Ideologies of the music industry
Producing Pop
Identifies 2 different ways of thinking
about artists within the music industry: organic VS synthetic
Organic ideology:
- Naturalistic approach
- Seed of success relies on artist, so need to be nurtured by record company
- Image is enhanced by record company
- Given time to evolve and progress through their career
- Emphasis is given to album sales and construction of back catalogue
- Aimed at more sophisticated consumers
- Profits generated by this kind of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record company
Synthetic ideology:
- Combinational approach to artist and material
- Construct successful acts
- Image constructed by the record company
- Artist will be given a short time to prove their success before other combinations will be tried
The Frankfurt School
- A collection of Marxist philosophers, based in Germany in the mid 20th century. Among their many writings, they were concerned with the role of popular culture in exploiting the masses and maintaining the power of bourgeoisie.
- Their work, particularly that of Theodor Adorno, represents the first attempt to write about popular music.
- Adorno argued that capitalism fed people with the products of a ‘culture industry – the opposite of ‘true’ art – to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic.’
- Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products, which have replaced the more ‘difficult’ and critical art forms, which might lead people to actually question social life.
- False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness
- These features are particularly true in the music industry. All popular music products are commodities to be sold to an audience who believe that they are consuming ‘true’ emotion.
- False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people’s ‘true’ needs – freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness
- These features are particularly true in the popular music industry. All popular music products and commodities to be sold to an audience who believe that they are consuming ‘true’ emotion.
- Popular music products are characterized by standardization (they are basically formulaic and similar) and pseudo-individualization (incidental differences make them seem different but they’re not.
- Products of the culture industry may be emotional or apparently moving, but Adorno sees this as cathartic – we might seek some comfort in a sad film or song, have a bit of a cry, and then feel restored again.
Dick Hebdige
- More modern theorists have tended to view Adorno’s ideas as overly pessimistic and dismissive of mass audiences as passive and easily manipulated
- Hebdige argues that consumption is an active process in which differences in audiences’ social and ideological construction leads to different readings of the same cultural background.
- As such, the audience is free to resist the power of large companies by ignoring, undermining or finding alternative products to consume. Often this takes the form of the audience constructing themselves as distinct from mainstream culture – as sub-cultures.
- Major companies will inevitably attempt to assimilate this resistance by attempting to provide products, which these audiences or subcultures will consume.
- The audiences must then decide whether to accept these products or whether to resist further.
