George Ritzer, is the great mind behind the term McDonaldization. It can be used to describe the functioning of different formal organizations, such as hospitals, shopping centers, or even universities. However, I’ve decided to look at the McDonaldization of the music industry.
There are four principles of a fast food restaurant that Ritzer discusses in his talk about McDonaldization are: efficiency, quantification and calculation, predictability, and control. All of there principles can be applied to the music industry and how, if you look close enough, it functions just like a McDonald’s.
The way that the music industry applies the principle of efficiency is as follows. They want to be able to make megabucks by selling their artists’ music, so they make sure that they music that they are producing is the most productive and appealing to their targeted audience. They offer the best music that they can offer to their consumer to satisfy their needs as they are their primary source of income, and if their productions were not efficient and sufficient then they wouldn’t have a job anymore. For example: the producers of an album know that the most efficient time to sell a Christmas album is more than likely to be around the holidays, and not during the summer, therefore they are being efficient in making sure that they don’t waste their resources.
Next on the principle list comes quantification and calculation. This particular principle is applicable to several different aspects of the music industry. The notion that more is better can be viewed two different ways, and in both be seen as ways of quantification. The first way is by looking at the number of albums they sell, and subsidiary to that all the other merchandize they come up with. To the consumer they get more for their money when they buy the album on iTunes. If they didn’t know about the extra material online and actually bought the actual CD first then they will have to buy the whole album again in order to get the material, thus the music industry gets more. The second way of looking at this principles is can be looked at as quantity over quality. There are numerous artists in the industry, and a majority of them are very similar. At one point Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, and Jessica Simpson were all very similar. As if they were mass-produced artists, thus more of the same artists as opposed to a few really gifted ones.
Predictability. When thinking about the music industry it is pretty predictable when it comes to what you get from it. It starts off with a lot of promotion for a new artist, after that comes a first single, the album is released, maybe a couple more singles, that artists is an opening act for a while, they get their own tour, and work on their second album begins. Or at least something along those lines when an artist is actually signed to a label. As consumers we know that the most popular songs usually come out during the summer, and that’s when we expect the artists to come out with the best that they’ve got. We know what to expect from a boy band (though not many good ones exist nowadays), what Beyoncé is going to sound like, and what country music is like. It’s the way the industry functions that makes it predictable in a good way.
Last but not least comes the principle of control. This is where the music industry actually regulates what comes out of it and how that goes about happening. They make sure everyone is doing their particular job to the best of their abilities. Everyone does what they need to do in order for the organization to function properly, and if one person makes a mistake it can result in failure.
McDonaldization can be seen everywhere in society and the music industry is no exception. Question is, how much more can society take of it?
