The Art of Selling Out

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indra

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This was in Sunday's Washington Post. It was written by Bill Wyman, the former arts editor of National Public Radio, who writes the blog Hitsville
:lmao: link to the article

It's a fun read. :)

How to Calculate Musical Sellouts

As Rockers Cash In, The Moby Quotient Helps to Determine The Shilling Effect

A commercial during "The Colbert Report" recently featured a happy family shopping in Circuit City for back-to-school technology for their comely daughter. She's a big fan of the bubblegum punk group Fall Out Boy, and while the band's fabulous song "Thnks fr th Mmrs" plays, she imagines all the exciting Fall Out Boy-related things she could do with many different amazing Circuit City products.

As the happy family leaves the store, Dad hands her a new cellphone and says, smiling, "You can take a study break with Fall Out Boy!"

The kid is tickled pink.

Right after that came a Nissan commercial, which wanted consumers to understand that, if you owned an SUV, you could drive places. To underline the point, the commercial broke into the Ramones, who sang, "Hey! Ho! Let's go!" That's the famous break from the punk rockers' "Blitzkrieg Bop," a heartfelt ode to pogoing to the beat of a Nazi military assault.

Well, at least it wasn't a Volkswagen ad.

It seems as if every commercial these days has a rock band in it. What was once the mark of utter uncoolness, a veritable byword of selling out, has become the norm. More than a decade ago we became inured to the most unlikely parings. Led Zeppelin in a Cadillac ad. The Clash shilling for Jaguar. Bob Dylan warbling for an accounting firm, or Victoria's Secret. An Iggy Pop song about a heroin-soaked demimonde accompanying scenes of blissful vacationers on a Caribbean cruise ship.

There is no longer even a debate, let alone a stigma. "If you did an advert, you were a sellout," notes Billboard Executive Editor Tamara Conniff. "The Rolling Stones broke that when they allowed the use of 'Start Me Up' for the Windows campaign. Though there was an initial backlash, it suddenly made it okay for bands of integrity to do commercials. Now, it's almost as if as an artist you don't have a corporate partner [or] commercial, you've not really arrived."

Indeed, in the late 1990s, the techno artist Moby, as hip as they come, openly boasted of having sold every track of his breakthrough album "Play" to an advertiser, or to a film or TV soundtrack. The album should perhaps have been called "Pay."

So we submit: The battle has been lost. But that doesn't make it right. There are even some who disagree.

"People say making money is making money, but there's a difference," says Bill Brown, a onetime rock critic who now works in the New York publishing world. He examines the implications of this new age in rock commercialism at great length and no little erudition on his Web site, Notbored.org. "If you're in a band, you want to be paid, definitely, but the music is for people to use and enjoy. The problem with branding yourself and selling your songs to commercials is the music is no longer for the listener.

"Instead, the ad is signaling that, 'This company is cool, and we've gotten this band to sell us some of their music.' It's the difference between selling to me, and something else: Pete Townshend sold a song to Hummer!"

Clearly, what we need is an objective formula for determining just how offensive a particular rock-based advertisement is. I am proud to announce that this lack has been righted.

I recently enlisted the aid of Jim Anderson, a senior lecturer in mathematics at England's University of Southampton. An expert on hyperbolic geometry, he embarked on this task with tongue firmly in cheek, and developed a formula that can be used to process the ethical and aesthetic implications of any one instance of the pervasive blurring of the lines between rock and advertising.

The formula kicks out a number that could be used to determine just how much of a sellout is a particular artist.

We are pleased to call this number the Moby Quotient and to assign the Greek letter "mu," to designate it.

The equation is designed to put things in perspective. If Kelly Clarkson sings for Ford, where, in the end, is the harm? Negligible artists singing on subjects that can be of less-than-pressing social import advertising silly products. One does not look to Disney pop culture puppets or artists given an imprimatur by the viewers of a Fox TV show for artistic integrity. Ms. Clarkson can sing for her supper anywhere she wants, and the world sits solidly on its foundations.

However. If you are an artist who traffics in -- or has trafficked in -- your outsider status; if you were a punk or a rebel or a beast whose rude yawp emerged from the underground and you are now hawking your anthems of defiance as ear candy to further the sales of a crummy telecom company, a new line of SUVs or the marvelous things General Electric is doing, well then, sir or madam artiste, expect your Moby Quotient to be somewhat higher.

The formula sits proudly on this very page, along with a few examples of the sorts of Moby Quotients certain artists earn. We have to be realistic: This tide of greed will never slide back out. Indeed, it can only get worse, since new generations of rock fans have grown up with the practice and apparently see nothing wrong with it.

Our one hope is that what greed created, greed may eventually eliminate -- in other words, that younger artists will view Moby's career as a cautionary tale. The jut-jawed vegan still makes a good living touring and doing film soundtracks and the like. But it's also true that commercially and artistically, his recorded work since "Play" has been on a downward spiral. Let the sellouts beware.


To see The Moby Quotient -- complete with examples :) --
click here

:D
 
First off, entertaining setup there-I like using Moby as the standard :D. The math bits kinda make my head hurt (it's after 2:30 in the morning, so my mind's not exactly in equation mode right now), but an ingenious idea nonetheless.

Second, interesting article. I can see where the writer is coming from on some aspects, but there's other stuff I disagree with. Like this:

indra said:
"If you're in a band, you want to be paid, definitely, but the music is for people to use and enjoy. The problem with branding yourself and selling your songs to commercials is the music is no longer for the listener.

