Does the audience play an active role in the production meaning in popular music

The answer to this question is a two sided coin. Popular music simply would not exist without an audience to market it at. However an audience would have nothing to listen to and decide if they love or hate a piece of music without the music industry producing and marketing it. If a song was released without a retailer selling it, no music press, no merchandising, would the record sell? Probably, yet without a retailer, consumers would not no where to purchase the record. Without any publicity, hardly anyone would know of its release or even its existence. However “Recordings generally sound the same, with some variation due to handicraft nature of music production” ibid. A person could love rock music and another loves classical, is it fair to say their music sounds the same? Of course not. Everyone has a different music taste and to say recordings generally sound the same is an unfair comment, recordings can simply not sound the same due to different sound, speeds, voices and instruments. Audiences help move the music industry along. If an audience gets bored of a type of music, they buy less of it and sales drop, helping companies create a new music sensation to cover the gap in the industry. For example, The boy band era (Backstreet boys, Boyzone, Take That, West Life), the girl band era (Bewitched, Spice Girls, Eternal) Pop rock era (Sum 41, Blink 182, Linkin Park, Bowling for Soup) now where in the era of reality talent, for example. Shane Ward, Girls Aloud, Hearsay, Kelly Clarkson and Lemar. Do consumers help create the production meaning in popular music? Yes they do, however it is the music industry that creates and markets these artists, for us as consumers to help further their careers by buying their music.