Theorists claim that neoliberal society, in which individuals feel an increased responsibility for themselves, has paved way for ‘pay to play’ society. This concept refers to the idea that within society we now need to spend money in order to participate within society’s conventions. For example, the expansion of the housing rental market has resulted in individuals paying for temporary shelter as long as they can afford the rent prices; ownership is temporary. I first read about this concept a couple of years ago and I was reminded about it earlier today when playing music through YouTube. I usually listen to music through logging into either my sister’s or partner’s premium membership with Spotify. However, I began to think that YouTube provided a reliable, free, source of music if for some reason I could access Spotify either through forgetting passwords or through these being cancelled. This prompted me to think about my search for stability within a subscription filled music business. With the rise of Spotify brought services such as Apple music and MTV music, the same pay for a month of ad free and downloadable music. For some reason I did not get a sense of permanency with these pay to listen services. I was searching for stability within neoliberal pay to play society. After reflecting upon this, I started to think about other areas of my life which involved regular upkeep; the ideology behind the ‘pay to play’ concept. I looked to my own personal list, on Google Keep, of what I needed to do: get my eyebrows shaped and tinted, dye my hair, self-tan and get my nails done. Indeed, with each one of these tasks, the result is temporary: hair grows, tan fades and nails chip. Each one of these tasks comes at a financial expense and the upkeep of my own beauty ideals comes at a cost. My body itself is engaged within pay to play society.
In a similar manner, recently I have been watching a lot of videos, mostly Buzz Feed - an entertainment website dedicated to trendy news and ‘life hacks’, about beauty and music trends in the last 100 years. These included: common eyebrow shapes, the ‘ideal’ figure of the decade and dance moves throughout the last century. Of course, comments on the videos disputed some depictions of fashion within certain decades. However, the point I wish to focus upon is it was interesting to see how pay to play society was a feature of the so-called ‘modern’ era of stable mortgages and the ‘golden age of the family’. As such, pay to play society is not a foundational concept of neoliberalism, but rather the foundation of fashion. Fashion has penetrated every type of society, as Simmel states, fashion is a social relationship between the individual and society at any given time. Therefore, it is important that concepts related within neoliberalism are not just confined to this type of society. Indeed, it may be true that sociological concepts, such as the pay to play society, are fluid in essence. Every version of society does not have a concrete set of sociological concepts that relate to it. Pay to play is not a new phenomenon; it is simply represented in a different way within current times.
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