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!