Commercial originality: Does it exist?
With the homogenization of popular music, the struggle of its origins (rock) against hoi polloi remains fraught. Record companies influence music consumption to a great extent, through the conglomeration of media entities that includes radio and television stations, publishing houses as well as acquisitions of other ‘boutique’ companies.
This ‘Mcdonaldization’ of culture, as capitalism grows to be the No.1 religion of Western societies, created an oligopolistic industry that is far from the competition amongst 1950’s radio stations that had wanted to “capture the local market”. The role played by BMI when it protested against ASCAP’s market monopolization encapsulates the initial rebellious spirit of popular music. However, while the competition was relatively healthy in fostering new or expanded genres, it questions the cliché of “suffering for your art”.
However, the homogenized marketing of popular music has created an unsavory blandness in the music landscape, where one artist sounds, performs and looks like the other. The most commercially successful artists are not the ones that are most lauded for distinctly exceptional work in singing or song-writing but rather for their ‘entertainment value” and hype factor. Additionally, the stamping of a celebrity producer’s signature sound on an artist’s latest album has emphasized the role of ‘the celebrity’. This causes a recycling of musical genres that leads to smaller cycles of creativity akin to a coiling effect.
While music has often been used as a definition of a group or era, it parallels as a class separator. The emergence of popular music during the baby-boomer era demonstrated the alternative environments created as a form of escapism from their everyday post-war family values. However, a growing collective interest in the genre caused it to be widely accepted to the point that is not a valid expression of rebellion any longer. Therefore, while ‘alternative’ artists have often been accused of “selling out”, and being transformed into profit-making puppets of major record companies, one could question the consumers’ desire to intentionally be alienated so as to make sense of the idea of identity and existentialism within their personal sphere.
