Response to Kyle
FIRST 10 PAGES
HISTORY Intro (After introduction)
(To put the following examinations and arguments into perspective, my paper will begin with a brief, but comprehensive overview of the inception and journey of electronic dance music in America. The scene’s origins and timeline of important shifts play a significant role in understanding the state of electronic music culture and it’s fans today. )
This history of modern western dance music is complex and storied. It is the journey and culmination of ideas, artists and technology, crossing oceans and spanning the globe. It is the combination of many cultures and influences, innovators and experimentalists. The origins of Western dance music are controversial and can be traced back to medieval festival music in the 13th century and even ancient Greek musicians and dancers.
Western dance music has taken an almost infinite number of forms in its constantly evolving lifetime, but there is one shared motive that ties all forms over all centuries together. Its primary goal is to make you move. While this may seem like a trivial fact to the average person, it could not be further from the truth. Movement is expression. Expression generates culture. And culture defines our society and our lives.
Electronic Dance Music, or EDM as it has become known in the past half decade…
(Comparison to the British Rock invasion of the 1960’s.)
The Commercialization and Commodification of Electronic Dance Music in the Unites States. (Section 5, before conclusion).
Turn to your local pop music station; watch a major corporation’s advertisement on television; pick up an ipod from any teenager. What common sound envelops your ears? Electronic dance music. This uniquely broad spectrum of electronically produced and layered music, which has long topped charts in Europe, has in the past half decade, emerged from the fringes of the American music world and thrust itself onto the global stage. There is no denying the influence of this genre in ever increasing proportions of mainstream media, and accompanying this, a growing interest from major record labels, and on a larger scale, corporate America. The electronic dance music scene has become a major part of mainstream culture for an increasing proportion of today’s youth. The relative de-commodification of physical music distribution contrasts the commodification of the industry as a whole, with emphasis on the live concert, show and festival. A rapidly changing balance in electronic dance music, or EDM, between popular culture and mass culture, between a cultural and economic model, has found an interesting equilibrium today that continues to evolve.
The backbone of this argument revolves around the existence and constant dynamic changes of culture industries. All commodities have their functional values, but also their cultural values as well. John Fiske, in his study “Popular Culture and Commodity”, uses television as his primary example of a culture industry, describing both the cultural and financial economies, and their relative flows within society. While the television industry’s financial model deals with the circulation of wealth between production studios, distributors, and advertisers, the cultural side centers on the audiences’ manifestation of meaning and pleasure from a program. The music industry closely follows this same outline and pattern. The rise and commercialization of different genres of music is not new in recent history, and can be seen on a macro level with Rock and Roll in the 60’s, as discussed previously (discussed in History section) and Hip-hop in the 80’s and 90’s. As has been shown, electronic Dance Music is the latest genre to surface as the dominant popular culture genre. What makes this latest genre unique is the fact that it is extremely broad in its sound, attributed to the fact that the music that comprises it is based on continually improving technological advances over the past decade and is therefore ever changing. Fiske’s “Popular Culture and Commodity” theory can be an effective predictor as to the future of today’s electronic dance music phenomenon, specifically focusing on the shift between popular and mass culture and its effects on the millennial generation. <You need to do much more to explain the relevance of Fiske’s analysis, both in terms of the economic function of EDM, and in terms of its cultural function.>
The turn of the 21st century and specifically the late 2000’s continue to observe a surge in popularity of various forms of electronic music, with its influence taking over commercial radio, merging into other genres, and bleeding into almost every aspect of mainstream media.
“Popular culture is always one step ahead of mass culture.” This quote <Whose quote is it?> has proved true time and time again over the past half a century in the music industry. The transformation of initial underground, leather jacket clad bad boys, The Beatles, into their clean-cut mainstream appeal was one of the first major examples of this shift. Mass culture defines the mainstream, dominant beliefs of society, controlled by the “elites”, what can be construed as the corporate world today. Mass culture attempts to catch up to exploding popular culture movements, such as Rock & Roll, using a method of containment. This containment allows mainstream society to indulge in elements of popular culture, but without the negative aspects or having to abandon their social categories in order to do so. Returning to Fiske’s television industry analogy, MTV represents mass culture’s attempt to catch up with popular culture at the time, presenting itself as new, “cool and hip.” In this containment, some aspects of the popular culture are retained, but only to satisfy the pleasure of the elites, or mainstream. <Your definition of mass culture, in this context, seems to be a partial one. Another definition of mass culture is culture that is mass-mediated, and certainly EDM is that.>
This phenomenon can be seen mirrored in the electronic dance music scene. Most radio hits on the charts today have some element of electronic dance music infusion. Top producers and DJs, renowned for years in the electronic dance music realm, have begun to produce crossover hits for long time pop stars. Mainstream music fans have used these songs as gateways into the electronic music scene. Vice versa, pop music stars have embraced this surge, crossing over into the dance genre and performing at previously all-electronic music festivals (see artists such as Flo Rida, Madonna, Black Eyed Peas, LMFAO, Snoop Dogg, etc). Time Out Chicago sums it up nicely by stating that “EDM has become to soundtrack of choice for a new generation.”
