Adorno insisted music’s commodification is literal, not merely analogous to commodity exchange.

Evidence

According to Adorno, when the importance of music’s quality is supplanted by its economic success, when music’s social function is dependent on sales and profit, then it indeed follows that music itself must be viewed as a commodity. As he writes in the original version of ‘Fetish-Character’ from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, ‘[t]he application of the category of the commodity to music is not an analogy. Yes, the exchange of “cultural goods”, however it occurs, terminates in material matters: opera and concert tickets, piano compositions of popular songs, gramophone records, radio sets and – especially in America – articles advertised with the aid of musical executions’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 435

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to ‘Grafting & Growth’: the claim that a category applied to cultural goods is ‘not an analogy’ mirrors how grafting metaphors collapse the literal/figurative distinction.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno’s commodity critique of music rests on homology, not mere analogy — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 485; Adorno openly admitted the aporia of strictly adhering to versus weakening economic categories — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 899; Adorno saw formal logic as a social artifact mirroring commodity exchange. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 266 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno saw formal logic as a social artifact mirroring commodity exchange. #corroborates (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 266
• Adorno’s identification of exchange with identity logic is meta-economic, not capitalist #qualifies (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1298
• Adorno treats exchange as a principle shaping thought and feeling to the innermost being. #corroborates (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 930
• Adorno openly admitted the aporia of strictly adhering to versus weakening economic categories #qualifies (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 899
• Adorno repurposed Marx’s commodity fetish concept toward art reception rather than production relations. #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 433