A Background to the Music Industry and some basic theory

Pop Music Genre

Genre- the classification of a text according to its style and content and possibly its form and manner of production. Pop music is very dependent on genre.  
Genres are continually being invented, crossed and revisited. 

Most music falls into one of these categories:

• Pop 
• Dance
• R&B
• Hip-hop/Rap
• Rock
• Punk
• Country & Western
• Folk 
• Jazz
• Blues
• Latin 
• Gospel
• Reggae
• New Age

Each of these categories have sub-genres, and there are plenty of hybrids and mash-ups. 

However each of these genres have a unique musical character (rhythm, instruments, lyric, and vocal style) which can connect with other factors of the artist such as clothing, hair and lifestyle. 

Genre and Artist Image

An artists image is key. They should have some kind of ‘look’ categorising them before they start singing or playing. They must be represented as doing so visually on record sleeves, publicity photos and in music videos. Their look can be as generic as their sound. If the look fits, wear it. 

Adele, whose music comes from classic pop styles of the 1960s and 1970s is often photographed wearing classic and retro clothing that links her with her role models such as Aretha Fraklin and Dusty Springfield. This look suggests a serious and soulful artist. 

Genre and Sales

Costumers often restrict themselves to a certain type of music and genre. In your local HMV you will see that the albums are organised in the different genre categories across the walls. Lots of artists resent being pigeonholed into a particular genre niche in this way, there is little doubt that retailers and customers rely heavily on genre to make their buying choices. Services like Spotify rely on the past genre choices in order to keep playing you new music that you may be interested in. 

What have I learnt from this article and what will I take away?

I have learnt that i do restrict myself to some certain genres like Pop, Dance, R&B and randomly I love country and western music. I think that I need to branch out more and discover other types of music. I also think that for my product I will make sure that the image that I try to present to people is what I am trying to get across. Sometimes people get mixed up with an image they like and an image they are trying to put across to people and I think this is important to bare in mind for my project.