Music as Lifestyle v Music as Lifeblood
May 21st 2008 11:34
If you really love music, you listen to it as you might watch a film - you sit down and absorb it. Or you jump around the room to it. You let it flood you for that moment - at least, that's what I have always done if the music is worth listening to. There's certainly no "multi-tasking" allowed when you sit down to watch a film, so why is it that the scourge of our age - marketers - are trying to identify what it is we like to do when we listen to music? The short answer is they want to package the music we listen to into neat little genres which have nothing to do with influences and styles, and everything to do with the consumer's needs - preferably allowing them to listen to music 'products' while they're consuming other items.
A recent survey in the UK, commissioned as part of a "re-branding" of classical music for the younger generation, found that various age groups liked, amongst other activities, to drive, to wind-down after work and to do the housework to classical music. Each question had an activity linked to it - after all, who just listens anymore? You've got to be caught up in a frenzy of other activity which the music helps you achieve... at least, that's how this clumsily designed and patronising market-research would have it. But it's not just classical music being flogged as activity music. If it can't be packaged neatly into a 'lifestyle category', it can't be sold.
So, according to the expensive market research, you have Norah Jones or Diana Krall as the background for a romantic dinner, some Gregorian chants or maybe some whale noises for the bathtub, some ACDC or Guns and Roses to get you pumped for the game, some trip-hop or noodling drum and bass for your funky cafe with the distressed walls and formica furniture, Dean Martin or Ella Fitzgerald for the antique shop, Kylie or The Scissor Sisters for the Chapel Street Boutique, and maybe some techno to show off the range of your Bang and Olufsen stereo. You might haul out that Jackson Browne compilation for the car trip to pick up the kids or on the way to Bunnings, or try a little jazz on the ipod while you're doing the ironing or renovating the house.
Then there's marketing to moods. Feeling nostalgic? There's a swingin sixties compilation just waiting for you. Feeling a tad rebellious? Nelly's latest has the odd 'Parental Advisory' lyric. Feeling thoughtful, contemplative - even intellectual? Coldplay or Keane will be just the ticket. As for classical - hey, the survey says that's for unwinding after work with a chardonnay. Just don't pull out Beethoven - he's a bit adversarial. After all, you don't want to end up like that nasty little man in Clockwork Orange. Oh yes, those clever marketers think they've got us all pegged...
No wonder there's no angry, face-spitting songs around at the moment about how we've all been tricked. There's certainly no pop songs around quoting Blake! There's no lyrical narrative whatsoever in music any more - after all, it's not there to be pondered, but to provide the backdrop to something else. Hence the rise of that brand of unobtrusive, anodyne cafe/bar music which seems to be the bastard child of acid jazz and trip hop. When you're in a crowded Ikea bar, you're not there to dance, and you're not there to listen - so why do they crank up something which approaches danceability so you're straining to be heard? Hapless proprietors of city wine bars mistakenly think it confers instant 'atmosphere' upon barn-like spaces full of oblivious, shouting suits of a Friday night. It doesn't - it's just incongruous and irritating. The suits might as well be in the boardroom for all they care about the music being played, and the rest of us might as well slap on an old favourite and crack open a tinny at home.
Whatever happened to the pub jukebox? Having to leave your beer and your seat and actually pay for a tune was a testament to your fondness for it. Not to mention live music - if it's worth standing in a pool of unidentifiable fluid with your face in a tall guy's armpits, someone's beer resting on your shoulder and someone else's hand resting on your arse, it's probably worth listening to. That's where the marketers really get it wrong - they underestimate how much music actually means to people.
A recent survey in the UK, commissioned as part of a "re-branding" of classical music for the younger generation, found that various age groups liked, amongst other activities, to drive, to wind-down after work and to do the housework to classical music. Each question had an activity linked to it - after all, who just listens anymore? You've got to be caught up in a frenzy of other activity which the music helps you achieve... at least, that's how this clumsily designed and patronising market-research would have it. But it's not just classical music being flogged as activity music. If it can't be packaged neatly into a 'lifestyle category', it can't be sold.
So, according to the expensive market research, you have Norah Jones or Diana Krall as the background for a romantic dinner, some Gregorian chants or maybe some whale noises for the bathtub, some ACDC or Guns and Roses to get you pumped for the game, some trip-hop or noodling drum and bass for your funky cafe with the distressed walls and formica furniture, Dean Martin or Ella Fitzgerald for the antique shop, Kylie or The Scissor Sisters for the Chapel Street Boutique, and maybe some techno to show off the range of your Bang and Olufsen stereo. You might haul out that Jackson Browne compilation for the car trip to pick up the kids or on the way to Bunnings, or try a little jazz on the ipod while you're doing the ironing or renovating the house.
Then there's marketing to moods. Feeling nostalgic? There's a swingin sixties compilation just waiting for you. Feeling a tad rebellious? Nelly's latest has the odd 'Parental Advisory' lyric. Feeling thoughtful, contemplative - even intellectual? Coldplay or Keane will be just the ticket. As for classical - hey, the survey says that's for unwinding after work with a chardonnay. Just don't pull out Beethoven - he's a bit adversarial. After all, you don't want to end up like that nasty little man in Clockwork Orange. Oh yes, those clever marketers think they've got us all pegged...
No wonder there's no angry, face-spitting songs around at the moment about how we've all been tricked. There's certainly no pop songs around quoting Blake! There's no lyrical narrative whatsoever in music any more - after all, it's not there to be pondered, but to provide the backdrop to something else. Hence the rise of that brand of unobtrusive, anodyne cafe/bar music which seems to be the bastard child of acid jazz and trip hop. When you're in a crowded Ikea bar, you're not there to dance, and you're not there to listen - so why do they crank up something which approaches danceability so you're straining to be heard? Hapless proprietors of city wine bars mistakenly think it confers instant 'atmosphere' upon barn-like spaces full of oblivious, shouting suits of a Friday night. It doesn't - it's just incongruous and irritating. The suits might as well be in the boardroom for all they care about the music being played, and the rest of us might as well slap on an old favourite and crack open a tinny at home.
Whatever happened to the pub jukebox? Having to leave your beer and your seat and actually pay for a tune was a testament to your fondness for it. Not to mention live music - if it's worth standing in a pool of unidentifiable fluid with your face in a tall guy's armpits, someone's beer resting on your shoulder and someone else's hand resting on your arse, it's probably worth listening to. That's where the marketers really get it wrong - they underestimate how much music actually means to people.
| 85 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
