Introduction
The process of becoming a rock musician strongly relates to the organisational form of the band (Bennett Reference Bennett1980; Green Reference Green2002; Behr Reference Behr2010). At all levels of ambition and success, membership of a band provides the musician with a natural entry point for performing to an audience and forging a potential career (Smith Reference Smith2013a). The ‘micro-organisational’ (Bennett Reference Bennett2001) development of a band, therefore, is an important career prerequisite for rock musicians (Behr Reference Behr2015). However, the social and practical challenges of musicianship seem to be continuously underemphasised within the field of popular music studies (Cohen Reference Cohen1993; Kirschner Reference Kirschner, Swiss, Sloop and Herman1998; Lashua Reference Lashua, Mantie and Smith2017; Weston Reference Weston2017; Kielich Reference Kielich2018). Therefore, in this article I will focus on an aspiring rock band's informal learning processes in becoming a small business together. The study provides insights into the educational and organisational aspects of band practices and contributes to the fields of popular music, education and organisation studies – fields that are converging in the emerging interdisciplinary research area of ‘organising music-making’ (Beech and Gilmore Reference Beech and Gilmore2015).
There are many interesting ways of approaching the complexities of rock band life. Different contextual circumstances may affect the specific ideological and cultural conditions for learning to become a band, including whether the band members are mainly a group of friends or have been recruited for the task (Berkaak and Ruud Reference Berkaak and Ruud1994; Behr Reference Behr2010). It may also make a difference if the band mostly performs covers or original music (Groce and Dowell Reference Groce and Dowell1988; Groce Reference Groce1989). Another influential factor may be the members’ genders in the (still) male-dominated world of rock (Bayton Reference Bayton1989; Groce and Cooper Reference Groce and Cooper1990; Cohen Reference Cohen and Whiteley1997; Clawson Reference Clawson1999). The rock band in the study is an originals band of mainly female members recruited for their musical skill, career ambitions and partly for their gender. All these and numerous other features of course matter in the operation of a rock band, although here I explore the more general aspects of a rock band's learning to become a small business. I selected this band for the study primarily because they are up-and-coming.
This article takes as its point of departure the fact that a rock band aspiring to a career faces a number of challenges in enduring and progressing as a band and small business. Some of these challenges involve division of labour (Weinstein Reference Weinstein and Weisbard2004; Thomas Reference Thomas2011), day jobs and families (White Reference White1983; Teague and Smith Reference Teague and Smith2015), line-up changes (Weinstein Reference Weinstein1991; Kirschner Reference Kirschner, Swiss, Sloop and Herman1998; Behr Reference Behr2010), getting paid (Phillips Reference Phillips2013; Cloonan Reference Cloonan, Beech and Gilmore2015), entrepreneurial creativity (Laaksonen et al. Reference Laaksonen, Ainamo and Karjalainen2011; Panagopoulos and Chillas Reference Panagopoulos, Chillas, Beech and Gilmore2015; Smith and Gillett Reference Smith and Gillett2015), commercial viability (Berkaak and Ruud Reference Berkaak and Ruud1994; Shank Reference Shank1994; Flacks Reference Flacks1995), lack of success (Cohen Reference Cohen1991; Weinstein Reference Weinstein2006; Behr Reference Behr2015; Miller Reference Miller2018) and low levels of activity (Ferguson Reference Ferguson2002; Taylor Reference Taylor2003; Malm Reference Malm2017).
Burnout, in terms of exhaustion and disappointment, constitutes a band- and career-threatening challenge for aspiring rock musicians. Miller (Reference Miller2018) argues that one way for them to handle this threat is to strive to become professionals, i.e. to turn their music into paid work. She clarifies, though, that a career in this field seldom means an aspiration to become fully professional. Rather, many rock musicians aim to establish a semi-professional career with a stable fan base and regular gigs motivated by love of the music, more than earning a lot of money. However, rock bands – especially heavy metal bands, Miller (Reference Miller2018) argues – have a hard time sustaining such ‘grassroots’ careers. The heavy metal scene's demands for technical skills, original music and being a well-rehearsed and committed group eventually risk the musicians feeling that they have invested more than they receive in return. Miller (Reference Miller2018, p. 85) further states that these demands put
pressure on heavy metal musicians to either professionalize and receive a clear pay-off for their high commitment or cease performing publicly. In short, the organization of the metal scene supports burnout.
Thus, insufficient success explains why most metal bands only last a few years until the musicians are somewhere in their mid-thirties, Miller (Reference Miller2018) concludes. However, these challenges are not unique to the metal scene; there is plenty of evidence that rock musicians in general, within a variety of sub-genres and scenes, experience pressure to become professional and run the risk of burning out (e.g. White Reference White1983; Cohen Reference Cohen1991; Berkaak and Ruud Reference Berkaak and Ruud1994; Taylor Reference Taylor2003).
