In this book, Crossley asserts that music is social interaction rather than a sonic ‘object’ in culture and society. In other words, and extending on Christopher Small's by now classic notion, music should be understood as an activity, as musicking. Any engagement with sonic materials culturally understood as ‘music’ is always an activity. As such, music is always multiply embedded in economic, political, cultural, social and other networks that make up society. Music is also multivalent, Crossley proposes, in the sense that it ‘may take on different meanings and accomplish different ends simultaneously and indissociably’ (p. 9). And musical interaction is mindfully embodied. That is, musicking inseparably involves the physical body and the mind. As social interaction, musicking is not confined to co-presence of acting individuals, it is most often mediated through technology. These sentences sum up, succinctly, the core argument of this book. Throughout, Crossley visits a variety of major sociological works, using them selectively for building his insights into the functioning of music in society. The book obviously is dotted with myriad references to musical works, musicians, genres and styles, exemplifying and supporting the developing argument.

Crossley writes a book in music sociology, a book that works very well as a study in sociological theory, where music stands as an example of the theoretical perspective of relational sociology. It also serves music scholars by exposing music to be essentially social, thus implicitly criticising the study of music in itself.

Following the introduction which briefly presents the perspective of relational sociology, the book consists of eight chapters. Chapter Two sets the basic sociological conceptual ground for presenting musicking as social interaction, pointing to the way music exists between individual bodies, institutional settings and webs, or networks of various kinds. Chapter Three, by way of revisiting Theodor Adorno as well as Richard Peterson and David Berger, points to how the key notion of ‘mainstream’ stems directly from the embeddedness of musicking in capitalism and cultural industries. This leads to Chapter Four, where Crossley develops his key concept of ‘music world’, based on Howard Becker's notion of ‘art worlds’ – not before recounting certain shortcomings of familiar terms such as ‘sub-culture’, ‘neo-tribe’ and ‘scene’, as well as dismissing Bourdieu's concept of ‘field’. Thus,

And music worlds are always part of

Chapter Five further elaborates on this theme, by exploring and demonstrating how music worlds are, in effect, social networks, consisting of various forms and levels of nodes and ties between individuals, groups and organisations. In Chapter Six, Crossley presents a perspective on musical meaning, based on Charles Peirce's semiotic concepts, and Chapter Seven elaborates on the various uses of musical meaning for the creation and maintenance of individual and collective identities, primarily through taste preferences. Chapter Eight continues these themes by discussing how musicking, through taste and interaction in music worlds, is a factor in social division and inequality. The final chapter again touches on Adorno, in order to discuss the political aspect of musicking, leading to the assertion that music worlds are ‘spaces in which lifestyles, identities, values and norms can be generated and experimented with, informing wider movements of change’ (p. 191).

One need not agree with all the conceptual elaborations and theoretical claims made in order to find here an excellent source of ideas and insights about ‘the social life of music’. I, for one, think for example that Pierre Bourdieu's concepts and legacy can be put to better use for understanding the dynamic of diversification and innovation in popular music (Regev Reference Regev2013). Other reservations concern the empirical aspect of the book. It is almost entirely theoretical. It mentions musical examples only briefly, as short illustrations for theoretical propositions. The exceptions are Chapters Four and Five, where Crossley explores in detail the actual working of music worlds as networks at various levels of interaction. Figures of cluster analysis graphically illustrate one music festival network (p. 79), a network of various music festivals (p. 82) and Liverpool's punk/post-punk music world in 1975–1980 (p. 86), vividly illuminating the concepts. These chapters however also make clear that Crossley's concepts and theorisation stem primarily from his research on music festivals in the UK, and are based primarily on face-to-face or ‘live’ forms of musicking. Given the breadth of its theorisation and implicit claim to universality, and although Crossley does acknowledge at the outset that he limits the examples to the popular music universe in Western countries, one would expect a wider scope of detailed examples. In the West itself, I miss examples from additional countries, but also empirical evidence regarding the functioning of music worlds in mundane listening habits in everyday life, especially now that streaming has become the major form of musicking. Obviously, there is also the issue of music worlds in countries beyond the English-speaking world, or the global dynamics of music worlds such as metal, hip-hop or indeed the mainstream.

Still, these reservations do not detract from the richness of the book, its success to provide a quite coherent analysis of musicking that draws on multiple levels and dimensions of sociological theory. Students and scholars in music sociology will find here a text to repeatedly come back to for guidance and inspiration.