The aim of the study is to deliver understanding on the change of the concept of the cultural industry. It also aims at explicating the situation of the neutral and positive use of the concept in contemporary cultural policies. The conceptual change is studied via analysing major Western traditions on this issue. A rhetorical point of view on conceptual history employed by Quentin Skinner is used as a methodological approach in the study. As a result the study proposes eight possible meanings in employing the concept of cultural industry: critical, dialectical, emancipatory, cynical, descriptive, normative, legitimatory and instrumental. They are historical layers and all of them employed also in contemporary situation. Each of these meanings point at a specific rhetorical re-description of the situation of cultural and aesthetic production. These re-descriptions legitimate the tone of writing and the meaning given to the concept. The study also proposes a pyramid model pointing at the criteria of application and a circle model pointing at the range or reference of the concept of the cultural industry.