On "selling out"....

http://www.mbvmusic.com/2010/10/19/living-in-the-age-of-art-vs-content

i got fucked by a stockbroker once,,and he did it right thru his pants..never even bothered to lower them to a respectable ankle height

lmfao

Yet some artists start losing their shine after two decades of work. It usually comes down to poor song writing quality or deterioration of vocal range. Most of these end up pulling an album out before Christmas just so they can sell SOMETHING.

i like the aging singer's honesty about his "comeback" single in the movie love actually.

i liked the bit where dave grohl was saying how much he hated stadium rock bands in an interview but now his lips are firmly wrapped around the big dick of some major label

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19206509#TWEET190760

Adam Yauch snubs ads forever from beyond the grave

that's not about not "selling out," that's about not getting exploited.

It's part of the same debate imo.

It's a bit sad that artists now have to specify in their wills "don't do stuff to me after I'm dead that I would never have consented to while alive." But I can certainly understand and respect that decision.

eh at this point if a musician reaches a certain level of fame or iconic status, it gets harder and harder to stop people from cashing in on your image/music even if you don't consent to it. feels to me like a wholly separate issue from people that choose to consent to advertising and other people judging them for it. (xpost)

It's just a thread to post it on. You can't always find the perfect one.

fair enough

this thread's a lot shorter than i expected it to be...

Honestly, I think this is a good way to remain irrelevant to future generations. Things have changed.

i dunno, i think Beastie Boys are gonna be pretty well remembered no matter what. and if they're not, it won't be because MCA didn't want their songs in any movie trailers.

Because in the future we will only be allowed to listen to music through adverts.

Just curious-how do you think the majority of people in the future will be schooled on the ever-growing catalog of older and older recorded music?

only if ILM still exists

shit yeah, why you think we put in the hours?

Just curious-how do you think the majority of people in the future will be schooled on the ever-growing catalog of older and older recorded music?

Who gives a shit about "the majority of the people"? Most people who hear music in ads aren't even remotely interested in actually learning about the music they hear. There is no lack of access to, or information about music of the past these days. People in the future will "be schooled" because they are interested in music and want to learn about it and the resources to learn about it are easily at their disposal.

But I'm not talking about whether they will be completely forgotten. I'm talking about cultural relevance. Cultural relevance has to do with recognition. One big way that people learn about and are introduced to music is by hearing it in ads. Just as an example, I'd say Hall and Oates was as close to irrelevant as you could get just a few years ago, but after they'd been featured in any number of ads, suddenly their value as a musical act has risen considerably. They are now getting props from all kinds of people (even audiophiles) who would have either written them off or never bothered to listen to them because of their utter lack of relevance in culture. You could argue that Nick Drake's influence and legacy would be whole lot smaller right now without Volkswagen.

I don't remember ever hearing a Hall & Oates song in an ad (although in fairness I ignore a lot of ads). What is this "any number" you're referring to?

what fools the beatles were to destroy their legacy.

Just as an example, I'd say Hall and Oates was as close to irrelevant as you could get just a few years ago, but after they'd been featured in any number of ads, suddenly their value as a musical act has risen considerably

dude I've been hearing "I Can Go For That" and "Private Eyes" in clubs and jukeboxes for more than ten years.

*I Can't Go For That

Girls in comedy mustaches + 80's revival

I seem to remember that Nick Drake became more well known after his albums were reissued and the boxset was released in the late '90s. Then the VW ad came after that. The VW ad certainly sold a lot more of his records, but the only reason the ad happened in the first place was that there was already a revival of interest going on.

But that was back when people still watched TV ads. If anything is losing cultural relevance it's the commercials themselves.

I can't hear "stop the world and melt with you" without thinking about cheeseburgers.
If the ad makes you think more of the band than the product then it screwed up, so
the strategy of cementing a legacy through ads hinges on the ad makers using your music incompetently.

also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7yOB8BdpoM

Would you agree that songs being used as samples in other songs also breathes new life into them, and creates new audiences?

