Young People and Popular Music - Essay Example

Critical appraisal: ‘Does it really matter? Young people and popular music’ The research paper which I have chosen focuses on the relationship that young people have with popular music. In this research the author focuses on what young people say is the importance of music in their lives. I have chosen this paper because I think it is a very interesting study. The author is very clear in her methodology and combines various approaches from different areas of media and cultural studies in order to perform her research. This mixture of methodologies, taken from different studies of music and media, makes the article useful to analyse. By combing these methods the author has an original approach to her research and this makes it very interesting to criticise. The paper shows how the role of popular music in society has been studied traditionally and challenges some classical methodologies while also proposing new ones. It is the combination of these points which makes this article good to study in terms of research methodology analysis. The study is of popular music in the lives of young people. It positions itself with cultural and social studies. Its aim is to approach the study of the role of popular music in a slightly different way from other researchers on this subject. Initially the author states that few studies work directly with the people who use and consumer music. The study therefore aims to change this by asking people directly what their experience of music is, instead of making theories that do not in interact with reality. The author emphasises the need to concentrate on the real experiences which people have, or say they have, in relation to music. Related to this is the aim to explore what the author refers to as the ‘everydayness’ of music. Rather than focusing on the cultural significance of music through issues such as identity construction, the paper aims to explore the possibility that these issues of music consumption are in fact less important than the more mundane and routine uses of music in everyday life, as a background noise whose meanings are irrelevant. She focuses on the ‘fallacy of meaningfulness’, arguing that music doesn’t necessarily have to be significant or used to define a particular group or consumed by a particular ethnic group or social class. The methodology used by the author involves the use of unstructured informal discussions with three groups of GCSE sociology students, around fifteen years old. Three groups of four to five students were involved in one discussion, all on the same day. There were fewer boys than girls in all groups and one group was exclusively female. The discussion was prompted by the question ‘is music important in your life’ followed by ‘in what way is it important’. Students were given free reign to explore whatever issues came up and lead the discussion as much as possible. The author takes the methodological decision to conduct these interviews rather than theorise because she believes it will provide more insight into the real experience of music in young peoples lives. She adopts an ethnographical approach based on work by Morley and Ang. The findings vary a little from the current research and what the author expected to discover. An important finding was the fact that music tends to be consumed as part of a broader embedding in other media. The teenagers interviewed made reference to radio and television as part of their music listening experiences, even focusing on the use of music in advertisements. It is important to understand that young people’s access to and use of music may be changing due to the multiple and interdependent media channels which they have access to. This study pre-dated the widespread practice of music downloading from the web but this would no doubt have contributed to the sense that music is no longer an independent entity. The teenagers focused on innovation and the fact that they became bored by new music easily and so didn’t necessarily want to spend money buying albums. They would be bored of a new song after a few weeks and so considered buying music a waste of money. The author also shows that when interviewing this particular group, the idea of music is limited by the ways in which they can receive it. As they are not willing to buy music, they mostly listen to it on the radio. This means that the music that they are exposed to it the music which makes it into the charts. Therefore the study was mostly investigating the relationship between young people and chart music, rather than between young people and music in general. In this way although they deny being products of the music which they listen to, or believing the media constructions and ideas associated with music, it is also true that they rarely listen to music outside of the boundaries which the media channels set. They will only have contact with music that gets airplay because they are unwilling and financially unable to explore alternative music sources. Since the explosion of music downloads it would be interesting to explore how much this is still the case. There are also other issues associated with media and music. These include the way in which the students expressed an understanding of the workings of the music industry as essentially constructing images to sell music. They were aware that, for example, boy bands are put together to appeal to young girls and images such as the Spice Girls ‘girl power’ slogan were meaningless since the Spice Girls did little to empower women, in their opinions. The author suggested that this might be one of the reasons why the young people were unwilling to say that the music they listened to formed part of their cultural identity. They did not define themselves by one type of music but instead claimed to listen to many different genres, whatever they liked to sound of and not a specific type. They also did not attempt to divide their peers into groups divided along music preference lines. All this was at variance with similar studies carried out in the 1970s where teenagers routinely classified their peers by musical taste. This surprised the author although she stated that perhaps a cynicism to the music industry and advertising and mass media might explain why they were unwilling to recognise that they might be influenced by the music they listened to. They routinely denied the idea that it reflected part of who they were. Connected to this was a willingness to listen to the same music as their parents and even say that their parents sometimes liked their music too. The study carried out in the 1970s saw a total rejection of parental music