Culture Industries and Adorno’s Theory of Standardisation.

Popular, or mainstream, music has always been a part of our society. In every culture, there is always some form of art that is regarded as “more popular” than others due to a variety of different reasons. In this post, I am going to look at Adorno’s theory of standardisation and what it means for music in today’s society.

Theodor Adorno belonged to the Frankfurt School of social theory and was a prominent musicologist. Members of the Frankfurt School believed in neo-Marxism and, critical of both socialist and capitalist societies, sought an alternative path to social development. The school was known for being critical to the idea of  the”culture industry” (A term coined by Adorno and Max Horkheimer), referring to the capitalist industry based on creative expression. Adorno believed that the capitalist nature of society encouraged people to invest in “false needs”; the need to spend money in exchange for happiness. His theories were hugely inspired by his belief in neo-Marxism and, through studying popular music, Adorno formed his own theory on the culture industry; Adorno’s theory of standardization. This theory maintains that, in capitalist society, popular culture (and, by extension, popular music) is standardized, using the same formula to appeal to the masses. Adorno noted that all popular music contained a verse, chorus and bridge, and that these elements were interchangeable without damaging the song. However, this formula did not apply to “serious music”, saying that “every detail derives its musical sense from the concrete totality of the piece“, and arguing that even if one detail is omitted “all is lost” [Source].

Theodor Adorno

Adorno maintained that the music industry promoted “pseudo-individualism” as a way to keep society unaware of this formulaic approach to music. Pseudo-Individualism basically translates to “the illusion of choice“. As advertisers use different images and slogans, different meanings are assumed for different products, despite the product essentially being the same. Writing about his studies on popular music, Adorno explained his theory;

“By pseudo-individuation we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market [sic] on the basis of standardization itself. Standardization of song hits keeps the customers in line doing their thinking for them, as it were. Pseudo-individuation, for its part, keeps them in line by making them forget that what they listen to is wholly intended for them or predigested.“

However, due to the separation Adorno makes between “serious music” and “popular music”, it could be argued that the theory is elitist. Adorno’s definition of “serious music” extended to include classical and avant-garde pieces, noting that such music plays to the imagination and naturally fulfils the emotional human need, whereas popular music cannot. While I agree with much of what Adorno proposed, I feel that this theory should be disputed. My personal opinion is that, as humans, our emotional needs and social development are shaped from an early age and depend on the background in which the individual is raised. Therefore, it seems presumptuous for an individual to comment on another’s emotional needs; we can only make that decision for ourselves. Adorno’s theory of standardization, however, can be seen in popular music today.

Rebecca Black singing “Friday”

Rebecca Black shot to ‘fame’ earlier this year with the heavily auto-tuned single “Friday“, which was released in March through ARK Music Factory.  The video for “Friday” gained around 167 million views on YouTube and is a classical example of a viral video, despite being dubbed “the worst song ever” by many critics. Produced and released by ARK, whose business model focuses on discovering, and writing songs for, new singers for a $2,000 – $4,000 fee, “Friday” was co-written by Patrice Wilson; the ARK Music Factory co-founder. Speaking about the inspiration for his song lyrics, he said the following;

“I wrote the lyrics on a Thursday night going into a Friday,” … “I was writing different songs all night and was like, ‘Wow, I’ve been up a long time and it’s Friday.’ And I was like, wow, it is Friday!”

The very concept of ARK Music Factory can be related to Adorno’s theory of standardization and culture industry. The fact that, for a price, a business can write, record and publicise a new artist, gaining such attention for an unheard name, only proves that culture industries do exist. Obviously, in this instance, the idea was unsuccessful as “Friday” became massively unpopular (with Rebecca Black receiving death threats through phone calls and emails), but the point still stands that there are industries built solely on exploiting art forms for monetary gain. “Friday” was notorious for excessive use of auto-tune, a technique also used by Akon, T-Pain and Cher, showing that even singers with very little talent can “clean up” their music in production. After looking into this topic and thinking more about the concept of popular music, I recalled the first year of my university course. We were taught that all music is popular in some way, as there has to be an audience for that music, even if it is the musicians themselves. An interesting topic raised in the lecture this year was the band “Rage Against The Machine” and their music.

Rage Against The Machine

In December 2009, after a huge campaign on Facebook, Rage Against The Machine took the Christmas No. 1 spot on downloads alone. Their song “Killing In The Name“, the first song to reach Christmas number one in the UK on downloads alone, refers to racism in the police force and is known as the band’s signature song. The Facebook campaign of 2009 encouraged members to buy the song in order to gain Christmas No. 1, instead of letting that year’s X-Factor winner Joe McElderry take chart victory, as had become the norm since 2004. The campaign, which helped sell 502,000 tracks, was started in opposition to the X-Factor’s Christmas chart dominance and, with the lyrics “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” provided by Rage Against The Machine, provided a huge contrast to McElderry’s words, which asked listeners to “keep the faith“.

However, the once-rebellious nature of Rage Against The Machine and the song “Killing In The Name” has now become somewhat ironic. The refrain “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” can be heard most nights in local rock clubs, sang by (to quote Propagandhi) “Like-father, like-son “rebels” bloated on Korn, Eminems and Bizkits“. During the Christmas No. 1 spot campaign, it came to light that Rage Against The Machine were released through Sony Music, which had links to Simon Cowell, who owns Syco (a Sony subsidary) and released the X-Factor winner’s song, therefore undermining the whole point of the campaign. Again, this relates back to Adoro’s theories on culture industries and pseudo-individualism; although “Killing In The Name” seemed like a rebellious, anti-authoritarian rally against the status-quo of the music industry, the rights to the song are owned by the very company the campaign was started against. The fact is that nearly all popular music can be dressed up in any way, shape or form, but it is still just a product intended to make a profit.

[Edit: I took out the words “…without any artistic merit“, after Vicky at LifeOutOf10.net convinced me otherwise].