When creativity is restrained or promoted by the music industry, choices of bands and artists can be questioned when commercialism choices effect audiences opinions towards a band, and other artists opinions of one another. My Chemical Romance wrote the song ‘Vampire Money’ specifically to target the band Muse when their song ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ was used in the commercially successful franchise Twilight. Believing that Muse were ‘sell outs’, this attack from one band to another created a ripple through the music industry that wasn’t often seen in the Rock music industry. Another example, came from Trent Reznor the front man of Nine Inch Nails, when Reznor became the ambassador for Beats Music, despite years of voicing his intense hatred
With technology growing more and more each day, it is no surprise that the music industry is transitioning to rely more and more on online sales. However, problems can arise from this when artists are taken advantage of by people who illegally download their music off of the internet for free. When one college radio host publically stated that she illegally downloaded her music, a professor by the name of David Lowery saw a problem with this and decided to speak up about it. He wrote a letter addressed to the college radio host, Emily, called “Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered”. With this, he also addresses the general public and calls them to make a change in their music buying, or lack thereof, habits. He explains that illegally downloading music is not a harmless task and we must understand the effects that it has on the artists as well as the music industry as a whole. While Lowery has strong uses of ethos, logos, and pathos, his conversational and
I'll participate in this (hopefully objective and unpolitical views of some gentlemen here) I got words for you today zinesters. Adding some words from Em Lozano 's post, Music's standards need not be set by people who use their inks and allowing their personal views in fabricating bandwagonism and or elitism and such. Musicians set the standards and or feed the listening arena with their own brand or style without affirmation from someone else's preference and music standpoint. Music is not written by critics nor written by fans. If you don't like someone else's work, don't listen to it or just trash it out. Need not bash em out because it wasn't recorded at your favorite studio or you're not friends with the band. Cut the "bandwagon" ,
Furthermore, various songs are specifically written with certain intentions and nuances to express the artist’s values and beliefs about a topic such as, love or the natural phenomena. Based on the passage, “ Source 2: Selling Out Not Worth the Risk”, it states “ But when outside interests enter the mix, they can replace the passion in an artist’s music and turn the art into just another tool for corporations.” To emphasize, businesses have the power to change any lyric in the song, so the song would lose it’s meaning and instead be about the product the business is selling. Even though, allowing corporations use an artist’s song for advertising a product, enables the artist’s song to be heard from an even more
According to the article "The Changing Landscape of the Music Business", by Jacob Carter, it states that "A band can make hundreds of thousands of dollars by agreeing to promote a product or license its music for the use in advertisements." Carter explains that in some cases, artists can make lots of money by using their music in advertisements. Although, not all artist can make enough money off of their music. Many people think that when musical artists use their music in advertisements, it’s a good way to put their music out there. In the article "The New Necessity in the Music Business", Stacia Coates says that "For artists serious about their careers, turning down any form of corporate sponsorship or licensing agreements could be a mistake.
The music industry is an oligopoly. Since the late 1800’s people like Thomas Edison have been buying up patents in communication technology, forming monopolies, leading to a non-competitive entertainment industry. With only a handful of corporations controlling all aspects of acquisition, distribution and marketing of music, harsh business principles create an exploitative industry that takes the best of what artists have to offer and leaves many of them unable to support themselves. Beginning in the 1950’s with payola and white cover music and ultimately evolving into iTunes and Spotify, the music industry has grown into a billion dollar industry with far-reaching influence and control. Contracts rarely serve the artists’ best interest and many are left out to dry when their usefulness has expired.
Questioning the correlation of commercial success and true artistry began in the light of mainstream music. Mainstream music has been given a negative connotation due to the supposed lack of originality of the artists. Repetitive chord progressions and meaningless lyrics compose the majority of “mainstream music,” making each song sound like the next . Despite these patterns in music, artists still ventured outside of what was societally normal and created music that was unheard of. Despite the potential risks in being an individual in the music industry, several groups achieved high success and maintain the popularity in the present. Creativity and commercial success can definitely exist alongside one another, and this paper will prove that through the music of the Beatles, the performance styles of David Bowie, and the grunge movement in Seattle which was fueled by Nirvana.
Music has become a center piece of life; however it comes with a vigorous price unknown to most of the public. The music industry is littered with corruption. My proposed research problem focuses on the manipulation and control the music industry has upon its artists through an unescapable 360 deal, which in and of itself is not only reducing an artist to almost indentured servitude, but also cripples record labels themselves. The 360 deal is a common mandatory contract record labels utilize to financially support an artist. This includes advances and funds for promotion, touring, and marketing, all which the artist has to pay back to the label. I believe this problem is significant and warrants further research because the record labels are unconstitutionally taking away artists rights in favor of their own greed, in turn, leaving the artist without ownership of their own songs, money, and rights to royalties.