tastes. The idea that teenagers build images based on difference was therefore not supported by this study. However the study has shown that the young people retain some stereotypical views of music inherited from earlier idea connected with rebellion and genuine music. The state that while boy bands may be manufactured, rock bands such as Oasis are free to speak without worrying about the media. There is a dishonesty associated with pop music while rock music is considered genuine, according to these teenagers. This is an interesting use of a cultural stereotype by a group which claims not to be influenced by the media and which refuses to read messages into music. However it is clear that at some levels certain values are placed on rock and pop respectively. The study found that, instead, the young people interviewed were happier to identify music use for far more mundane purposes. The stated that music could help them to change their mood, or reflect their mood but the lyrics did not have an impact on them as much as the overall sound and feel of the music. They also identified music with their daily routine. Many would get up and listen to music, listen to music before going to sleep or do their homework while listening to music. Many commented the music can help reduce boredom and they also had an aversion to silence. Music, any music which made a sound the liked, could be used to fill the gaps and remove the silences. This is much more of a generic music use rather than an identification with a particular type of music used for a specific purpose. They also felt music could be used in social situations. It could make awkward silences less awkward and could also be a good starting point for getting to know someone, because everyone, in their opinion, has an idea about which music they like. However they did not express the idea the friendships could be formed along particular musical lines. Disagreeing about music could be just as good as agreeing about music to pass the time and get to know them, but disagree did not prevent friendship. The methodological approach was positive in the way in which it engaged with the consumers of music directly. It was careful not to bring preconceived ideas to the interview process and so decided to use an informal unstructured discussion. This would help to prevent leading questions or a bias based on asking questions only related to the ideas of previous researchers. The decision to interview in groups was also a sensible one, allowing students to get ideas from their friends. She also conducted individual interviews afterwards to allow students to say anything they were too shy to mention, but found that no one had anything to add. This reinforces the idea that the unstructured interview was a good way to carry out the research. A further strength of the study lies in its deliberate attempt to fill a gap by combing a variety of methodological approaches. It engages well with other media research, including studies based on television in order to establish the right methodological and theoretical approaches. By giving this overview it makes a strong case for the research it sets out to conduct while also noting the debt it owes to other researchers. She is also very clear on giving definitions on the terms she uses. When she refers to ‘teenagers’ she simply means the age category and otherwise refers to them as ‘young people’. This is to distance the study from the ideas of rebellion contained within the word ‘youth’ which is gained during earlier social and cultural studies on this group. She also refers to ‘ordinary’ music consumers but is clear to show that there is nothing abnormal about music fans. She simply uses the term to distinguish the people in her study from music fans who have a different relationship with certain music. These definitions are very important in defining her study. There are, however, problems with the methodology. The first of these is taking such a small sample size. Although the author stresses that universal truths cannot be taken from her research, it could be argued that very little information indeed can be taken by talking to thirteen children. Her choice of children is also a little confusing. She interviews sociology students, which she admits may be more media savvy and self analytical than other students. It would have been much more meaningful to interview students who have not had a sociology background to avoid the problems with the findings related to the media. Further, there is a strong female bias within the groups, which means the results are not divided evenly across the sexes. This too could have been easily avoided by using a different and more balanced group. The choice of group also has problems when it comes to relating results to existing literature. The group are from a middle class school in an affluent area. The author comments that they do not identify themselves with the music or divide up their peers according to music taste. However previous studies which had found these trends to be true had focused on working class teenagers. It is therefore possible that these trends do still exist within the social group in which they were first identified. It is meaningless to challenge existing research in this way and makes the research seem misleadingly significant. The author is continually making allowances for the choice of group and it would perhaps have been better to consider this before conducting the research. The unstructured group discussions are also partly problematical. While they are no doubt better than formal interviews, the author recognises the fact that they don’t fit well with her ethnographic approach. According to the paper this method removes people from their natural day to day activities so that their discussion is detached from the context. When people are asked to reflect on what they do, they don’t necessarily give an accurate representation of what they actually do. Although allowing peer discussion helps to create a more authentic atmosphere, it is not as good as observation. This method would have provided a more accurate idea of how young people actually use music, rather than how they think they use music. It may however have been impractical. There are, therefore, serious issues with the methodological approach. However they are mostly problems which are easy to resolve. If they were changed, the research would have much more meaningful findings and be a real contribution to cultural studies. There is not doubt that the overall aims and approaches are well thought through and very important and bring valuable research to an under-studied area. WORD COUNT: 2256 Read More