Introduction: When the term business or corporation is applied to an industry, immediate images of a machine-like structure consuming everything in its path with little to no concern for anyone or anything except the bottom line comes to mind. In a quote from an article in the online news magazine Alternet, Julianne Sheppard says: "It's no secret that corporate conglomerates run mostly consumer goods, gobbling up small businesses like monsters voracious in order to maximize their financial results. Further emphasizing that as consumers we all fuel these businesses (Shepherd 2012). In the second chapter of his book Popular Music In Theory, Keith Negus explains that very often the music industry is seen as such, a ruthless, corporate machine that seeks to control creativity and continually compromises aesthetic practices that offer audiences little or no of choice. (Negus 1996). If one follows this line of thinking, then no credit is given to the accommodating structures that allow a relatively unknown artist or musician to rise from a place of obscurity to the covers of every magazine, in the headlines of all the magazines. a gossip column, and a place where even attaching their name to an unrelated product sells like it's the last of its kind on earth. As we seek to explore the role that corporate structure plays within the music industry, these seemingly opposing values ​​will reveal themselves as an enabler of each. Theodor Adorno was one of the first to theorize the concept of the culture industry, implying that music was not independent of industry and commerce, that it was mass-produced in a standardized format without any other purpose than to maximize profits, in an assembly line like production method...... middle of paper ...... and innovation, whatever these controls they can place this process to the extent they are as effective as consumers allow. Works Cited Negus, Keith. (1996). Popular music in theory. An introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Starr, L & Waterman. C. (2003) American popular music: from minstrelsy to MTV. New York, USA: Oxford University Press Scott, Derek, B. Ed. (2009). Ashgate Research Companion At: Popular Musicology.Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.WebographyShepherd, Julianne. (2012). New Alternet magazine. [online], available http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/933473/the_10_major_corporations_that_control_everything_you_buy [accessed February 23, 2013]. Ardono, Theodor. (1991). The Culture Industry, [online], available: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~carlos/607/readings/adorno.pdf [accessed February 23 2013].