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Media discourses and marketing strategies in the advertising of the pianola

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2021

Jordi Roquer González Open the ORCID record for Jordi Roquer González [Opens in a new window]
Jordi Roquer González*
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, C/ de la Fortuna s/n, Campus Bellaterra, Barcelona, and TecnoCampus – Universitat Pompeu Fabra, C/ d'Ernest Lluch 32, Mataró, Spain
*
E-mail: jordi.roquer@uab.cat
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Abstract

As a phenomenon of great social relevance between 1900 and 1930, the graphic advertising of the pianola must be considered as one of the first great mass media platforms linked to musical activity and, therefore, the analysis of its discourse offers valuable information about the social construction of the musical world during the first decades of the twentieth century. This article shows the results of an analysis of 200 historical advertisements through which it is possible to trace the origins of some of the current advertising rhetoric and also some of our current ideas about musical activity. In this way, the advertisements studied show some interesting links to the mindset and aesthetic and social conventions of the time but also show us to what degree these discourses are, to a large extent, still valid today.

Type
Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 42 - 57
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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