‘Right here, right now!’: embodied experiences of pop concert participants

Despite the proliferation of high-quality recorded live pop concerts in today’s digitalized world, the demand for live pop performances remains strong. Through a case study of Mayday, a popular Chinese- Taiwanese band, this paper conducted qualitative research and collected multiple sources of data through netnography, participant-observation, semi-structured interviews and secondary data to reveal the embodied experience of young participants travelling across China to attend live pop concerts to be ‘right here, right now’. From the perspective of embodied experiences, this study finds that the allure of live pop lies in providing space for participants to be immersed in the body that lets go, to be present, be in unison, and forget. In this way, participants can gain aesthetic pleasure, sense of authenticity, tacit understanding and immersion, which are embodied experiences that cannot be replicated by other musical experiences and digitalization. The paper also provides theoretical and practical considerations for tourism practitioners to improve the experience for both live concert audiences and armchair audiences watching the recorded live concerts at home or in cinemas.