A Convivial Small Music Venue: Value Creation by Bricolage of the Market Principle and Gift

Abstract

It is difficult to categorize indie musicians’ activities as either a job or a hobby. Nowadays, indie musicians are rational and economically independent due to technological improvements in musical equipment and the Internet, which have individualized and de-localized musical activity. Indie musicians based in the “Livehouse” (a Japanese small music venue) sometimes judged as irrational actors, and Livehouse has been criticized as a closed space where performers are exploited by a ticket quota. However, such criticism is based on values of the market economy. My aim is to overcome the limitation of these biased criticism by analyzing the face-to-face interactions among people gathered in a Livehouse called “Heaven”. For that, the present paper demonstrates that even though this venue relies on market exchange to profit from customers, the core customers, known as “regulars”, use “Heaven” as a “hangout”. These regulars interact and mutually aid each other without using money and demonstrate their respect towards the music through money. Here we can find the bricolage of market exchange and gift exchange that transforms “Heaven” to a convivial place.