Another challenge for an aspiring rock band may be its inherent ambivalences and ideological tensions, and Berkaak (Reference Berkaak1999) identifies a number of such ambivalent relationships inherent in rock bands. Here, the Baumanian concept of ambivalence points to the possibility of understanding objects or events as different things at the same time. Berkaak shows how such ambivalences may turn into dilemmas within aspiring bands. Drawing on his studies, Berkaak (Reference Berkaak1999, p. 29) writes that
in the development of the band the dilemmas of play and work, individuality and communality, fantasy and realism became acute in the sense that each one of [the members] had to start to make final decisions.
Often bands split up because of these inherent tensions. Berkaak suggests that bands that manage to move on from their early years of rock star dreaming have members who manage to ‘disentangle’ these ambivalences (Reference Berkaak1999, p. 41), which are managed by the members’ drawing a clear line between band work and the rest of their lives.
Research on rock bands, though, still seems to be somewhat missing an educational perspective (cf. Trobia and Lo Verde Reference Trobia, Lo Verde, Mantie and Smith2017). In this case, what are the challenges and practices of learning to handle the challenges and enduring as a small business? In organisation studies, a similar gap is identified by Edenfield and Andersson (Reference Edenfield and Andersson2017), who point out that research on entrepreneurial organisations tends to take up-and-running organisational structures for granted, while ignoring the nascent stages and precarious interpersonal processes through which small businesses come about. However, the term ‘learning’ is ubiquitous in previous rock band research (e.g. Bennett Reference Bennett1980; Fornäs et al. Reference Fornäs, Lindberg and Sernhede1988/1995; Finnegan Reference Finnegan1989/2007; Cohen Reference Cohen1991; Groce Reference Groce1991; Berkaak and Ruud Reference Berkaak and Ruud1994; Berkaak Reference Berkaak1999; Green Reference Green2002; Weinstein Reference Weinstein and Weisbard2004, Reference Weinstein2006; Karlsen Reference Karlsen2010; Behr Reference Behr2010, Reference Behr2015). Some of these studies deal primarily with learning the craft of popular musicianship, while others are more relevant to this article. For example, Weinstein (Reference Weinstein and Weisbard2004, p. 199) states that those rock bands that survive their inherent tensions are those that ‘learnt to mitigate the inherent tensions’. Few studies, however, provide an understanding of how this learning occurs. Thus, a study with a theoretically grounded understanding of the micro-organisational and social aspects of peoples’ learning could provide new ways of thinking about why some rock bands, and not others, manage to endure through the many challenges of career aspiration.
The aim of this article is to develop an understanding of aspiring rock musicians’ learning processes in becoming a small business. I draw on empirical material based on parts of a year-long ethnographic case study of an up-and-coming rock band. Data were analysed using identity as an aspect of learning (Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991; Wenger Reference Wenger1998), guided by the research question:
How are identities formed within an aspiring rock band's development of business-oriented practices?
Based on the findings, I will argue that, for members of a rock band or a similar creative group, tackling the challenges of enduring and progressing as a small business involve two central learning processes in which the members form different and contradictory identities.
Identity as an aspect of learning
Identity may be understood as something we continuously learn through participation in communities of practice (Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991; Wenger Reference Wenger1998). Mastery of skills and the gaining of knowledge intrinsically involve changed self-understandings in terms of who we become and what we become part of socially. Thus, identity may develop as a middle way between a person and the social (Wenger Reference Wenger1998). Further, Wenger describes identity as ‘the social, the cultural, the historical with a human face’ (Wenger Reference Wenger1998, p. 145), which means that identity always involves identification with social categories and cultural–historical communities, and a negotiability of what those categories and communities mean in relation to a person's unique experiences. Since identity is inseparable from the meaning we ascribe our practices; it also paves the way for further learning. Hence, identity formation is not only learning per se, but is also ‘strongly tied to a conception of motivation’ (Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991, p. 122). We may think of motivation to learn as motivation to participate in practices and thereby ‘realise’ our identity (Smith Reference Smith2013b).
Sources of identity include what Wenger (Reference Wenger1998) identifies as three modes of belonging to communities. First, belonging is expressed at the level of engagement in practice, e.g. identity may be formed in relation to band members’ sense of belonging to the joint enterprises they engage in together. Secondly, imagination manifests belonging, so identity forms in relation to band members’ sense of belonging to imagined social categories and groupings on an abstract level. Third, alignment is a physical expression of belonging to external, wider communities and social contexts, e.g. identity forms in relation to how a band's practices align with and materialise social ‘worlds’ (Becker Reference Becker1982/2008). Although these three sources of identity interconnect, Wenger (Reference Wenger2000) adds they may also become mutually conflicting, so often one mode of belonging becomes dominant.
