Analysis (Adorno, Hebdige, Negus and Dyer)

In today's lesson, we split into pairs and read through some information on several music articles.

Adorno
Adorno said that the Music Industry was controlled by Capitalists and that all the Music Industry was about was making money and more money.
He argues that Capitalists "fed people with the products of a 'culture industry', the opposite of 'true' art, to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic".
Adorno says that people are controlled by the media as to what they watch and don't watch. He also says that the music industry is very much the same, with songs and videos. Adorno says people are brainwashed with media.

Hebdige 
Hebdige was completely against Adorno in everything he said. Hebdige doesn't believe in Capitalists and says that what Capitalists do is wrong. He also says that the media doesn't control the public as to what they watch and that we are free to chose.
Hebdige says that people aren't brainwashed and that we have a voice to express our own opinions.


Negus
Negus says there are two creative ideologies, which are Organic and Synthetic. He says that the Organic ideology of creativity has a more natural approach to artists, they say that the the success is within the artist themselves. They also say that artist is given time to progress through their career rather than being pushed to be something they are not. An example of an Organic ideology are the Arctic Monkeys.
The Synthetic ideology of creativity is attempting to construct successful acts out of the artists and the songs at their disposal. As part of the Synthetic ideology, the artist is usually constructed by the record company and the artist will be given a short amount of time to prove that they can be successful.The Synthetic ideology of creativity is usually aimed at a younger audience and a less sophisticated audience.

Dyer
Dyer is all about the image of the artist or band. He says that " A star is an image, not a real person that is constructed out of a range of materials such as advertising, magazines and films etc.
Artists rely on thing such as advertisements to construct their image and gain an audience.
Dyer days that artists or bands have to have a good image in order to make a music video, without a good image, it will be hard to create a video that can spread as people won't be interested in it.

Summery
We can see that each one of the theorists have their own ideas as to what makes a good artist/band, what the image should be like and what the media is like with music. Adorno and Hebdige both argue about the media but with differnt opinions on whether they influence our music choices or whether us, as an individual makes the music choices.
Negus tells us about independent labels and major labels. He tells us how each one works with the artist. 
Dyer talks all about the image. He says image is important and you cannot be an artist or a band without the right image for an audience.