Is the audience for popular music created by the music industry?

Fenster and Swiss state that ‘some critics have argued that the market for popular music recordings, and therefore the pop music audience itself, are essentially created by the music industry’. It can be seen that the music industry has a lot of control over how society can access music and having specific target audiences for different genres of music just shows how the music industry are essentially creating the audiences. To have any music be popular, initially you would need a target group to aim at so that the artists knows what type of music is accepted into society. According to Peterson, Berer, Rothenbuhler and Dimmick, ‘a concentration has resulted in a more homogenised product’ meaning that popular music has no real difference between different tracks, everything is simply the same. This is likely to happen because once the music industry know what track works, everyone else in the industry take advantage of this and create similar tracks knowing they will be successful and the audience passively accept it. Therefore the audience is more than likely to be created by the music industry initially if not now.

Magazine review on MixMag

MixMag is a magazine based all on dance music. The bright colours of the front page connotes the inside of a club where this type of music would be played meaning that the magazine does not need to state what it is straight away as it aims to be eye catching. The magazine tries to focus on entertaining and informing its mixed gendered audience group about the latest artist, DJ or party, which the young raver’s can find more about the artist, DJ or party. This biggest selling dance magazine has so much to offer the audience that there is lots of information jammed packed into the magazine. It is aimed at 18 to 20year olds looking for a good night out or interested in raving dance music. There are even the pages on the best electrical equipment to get, which can enhance how the audience listens or play the music. Along with reviews on the latest gadgets you can get reviews on the latest apparel too! The magazine has everything a reader would want to know about!

Are blackness and whiteness useful concepts in the study of popular music?

Barry Shank stated that ‘there should be no argument that the transformation in popular music that we associate with the rise and development of rock were the result of white fascination with black music’. But can this be true of today’s popular music with such genres of popular music such as bhangra, which is even played in clubs alongside r’n’b and hip-hop, who originated from India. Hebdige states that ‘since the 1950s there had always been some young white people living in the ghettoes alongside the immigrants who were interested in West Indian music’. This suggesting that blackness and whiteness are not useful concepts in the study of popular music as you cannot fix the start of popular music to one race and you cannot fix the trend of the present day to a particular race either as it is ever changing and it is becoming more multicultural with the influence of every culture in our society today.

Can popular music achieve genuine political change?

With Shuker’s suggestions that popular music can be ‘a means of raising both consciousness about and funds for, political causes’ it can be implied that popular music can have a hand in the awareness of politics to help a certain case but not enough of an affect to make a change by itself. ‘Popular music is hardly the preserve of the political left and broadly progressive politics. It can, and has been, used to support a broad range of political positions’, says Shuker. This again emphasizing that popular music can help a political party in its cause but cannot make the political change with just the use of the music. Or in the case of the Sex Pistols, with their song God Save the Queen, suggested anarchy and how they don’t agree with the way she handle’s the country, yet this popular song didn’t change the Queen being on the thrown.

Does the emergence of the digital download signal the end for the music industry?

The common assumption that new digital technology could destroy the recording industry is exemplified by the cover of Wired magazine (2/03). Playfully re-contextualizing Apple’s iTunes slogan, it shows a zeppelin going down in flames, and reads ‘Rip. Mix. Burn: The Fall of the Music Industry’ says Ian Condry. It is not a new situation that there is probably a decline in the music market since the emergence of digital download as the general moral in society seems to be “why pay for it when you can get it for free?” This notion can be seen attached to youngsters as the DRM are trying to teach them that downloading is stealing. Like Condry puts it: ‘the problem is cultural and the consequences are economic.” It seems that society today does not value the efforts made to create pieces of music, digital downloading is not necessarily the end for the music industry but it is definitely the reason for the downfall.

What is World Music? What is the function of it?

