OUGD505: Micro-Genre Music Research

WHAT IS A MICRO-GENRE?

A niche genre of music that's not the typical well known genre of music such a pop, it's almost a sub-genre of something like pop music. They were historically designed by writers who wanted to create a new style of music by linking together similar artists. Genres are sometimes created by record dealers and collectors as a marketing tool to increase the value of certain records. By 2010, most micro-genres would be defined through the internet, usually to hype a new trend.

TASK FROM STUDIO BRIEF:

Jacques Attali's essential argument in Noise: The Political Economy of Music is that music, as a cultural form, is intimately tied up in the mode of production in any given society.

Attali believes that music has gone through four distinct cultural stages in its history: Sacrificing, Representing, Repeating, and a fourth cultural stage which could roughly be called Post-Repeating. These stages are each linked to a certain "mode of production"; that is to say, each of these stages carries with it a certain set of technologies for producing, recording and disseminating music, and also concomitant cultural structures that allow for music's transmission and reception.

Attali's notion of the Repeating stage (1900 to 1970s when he wrote the book) is based on his ideas of exchange-time and use-time within music. Attali defines exchange-time as the time spent towards earning the money needed to purchase a recording, whereas use-time involves the time spent listening to recordings by the purchaser. In a society made up of recording labels and radio stations, far more recordings are produced than an individual can listen to in a lifetime, and in an effort to spend more time in use-time than in exchange-time people begin to stockpile recordings of what they want to hear. Attali states that this stockpiling has become the main method of use by consumers, and in doing so, shorter musical works have been valorised. More importantly, according to Attali, this process of stockpiling removes the social and political power from music (Attali, p.101)

In the age of Spotify, Soulseek, torrents and other digital platforms, in what sense is Attali's judgement true?

Consider the current state of physical media and products within 21st century music industry and culture.

THE 4 DISTINCT CULTURAL STAGES IN HISTORY:

Sacrificing: to give up something that is valuable to you in order to help another person

Representing: to speak, act, or be present officially for another person or people

Repeating: to say or tell people something more than once// to happen, or to do something, more than once

To some extent I do agree with Attali's judgement because the music industry has become so popular there are millions of tracks available to listen to and it could be easy for someone to get caught up in it all and become confused. I think because music is available on all kinds of platforms, whether it being physical or digital, his idea of 'stockpiling' may be quite true because there are so many tracks produced it would be almost impossible for a person to either listen to them all or access them. However, I think it could be argued that this idea also applies to other forms of industries such as design, there are so many designers that exist and produce millions of pieces of work, it again would be so easy to get lost within it all. So it also applies to the idea that both music and design are at risk of being repeated but through different names and slight variations. Despite this idea of too much being created, I mostly think this is a positive thing as so many people listen to music or create work that we couldn't create everything the same to please the same person, there will always be differences in opinions or peoples tastes. Therefore this variation can only be seen as positive.