In this article, identity is dynamic and involves multiplicities of meaning – that is, co-existing versions of how shared practices are ‘contextualised’ by the practitioners (Lave Reference Lave, Chaiklin and Lave1993). Therefore, in most cases, it may be relevant to speak about identities in the plural form. Consequently, a practitioner may form conflicting identities that might cause ambivalence.
Rainio and Marjanovic-Shane (Reference Rainio and Marjanovic-Shane2013) describe ambivalence as a state in which different worlds, present in a person's life, clash and provide new possibilities for learning. Conversely, a rock band may accommodate contradictory worlds and ambivalence that create potential for the development of shared practices. However, practices that differ too much from the expectations and needs according to any of a practitioner's identities may cause a conflict of commitment – a state of anxiety and tension for that practitioner (Golden-Biddle and Rao Reference Golden-Biddle, Rao, Hatch and Schultz1997/2004). In this way, ambivalence may also cause identity struggles and dilemmas (Hoedemaekers and Ybema Reference Hoedemaekers, Ybema, Beech and Gilmore2015; Thunborg Reference Thunborg, Granberg and Ohlsson2016). Further, Golden-Biddle and Rao (Reference Golden-Biddle, Rao, Hatch and Schultz1997/2004) stress that practitioners tend to respond to such intra-role conflicts between identities by holding on more strongly to one of them and decreasing their identification with the group or organisation. For a rock band, then, ambivalence may both promote and challenge its members who are learning to progress as a small business together.
In this article, I discuss how two main identities are formed within a rock band: professional and hobbyist. These identities are inspired by Stebbins’ (Reference Stebbins1992, Reference Stebbins2014) rich sociological mapping of the pursuits, roles and careers in the borderlands between working life and leisure. However, while Stebbins develops a more objective categorisation of the vast variety of activities within this area of social life, the analyses in this article are, in line with Wenger (Reference Wenger1998), directed towards the participants’ own ways of ascribing meaning, sensing belonging and thus forming identities in relation to what they are doing. In the following section, I outline a definition of these two identities.
Professional identity
The formation of a professional identity in a rock band involves members’ contextualising of band activities as an ‘entertainment art’ (Stebbins Reference Stebbins1992) – a pursuit that historically has undergone a process of professionalisation. Thus, a member who forms a professional identity understands her/himself as situated within the complex continuum and dialectics between amateurs and professionals, as identified by Finnegan (Reference Finnegan1989/2007) and others. Stebbins (Reference Stebbins1992) argues that entertainment art has its amateur and professional practitioners who only differ from each other according to the degree of status they have in their field and whether the activity constitutes a form of livelihood or not. A professional identity in a rock band is thus formed by perceiving a potential – whether realised or not – for having the band as a full-time occupation, and through a sense of imaginary belonging to and alignment with the vocational world of the music industry (cf. Phillips Reference Phillips2013).
Hobbyist identity
In contrast, a band member who forms a hobbyist identity contextualises the band activities as a hobby. Stebbins (Reference Stebbins1992, p. 10) defines a hobby as: ‘a specialised pursuit beyond one's occupation, a pursuit that one finds particularly interesting and enjoyable because of its durable benefits’. Participants in a hobby ‘perform or produce strictly for their own enjoyment and perhaps that of others in the same community’ (Stebbins Reference Stebbins1992, p. 13). The activity, as hobbyists see it, has not undergone professionalisation and therefore cannot be made into a job. Instead, a hobbyist identity in a rock band forms in relation to a member's sense of imaginary belonging to and alignment with the leisure world of music-making (cf. Mantie and Smith Reference Mantie and Smith2017).
The study
In order to study the intimate setting of a rock band's internal work, my choice of methodology was inspired by the tradition of micro-sociological and in-depth case studies of rock band ethnography (e.g. Bennett Reference Bennett1980; Fornäs et al. Reference Fornäs, Lindberg and Sernhede1988/1995; Finnegan Reference Finnegan1989/2007; Cohen Reference Cohen1991; Shank Reference Shank1994). Like many rock band researchers, I have a background as a rock musician, which may have influenced the study in several ways (Bennett Reference Bennett2002; Faulkner and Becker Reference Faulkner and Becker2008; Lashua Reference Lashua, Mantie and Smith2017). For example, my researcher position could explain my focus on the band members’ challenges and differences in terms of meanings and motives (developed further in Malm Reference Malm2018).
The rock band in this study was selected ‘conveniently’ (Cohen et al. Reference Cohen, Manion and Morrison2011) from among my social networks in one of Sweden's larger cities. I am loosely acquainted with one of the band members, ‘Karin’ (not her real name). What makes this band particularly interesting for an in-depth case study of learning processes is that it is an up-and-coming band with increasing success and recognition. The Rock Band's (not the real name) current line-up, after some changes throughout its six years of existence, is Anna, Ellinor, Karin, Stefan and Stina, of whom Anna and Ellinor are original members who were both recruited by a former founding member. Anna and Ellinor have the explicit ambition to ‘go for it’ and aspire to a career in music, and have recruited all members on this understanding. The members range in age from 25 to 50 and their length of experience of being in rock bands varies widely from around 35 years to only a few. Anna and Stefan are the most experienced, while Karin is the newcomer to band life. Ellinor participates from a distance, mainly in the live gigs. All members have full-time day jobs or studies.