I think that a song being used in an ad isn't all that dissimilar to it being sampled. It's still a recontextualization and creates another touchpoint for it. The more touchpoints anything has, the broader its reach and the more its impact is going to be. As we are increasingly entrenched in a world of media where there's no shortage of media texts nor barriers to access them, it becomes much harder for any artist or song to gain a strong position of recognition in popular culture. Ubiquity is a way of ensuring that there are many touchpoints, and many opportunities for people to be exposed to it. Ads are just one way of making that happen; others are video games, cell phone ring tones, samples, karaoke versions, youtube parodies, etc, etc. These are all valuable in cementing something's relevance, even if it doesn't necessarily signal quality.

It staples the song to a product.

relevance is a slippery quality. ubiquity is a kind of relevance, a very direct kind, and there's certainly nothing wrong with it. but there are are other kinds of relevance, too. some things come to seem relevant or "important" over time due to their inaccessibility.

i disagree -- there is something inherently wrong with ubiquity in that for the majority of people encountering it, it's spam.

so the less ubiquitous a thing is, the less likely it is to clog up the word's inbox? i can't deny that, but negative spam value is likely proportional to other sorts of positive value, right? for the most part, things are popular (thus spam-like) only to the extent that a fair number of people get something out of them.

"get something out of" doing some heavy lifting there i know...

i'll grant health care as deserving ubiquity over the protests of a blinkered majority but not vuvuzelas

It staples the song to a product.

There are good ads and bad ones. I'd say that the good ones promote the song and the product in a way that doesn't cheapen either. The Nick Drake and Richard Buckner ads done by Volkswagen did a great job; the Burger King "Melt with You" ads, well, not so much.

If someone wants to do a quality ad and get paid that's up to them but it's absurd to claim that someone who withdraws from that market (see also: U2, Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Tom Waits, David Byrne, and several others) are going to see their relevance and exposure wane. Ad refuseniks are usually happy to consider movie or TV syncs for example, and that's without mentioning the radio, the internet… you get the idea.

Arcade Fire did license "Wake Up" to the NFL for the Super Bowl, but gave all the money to charity.

Even if you're in a DIY working class band making money solely through local live performances, your music is still being used to sell High Life, PBR, Camel, etc. At least Burger King doesn't kill 16,000 a year in drunk driving accidents.

If someone wants to do a quality ad and get paid that's up to them but it's absurd to claim that someone who withdraws from that market (see also: U2, Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Tom Waits, David Byrne, and several others) are going to see their relevance and exposure wane

Almost every one of the bands you mentioned are old-school artists who got their name/branding while still operating under the old model of music marketing, where record companies promoted them and people actually bought music. I would really like to see what kind of staying power any newer band has while withdrawing from the model that encourages multi-platform exposure to their music.

we'll see what we will see

I'm not 100% against songs in ads but I think there's kind of a continuum where being featured in a well-directed commercial that fits the atmosphere of the song > being featured in an ad where the context is kind of off > being featured in a just flat-out awful, irritating ad > actually having the lyrics of your song changed into a jingle for the product > being featured in an ad for some kind of hateful or evil product

And I think anything beyond the first one risks diminishing the power of the song. E.g. there are a lot of great old motown and other 60s soul hits that I can never hear without thinking of nabisco products or some fast food chain, although granted it's not like Mr. Big Stuff would have been exceptionally important and meaningful to me otherwise.

I'd also ad a subcategory somewhere in the third or fourth one there for ads where even though the lyrics aren't actually changed, certain words in the song are emphasized because they refer to something about the product, or the announcer speaks words that are in the lyrics. "Do what you wanna do at the Wal-Mart back to school sale! Because it's your thing!" etc.

there are a lot of great old motown and other 60s soul hits that I can never hear without thinking of nabisco products or some fast food chain

Yeah, but you kinda forget those ads and just remember the songs. Unless off the top of your head you can list the specific product and specific song.

