29 July 2008
Production and Promotion of Popular Music
Many specialists play vital roles in producing and promoting popular music
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
Before music hits the stores and airwaves, business agents, video producers, graphic artists, copy editors, record stores, stage hands, truck drivers, T-shirt companies, and the companies that produce musical hardware – often owned by the same corporations that produce the recordings – play vital roles in the production and promotion of popular music today. It is hard to know where to draw the boundaries of an industry that has extended itself into so many aspects of commerce and culture.
In addition, many of the roles described above have become intermingled in complex ways. A person like Quincy Jones, for example, is a performer, a song-writer, an arranger, a producer (who makes lots of engineering decisions), and a record label executive. And the wider availability of digital recording equipment means that some performers may also act as their own arranger, producer, and engineer (Stevie Wonder and Prince are good examples of this kind of collapsing of roles).
Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher who wrote in the 1940s and 1950s, powerfully criticized the effects of capitalism and industrialization on popular music. He suggested that the music industry promotes the illusion that we are all highly independent individuals defined by our personal tastes – “I’m a country music fan,” “You’re a metalhead.” In fact, Adorno argued, the industry manipulates the notion of personal taste to sucker us into buying its products. Emotional identification with the wealthy superstars portrayed on television and in film – the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” syndrome – is, in Adorno’s view, a poor substitute for the humane and ethical social relations that typify healthy communities.
In some ways Adorno was right: Americans are probably less individualistic than they like to think, and it is often true that record companies con us into buying the latest thing on the basis of tiny differences in musical style, rather like the little design changes that mark off different kinds of automobiles or mp3 players or tennis shoes. And it is true that the private experience of listening over headphones – like the experience of driving alone in an automobile with the windows rolled up – can isolate people from one another.
But there’s more to it than that. Just ask anyone who’s worked in the music business and developed an ulcer trying to predict what the next trend will be. Compared to other industries that produce consumer products, the music business is quite unpredictable. Today, only about one out of eight recordings makes a profit. One platinum record – something like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Madonna’s Like a Virgin, Nirvana’s Nevermind, or Dr. Dre’s The Chronic – must compensate for literally hundreds of unprofitable records made by unknown musicians or faded stars. As record company executives seek to guarantee their profits by producing variations on “the same old thing,” they also nervously eye the margins to spot and take advantage of the latest trends.
The relationship between the “majors” – large record companies with lots of capital and power – and the “indies” – small independent labels operating in marginal markets – has been an important factor in the development of American popular music. In most cases, the majors have played a conservative role, seeking to ensure profits by producing predictable (some would say “bland”) music for a large middle-class audience. The indies, run by entrepreneurs, have often had to be more daring, searching out new talent, creating specialized niches, and feeding new styles into the musical mainstream. It is mostly these small labels that initially popularized blues, country music, rhythm & blues, rock ’n’ roll, funk, soul music, reggae, punk rock, rap, grunge, worldbeat, and other “alternative” styles. In some cases, indie labels have grown large and powerful; one example of this is Atlantic Records, which began as a small R&B label in the late 1940s and grew into a multimillion-dollar corporation.
Today, the relationship between indies and majors has been extended over the globe – five corporations (only one of them actually based in the United States) now control at least 75 percent of the world’s legal trade in commercially recorded music. Each of these transnational corporations has bought up many smaller labels, using them as incubators for new talent, a system reminiscent of the relationship between major and minor league baseball teams.
This consolidation will not likely be the end of the story. With the rise of the mp3 and other digital formats – developments discussed in chapter 10 – and of Internet and personal digital device distribution models, the music business will continue to evolve. One constant will remain: listeners will continue to seek out and enjoy their favorite tunes.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