I generated the empirical material for this study as a part of a larger year-long field study with The Rock Band during 2016. The material was drawn from my observations of four band rehearsals, one band meeting, one live gig, online marketing and media, one individual interview (with Karin) and two group interviews. All of my interactions with the band took place in the band's rehearsal studio located in the basement of an industrial building. The live gig was at a large festival in Sweden. Although all the material co-informed my overall ethnographic understanding of the band members’ views and learning processes, the two group interviews serve as the major basis for the analyses in this study. I conducted the first group interview, attended by Anna, Karin, Stefan and Stina, at the beginning of the fieldwork and it took about 40 minutes. The second group interview, with Anna, Karin and Stefan, I conducted towards the end of the fieldwork period and it took about 1 hour and 30 minutes. In these two semi-structured interviews, the band members reflected upon themes and issues around becoming a business and professionalism that I picked up from my observations of their interactions and activities. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.
I analysed data using a form of thematic template analysis (King and Brooks Reference King, Brooks, Cassell, Cunliffe and Grandy2018) and an abductive procedure (Timmermans and Tavory Reference Timmermans and Tavory2012). This meant that I first considered the last group interview as a potentially representative sample for what was going on within the band. The rich interview material dealt with a lot of my curiosities from observing and getting to know the band over the preceding year. I scanned the interview for patterns, focusing on expressions of learning processes and asking questions such as: what are the band members’ struggles in their joint efforts? What do they want to become and master? In what directions are they being formed? Different themes emerged for the various things that the members learned. I gave the themes codes and formed them into a preliminary template, against which I coded the rest of the data. I went back and forth between the data and the themes repeatedly, modified and merged themes, invented new ones, recoded, and eventually stabilised the template. Finally, the resulting two main contradictory learning processes were conceptualised into the theoretical framework.
During the course of the research, I kept the participants informed about the overall purpose of the study and gave them the option to withdraw at any time. I also asked them for their permission to record them on each occasion. All names, places, events or other identifiable pieces of information were changed or obscured in the interests of confidentiality. Moreover, the band gave feedback on descriptions, excerpts (translated by the author) and early analyses and approved them for publication. Given these considerations and the observance of other ethical factors to avoid harm, I present the empirical material as close to the experiences and cultural knowledge of the participants as possible, inspired by the basic principles of ethnographic research (Spradley Reference Spradley1980). Before I detail the analytical findings, I will give some descriptions of the empirical setting and the context of this study.
The Rock Band and its development of business-oriented practices
The Rock Band has reached a level in their career where its members have all of their live gigs offered to them by external promoters and organisers. The types of gigs and venues they are playing are increasingly changing from small rock clubs to larger festivals. The Rock Band has been out on several tours, both as a supporting act and as headliner, nationally and internationally. The band members self-produce and distribute records, videos and other band merchandise in cooperation with professional friends and companies within the music industry.
The Rock Band is currently involved in developing business-oriented practices of formalisation, rules and routines. Three examples of these practices I chose to call becoming a formal economic actor, creating workplace boundaries and formalising a repertoire of management.
First, the band is becoming a formal economic actor and has formally registered as a business firm to be able to get paid for record sales and live gigs, as well as to cover expenses for professional equipment, promotion and travel. The band also has applied for a business bank account. It is increasingly dependent on cooperation with individuals and companies within the music industry, increasingly needs financial resources, and there is a feeling it wants to be seen as a serious business partner on the music business market.
Secondly, The Rock Band is also involved in creating ‘workplace boundaries’ around its activities. Since all of the members have day jobs, the band's coordination is highly dependent on various digital and mobile forms of communication. The Rock Band's current career status brings with it an increasing flow of offers and requests, as well as a need for the members to be constantly available for quick planning and decision-making. The band uses Facebook Messenger, where they have created different threads for topics like business, merchandise, rehearsals and live gigs. This delimits what counts as band work in the vast stream of day-to-day distance communication. These formalised forums of communication create symbolic boundaries for the band as a kind of workplace.
Finally, The Rock Band is involved in formalising a kind of ‘repertoire’ of management; the band members have divided many of their increasing number of tasks between themselves, which has led to task areas being chosen by the members who are responsible for them. Such areas include: business administration, booking, photography, social media, sound and stage technology, selling and storing merchandise, merchandise design, media and interviews, and logistics. Beyond that, there is also an administrative function of making sure tasks are distributed and completed in time.
