Write a essay on the function of music in As You Like It?
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Most of today’s new acts are manufactured because this is cheaper and easier for labels to produce rather than finding new talented artists. With television shows such as ‘The X Factor’, a concept of combining reality television with the music industry, created by music mogul Simon Cowell, we are brought together as this unthinking homogenous mass with the music acting as a “social cement”. We are being brainwashed through these simple ideologies of music, rendering us as a passive and unthinking mass audience. Adorno argues that “the whole structure of popular music is standardized, even where the attempt is made to circumvent standardization.” In his work he characterizes “popular” and “serious” music of which he then uses to underline his theory of popular music being standardized. This theory highlights that pop music is just a product of mass culture, and how the formula of producing a song is just endlessly replicated with a fixed structure and yet creates the illusion of creativity, what Adorno refers to in his theory of “pseudo-individualisation”. The song structure is replicated so much so, that the consumers do not actually realise they have heard it before, what Adorno refers to as “pre-digested”. So the listening of a song is not spontaneous and no intellect is required as it has done the thinking for them and the listeners consume what is already “familiar”. However, I do believe that with the current crisis of the music industry, there is a certain layer of pop music that is standardized but there is still an element of creative autonomy. Although saying that, the industry will always be driven by money and not creativity as that is the prerogative of a capitalist society we live in today.
Compared to popular music, serious music is not standardized as it is produced with the whole aesthetics of a song in mind and “every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece.” With serious music being genres such as folk, pre-industrial music, classical, or art music, it is focusing on the experimentation and meaning of a piece rather than the repetitive, fixed structure of a popular song. Independent music labels have a slightly different outlook on producing music compared with the major labels. They take a less economic approach and more a social approach to music and without a corporate conglomerate steering them they can decide what to produce. However without corporate finances ‘indie’ labels still have trouble getting the music out there to be heard. Not wanting to be a part of the commercial music industry, the American punk band Fugazi stayed with their independent record label ‘Dischord Records’ which was also co-founded by the bands guitarist Ian MacKaye, refusing offers to become part of major label. Their main focus was their music and they did not want to rip off their listeners, which a major label would make them do. Michael Azerrad mentions in Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, “In response not only to a corrupt music industry but to an entire economic and political system they felt was fraught with greed for money and power…Fugazi staked out the indie scene as the moral high ground of the music industry; from then on, indie wasn’t just do-it-yourself, it was Do the Right Thing.” This is one example where the music is more important than the sell and the artist keeping control over their music. Even when managing to not “sell out” to the commercial music industry, Fugazi gained loyal fans through their honest and passionate attitudes towards their music and do not charge extortionate amounts of money for tickets to their performances or CD’s escaping the capitalist business. However, for the major record labels, charging large amounts of money for concert tickets seem to be the only way for an artist to make money these days. With the music industry in a crisis, losing money through illegal downloading and file sharing over the internet, artists are losing money through CD sales so have to charge more money for ticket prices to make up for this loss.
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