The musical object in consumer culture

Abstract

Where music has been produced as a commodity, as is much popular music, its status sometimes appears to be reflected in its material. Its standardized forms and rationalized content are comparable to those features of mass-produced commodities. This was the basis for Adorno's infamous critique. In fact, the popular music of the 1930s that was the subject of Adorno's critique was not actually mass-produced at all, but handcrafted. Adorno's criticism would seem far more pertinent to the highly repetitive music of contemporary dance culture. But however standardized even this music might sound, I argue that the organization of its material cannot be ascribed to the facts of its production. Rather, than modes of production affecting musical material in a direct way, it is my thesis that commodity production informs an aesthetic paradigm. It is this paradigm that is subsequently realized in the standardized forms of popular music.

Issues of how we relate to musical material, and how it relates to us, have troubled scholars for centuries. Television commercials are a useful resource to consider such questions, as they are usually contrived to communicate something quite blatant to the viewer - typically the desirability of a product or its producer. Since 1983, British Airways has consistently used the "Flower Duet" from Delibes' opera Lakme in its advertisements. I argue that the music itself has no meaning in the semantic sense, but that (following Cook, 1994) the music facilitates the emergence of meanings given elsewhere in the multimedia form. Nevertheless, a piece of music can signify as a result of its association with a product or brand. This is particularly interesting in the case of the "Flower Duet": despite being subject to severe distortions in British Airway's commercials, the musical sign remains intact.

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