The Rock Band's forming of contradictory identities
The Rock Band's emerging business-oriented practices seem to generate both enthusiasm and ambivalence amongst the band members, as they express both aspiration and reluctance towards becoming a business. The shared practices seem to be contextualised in various and sometimes conflicting ways in terms of the meaning they are ascribed by the members. Their different, multiple and shifting attitudes towards the band and its current direction of development may be analysed as a simultaneous forming of two conflicting identities: the members are becoming both professionals and hobbyists to various degrees.
Becoming professionals and hobbyists
Anti-corporate and ad hoc leadership ideals, as well as antipathy towards formal modes of communication within The Rock Band both oppose the emerging business-oriented practices, which may indicate a need to anchor outside of the formal business world:
Anna: Right now we're applying for a corporate tax certificate and bank giro payments, but we got rejected by [a bank]. Now we have to apply to some other bank. We have money that we're just waiting to deposit.
Stefan to Anna: Just don't pick [another bank].
Karin to Stefan: Why? It was them who got into some scandal, right?
Stefan: Yeah, they are all just crooks and bandits.
Stina to Anna: What were we rejected for?
Anna: No explanation, they just said ‘rock band, pff, no revenues, no’ [some chuckles]. OK, I know nothing about business, you know, and when I filled out that form I just guessed how much we will earn and sell abroad and that went wrong for sure.
Stina: Check with [a third bank]. [Another band that I played in] didn't have any problems having an account there. We had a general partnership back then … yeah, whew …
Researcher: Whew?
Stina: I didn't like invoicing and bookkeeping at all. I was the one who had to take care of all that.
Anna to Stina: You can become our accountant.
Stina: Never [some laughs], it's so stiff.
On the one hand, the above excerpt may be an illustration of how the band members are learning new practices of business administration and forming identities as professionals. On the other hand, it could also illustrate a reluctance among the members towards becoming a real business and entering into a corporate world they perceive as ‘stiff’ and full of ‘bandits’. In The Rock Band's efforts towards becoming a formal economic actor, the members seem to have a simultaneous need to feel like hobbyists and stay loyal to their anticommercial ideals. Such ideals, as identified by Cohen (Reference Cohen1991), Shank (Reference Shank1994) and others, often prevail in many rock bands.
The formation of hobbyist identities occurs in parallel with, and sometimes in opposition to, professional identities within The Rock Band. This is also evident in their resistance against excessively rigid boundaries around what may count as ‘band work’ in their internal communication:
Anna: Yeah, first we only had one [Facebook Messenger] thread but then someone started talking about cats [laughing] when we were about to decide on merch. Then it disappears in the thread. That's why Messenger is not that good. So we try to use regular e-mail as well. It's better to follow up a thread in that way. So then we may write that we have sent an important email, check it out. Or if there is a booker asking if we can play this or that day, answer quickly. Then it's easier with Messenger. Or SMS if you know that someone doesn't have internet right then.
Owing to the large number of topics for the band to discuss at any one time, the large streams of text that arise from digital communication can sometimes be confusing. On one level, the excerpt illustrates how the band handles this by learning formalised modes of communication and becoming professionals operating in a kind of workplace.
The excerpt may also illustrate, however, how members are reluctant to become too formal with each other. Occasionally, members resist clear-cut divisions between work and fun and are tempted to go off-topic and fraternise informally in their everyday chatting on social media – as in the cats example. However necessary the relief provided by such ‘hobbyist resistance’ may be at times, endless scrolling through irrelevant matters also causes irritation and creates inefficiency and feelings of non-seriousness.
The band members’ approach to the management of the band provides another example of the formation of contradictory identities. Anna and Stefan – two veterans of band life – are both informally influential leaders in The Rock Band. However, the band members ascribe Anna – a founding member – a general leadership role, comprising a measure of formal power to decide on and distribute tasks:
Stefan: Anna is the spider in the web. She is the one who delegates the most.
Anna: I'm the one who pokes people and says ‘now you haven't done it’, ‘now it's been two weeks’, ‘don't forget to answer in time.’ [Makes whip cracking sounds, laughing]. I don't want to do all that though.
Stefan: I think it's important to learn to delegate tasks and not take on doing everything yourself. Then it's easy to get kind of overloaded.
Anna: We try to make sure I don't do everything. If you think too much about the band you can burnout. I think that was what [a former, founding member] did.
Stefan: It's good to put things on someone else who is better at it than you, and not to struggle with stuff unnecessarily.
Anna: Now it's also a good thing that we have different jobs and ages and so on, then we have different skills.