The popular music industry in the late 1990s was dominated by a small number of integrated corporations with headquarters in Europe, the United States and Japan. This music market starts simply with an artist and moves along through many steps to the consumer. Everything has its start when a musician presents his music to a music manager, and if he/she finds the music promising, a contract is signed between the two, recordings are made and a marketing plan is drafted for the
It is clear that the hip hop culture plays a huge role in the lives of many people. It has influenced the way people dress, the way they talk, and the way they act. Unfortunately, many big corporations have taken advantage of this and commercialized rap music in order to gain a profit (Blair, 497). Commercialization is a very complex topic; however, it is important to understand. This is because of the fact that when something becomes widely known, such a hip hop and rap have, it is vulnerable to change (Phillips, paragraph 9). An example of this is when author Nicole Phillips states, “Hip-hop became more about edge and less about the content of the message. It became about sales….” (Phillips, paragraph 9). Therefore, in order to prevent any further change, one needs to understand commercialization and how it works. This paper is going to explore the complexities and nuances of commercialization of the hip hop culture. In order to do this, this paper will consider what commercialization of hip hop culture entails. This paper will also discuss how Elizabeth Blair, author of “Commercialization of the Rap Music Subculture,” conceptualized commercialization, as well as how she discusses the situation in general. After discussing these topics, the paper will move on to discussing cultural appropriation. This discussion will include how authors describe cultural appropriation, and a debate regarding this topic.
Adopting the meta-leadership solutions to leadership training would allow for integration of many actors into the process, starting with the line officers who need to be socialized to the needs of professional development that is not always initiated by the organization, followed by the responsibility, on the part of the supervisors, to reach out to external bodies and engage them in the delivery of the ongoing leadership development (Haberfeld, 2013, p. 7). The following diagram below illustrates the five dimensions of meta-leadership.
The feel-good essence of a lot of commercial pop music has the outcome of concealing the reality of structural where a people may not be treated as equals around the world (McKay, 2000, p.2). Therefore, commercial pop music has the triple socialising effect of having listeners forget the environment that they live in, having them believe there is validity in commercial power, and of muting people by mass-producing blaring, fused type of pop music while censoring others. This is concerning since the increasing variety of media controlled by the same corporations. An argument to this is that this feel-good aspect can help consumers feel, that they have escaped the conditions they live in. (McKay, 2000,
Most popular music today is driven by violence and sex. These musicians put out albums that glorify violence and promote causal sex. When the albums are being produced, the artist does not think of how it will affect the perspective merchant. When
There are several ways in which art is commercialized; especially within the music industry. Classic bands such as the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan were criticized for allowing companies to use their material to sell products and services. However, this is a common avenue for a musician or an artist to profit from their works. Many companies are willing to pay a hefty premium to have their products associated with music that has broad emotional appeal to many potential consumers. However, many people feel that when an artist licenses their material it is a loss of integrity and that something is lost by the commercialization of their songs.
Radiohead, one of the most popular and contemporary bands of this period, attempted a significant break from the industry standard of fixed price music. In 2007, Radiohead had planned release of its new album, “In Rainbows”, exclusively as a digital download on the band’s website, with an innovative pricing option of allowing its buyers to decide on how much they wanted to pay for the music. Radiohead’s “name-your-own price” pricing model for its new album generated an intense speculation about the future of recorded music industry. The key issues with Radiohead’s innovative distribution model and my views after an analysis of these issues are as follows:
Over the past decade, the use of CDs has been replaced with online streaming and retailing. This has eliminated much of the record companies revenues as they were used to making most of their profit off of distribution and promotion of physical copies of artists albums (Niemen). This has caused for a major shift and remodeling of major players in the music industries business models. Companies such Sony, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group have started to completely rethink the way they conduct business (Forbes). In the past record labels were not only responsible for production, distribution and promotion of an artist and his/her music, but they also acted as a bank (Forbes), funding the artists tours and recording sessions. Recently, these music giants have been moving towards becoming more of a modular network organization. What this means is that they are less occupied with the nitty gritty, and more focused on what they do best which is distribution and promotion. This also allows for more freedom of creativity for the artist as well as fairer split of profits (Forbes). This adaption of new business models clearly shows the versatility of the music industry in adapting to new times and technologies.