Sonic capital and independent urban music production: Analysing value creation and 'trial and error' in the digital age

•Digitisation and disruptive music markets trigger trial & error practices in independent urban techno music production.•Experimenting with activities and digital formats requires protagonists to build up sonic capital.•Flexible configurations of value creation allow for strategic shifts which remain indebted to former production concepts.

Since not long ago independent urban music production was stirred up by digital change and dramatic shifts in music markets. Local scenes of producers, labels, clubs and DJs have been challenged to cope with new digital formats while keeping up balance with the requirements of musical style, local and global audiences, and urban embeddings of music production. It is the specific combination of pressure coming from disruptive music markets, emerging socio-technical and socio-cultural socialities, and technological options, which determines musicians moving. 'Trial and error' practices have become an appealing undertaking for some, as well as a last resort for others. For agents in scene-based music production this ambiguous challenge assumes a particular shape. The paper develops the concept of sonic capital to get analytical clue to scene-based value creation. It addresses a specific knowledge-based capacity acquired by professional agents and users/consumers to keep up with the co-evolution of musical styles, technology, markets and urban social environments. On the empirical basis of interviews with independent label owners, producers and DJs in the Techno and House scene of the city of Berlin, typical strategies are identified which relate to the task of gaining context-related knowledge, developing trial-and-error routines, and performing contingent turns in business concepts and creative procedures. By applying a modification of Bourdieuian notions of capital formation to shifts in the urban music business, the tangle of recent social, economic and spatial reallocations of value creation becomes more comprehensible.