information:highlighting, structural:expansion
Standardization

The phenomenon of standardization is "a concept used to characterize the formulaic products of capitalist-driven mass media and mass culture that appeal to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of maximum profit". According to Adorno we inhabit a media culture driven society which has product consumption as one of its main characteristics. Mass media is employed to deliver messages about products and services to consumers in order to convince these individuals to purchase the commodity they are advertising. Standardization consists of the production of large amounts of commodities to then pursue consumers in order to gain the maximum profit possible.

They do this by individualizing products to give the illusion to consumers that they are in fact purchasing a product or service that was specifically designed for them. Adorno highlights the issues created with the construction of popular music, where different samples of music used in the creation of today's chart-topping songs are put together in order to create, re-create, and modify numerous tracks by using the same variety of samples from one song to another. He makes a distinction between "Apologetic music" and "Critical music". Apologetic music is defined as the highly produced and promoted music of the "pop music" industry: music that is composed of variable parts and interchanged to create several different songs. "The social and psychological functions of popular music acts like a social cement" "to keep people obedient and subservient to the status quo of existing power structures."

Serious music, according to Adorno, achieves excellence when its whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The example he gives is that of Beethoven's symphonies: " greatness shows itself in the complete subordination of the accidentally private melodic elements to the form as a whole."

Standardization not only refers to the products of the culture industry but to the consumers as well. Many times every day consumers are bombarded by media advertising. Consumers are pushed and shoved into consuming products and services presented to them by a media system that takes advantage of musical hooks mass produced via electronic media. The masses have become conditioned by the culture industry, which makes the impact of standardization far more widespread. Not recognizing the impact of social media and commercial advertising, the individual is caught in a situation where conformity is the norm: "During consumption the masses become characterized by the commodities which they use and exchange among themselves."

Tony Waters and David Philhour have tested Adorno's ideas and used musical intros from pop songs, and asked students in The United States, Germany, the United States, and Thailand what they recognize. They found that indeed, as Adorno hypothesized, the song intro recognition has spread around the world for some specific commercial pop songs. But they also demonstrate that there are still national differences in recognition.