Commercialization and consecration: Media attention to popular music in the US and the Netherlands, 1975-2005

- Newspaper coverage of popular music expanded in the US and the Netherlands between 1975 and 2005.
- Popular music has developed a stable system of symbolic value that is independent from, but overlaps with, commercial success in both countries.
- Popular music coverage adopts an increasingly “aesthetic” perspective over time.
- The aesthetic legitimacy of popular music has diffused across a number of music genre categories.

Recent studies have argued that popular music has secured aesthetic legitimacy and an elevated position in the cultural hierarchy. Drawing on a variety of information, including newspaper articles on popular music in the US and the Netherlands in select reference years from 1975 to 2005, I consider the extent to which processes of commercialization and autonomization (Bourdieu, 1993) have shaped coverage of popular music. Overall, I find that the field of popular music has developed a stable system of symbolic value that is relatively autonomous from, although overlapping with, commercial success. In particular, most coverage of popular music across artist and music types takes an aesthetic perspective, although there is a balance of both news items and artistic reviews. The study contributes to recent studies of institutional recognition and consecration in commercialized fields of cultural production.