According to Adorno, ‘The popular music industry is an all consuming production line that churns out mass produced, inferior commodities.’ He believes that the structure of popular music is standardized and presents the ‘illusion of uniqueness’; something, which he declares, could never be applied to classical music and so automatically creates a hierarchy.
In response to Adorno’s viewpoint, Gendrum argues that ‘popular music privileges different criteria to European classical music’ so therefore this notion excludes the idea of inferiority within music, as there is difference on the focus of production.
Although popular music ‘accentuates similarity’, the way in which it is consumed is differentiated from other mass commodities. Just like other art forms, which emote individual expression, music can ultimately never be reproduced. Although many music artists may be seen as highly commercial, a song that someone has written, which expresses feeling, in my opinion conforms to an art form.
This is a really good post that responds well intelligently to the question. However, the second theorist's name is Gendron.
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