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This study is a contribution to the study of popular culture. Focusing on the youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves, it highlights the values of authenticity and hipness, and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture. Using a combination of methods, the book paints a picture of club cultures as "taste cultures" brought together by micro-media (like flyers and listings), transformed into self-conscious "subcultures" by niche media (like the music and style press), and sometimes recast as "movements" with the aid of mass media (like tabloid newspaper front pages). It also analyzes the changing status of the medium of recording, from a marginal second-class entertainment in the 1950s to the much celebrated, dominant form of clubs and raves in the 1990s. Drawing from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Sarah Thornton coins the term "subcultural capital" to make sense of the distinctions made by "cool" youth paying particular attention to their disparagement of the "mainstream" against which they measure their alternative cultural worth. Illustrated with case studies, this book should be useful as a text in cultural and media studies, and in the sociology of culture.