Modern Advertisement Appropriation of Music

“Music, with all the attributes of the ethereal and sublime which are generously accorded to it, serves in America today as an advertisement for commodities which one must acquire in order to hear music” (278) There is a shift in the listener response to music. It is no longer the value derived from the piece of music, but rather the veneration of the money which allows a person to buy concert tickets to Coachella, to buy the IPod, or the sold in specific stores album versions. I chose the IPod commercial, to show an example of modern day use of music as a means of supporting the growth of this commercial and capitalistic engulfment of music. Adorno claims that the “exchange-value” power produces the quid pro quo fetish. That is, it is the disguise of exchange-value for the as the object of enjoyment that leads to pleasure in the caprices of commodities, in this case the purchase of the IPod. Basically, the feelings of the money commodity exchange value create the appearance of immediacy, but at the same time ignore the absence of a relation to the object itself. In a sense, the music available lacks originality for “the same thing is offered to everybody by the standardized production of consumption goods” (280). Taste no longer exists for the organization of the whole of a piece no longer matters. Instead, the disconnected parts with climax and repetition subvert the listening experience into one of isolated popular passages and advertisement.