This excerpt illustrates how the members are involved in learning to formalise their repertoire of management practices over which Anna's and Stefan's views are relatively dominant. Their recognition of having a ‘spider in the web’ who makes things happen and legitimately delegates tasks is telling of their emerging professional view of themselves. In the case of fully professional rock bands, Laaksonen et al. (Reference Laaksonen, Ainamo and Karjalainen2011) illustrate how this kind of general leadership develops into a formal and equally necessary role as a kind of ‘lead entrepreneur’. By formalising decision-making and leadership, The Rock Band assures the completion of necessary and, perhaps, boring work. In addition, this may save some members from taking on a lot of informal work that others in the band do not find attractive and burning out, which was the band's experience before starting to develop more business-oriented practices. Burnout also happened to a member of the rock band Taylor (Reference Taylor2003) studied, when taking on too many managerial tasks.
However, a parallel formation of hobbyist identities that somewhat opposes the professional identities is evident here as well. The rationale for developing a formalised management does not only seem to be the improvement of decision-making through a degree of hierarchy, as one might expect from a business point of view. An additional reason seems to be to ensure relative autonomy for all members to choose their own tasks, guided by respect for and efficient utilisation of everybody's different skills and experiences. In this way, the band preserves motivation despite the time-consuming and unpaid work. Such ad hoc leadership ideals are in line with the egalitarianism and voluntarism researchers have identified as an aspect of the ideology within rock bands (e.g. Finnegan Reference Finnegan1989/2007; Berkaak Reference Berkaak1999). In The Rock Band, Anna expresses that she does not even want to lead, which may illustrate a hobbyist identity. Rather, she wishes that everybody would know what needs to be done and take on their own tasks. Traits of such hobbyist identities are also evident among leaders of the professional bands in Laaksonen et al. (Reference Laaksonen, Ainamo and Karjalainen2011) of whom one states, for instance, that ‘[I am not] telling people what to do. I let them do their own thing’ (p. 29, a quote).
Further, analyses may identify contradictory identity formation in members’ reflections upon the fact that The Rock Band is becoming an ever more dominant part of their lives as their public success and status increase:
Karin: I guess the difference is that with previous bands you only practice in the rehearsal room, but with [The Rock Band] it's almost 24 hours a day – there's always something.
Stefan: Yeah, I have had many bands that are like a bunch of friends, where the band doesn't really exist outside of the rehearsal room. It's only in the rehearsal room that we practised on our instruments and talked about the band, much like a football practice – the band isn't something we do otherwise. And then the members quit when too much is happening: ‘No, I just wanna meet up for some rehearsing and a coffee once a week’. But in [The Rock Band] we discuss and work with a lot of things surrounding the band all the time, the business and everything …
Karin: … mm, and because we're talking [online] every day, there's never a break. Even though you are at home on the couch, it's still ‘Yes, I'll just answer this, I'll just check that out’. And when we go and do stuff, like video recordings or meetings about outfits or whatever, then it feels like it takes all day. But the intensity varies a lot.
Anna: You could not have another hobby, though you might need one.
Stefan: Well, I guess that's so – you must miss out on a lot. I never have time to go to the gym and things like that, you just have to cancel the gym card. And I've not played a lot of computer games in the last two years either, it's just gone [chuckles].
Karin: Well, me neither, but I did it this weekend. Even then I felt anyway that maybe I should have done something with the band instead. You sometimes get bad conscience when you do something else [chuckles].
This excerpt illustrates how the band members form professional identities and contextualise their activities even more within working life, and to some extent align the business-oriented practices with occupational values and norms like commitment and collegial relationships. Stefan and Anna especially seem to manifest their formation of professional identities by stressing their serious commitment and sacrifice. For example, Anna states that she is in a need of a ‘hobby’ on the side, which may be an expression of the high commitment that Bennett (Reference Bennett1980) and others have identified as an important ideal within rock bands. However, the formation of a professional identity also seems to be a struggle to some members in The Rock Band; the relative newcomer Karin seems to experience a kind of dilemma with the band being demanding and not a fun leisure activity alongside other hobbies. She expresses how having the band as a primary occupation promotes feelings of pressure and guilt for not working seriously enough.
Although the band members spend at least 10 hours every gig-free week on band activities – including rehearsals, meetings, and day-to-day communication – the whole enterprise is nevertheless a matter of unpaid work in addition to their full-time daily occupations, i.e. something that Stebbins (Reference Stebbins1992) defines as a hobby:
Stefan: Then we have 50 hours a week that we spend on our regular jobs and commuting. That is very different to the fully professional bands that can rise in the morning and write songs and go for it fully. We have decided that we can go on tours and such about two weeks per semester, otherwise we stay home. We have our jobs and accept that everyone wants their private lives, so we have chosen not to become that big. In that case, we would have to go for it in another way …
Anna: … and maybe become semi-big. So, of course if someone wants to book us on something where we get paid enough to manage and pay the rent, we would certainly do it. But that's not something we're actively investing in right now – we have families. But, actually, I would like to work with this on a full-time basis. The other stuff [the day job] is because you have to be able to pay the rent and food.
