The primary arguments regarding the recording artist-brand relationship and the emergence of promotional ubiquitous musics, as discussed above, are advanced in the following chapters, which also elucidate a number of additional key arguments. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive literature review of critical research relevant to the study of popular music’s use as promotion. It surveys and engages with core debates within consumer culture studies, and considers the relationship of this area of research to popular music studies. Promotional ubiquitous musics, in my account, straddle these two distinct but related areas of enquiry.
Chapter 3 revisits and provides an in-depth analysis of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s ‘culture industry’ thesis and its legacy within both cultural studies and the political economy of communication. This critical legwork lays out the foundation of the neo-Adornian frame through which I examine promotional ubiquitous musics – a conceptual lens that is further delineated in Chapter 6. These musics are a product of instrumental rationality; popular music’s deployment as promotion is a consequence of its commodity form and, hence, the drive to maximize profits. Similar to the popular music analyzed by Adorno, promotional ubiquitous musics both reflect and reproduce inattentive or ‘deconcentrated’ listening practices. These musics are bound up with the forms of consumption and, hence, cultural homogenization produced by global brands.
Chapter 4 first contextualizes the music industry’s digital transition by way of a ‘cultural industries’ analysis of the competitive logics and corporate structures that supported and defined the ‘old’ music industries. It then provides an overview of the
sweeping changes that have enveloped the music industry in the twenty-first century. It draws on field interviews, industry conference panel discussions, and trade press coverage to analyze the political-economic and technological conditions that have made licensing agreements with media and consumer brands so important to record companies, music publishers, and aspiring artists hungry for marketing exposure. The chapter makes the central argument that the ‘artist-brand’, not the sound recording, is the core popular music commodity today. It examines the increasing costs of entry associated with music marketing, not music making, in a cluttered marketplace; the explosion of new music products and licensing agreements; the emergence of the artist- brand construct; the institutionalization of 360-degree recording contracts; and an overall wave of industry-wide consolidation, involving recorded music, music publishing, live promotion/concerts, retailing, and artist management. It identifies an unfortunate consequence of the increased access to music recording and distribution technologies that so many have called a ‘democratizing’ phenomenon: more artists are competing for fewer dollars in a market still dominated by the major music companies.
Chapter 5 offers a history and in-depth analysis of the intensifying relationship between recording artists and corporate brands. It draws on marketing literature, the trade press, field interviews, and industry conference discussions to trace early uses of popular music in advertising through to today’s strategic business partnerships. The chapter outlines the rationales behind the use of music as a branding vehicle and documents popular music’s colonization by brands through these ever-tightening promotional arrangements. It then spells out the consequences of these developments
for working artists and for popular musical content itself: brands’ drive for cost-savings actively works against fair remuneration for aspiring and non-star artists; and advertisers’ bias toward happy sentiments and, therefore, upbeat music actively works against popular musical diversity. Overall, the chapter argues that commercials, television programs, and video games do not constitute the new radio, as is often suggested, but instead function as new gatekeepers of music’s promotion. This analysis is by no means intended to suggest that the old music system, which was more fully controlled by major record labels, was more advantageous to working artists. Instead, it identifies the new challenges and dynamics of domination inherent to the brand-driven promotional system; as artists become dependent on corporate brands for revenue and exposure, those brands have the power to dictate the terms of this relationship.
Taking into account the developments examined in Chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 6 argues for the relevance and renewed importance of the ‘culture industry’ thesis to critical analysis of the digitalizing music industry and to promotional ubiquitous musics. It advances a neo-Adornian critical framework that incorporates important contributions from literature on post-Fordist cultural production. Counter to the argument that Adorno’s claims are best suited to analysis of the more rigid industrial/manufacturing capitalism, it argues that the domination produced by commodification per se also applies to a more supple capitalism predicated on the commodification of information, media, and signs. In fact, post-Fordism’s flexible production methods and marketing techniques are even better able to adapt to changing consumer tastes and attitudes than their Fordist predecessors. While popular music is always already industrialized and
commercial, the proliferation of promotional ubiquitous musics exemplifies the acceleration and intensifying logic of capital accumulation under neoliberal, post- Fordist capitalism. Drawing on Martyn J. Lee’s (1993) terminology, I nominate promotional ubiquitous musics as an ‘ideal-type’ commodity form under post-Fordism. Crucially, the instrumentalization of popular music under the contemporary branding paradigm speaks to new levels of subordination for popular musical expression and creative cultural work. I illustrate these dynamics in a concrete way by examining new music supervision software geared around the classification and targeting of affects.
Chapter 7 summarizes central research findings and arguments, elaborates on the consequences of the new relationship between popular music, media properties, and consumer brands for working artists and for cultural production, and highlights key considerations for future research.