The Industrialization of Popular Music

Abstract

The pop story starts the industrialization of music means a shift from active musical production to passive pop consumption, the decline of folk or community or subcultural traditions, and a general musical deskilling—the only instruments people can play today are their disc players and tape decks. There is an irony that has a continuing resonance: While each new technological change in mass music making is seen to be a further threat to "authentic" popular music, classical music is seen to benefit from such changes, which from hi-fidelity recordings to compact discs have, indeed, been pioneered by record companies' classical divisions. It is a pleasing irony of pop history that while classical divisions of record companies have led the way in studio technology, their pursuit of authenticity has limited their studio imagination. Technological change has also been the basic source of resistance to the corporate control of popular music.

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