Researcher: By the way, how much do you charge for a live gig?
Stefan: It varies, but generally we would like it to not cost us anything personally, so that we can break even at least, otherwise it wouldn't be possible.
Anna: But we still fall short because we often take leave without pay and seldom have much paid vacation left for other things than the band.
This excerpt illustrates how the band members form hobbyist identities, aligning their practices with leisure-oriented and non-profit values and norms. Stefan, for instance, expresses how he, in addition to becoming a professional, also becomes a hobbyist. He states that he is happy just to break even financially, meaning that he is not doing it for the money. Rather, he accepts the band having limited commercial success in favour of a good ‘work–life’ balance (Teague and Smith Reference Teague and Smith2015). Stefan's attitude is reminiscent of the anti-commercialism that, e.g. Finnegan (Reference Finnegan1989/2007) identifies as an ideological feature in rock bands. Forming identities as hobbyists, though, causes dilemmas for members like Anna, who identifies herself more as a professional and dreams of having the band as a full-time job. She seems to struggle with the fact that the band functions as a kind of hobby and has a number of constraints that prevent it from becoming a livelihood.
In summary, I have illustrated how an aspiring rock band's development of business-oriented practices involves the formation of both professional and hobbyist identities. This causes ambivalence and dilemmas since the identities have their sources in the band members’ imaginary belonging and alignment to different social worlds – namely the vocational worlds of the music industry and leisure worlds of music-making, which to some extent are logically and ideologically conflicting. Professional identities espouse ideals of high-commitment to commercial success, while hobbyist identities promote ideals of egalitarianism, voluntarism and anti-commercialism, which all combine to produce a tension-laden situation within a band such as The Rock Band.
Discussion
My overall impression is that the rock band in this study manages the challenges of progressing as a small business rather well – despite the contradictions and dilemmas found in the analyses. Here, I would like to discuss how these findings indicate that learning to become both professionals and hobbyists may be central for aspiring rock musicians to tackle some challenges to their band and a potential career, as identified in previous research. It will be discussed how each of these learning processes may contribute to members’ ability to avoid burnout and handle challenging situations, and how the resulting ambivalence may prevent potential loss of motivation and interpersonal conflicts.
It should be noted, though, that by stressing the centrality of forming both professional and hobbyist identities in this setting I do not insist that the two identities merge into one ‘hybrid’ organisational rock band identity in which the identities become mutually constitutive (cf. Golden-Biddle and Rao Reference Golden-Biddle, Rao, Hatch and Schultz1997/2004). Making use of the theory of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger Reference Lave and Wenger1991; Wenger Reference Wenger1998) as a framework, various practices and joint enterprises may involve learning different identities. In band life, some situations and tasks involve mainly professional identities, while others involve becoming hobbyists. The becoming of a rock band's ‘we’ as a small organisation or business, therefore, is never univocal but ambivalent.
The ambivalence of becoming a small business
In line with Miller's (Reference Miller2018) observations, learning to act like and identify as professionals may be necessary for rock band members to avoid burning out. The different rock scenes’ stylistic conventions of high artistic standards and professional demands, and alignment with the industry's ways of working, may gradually force band members to make efforts comparable with those of a full-time job (White Reference White1983). Developing a professional mindset, including ideals of high commitment to commercial success, may motivate a band to formalise its division of labour and use its time more efficiently. As illustrated in this study, aligning the work to professional practices may reduce a band's uncertainties and need for negotiations regarding economy, communication and management. By becoming professionals, a band can keep up a continuous ‘production mode’ (Malm Reference Malm2017) while avoiding exhaustion.
Learning to become professionals may facilitate a number of challenging band life situations that may be important in forging a career. These situations include prioritising touring and being away from families, friends and day jobs, replacing members that are not skilled or contributing enough, organising practical and administrative arrangements for making a record, and being commercially viable on the stage and in the studio.
At the same time, learning to become hobbyists by adopting the manners and ideals associated with it, including egalitarianism, voluntarism and anti-commercialism seems equally important in tackling the challenge of burnout, and particularly the aspect of disappointment. Extensive and unpaid band work is often done in addition to members’ regular full-time daily occupations, which this study confirms. However, a sense of belonging to a scene or subculture, the love of its music, and the social well-being within the band may sustain members’ motivation in the long run (Shank Reference Shank1994; Thomas Reference Thomas2011). Although some dream about the ‘big breakthrough’ more than others, band members learn to partly contextualise their band work as leisure time and inferior to priorities like day jobs and families. They learn to have a good time instead of just pushing forward relentlessly. In this learning, band members develop an increasing (and perhaps painful) awareness of the fact that there is nearly no chance of the big breakthrough (Weinstein Reference Weinstein1991, Reference Weinstein, Kelly and McDonnell1999) or even making a basic living as a rock band (Behr Reference Behr2010; Laaksonen et al. Reference Laaksonen, Ainamo and Karjalainen2011). Thus, becoming hobbyists may prevent disappointment and disillusion and instead foster realistic expectations regarding career and band mates’ commitment. This point runs somewhat counter to Miller (Reference Miller2018) and appears to be underemphasised in previous research in general.
