Popular Music Industry Creates Boring and Repetitive Music. Adorno and the Music Industry Flashcards
Adorno the individual
Sophisticated philosopher.
Serious musician and composer, a pupil of Alban Berg and a member of the circle surrounding Arnold Schoenberg.
Marxist sociologist.
Student of psychology and a Freudian thinker (again, an unorthodox one) who developed a Freudian analysis of modern character. (Witkin 2)
Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School
Theodor Adorno was a German born near the turn of the 20th century.
In the 20’s he became part of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.
Left-leaning institution comprising philosophers, literary critics, sociologists, psychologists, economists and political scientists.
Other names - Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Otto Kirchhheimer, Leo Lowenthal. (Arato and Gebhardt: ix)
Adorno’s Ideas on Industry
… Adorno …proposing that popular music was produced by a ‘culture industry; that was little different to the industries that manufactured vast quantities of consumer goods. (Negus 37)
All products were made and distributed according to rationalized organizational procedures and for the purpose of profit maximization.
Adorno, writing with Max Horkheimer, characterized the culture industry as an ‘assembly-line’ and referred to the ‘synthetic, planned method of turning out its products (factory-like not only in the studio by, more or less, in hit songs)’ (Negus 37)
Adorno’s Ideas on Industry continued
Adorno proposed that popular music was produced by a ‘culture industry; that was little different to the industries that manufactured vast quantities of consumer goods. (Negus: 37)
Adorno … characterized the culture industry as an ‘assembly-line’ and referred to the ‘synthetic, planned method of turning out its products (Negus: 37).
…the music industry frequently appears as villain: a ruthless corporate ‘machine’ that continually attempts to control creativity. (Negus 36)
Two types of listener produced by industry
‘Fetish object listener’ – an alienated (usually male) individual obsessed with popular music especially the object. (record/phonograph)
‘Regressive listener’ – a child-like listener who comprehends only fragments of music on a superficial level. Prone to acts of ‘compulsive mimicry’ (Negus: 10).
The Assembly Line
Workers become ‘appendages’ to this system, estranged from the product of their labour. They do not choose it, nor does it express their social being. (Witkin:3)
Produce commodified music not reflective of individual experience.
Adorno was referring to swing bands and the 32-bar song form of the age.
Other Perspective on the Music Industry
The industry needs to be understood as both a commercial business driven by the pursuit of profit and a site of creative human activity from which some very great popular music has come and continues to emerge. (Negus 36)
Continued Views on the Music Industry
Not all industry stems creativity.
Bohemian Rhapsody, considered a great artistic work even though released by the industry.
A unique musical work.
Independent Releases
Lee’s study implies that the notion of ‘independence’ works and belief system that defines different working practices and values to that of the majors, while at the same time providing a way of positioning a small company within an ‘alternative’ niche market…(Negus 45)
Money denotes success
In contrast, Cohen found bands who adopted ‘capitalistic attitude’ and in doing this ‘took on commercial values and ambitious and constructed the music accordingly’ (1991a:196) (Negus 46)
Frith quoted the rock musician Manfred Mann saying that ‘the more people buy a record the more successful it is – not only commercially but artistically’ (1978: 202) (Negus 46)
… what becomes commercially successful on this market does not do so due to a spontaneous process in which ‘the markets decide’. Neither does what is made available on the market simply coincide with what the public ‘wants’. (Negus 50)
Music Industry is not as easy as it looks
Iain Chambers ‘While the industries might have a direct impact on how music is produced, they are unable to control the way it is used by audiences. (Negus 26)
…Chambers argues that the commodities of the music industry are actively transformed as they are ‘appropriated’ by various groups and individuals and then used for the expression of individual identities, symbolic resistance, leisure pursuits and forms of collective and democratic musical creativity n everyday life. (Negus 26)
Repetition is important to Black and Caribbean music
African music is based on repetition.
Adorno was not taking into account the different cultural perspectives.
Gates “…reusing and recombining stock phrases in an original way from one context to another rather than on creating phrases that are strikingly original in themselves…” (Brackett:123)
