SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC

Lesson 10 SOC 86 – Popular Culture Robert Wonser

MUSIC AS A SOCIAL PRODUCT

Music is not just sound but more importantly a social product as many people are involved with its creation, distribution, and consumption.

Music thus connects with important sociological concepts and processes, and many social worlds.

THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF POP MUSIC

Pop music as a social phenomenon is thought to have emerged during the early twentieth century when music became a commodity.

Benjamin (1936) referred to this as the age of mechanical

reproduction.

• What is the role of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction?

MUSICAL MEANINGS AS SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS

• • Social constructionist theories focus on how things become meaningful.

All these theories focus on “doing,” that is, on practice, action, conduct, behavior, rituals, work, and in the consequences of ideas, values, roles, scripts, language, and norms.

Thus a constructionist believes that social realities are made by people acting in accord with (and often in spite of) one another.

Constructionists focus on micro sociological interpretation but also on the criticism of social inequalities.

Music then, is a sociological phenomenon insofar as it is socially constructed.

• Like what is considered music and what is not? Good or bad music?

WHAT IS

NOT

THE CASE REGARDING MUSIC

What is music?

Music generally defined as some sort of pattern of organized sounds, deliberately created in order to produce certain effects (Martin 1995) It has been argued that we understand music because its meaning is inherent within it and is communicated to us through our ears.

The sociologist of music is not concerned to establish the ‘true’ meaning of a piece of music, but instead what people believe it to mean, for it is these meanings that will influence their responses to it.

WHERE DOES MUSIC AS ART FIT IN WITH MUSIC AS COMMODITY?

The link between music and the market in inevitable in a capitalist society.

In such a system, can indie music exist? And if so, can it survive?

Is conspicuous consumption everything, or is authentic expression of musical identities possible?

Can you think of other ways in which music serves as a commercial technology?

INSTITUTION

• To understand what institution means think of an institution as custom and an

institution as recognized social

organization.

• • • No matter how original a form of art may be, it has to deal with institutional gatekeepers of art institutions.

Art institutions are known by sociologists as “art worlds.

” Ever wonder why some music gets made and others don’t (or with limited resources?).

INSTITUTIONS

Becker (1982:x) defines art worlds as “network[s] of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce[s] the kind of art works that art world is known for.

” Institutionalization may makes life difficult for original expression, but it also allows for familiar and customary performances to register more easily with audiences

MCDONALDIZATION OF MUSIC

Have you felt like you’ve heard a song before on your first hearing of it?

The principles of the fast food industry come to dominate social life

• Predictability • Calculability • Efficiency • Control through technology

MCDONALDIZATION OF MUSIC

McDonalization reduces the risks inherent in creativity Music is a business,   minimizing risk and taking the safer bet makes more sense economically standardized and predictable product of mediocre quality

INSTITUTION: AMERICAN IDOL

• • • The success of the show American Idol depends on the solidity of many institution on which it depends.

The American idol contest resembles the US presidential election process.

American Idol is grounded in the instrumental rationality typical of an advanced market-based democratic bureaucracy.

• • • American Idol can also be said to be a case of McDonaldization of popular music talent.

Like presidential candidates American Idol winners hope to appeal to a large mass, by offending the taste of as few audiences as possible.

Is this a case of talent or predictability?

The study: In a recent study, researchers from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria studied 15 genres and 374 subgenres. They rated the genre's complexity over time — measured by researchers in purely quantitative aspects, such as timbre and acoustical variations — and compared that to the genre's sales. They found that in nearly every case, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.

"This can be interpreted," the researchers write, "as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills."

As reported by the Atlantic, "Top 40 stations last year played the 10 biggest songs almost twice as much as they did a decade ago." Human beings crave familiarity. Numerous psychological studies show that people choose songs they're familiar with over songs that more closely match their reported music tastes. Our somewhat manipulative music industry, which chooses familiar-sounding music and pushes it to listeners in massive quantities, knows well how to capitalize on those cravings. Genres standardize over time as a way to plug into this psychology. And then we hear the same songs, over and over again.