Music venues in transition: States of autonomy, dependence and subcultural institutionalization

Abstract

Taking into account changing spatial structures of local music scenes and processes of music production, urban regeneration, and the commercialization of live music during the last decades, this article examines how ongoing transformations of socio-spatial environments exert influence on originally do-it-yourself music venues as a specific kind of urban music space. Venues are understood as individual actors that develop in relation to their initial spatial and cultural strategies. Therefore, the status of these venues reaches from traditionalist but highly dependent to paradoxical forms of “subcultural institutionalization”. Based on empirical data from three case studies in Hamburg, Germany, fieldwork shows that DIY-driven clubs increasingly become hijacked or taken-over spaces that apply different strategies in order to preserve their idea(l)s of self-governed and collective cultural work.