There may be some inevitable situations in band life in which hobbyist identities seem to be crucial in order for a rock band to remain together and preserve its joint enterprise. These include playing to empty venues, bad ratings, lack of success, feelings of degradation and humiliation, and time periods of low or no band activity – i.e. a kind of recurring ‘hibernation mode’ that can be demoralising and destabilising (Malm Reference Malm2017).
Becoming a small business, then, involves two learning processes, which are in equal parts contradictory and important. As seen in this study, the ambivalence that arises from this parallel identity formation seems to cause identity struggles and dilemmas among the band members. In contrast to Berkaak (Reference Berkaak1999), however, this study suggests that these dilemmas seem to be caused – rather than eased – by attempts to escape or ‘disentangle’ the state of ambivalence. In trying to choose one identity – professional or hobbyist – for all situations, a conflict of commitment gives rise to dilemmas since none of these identities is ‘right’ for all situations of band life. For example, in this study, Anna experienced a conflict of commitment to her dominant professional identity in not being successful enough to tour instead of having day jobs. Similarly, Karin experienced a conflict of commitment to her strong hobbyist identity owing to the increasing time away from home, family and friends.
It seems plausible to expect that holding on too strongly to one univocal identity might become career-threatening in terms of loss of motivation and interpersonal conflicts. Being involved in shared practices that do not align fully with one's expectations and needs that are derived from an imaginary belonging to a social world may cause reluctance. It may be difficult to be motivated to take part in practices that fail to fulfill your primary ideals and belongings. Therefore, singular identity formation and the resulting conflicts of commitment may, first, make a band member identify less with the band as a ‘we’, lose her/his motivation to remain a member, and eventually, quit. Secondly, it may also lead to interpersonal conflicts; the contradictory logics and ideologies of professionals and hobbyists might cause band-threatening tensions in situations when different members lean in different directions. While this is not the case within The Rock Band (as far as I could observe), the small tensions between the core members Stefan and Anna concerning how content they are with the current level of investment and success could develop into future difficulties for the band.
The present study may therefore suggest that, instead of escaping ambivalence – by sticking to one set of coherent logics and values (cf. Berkaak Reference Berkaak1999; Miller Reference Miller2018) – band members could embrace it in order to prevent demoralising dilemmas and conflicts. Band members’ learning to develop multiple identities and live with ambivalence may provide them with a useful readiness to tackle the many challenges of enduring as a business.
Conclusion
Rock musicians’ careers are in many ways interdependent with their bands’ micro-organisational development. In this article, I have attempted to provide a new understanding of aspiring rock musicians’ learning processes in becoming small businesses by focusing on identity formation as an aspect of learning. I have argued that learning to act like, identify as and thus become both professionals and hobbyists, and living with and embracing the ambivalence resulting from this multiple becoming, develops a readiness for rock musicians to tackle some of the many challenges in enduring and progressing as a business together. Consequently, members of a rock band, or a similar group, who fail to develop this kind of flexibility by holding on too strongly to one of these identities may risk burning out, losing their motivation or finding themselves in interpersonal conflicts. The importance of these learning processes, and especially becoming hobbyists, is underemphasised within popular music studies.
This article may challenge how scholars usually define different kinds of creative groups into categories such as professional, amateur or hobby. Such simplifications are misleading since a group's members may be, and perhaps need to be, heterogeneous in how they contextualise their activities, which may mean different things in different situations and at different times for each member. Although categorisations of activities are academically useful, this article, with its educational perspective, suggests that meaning most fruitfully remains an empirical issue.
Finally, while this study is limited to one single case study and its conclusions are tentative, more research and angles on learning processes of small-group formation within the area of popular music are welcome. For instance, what role do new technologies play? Recent research observes that today's connected society encourages broad layers of rock musicians to act as if they were professionals, in spite of their relative lack of competence and knowledge (Trobia and Lo Verde Reference Trobia, Lo Verde, Mantie and Smith2017). How may these breaches of traditional social and cultural barriers, and other changing circumstances, affect the formation of professional and hobbyist identities? Moreover, how may we understand these processes in bands that, in contrast to this study, are declining in their careers? What role do identities play in band fights and breakups? These kinds of questions increasingly could be addressed within the emerging field of organising music-making.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Camilla Thunborg, Pär Larsson, Ulrika Bennerstedt, Keith Roberts, reviewers and colleagues in the research groups of organisational pedagogy and music education in Stockholm for their useful comments and kind support.
