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Here's an idea you might enjoy pop music because you can't get away from it.
Okay, before I even start saying the stuff I wanna make one thing
exceptionally clear and that is: I love me
some pop music.
I'm not gonna say that I definitely know all the words to Katy Perry's "Roar", but
I've got the eye I of the tiger, a fighter
I'm dancing through the fire. But objectively I think we can all agree
that there are some songs in the pop music
canon that are played with frequency. There's even a sometimes unshakable
feeling that Rhianna or Lorde or Mr. Timberlake are following you.
At first maybe you're like, "Alright, this is a new song," which after a while could
become, "Okay,
I get it," but before long that might evolve into, "And we'll never be royals"
And it's all over. They got you. You know the words, you're gonna sing along when it's on, and oh hey
look the single's the only 99 cents on iTunes!
Perfect. Then it's just a matter of not pulling a Macarena and saturating the
universe so completely that even a few notes of it
can send people into a boundless rage.
Now, the second most impressive thing about this whole arrangement, assuming that the
first most impressive thing is the writing of a song that is worthy of such an
effort
is the aligning of Glob knows how many forces to make sure that no matter where
you go
you know that you shine bright like diamonds in the sky. Of course we'd like
to believe that the songs we constantly hear are played so often because we the
music buying public
have decided it should be so. That through record sales and downloads and whatever
else we've all, or at the very least
a large and representative group of us have agreed and dereed, 'yes
Miley Cyrus everywhere please.'
But it might not be so simple. It turns out to be a kind of
chicken-and-the-egg problem that lots of art forms deal with, but which has been
exemplified by music.
That problem is knowing how much music is worth.
Seeing as how it is ubiquitous, arguably THE most popular art form, easily acquirable,
both legally and
ill, yet no less impactful culturally, it can become very difficult from a
business standpoint to accurately predict which pieces of music are going
to be worth the time and money
to promote and have produced at world-class studios by people with golden ears
which incidentally is why pop records are so expensive to make. Golden ears
don't come cheap.
So recording industry people, not the ones with the golden ears, but the ones with the
very thick rolodexes... rolo-
-deces... rolodex-i...phone contact list do some stuff to encourage a kind of
market
stability to clearly communicate which recordings have value and what that
value
is. In short, they work very hard to make a certain selection of music very
...visible, I guess. Songs are placed in commercials, TV shows, and movies. They're
specially selected for playlists played in retail settings,
and maybe most meaningfully, they are played on the radio.
Now before you deploy all of your scoffs, and are like, "Who listens
to the radio?", the answer's like, pretty much everybody. According to Nielsen
ratings, fully ninety-two percent of Americans over the age of 12 regularly
listen to the radio.
I know, I was shocked too! And I regularly listen to the radio.
Nearly a quarter of those people say that they love the radio
so it should be less of a little jagged pill when Mike Masnik of Techdirt described
radio as
a key, if not THE key way to break an act.
As such, radio airtime is a valuable commodity
and wouldn't you know, the people in charge just happen to figure that out!
The practice of payola, which is a portmanteau of pay and Victrola, a name of
early phonographs, is one where record companies pay broadcasters to play their
songs on the air.
and weirdly, the promotional consideration in television and movies,
paid product placement in music videos, and tons of other like
stuff is not only expected but usually considered necessary.
Payola is illegal. Massive label X can't pay huge radio station Z to play the new
single by band-who's-gonna-make-it-big
Y, which is incidentally also the name of my new banjo-infused noise rock group
that's gonna make it big. Y. However, and of course there are tons of ways
around these payola laws. Some of them involving implicit understandings broken around
trips to exotic locations,
and tons of other crazy interesting stuff we just don't have time to get into
For the reading in the description, if you're interested. So payola effectively
happens anyway, and given the surprising influence of radio, this gives rise
to a quote "commodification in taste-making" Put another way,
in a paper from Media Culture and Society, Charles Fairchild cites research
which notes the more difficult it is to define the economic value of the product
the greater power that rests in the hands of those who act as intermediaries for that
product
to influence the perception of its value.
So, through the quote "targeted deployment of music", both on the radio and in public
spaces
meaning, and therefore value, is created within that music.
Which makes sense right? Like if you've never heard a song and have no positive
associations with it,
you might not think of it as having meaning. But if it's totally your jam
because it's on
every time you're out with your pals, that's pretty meaningful.
And there are, I think, two ways to look at the situation that arises
as a result of all this. The first is to cynically cast this whole thing as a
kind of media-related Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome is a symptom of
victimization
where a hostage or prisoner might start to feel positively towards and even defend
their captor. Clearly it's hugely irresponsible to draw a total
equivalency between people stuck in violent or dangerous situations
and feeling like, "God, that Robin thick song is just
everywhere!" It is, however, an unfortunately useful shortcut to evoke a perceived
imbalance of power
"I can not escape this song!"
And the eventual, maybe somewhat guilt- laiden change of heart.
"You know, that Gotye song actually is pretty good!"
