Is the audience for popular music created by the music industry?

'Some critics have argued that the market for popular music recordings and therefore the pop mop music audience itself are essentially created by the music industry'(shuker)

In many ways I do agree with this, the music industry is incredibly powerful and can influence the audience in the same way that a newspaper con. The pop music industry has the power to control the majority of the music that is produced and distributed. Huge record companies such as Warner Bros, Universal and EMI are responsible for this and also have a great deal of smaller labels attached to them. Therefore like a spiders web they spin their way around the industry and in some ways poisoning the audience with the very similar kinds of music.

It seems that the music industry is so powerful as a media, that its not unreasonable to believe the audience is created by the industry. 'pop music is an economic product which is invested with ideological significance by many of the consumers'

NME magazine

NME – This magazine is one that many would consider to be pretentious and truly elitist for the scensters that role up to Shoreditch on a weekday night or to Brick Lane on a Sunday. This magazine focuses on a very specific reader that has true love for Indie music and an alternative dress sense. From traveling through a love affair with Morrissey and Ian Curtis in the early days of production to the new found love concentrating on Pete Doherty’s messy personal life, this magazine oozes cool.

It seems to consist of a lazy layout and design for a magazine yet is packed full of well-written, well articulated and punchy reviews from gigs and interviews with the newest rock romantics.

However for a magazine that attempts to avoid the main-stream it contradicts itself by the fact it has become fairly commercial, although I must admit I’m guilty of buying an addition every now and again.