Conclusion: Subculture within society

Introduction

It is easy to say that everyone has a subculture but if asked could you class yourself to a particular subculture? There are many stereotypical subculture within our society such as Goth, Geek and Chav but would you want to call yourself a geek? It now appears more accepted within our soicety to embrace who we are. For example people who are Gay are now very much accepted but not long ago people would have to hide this fact about themselves as it just wasn't seen as 'right'. This is the same in some sense for 'geeks'. Geeks are usually seen in films and T.V as being 'losers' and would be shown having no friends or being beaten up but now we see 'geeks' being resepected with films such as 'superbad' where most of the characters aren't popular but have comic value which makes them respected by their audience and therefore gives geeks a comic quirky side in society.



Subcultures within the music industry

When stereotyping someone to a certain genre of music it could be seen as a simple task. However todays audience are beginning to rebel against the Music industry and become more diverse with their prefrences. The music industry want their audiences to fit to a certain subculture and therefore create an image for the artists which they want their audiences to follow, for example Emo. When the music industry produce a song from artists such as My Chemical Romance they want their audience to have the stereotypical image and therefore seperate their audience into different categories. But audiences are prefering to use this system rather than be used by it. No one wants to be a brand for the music industry to profit from. The audience will always want to rebel. An example of this post-modern identity is someone who to an audience should be from one subculture (for example indie) but listens to music from an oppositional sub-culture (for example emo). Our understanding of the music industry needs to change as it is becoming less common for someone to stereotype themselves to a genre of music they listen to.

Female subcultures within the music industry

The role of female within the music has many different viewpoints both negative and positive. There's the one sense that these woman are being portrayed as 'objects' such as 'The Pussycat Dolls'. When a female group are refering themselves as being 'dolls', it gives the idea that their mere purpose is to be something that is lifeless and without their own self control. However in another way this feminist viewpoint of girl groups has a inverted negative impact upon the music industry as they are giving something for female audiences to rebel against. And this creates a new subculture of 'feminism'. There are now quite a few female artists who won't project this image upon themselves such as Laura Marling and Lily Allen who instead to prefer to mock this image by either not having a girl image at all or by being too dressed up but having a rather 'laddish' attitude such as Lily Allens swearing andn backlashes at other artists.
Nowadays though the music industry does try to create a more positive view on body image when it comes to female artists and not allowing all their artists to be too skinny and curvy instead such as the Sugababes and this is allowing young girls to have a more postive attitude within themselves rather than feel like they are having to starve themselves to look like their role models.

The impacts of subcultures within the music industry

Parts of this have already been covered in Subcultures Within the Music Industry and Female Artists Within the Music Industry but there are many impacts with subcultures in general. One of these impacts which was covered was how an artist projects their image outside of their music. Most artists will often be seen in some sort of publicity scandal but one which often gets the music industry and audiences the most angry is drug taking. It appears that within this industry one of the ways to ease the pressure and produce good music is to take drugs but once the newspapers find this out the artists label or management will want it to stop or are prepared to fire them even though it was likely that they would have known what was happening. Pete Doherty was a chosen example due to the amount of times he has been to court over drug offences or alcohol abuse etc but still carries on creating music and making money. This is due to the image in which Pete Doherty label wants him to have as he is known for being rebellious, but he has been successful so in some ways this technique is workingn as an audience want a role model who is considered 'cool'. However fans can grow tired of it all as solo artist Amy Winehouse was a known drug addict and would often be cancelling shows or not meeting her high standard of performance and this ends up resulting in a loss of respect for the artist and less money for their labels causing them to be dropped. Therefore the main impact within these subcultures appears to be whether or not the music industry can keep up to date with what the audience are willing to tolerate in order for them to make a profit.

Artists changing genre

It appears that artists are also being put under pressure by this post modern identity which audiences are beginning to show and therefore are being understrain to show more variety in their music. Nelly Furtado wasn't selling by releasing folk music so therefore knew the money was in mainstream R&B. Audiences are always wanting something new and edgy. Dizzee Rascal went mainstream to appeal to the large audience who listen to dance music. These two genres R&B and Dance appears to be where the money is within the music industry as they don't necessarily stick to one particular sub-culture. In someways their is something that most people can get from these genres such as being at a club or party as it creates and atmosphere. Nelly Furtado's folk releases would be more likely to be played in a shop or restaurant but wouldn't go anywhere near the young part scene. Now her music has more varities and can be used with much more variety and publcity for the artist. Another technique each of these artists used was colloborating with other successful artists to merge to different subcultures. Dizzee Rascal will now have previous fans as well as the artist Calvin Harris' fans who he helped produce his new album 'Tongue and Cheek'. This was the same for Nelly Furtado who had her old fans enjoying her new sound and image as well as fans of Timbaland who appeared in her song Promiscuous and is famous for producing successful artists such as Justin Timberlake and 50 Cent. Therefore the music industry are making the subcultures much broader to try and compete with this Post Modern Identity in which audiences are creating for themselves.