A background to the music industry and some background theory

Pop music genre

Genre:'  'Classification of a text according to its style and content and possibly its form and manner of production.' 

Pop culture is the most dependent on genre and also includes the most wildly different genre of texts. Most genres are being invented or revisited. 

Most music will fall into one of these categories: 

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

These catogories have 'Sub Genres', this includes hybrids and mash ups. Despite this, they hall have unique musical characteristics. This could be due to rhythm, the lyrics, vocal style or the instruments and how they are used. Visual factors such as clothing, hair style and the lifestyle they live could also be separating factors. 

.Each genre has institutional support such as nightclubs, radio stations, record shops, magazines and  festivals. There will always be a place in which plays a particular genre, especially when it comes to festivals. 

Genre and Artist Image

An artists image is key for the music genre which they are in. If you look at an artist you should be able to tell what genre they belong to before they start performing. For example, a rock band would probably wear leather and chains so that they truely fit and represent the catabory they belong to. They may further do this by taking publicity photos and through music videos etc. 

Hip Hop videos are usually hard to distinguish as they mainly feature boys wearing baggy clothes sitting on steps or outside houses in a generic 'hood, swinging their arms and smiling at the booty passing by' Likewise, all the boy or girl groups tend to go for the background of their video to include being shot in a ware house in im some kind of urban setting. 

Adele - Music draws in attention of classic pop styles of the 1960's and 1970's. Adele commonly wears classic retro clothing, which associates her with her music aswell as her role models such as Aretha Franklin or Dusty Springfield.

Genre and Sales

Everyone has their own music taste and tend to restrict ourself to a particular style of music, there fore not venturing out or buying anything outside that genre. Everything nowadays is separated into genres. FOr instance, if you go into HMV all the albums are sorted into genres - even online music streamer (e.g spotify) rely on your past genre choices in order to keep playing you new music you may be interested in buying. 

Personally, i prefer the genres R&B and alternative, however recently i have branched out and have started listening to others such as hip-hop and reggae.