Culture and Industry
It is arguable as to whether culture creates industry or industry creates culture. Do record labels dictate the culture we live in today or do people guide the record labels in congruence with the culture that they see is necessary. When I speak of people I do not mean one culture, but many cultures and sub-cultures. Most industries seem to be guided by a direct knowledge of what consumers want and need, yet the music industry fluctuates as tastes evolve to meet cultural desires. For instance, you will not find a mass majority of college aged students listening to Elvis on a regular basis, not to say that many don’t have his albums in the depths of their music collections. There seems to be an invisible force guiding the tastes of music listeners and there is no single entity that is proven to have control over it.
Record labels control what is spread universally, yet the people control what becomes popular in a certain genre of music. If record companies don’t have the control many would claim they have over listeners, then who should have the most power in this industry? This is a debatable question, yet it will always remain an issue as music continues to progress.
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