Consumerism

Music Employed in the Consumer Economy

Most countries in the developed world today are consumer economies, ones where music can be employed by the advertising industry to sell products. The advertising industry uses multiple media to sell its products with the aid of music. Initially, the Great Depression gave rise to radio jingles. In the 1950s and 1960s, the advertising industry used music on television, namely, in commercials, to register with the mood and emotions of consumers. Jingle production became standardized in the 1950s and integrated into the cultural industries, which absorbed such standardization until a youth counterculture emerged in the 1960s. Youth consumption in the 1980s was marked by corporatization, in which music was reconfigured by advertisers to sell a new series and greater amounts of products. The effects of such corporatization entailed a shift in the shape of cultural industries in the 1990s, to which music and sales had to be realigned. In the late capitalism of postmodernism, a new type of consumer class emerged, a new petite bourgeoisie that was conscious of music as a component of its consumer presence at the marketplace.

The concept of music as a commodity dates to antiquity in the form of song contests in ancient Greece, and it can be traced throughout the development of music history and technology. Most significant in the development of the trend is the invention and manufacture of the first phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877, followed by [Page 255]the Victor Talking Machine Company's Victrola in 1901. Concurrently, the release of phonograph recordings and the earliest vinyl recording contributed to music's evolution as a commodity, and the recording industry served as a transformative catalyst for the larger music industry.

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