Ideology of Music

Every genre of music has its own ideology (a set of beliefs).

An example of a big dichotomy is between the pop and rock genres. These ideologies affect the representation of the genre's musicians and fans.

The ideology of music affects the representation of that specific genre visually through the choice of font, colours, images and themes within a music magazine. For example, a rock magazine such as 'Kerrang!', uses a bold font with a smashed effect that relates to the ideologies of rock music in that it is loud, looks abrasive and is represented as scruffy, untidy and uncaring in the appearance of the title which reflects the ideologies of the genre itself. The colour scheme isn't like that of a pop magazine in that it uses darker colours to suggest a more serious tone to the genre of magazine. Further more, the main images in the two examples shown both provide a direct mode of address with the artist's conveying serious expressions, which is not as clean cut or as conformist as you would see in genres like pop. Although this is done to appeal to the target audience of adults of whom no longer want to conform to what is mainstream or 'in' at the time but wants to take their taste in music more seriously. The layout of the magazine cover itself does not effect the representation of the genre as many magazine covers layouts are very similar, although some themes suggested in the main images is further affected by the ideology of the genre. The rock genre's ideology consists of themes of sex, drugs, anger and violence which mirror their loud, abrasive and sometimes deliberately offensive to mainstream music representation. The rock genre is referred to as 'classic' in that its music is built to last, and that it is genuine, real and authentic. This can be seen in the choices in the main images of the magazine due to the fact each cover is unique and specific/accurate in the representation of that artist.


Audience pleasures:

Schadenfreude

Predictability

Narrative Resolution

Intertextuality

Entertainment and Diversion

Familiarity

Surveillance

Consumption of the familiar

Identification

 

In my magazine I will be incorporating the audience pleasures of intertextuality, identification, consumption of the familiar and surveillance.

Uses and Gratification Theory:

This is the theory that explores why and how individuals seek out specific music magazines to meet their specific needs. This theory is an audience-centred approach to understanding mass-communication; the Uses and Gratification theory focuses on what do people do with media rather than what does media do to people. 

Audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts; these audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. As early as 1948, Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society, surveillance, correlation, entertainment and cultural transmission (ideas shared by similar cultures).

This theory stated that individuals might choose and use text for the following purposes: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance.  

Hypodermic Needle Effect/Magic Bullet:
'This is the idea that the mass media is so powerful that it can target an audience directly and the audience is powerless to resist' - This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogeneous.

A difference between these two theories is that the Hypodermic needle theory sees the audiences as lazy where as the uses and gratification theory views the audience as more involved within the media and intelligent.