Does the audience play an active role in the production of meaning in popular culture?

I think the audience does play an active role in the production of meaning in popular music for a few reasons. One reason is that hormonal pre-teens who are known as ‘emo kids’ are going through the stage of puberty where they don’t understand what’s happening to them. These teens need some form of release for their emotions. This is why emo music has become so popular in the last decade. The record labels saw a gap in the market for these bands that sing about being depressed and feeling like the whole world hates them. This worked well for the teens because they found someone they could relate to.
Another way in which the audience plays an active role is that people go through trends. Recently ‘indie’ bands have become more and more popular and now there are so many I couldn’t even name them all. One band decided to start this kind of music, and once it became popular there was a new audience that craved for more of the same sort of music.

Review of Hip Hop Edition

If you’re after the latest news on hip hop and rap music this is the magazine to buy. Upcoming shows, new artists and interviews with the stars are all found in this magazine. The few adverts shown are for hip hop fashion and alcohol. There is a naked woman on one of the pages claiming to be interested in hip hop music, but in her interview, she doesn’t even mention music. This shows that the readers are mainly male because of the blatant use of a naked woman to get their attention. Graffiti is shown throughout the magazine which shows that most of the readers are heavily into hip hop culture. Names of hip hop artists who are not in the mainstream also show that the readers are interested in the underground hip hop scene. The main colours used in this magazine are red and black which could be linked to gang colours or they could just be used to show a manlier colour scheme.

Are blackness and whiteness useful concepts in the study of popular music?

It seems pointless trying to define music as ‘black’ or ‘white’ because most genres of music have derived from black culture. Blues music came from the black slaves singing in the fields and it’s the only genre of music that has specific notes which are used only in that genre. These ‘blues notes’ were key in the development of rock music.

It is very difficult to define music into one genre. This is because very often the genre can change throughout an artists’ album or even partway through a song. This means that ‘blackness’ and ’whiteness’ are not useful concepts at all in the study of popular music.

These terms only seem to be useful in the marketing of music. Being able to have a ‘black’ and ‘white’ section in music shops is helpful because it defines different artists into categories. This makes it easier for the consumer to find the artist they like.