World music can be any music, which is produced in another country. Shuker states that ‘the common preference of listeners and record buyers for foreign-originated sounds, rather than the product of their local artists and labels, is associated with the cultural imperialism thesis.’ It is suggested that dominant countries will make products, which endorse cultural values of their origin and market them in such a way that the ‘world music’ dominates over the local indigenous music. The problem with this thesis being that world music is shown to be dominated by one or a couple of dominant nations, there is not a mix of countries who can create their own music and can say it is popular for a worldwide audience. World music should be something that is a mixture of international and national music, not just music from a dominant nation, which can be popular music for the masses.

Is popular music a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form?

Adorno has stated that ‘the whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization. Standardization extends from the most general features to the most specific ones’ in On Record. The suggestion that popular music is homogenous and this leads to the notion that the entire culture industry must be standardized and therefore it is a mass-produced commodity. Suggesting popular music is homogenous means that every track produced is the same; the structure of it is the same and therefore cannot be a genuine art form. Art should be something that is unique and makes a point of self-awareness; it can also be something to express feelings of its producer. Popular music is not unique, every ‘artist’ follows the tried and tested method and therefore popular music is a mass produced commodity whose only purpose of existing is to make money from its passive audience.

How useful is a production of culture perspective in understanding the birth of Rock and Roll?

According to Peterson there are 6 factors for the emergence of Rock and Roll, which are law, technology, industry structure, organization structure, occupational career and market, yet these don’t necessarily give a proper understanding of why Rock and Roll music can be classified as Rock and Roll music as Peterson doesn’t go into great detail about the actual music content. Though Peterson does state “these are times when the usual routinising inhibitions to innovate do not operate as systematically, allowing opportunities for innovator to immerge” which shows that he does explain how social and historical contexts affect how the music is made and how it changes over time. This emphasizing on the fact that even today people cannot decide which song was the first Rock and Roll track, whether it was Elvis Presley with That’s all right in 1954 or The Andrew’s Sisters with Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy in 1940.

Is it reasonable to consider that rock music is gendered as male?

Frith and McRobbie have used the term ‘cock rock’ to refer to the gendered nature of this genre of music. They state that by using this term they mean ‘music making in which performance is an explicit, crude and sometimes aggressive expression of male sexuality’. This showing that rock is male dominated music in which females are the subordinate gender, they don’t fit into the stereotypical ideology of a rock musician. Bayton makes statements on how women’s role in music have mainly been the vocalist rather than the instrumentalist which suggests that instruments related to rock music such as the guitar are manly and Bayton states how the guitar is held low and in front of the genitals, again connoting that the guitar is an extension of the male body, this is another sign in which males imply this is their territory which emphasizes that rock is gendered as male.

Can Popular Music ever really be unplugged?

Firstly we need to define what unplugged means in terms of music, according to the Cambridge dictionary unplugged describes musicians performing without electric instruments and without amplification. There has been a trend in recent years where artists have performed unplugged using acoustic instruments, the use of performing unplugged enables audiences to hear the vocalists in their real human voice instead of the amplified voice. Unplugged performances seem to be the way to show audiences that the music is genuine and can be performed the same as when heard on radio broadcasts, television programs or on CD’s. But popular music is never really unplugged; the songs have to be created with the use of electrical instruments and with amplification to make it stand out and appeal to the wider audiences and the use of electrical equipment in performances enables the artist to perform better, so it is not a unplugged performance.

What is Popular Music?

Popular music is a wide range of things, it can be music that is popular in its own genre of music, this meaning an artist or a band in a specific genre is popular. Popular music can also be a genre of music, which is popular compared to all other genres of music. The general ideology is that popular music is music that is listened to by the masses of people either nationally or internationally. According to Roy Shuker in Understanding Popular Music, popular music ‘consists of a hybrid of musical traditions, styles, and influences, and is also an economic product which is invested with ideological significance by many of its consumers’ p.7. This suggesting that popular music is a wide mixture of history, culture and politics all put together to make music, which is accessible and approachable to the masses rather than the minorities to be constituted as popular.