iieiiei1eWrkers - Leicester Research Archive - University of Leicester

The production of popular music in the Azona and Grammy companies
This same argument can also be applied to the music industry, except that the
artists and music companies need to draw on their audience as sources of
material and not nierely as consumers of finished products. This issue has
stiimilated debates in the sociology of popular music centred around the notions
of authenticity versus artifice. 10
100
But it is not a question of either one or
the other. As Hennion argued, the production of popular music,
"aims chiefly at preserving and developing artistic methods which act as
veritable mediators of public taste, while accoinplishiiig a production job
which must also be technical, financial a/Id commericial.
(Hennion, 1983:160)
As we shall show, Thai music companies have structured themselves in order to
mobilise artistic creativity in the service of organisation goals. In contrast to
the drama companies' 'mechanistic' style of management in which production is
governed by instructions and decisions issued by superiors, work structures in
music companies are 'organic' in the sense defined by Burns and Stalker that:
"Job lose ,i,iic/i of their formal definition iii ternis of methods, duties.
and powers, which have to be redefined continually by interaction u'ii/I
others participating in a task. Interaction runs laterally as much as
verticall y . Communication between people of different ranks tends to
resemble lateral consultation rat/icr lila/I vertical co,nmnamid.
(Burns and Stalker, 1961:5-6)
The organisation of the Thai music industry, as observed in the two large
music corporations, Azona and Grammy, clearly conforms to this description.
Administration and organisation goals
The Azona and Gramniy corporations are niusic publishers for different segments
of the market. Azona began by producing mainly Pleng Luktoong or folk i'ock
aimed at rural audiences and working class youth, but it quickly expanded into
Pleng Lukroong or middle-of-the-road popular music as it concentrated the entire
production process vertically in its 20 million hht (approximately £0.5 million)
manufacturing outfit. In contrast, Grammy caters for urban youth, the middle
classes and the intellectuals with their adaptations of western rock-' n'-roll music.
known in Thai as 'Siring music ' . It publishes music but does not have its
own recording studio or printing facility.
However, the company does l)roduce
10 See for example, Simon Frith's (1981 and 1987) "'7'I:e illogic thai call
sd you free': the ideology of folk amid the myth of the mock community"
and "Towards an aesthetic of popular music ".