Even if I can't remember the product I usually get the sound of an announcer in my head. Mr. Big Stuff was Oreo Big Stuff, fwiw.

and like a lot of people said in the CCR thread, certain types of ubiquity are inherently devaluing. we become bored of what we always see and hear. value is frequently the product of specialness, even rarity.

these days it seems selling out is the goal

the idea of saying no to money is foreign to many esp young people ime

interesting development

I'm sure there's some good thinkpieces out there, maybe even real journalism or a book, I'd be interested in reading up

Do you have specific examples in mind(?)

Correct, since both recording and touring are much less reliable sources of income than they were in previous decades, money from brands, sync, commercials, etc is something to hope for rather than to agonize about.

This recent New Yorker article covers a lot of angles: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/05/how-to-hire-a-pop-star-for-your-private-party

I feel like that’s been true for 20 years, though

And young people today seem very principled and optics-focused; probably wouldn’t take money for something that would “look bad” politically or culturally

(which, yeah, doesn’t include putting your song in a commercial; because none of them have ever lived in a world where that was frowned upon)

Flaming Lips on 90210 in 1995 was the turning point

I can confirm from teaching a few terms of cultural studies that this is no longer a familiar idea to young people.

cormac mccarthy was the last real writer pic.twitter.com/3PYAt1BxHz

— Dan Ozzi (@danozzi) June 13, 2023

the thing about "selling out" is that it's culturally/artist-specific

like, the opening/first example of that NYer piece is Flo Rida.... like how dare he go against the anti-capitalist principles he's built his brand on

yes but that's all part of TINA surely

maybe listen to Flo Rida's first EP "Ownership is Theft" and get back to me

https://images.eil.com/large_image/SWAMP_DOGG_IM%2BNOT%2BSELLING%2BOUT%2B%2BIM%2BBUYING%2BIN-508343.jpg

I liked that New Yorker article - if you read the whole thing there are interviews with people that book private gigs and they talk about how the culture has changed, so even if you quibble about Flo Rida they do have opinions from experts in the field to back up the claim.

it's fair to hold most of the artists in that piece responsible for making awful choices most of them could afford to refuse - the fact that they generally don't do this is very interesting politically

shaming struggling artists for doing what they need to survive is something else entirely

I found a 2015 piece about the changing attitude toward selling out that claimed that anything besides playing private shows for dictators was okay these days. Not even sure if that's off the table entirely these days.

sure, hold artists responsible for their choices, but that's different from selling out imo

I haven't heard an artist be called a sellout for placing a song in an ad, or getting on a major label, etc. in a long time... (*Obi-Wan stroking beard gif*)

That's all kosher, as long as they're not a landlord.

The concept of "selling out" has been replaced with the concept of the "industry plant" - instead of betrayal, it's cynicism; "you were fake from the beginning."

The key quote from that New Yorker piece, as I recall, comes from Billions (the booker): even for rich people, it's really hard to say no to an hour of work that may literally pay for four years of your kid's college education. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the gist. I think the key is to set some hard standards. When Isbell wanted to play a bunch of corporate gigs to afford a very expensive one of a kind guitar, iirc he told his manager "no republicans, no dictators."

Dean from the Waco Brothers: "If selling out was easy, I would've done it a long time ago".

terrific/terrifying quote:

he goes, ‘Is anybody hungry—like the wolf? Two, three, four!’ And I’m, like, ‘Oh, my God, this guy gives good privates.’

haha yes that's great

many xps to morrisp I've been thinking abt this for a while and was prompted by the shared cormac mccarthy quote (and reaction) to revive thread

I meet a lot of musicians who are hopeful about tv placements or doing private commercial gigs

I get it, I just feel like esp within some communities (hip hop for example) that would've been called out say 20 years ago, now it's applauded