Taste

In the Negus reading, he talks about how hard it is to break into the music industry because of the difficulty mastering the “peculiar mixture of reckless abandon and cautious indecision.’  I think that this is so hard because of peoples’ taste.  Everyone has taste that is constructed from their past experiences that help shape what they like.  Because everyone’s is somewhat unique it can be hard to appeal to a vast majority of the population.  People who have mastered this industry have captured peoples’ taste by connecting with them on a deeper level through their art.  Negus talks about his two main ideas of genre and corporate strategy and how they are related.  Many corporate structures control genres of music because they pick what they believe will be successful.  This also ties back to the key word “commodification” because these record companies are taking peoples’ artistic talents and shaping them into lucrative cookie cutter songs.

Similarly, these companies monitor their artists closely to keep them in line both socially and within the terms of their contracts.  This is an example of surveillance, like how in post 9/11 big government agencies and companies in general are monitoring and controlling exactly what you do.  This creates a power relationship, and in this specific case, Spotify has the power over artists.  It controls them through their contracts and how much they monitor and pay artists.  This relationship just recently shifted, and in a lawsuit against Spotify artists’ won the case which forced Spotify to increase its royalties to artists by 45%.

I picked the spotify’s logo because of the issues that have arisen in the past.  It has been unfair to artists in terms of their payouts, and many artists boycotted the service because of these unethical practices.  I included the quote from negus because it shows how hard it is to become an artist, but also how hard it is to get a recording deal.  Many companies are selfish, have monetary motives when signing people, and make young artists sign very unfair contracts.