How and why is music listened to? Do we let go and immerse ourselves in musical sounds as if they ‘wash around us’, like Mrs Phelps advised young Matilda in Roald Dahl’s classic novel? Or do we let the music ‘kick its way through to capture our hearts’, as in the popular lyric to Ikuze! Kaitō Shōjo by the idol band Momoiro Clover? What do we actually do when we listen, and how do these practices relate to everything else in our everyday lives: our demographic markers, jobs, families, emotional states and routines?

In this chapter, I argue that successfully linking the spheres of the personal with the social connection can be realised through conceptualising audience engagement as ‘practice’, that is, a regular and social set of activities (Bräuchler and Postill, 2010). This allows me to move from the linear musicological models towards a more circular account of listening, and will help answer the main questions for the chapter: namely, ‘What are people’s practices surrounding music?’ and ‘What is the role of music in people’s lives, and how is it interpreted in the context of social and cultural relations and identity work?’ In the second part of the chapter, I present a detailed analysis of the music engagements of five people. I chose these five out of the hundred participants from the study as aptly representing the various musical practices emerging from the data, as well as the demographics of the analysed audiences. Additionally, the five were chosen out of the 20 participants I had the most interaction with throughout the study as part of focus groups and individual interviews, as well as the actual practices of listening I observed.