The Impact of Commercialization on R&B Music: From the 1990s to the Modern Days Since its advent, the music industry was focused on making the most out of artists. Not a single music genre became an exception to that rule because the power of financial decisions is superior to the independent artists and their desire to keep up with the roots of their preferred genre. Unfortunately, the trends that are currently present in the music industry seriously limit the possibilities of those who do not follow those trends. Within the framework of this paper, the history of R&B and its course of development is reviewed so as to draw conclusions regarding the current state of this music genre and its nearest future. The author of this paper evaluated the most relevant evidence in order to come up with the most accurate conclusions and critically scrutinized the rhythmic and lyrical trends of modern R&B music. Within the framework of this paper, the concept of commercialization is reviewed. On a bigger scale, this is a process of replacing common values characteristic of music (or any other type of art) with the monetary values that usually signify that the artist is more interested in getting money than maintaining the quality of the content they put …show more content…
The concept of “rhythm and blues” depends upon the backbeat and 4-beat measures in terms of the former and lyrics and melodies in terms of the latter. Due to its convenience, the term “R&B” became popular, and by the early 1970s, soul and funk were also included in the definition of rhythm and blues music (Bernstein et al. 62). Throughout the time, the lyrical content of the songs constantly changed and so did music. This became a pivotal weakness of R&B, and it will be scrutinized within the subsequent chapters of this