The Culture Industry

What is the Culture Industry?

Adorno and Horkhiemer adopted the term ‘The Culture Industry’. This term has been portrayed as the ‘assembly line’. This is basically when an artist will apply for a talent show, such as the x-factor, who will then try to be unique, as this is what the judges claim they are looking for and in the end the artist/group tend to come out as the ‘perfect artist’ that will produce commodity.

Standardization is the biggest fault within the music industry, the audience are brainwashed into believing what is the ‘right’ type of music. The standardization is when talent shows and the music industry place through acts that are all the same, they are just a repeat of the previous ‘ big thing’ and then when the audience see an act that are different they chuck them to one side because they are not the same as the rest.

Pseudo Individuality is theorized by Adorno and Horkhiemer, this is an image of the lock and key, the artist is seen as the key, with the ridges that are all slightly different, yet they are all similar and the music industry is the lock. They claim that artists have ‘originality’ when in reality an item that is mass production is in million, the uniqueness is only extremely small.  

An artist that I think has not been affected big by the Culture Industry is Ben Howard, to an extent. By this I mean that his music has stayed the same. He released his debut album in 2008, and audiences have only just begun listening to his music.  His image has not relatively changed either, however saying this now Ben Howard has began to grow, he could be affected by Culture Industry.