This transformation can be largely attributed to the attention and following investment from large corporate entertainment companies, such as Live Nation, and large music conglomerates, namely the big 4: Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and the now defunct EMI. Jump starting the process of commercialization and commoditization, these companies formed the backbone to the machine, which in just a few years, thrust what was once a marginalized popular culture scene, into the mainstream limelight. Well-known producers such as David Guetta also helped spark the fire by helping to bridge the gap between dance music and “pop music”, disguising his productions with the voices of well known singers, and producing chart topping songs for groups such as the Black Eyed Peas #1 hit “I Gotta Feeling.” The attempt to morph this once underground experience into a commercial, consumable product has thrived. Live Nation and other eager organizations focused on live events are commoditizing this experience by attempting to separate people back into the categories they initially sought to abandon in the scene, profiting by doing so. The most obvious example of this is the creation of luxurious VIP and upgrade services for higher tiered pricing at live events and festivals, for those ascribing to mass culture who wish to take part in the experience, but retain their aura of social status.
The latest and largest attempt to commercialize the dance music scene and tap into the rapidly growing demographic of identifying millennials, has been the formation, and recent IPO offering of the entertainment conglomerate SFXE. The concert and live events company is focused solely on the “American rave industry”, and is the first such corporation to go public. The recent formation and rapid acquisitions of the company prior to public offering reflect just how quickly the industry is growing. The company’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) succinctly sums up the drive behind commercialization.
“We view EMC [electronic music culture] as a global generational movement driven by a rapidly developing community of avid followers among the millennial generation. Our mission is to enable this movement by providing our fans with the best possible live experiences, music discovery, and connectivity with other fans and events.” <Who is speaking?>
The pot of gold at the end of this rainbow of acquisitions and consolidation? Advertisements. With the target group being a solid portion of the millennial generation, the largest consumer group of goods and services in America today.
Despite the similarities to past music genres’ cultural journeys, the corporate takeover and mass culture shift of EDM is fundamentally different then the familiar past commercialization of Rock & Roll and Hip-Hop due to the vast technological advancements in the past decade. This advantage is two-fold: first it has given the average enthusiast with a modest budget the ability to produce what was a decade ago, impossible without expensive support and equipment, and second, the advent of social media has allowed the youth that dominate the scene to become their own brand, their own marketer, and their own boss. <I assume you will give examples to support the foregoing statement.> This latter fact has presented a dilemma for once all-powerful record labels, and has led to drastic strategy shifts in an attempt to stay relevant in this new era. Moreover, the global interconnectivity that social media and other communication technology improvements have created, has given artists the ability to share their material worldwide, finding audience niches, and allowing them to profit, further disenfranchising the absolute necessity of labels and distribution companies. This common all-under-one-roof concept has become known as the 360-degree-deal, in which one individual or company is responsible for live gigs, publishing rights, merchandise and more. Significant barriers to entry that prevented most from delving into this industry have been lifted by the advent of free software and distribution capability. The self-made bedroom studio, capable of producing a competitively professional sound, has replaced expensive studio time and personnel, previously only affordable by large record companies capable of putting forward the capital.
Rapidly shifting balances between the underground and the mainstream have created a dichotomy of EDM consumers in America; those part of the original subjugated group who founded the popular culture genre, and the masses who have joined in since the shift into mainstream/mass culture. These two groups often butt heads on issues of knowledge, legitimacy and more. The radical changes in the electronic dance music world over the past half-decade have garnered both their supporters and critics. While the sheer production size of shows, festivals and branding would not have been possible without support from large corporations such as Live Nation, critics argue that true creativity and originality are being stifled by the crossover and popularity of pop influences. The popularity and massive scale of the scene however, whether a blessing or a curse, could not have attained attention of this magnitude with the work of the original subjugated group alone. With hundreds of thousands of people buying tickets for festivals spanning multiple weekends, such as Coachella, Ultra Music Festival, and Electric Daisy Carnival, and new electronic music festivals springing up in every city with the population to support them, the measure of success is plain to see.
All this goes to show that the EDM movement, as an element of today’s mass culture, is contradictory. It is made out of elements of mainstream society, thus carrying hegemonic messages, while at the same time liberating alternative interpretations that serve the interests of subordinates. It is the mainstream masquerading as the underground, and the underground slowly becoming the mainstream. It is the elite dabbling in the taboo and the fringe embracing the core.
Kyle: This is a good beginning. You need to explain Fiske’s argument better and map it more thoroughly onto your topic, but I like that you are struggling with these questions of mass and popular culture. You seem to do a better job explaining mass culture than popular culture — does that seem fair to you? It’s a little hard for me to judge because I am reading only parts of your work. I also wonder about the fact that you introduce Fiske so late in your analysis. Shouldn’t this question of mass and popular, commercial and authentic, come at the very start of your essay? Also, you might do well to cite other scholars besides Fiske. Finally, you would do well to give more examples/evidence for your claims about EDM. But this is a fine effort. -Holly