Theorists

Adorno 
Adorno was a marxist and believed in a cluture industry which produces unsophisticated and unsentimental products for people to experience 'true' emotion. He sees this as cathartic which means that people who are feeling in a low mood will listen to this sad music or watch the sad film in order to release their emotions and therefore feel better afterwards. He disagrees with this as he believes that it benefits the capitalists.



Hebdige
Hebdige argues that audiences are free to resist the power of large companies, for example, music videos by ignoring their products and finding alternatives by creating subcultures. These subcultures go against the 'mainstream' trends and examples of these include, punk, emo, ecowarriers, feminists and such groups.


Dyer
A 'star' refers to a set of meanings constructed around music performances. Some common values of stardom include:

• Youthfulness
• Rebellion
• Sexual maganatism 
• Antiauthoritarian sttitude 
• Originality 
• Creativity
• Agression 
• Disregard for social values relating to drugs, sex and polite behaviour
• Consumption of sex, drugs and material goods 
• Success against the odds

His key idea was that some stars have key features which link them and these include; that a star is an image of a star and not a real person and that stars are constructed out of a range of materials including adverts, magazines, films, music videos and other such mediums.

Dyer says that a stars image is based on two paradoxes; 

1. 'The star must be simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary'. This means that they have to seem ordinary enough for their fans to relate to them but extraordinary so that they can idealise them.
2. 'The star must be present yet not present'. This means that they should be present so that their music and information about themselves is easily accessible but not present enough that anybody could contact them very easily.

Negus 

Negus identifies two distinct ways of thinking about potential artists from within the music industry. These ideologies shape the way that artists images and careers are developed and the way that they are marketed towards specific target audiences. 

The organic ideology of creativity 

This takes a 'naturalistic' approach to artists and says that the seeds of success are within the artist which are brought out by the record company. The artist is enhanced by the record company and is given time to evolve and progress through their career. The profits generated by this type of act tend to be part of a long term strategy by the record label. 

The synthetic ideology of creativity

This takes a combinatorial approach to artists and material. The image of artists is often constructed by the record company and artists are given a short time to prove their success before other combinations will be tried out and these artists are often aimed at younger, less sophisticated audiences.