As Auslander explores, the commodification of recordsled to their consumption for reasons behind auditory means, in one could argue that people are buying records “for the wrong reasons.” They bring up anecdotal evidence of a deaf man collecting records because of the visual aesthetic of the covers, and a man named Clarence only buying records that bear his name. Auslander looks beyond the context of the medium of records and points to the relevance of music in the digital format, and disagrees with the work of Debord’s The Society of the Spectaclein that the highest point of a product to achieve capital accumulation is when it becomes an image. Sourcing Debord’s argument is clearly unfair because he never would have guessed that the digitalization of music through MP3’s would lead to hyper-commodification.
Auslander’s analysis of the physicality and visualization of music as a medium constitutes a dialogue with Grossberg’s analysis on the impact and function of rock and roll. It takes an entire research analysis through the lens of sociology and historical determinism for Grossberg to come to the conclusion that rock and roll is relative, and that to study its impact and function does not point to a definitive answer because of the context as a reactionary genre. Of course, the commodification of music impacted the consumption of rock and roll. Auslander and Grossberg would both agree that the rock and roll cannot exclusively rely on an ocularcentrist format because of the genre’s relativism.
That being said, the relativism of rock and roll through the availability of a tangible medium such as the record created subgroups and identities. The commodification and capitalist exploit of rock and roll became ironic because of its divisive “Us vs. Them” sentiments and acute self-awareness. What is most important is how the influence of rock and roll played on young audiences. Commodification did not have as much as much as an impact as Grossberg claims, because the context of the genre changed over time. However, it did have a general framework of self-awareness and a rejection of social norms, but the fragmentation of rock and roll’s audience was inevitable. This is because of what the genre represents on its own as reactionary force strictly relying on context. For example, the subdivisions of rock and roll audiences splintered between age groups over time as a result of its commodification, thus leading into three different categories of affirmation: critical, experiential, and utopian. Because of the “Us vs. Them” rhetoric behind rock and roll, the division of rock and roll fans through these categories effectively killed the genre because it became more relative over time.
The commodification of music did not prove to be a core part of the fragmentation of its audiences because of the core values the genre represented.
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