Is popular music a mass produced commodity or a genuine art form?
For me, art is a single moment of inspiration; it is a distinctive statement from its artist. Popular music can be art; there have been some great inspiring artists that have created distinctive artful music but especially nowadays popular music is in contrast to art. Popular music is a mass-produced commodity; most artists set out to or are used to make money rather then to create art. The popular music industry has become very repetitive with tracks that have similar sound, style and connotations, because it is safe and they know that this would make money. This is not art; this has no moment of inspiration or distinctive statement. “ The popular music industry is an all consuming production line that churns out mass produced, inferior commodities”. One could argue that yes there have been some popular music that can be considered art but this it self is very rare.
Theodor W. Adorno, On popular music (Studies in Philosophy and Popular Science) 1941
This is OK and does use a quote from Adorno but it doesn't really look very deeply into what he had to say about popular music and completely neglects Gendron's response to his claims.
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