It's the process we've probably all experienced at least once of learning to
love a pop song because we kinda feel like we have to.
Which might come before never wanting to hear it again for as long as you live
so help you Pete.
You could also say that this is just how pop music works.
If you consider popular music as capable of having meaning in the first place,
Maybe one of the ways it gains that meaning is how it's used and where it's played.
seeing as how it is by definition popular, context and prevalence are part
of the equation.
Maybe even more so than sound itself because, like, Drake and Mumford and Sons
are both
equally pop music. Maybe "Get Lucky" gains just as much meaning from its content
and the personal space it creates in your headphones or your car, as it does from
being played in other contexts like
in the club, at the grocery store, on TV, at the mall, or in the hundreds of
covers
on YouTube. And the people working to make sure that happens are simply
pushing the best
most promising songs. Though, why they decided on "My Humps"
at one point is a little beyond me. I'm sure they had a great reason. What do you guys
think?
What are the ways that pop music gains meaning?
Let us know in the comments. And since I know you're gonna ask, it's a Dan Deacon
shirt.
please subscribe. So, new Google+ integrated commenting system.
It's gonna be a long while until we get our sea legs.
Let's see what you guys had to say about Ender's Game. So first and
foremost, an apology. In that last week's episode, we showed a picture
of a bunch of white gentlemen in the demotivator that was captioned
"fascism". What we didn't realize is that that photo was
of the General Counsel of the Church of Latter day Saints
and we therefore implied that we thought Mormons were
fascist. That was absolutely the last thing
that we intended on doing. We just simply did not know that that picture was of
the general counsel and that is
no excuse. We should not be putting things up on the show we should not be using
assets if we do not know what they depict but
I want to apologize to all of our Mormon subscribers and to anyone who was offended. I'm really
sorry
we're gonna just try to be better at that and I hope you'll forgive us. T4mercustomz
says that the problem with getting hung up
in a piece of art's politics is that it stops you from having
that authentic, aesthetic experience of experiencing the thing as
itself, as a work of art which, yeah totally. I mean and I think that is the problem a
lot of people had that day:
wanted to enjoy Enders game as a film but just got stopped dead in their
tracks.
John Needy says that if we have to take into account the political stance
of the people making everything we consume, then we will eventually be naked,
hungry, and not entertained at all, and yeah, I mean, I think you can't be expected to
know everything
about everything, though there are certainly some people who think that that
state of being is preferential, it gets complicated when people feel as though a
decision that they're making
or a thing that they're supporting is actually going to affect
a structure of power in some way or is going to sufficiently comment
on that structure of power, and that is the question with Ender's Game. It is a very visible
movie
made by a very visible man, with very well-known
politics, and so the combination of its visibility and politics
makes some people uncomfortable about supporting it. To Thomas Humphrey,
I honestly don't know whether or not it is possible to not
bring politics into things I just, I think that
yeah, it would be a very difficult thing to make, especially as far as Media is
concerned an
apolitical piece of media. To starius2, it's fine.
This is a very common mistake. It happens all the time. You'd be surprised actually
Pewdie is four doors down
and to the left. Veronica Bourgois said that the most important thing to her was not
Orson Scott Card's politics, but
how the movie was gonna be and says that basically anybody can make the statement
they want by choosing
or not choosing to go see the movie, but that it is unfair when someone is made to
feel like a bad person
for making either of those decisions. Agreed.
Furthermore Rocket Possum, who has an awesome name, said that Orson Scott Card
could have insulted her
directly and she would still go see Ender's Game.
That's dedication. Whoa whoa whoa, Brian Downes, I just wanna be
totally clear that we're not advocating any stomping out of
anyone's opinions, rather just saying that however you orient yourself towards
seeing Ender's Game or not seeing Ender's Game,
the reason that you have is important. Period.
Andrea Elise writes a really thoughtful comment about the complexity of the
decision to go see Ender's Game if you have been the victim
of homophobia and goes on to say that it might not be about money but it might
be about
not wanting to contribute to Card's cultural
relevancy to keep him in the spotlight which is, yeah, that's
totally valid. Michael McGee says that as someone who is somewhat conservative
if he were to only consume media that expresses his political viewpoint
especially in the sci-fi genre there wouldn't be too much for him
to read or watch and says that he will respectfully ignore
the political stance of creators if people who disagree with him
respectfully ignore him.
That's one way to do it. Aaron Moore points us towards a really thoughtful blog post by Neil
Gaiman who tackles this
very issue. It's super great. We'll put a link in description Jack Connell said that
Card's politics influenced him heavily in his decision to go
see Ender's Game, but in kind of the opposite way that we've been talking
about in that
after he learned the Card is conservative that made him more
interested in seeing the film.
which yeah, fair enough. This week's episode was brought to you by the hard work of these
diamonds in the sky. We have an IRC and a subreddit, links
in the description and the tweet of the week comes from Duncan MacLaury who points us towards
the tardis
eruditorum, which is a critical history of Doctor Who
in preparation for our episode next week about the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor
Who we recommend that you read
all of it. Better get started.