In recent years there has been a marked resurgence of interest in early Motown songs, many of which have received widespread exposure via successful films such as The Big Chill, My Girl, The Commitments, Father of The Bride and Sister Act. The steady flow of CD re-releases and contemporary ‘covers’ further attests to the continuing appeal and relevance of the music.

In the American record industry, independent record companies have long held a cultural status that far exceeds the actual economic impact they have in the market-place. Independent record companies, or ‘indies’, have become understood as innovative and creative oases for new or unconventional musicians in the midst of a capital-driven and profit-oriented record business. The development of a wide range of musical genres and styles – from rhythm and blues and soul to punk and industrial – are often attributed to the small companies that operated outside of the control of the larger ‘major’ labels.

As a child growing up in Finland in the 1950s, I heard all the popular songs of the day. We did not have a record player until 1957, and even then we never bought any pop records, as my father preferred classical music and I was getting interested in jazz. But the songs were all around us, and they still haunt me today. Many of them are now available on Compact Discs, and they are played regularly on the radio. Some of them are just Finnish language cover versions of records which were also popular in the USA and UK at the time, such as ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ or ‘Only Love Me’. Others are unmistakably Finnish, sentimental waltzes and tangos and rousing comic songs. Whatever, it is obvious that record companies created something that has become a permanent part of Finnish culture.

With the publication of the article ‘Cycles in symbol production’ (Peterson and Berger 1975) a discussion started concerning the advantages and disadvantages of the production of cultural goods under market conditions. The analysis by Peterson and Berger showed a negative correlation between concentration in the recording industry, on the one hand, and the diversity and innovativeness of the music, on the other. Repetition of the analysis using data from the 1980s (Burnett 1990; Lopes 1992) has shown that for this period Peterson and Berger's hypotheses should be rejected. Is there a connection between concentration and diversity and innovation? Are there cycles in symbol production? There seems to be no conclusive answer. In this article, I will attempt to clear up this matter. First, I will repeat the analysis of the relation between concentration and diversity/innovation, using the same model as Peterson and Berger, but with different definitions for the variables concentration, diversity and innovation. Then I will suggest a new model, which can be helpful in uncovering other factors influencing diversity and innovation in the music industry. I will come to that later. Let me first give the reader a brief overview of previous research.

In 1989 the Western media left its consumers with the romantic impression that it was merely the students who were demonstrating for ‘democracy’, as if emulating the student demonstrations of twenty years before in Europe and America. But there were workers involved too, who had illegally organised unofficial labour unions, and beyond concerns about democratic rights, there was the impetus of a socio-economic crisis. Most of those killed by the tanks in Tiananmen were workers, not students. People from all walks of life had marched and demonstrated throughout China from Canton ti Lhasa. Nine months before the Tiananmen massacre of June 1989, reversals in official economic policy put a halt to investment and constructions, and the problem of unemployment of rural migrants who had come to the towns was exacerbated. This migration was illegal but had been tolerated since labour was needed for construction. In 1989 anywhere between 60 to 100 million unemployed and homeless people were moving around the country en masse. At one time 250,000 were camped at Canton railway station.

Time shifts increase our sensitivity to birth and death, to the rise and fall of cultural epochs, by drawing attention to all sorts of changes. When years, decades or centuries turn, there need not necessarily be any corresponding great shift in society and culture. What does ‘real’ history care about dates and years? But our way of measuring time produces a sort of numerical magic that sometimes makes us extra sensitive to collective cultural mobility. In aesthetical production and cultural debate, each time turn induces a wish to reflect upon where we stand and what is happening. This sharpened time consciousness may accelerate or consolidate certain changes, if sufficiently many and strong social forces engage in the reflection to transform prophecies into effective mechanisms of change, by the material power of self-definitions.