Says who? It can still be for the listener, too, it's just that now there's a wider base of people for it to appeal to.

Getting serious for a moment, I see the point of those who get all upset about this, especially if you are extremely anti-corporate (although an argument can be made that LOTS of music listeners who were all "Rebel against the system!" in their youth have turned around and wound up working for the system in their lifetime, so they're really not on any high moral ground here, either).

But at the same time, I dunno, this just isn't an issue that really bothers me all that much. That, and I'm just so sick to death of the term "selling out", 'cause it seems a band can't do anything now without somebody slapping that label on them. If you're signed to a major label you've already gone corporate and sold out in some people's eyes, so why should doing anything beyond that be worthy of criticism? It's just gotten to the point where it bugs the hell out of me.

And as the link itself to the scoring pointed out, sometimes artists have no say in what their songs get used for, so you can't always blame the artists for this. Plus, with newer artists, it's a good way to draw attention to them. Can you really fault them in that case? And could a lot of music listeners honestly say they wouldn't do the same thing if they had the chance?

Just some thoughts on that aspect of it all. We may now return to our tongue-in-cheek attitude, though, which they did a good job with. Thanks for sharing this :).

Angela
 
Nothing says blue collar populism like a Jaguar ad. I mean, at least $ting looked like the kind of snot who would drive one.

Now I can feel doubly secure in hating Oasis.

Also:

There is no longer even a debate, let alone a stigma. "If you did an advert, you were a sellout," notes Billboard Executive Editor Tamara Conniff. "The Rolling Stones broke that when they allowed the use of 'Start Me Up' for the Windows campaign. Though there was an initial backlash, it suddenly made it okay for bands of integrity to do commercials. Now, it's almost as if as an artist you don't have a corporate partner [or] commercial, you've not really arrived."

Like the Stones ever had any integrity. They were corporate whores as soon as they had the chance to be, not a coincidence when the lead singer went to the London School of Economics.
 
Interesting article. I can't understand the maths and alegebra 'cause I'm not a maths person.

Just the way I look at it, Moby would never have written all songs on Play with the intention of them being used by companies. The fact that they were all used by companies almost seems admirable. A strong collection of songs that obviously have some resonance with a consumer's ear. Even if Moby isn't the biggest name going around, the songs have power.

Key thing here is that the use of a song in advertisment by a lesser known artist isn't so much a case of selling out as it is a case of mere promotional activity. Indeed, a support act is a marketing activity, in the same way playing a live gig and selling merchandise is marketing. And why not? ...might as well get paid for making music.

Using older songs is great for bands, gives the song a whole new lease of life, and is great for companies to leverage off existing associations between a consumer's knowledge of the song and their product. Win-win.
 
What I don't like is that when I hear songs that I like in the first place and they are used in adverts, I forever associate them with the product or company the song was used with. Every time I see an AT&T ad, I expect to hear "All Around the World" which annoys me because that is not the way I want to hear Oasis. I will do the same with the latest Jaguar commercial. Since I have "The Shock of the Lightening" as my ring tone, I am pretty sure people will hear my phone and will say "Hey that is the Jaguar commercial" never mind the fact I have had the ring tone for quite some time. :crack:
 
That damn recent beer commercial has almost entirely ruined The Dodo's 'Fools' for me, so I can relate to MVD's comments.
 
I have to say that I do have a problem with high-profile artists who own their song rights and decide to use them in advertisements for cash. I wind up losing some respect for them, especially if they appear to be anti-establishment or outside of the mainstream.

I think one of the best examples of this type of selling out is Billy Corgan rapping Bullet with Butterfly Wings for some sort of pay-per-view wrestling. That song used to be my favorite Smashing Pumpkins song but now I can't listen to it without thinking of being trapped in a "six-foot steel cage." It's moves like this that damages the artist's relationship with the audience.

YouTube - Lockdown PPV Open w/ Billy Corgan
 
At least Shuttlecock had the decency to use their music to endorse a music-listening apparatus (and downloading site), so when you hear Squirtigo, you're not thinking of product.

A very small difference, but a significant one.
 
Some songs can stand the strain, many cannot. I've heard David Bowie's Heroes in at least one ad for something or other, but more fool them: the song is so strong I just thought, oh nice, that's that ad (for something or other) that has Heroes playing in it.

Other songs, many others, are immediately, irrevocably, ground into aural dust, never to recover. Especially if the song hook relates in some way to the topic of the ad. 'Start Me Up', anyone? Yeah, I still get wet when I think about Windows 95, which I'm using to type this, incidentally.

Selling out means something, guys. I'm just not sure what it is, but I know it when I see it. I think it means, taking everything you ever stood for, putting it in a small pile and setting fire to it, even if you didn't need the warmth anyway. I can see where there may be confusion, as some artists never stood for anything to begin with. That's ok too, they're probably nice people (except for the ones who aren't).
 
At least Shuttlecock had the decency to use their music to endorse a music-listening apparatus (and downloading site), so when you hear Squirtigo, you're not thinking of product.

A very small difference, but a significant one.

Plus they took no direct cash (or cocks) for it.
 
I have to say that I do have a problem with high-profile artists who own their song rights and decide to use them in advertisements for cash. I wind up losing some respect for them, especially if they appear to be anti-establishment or outside of the mainstream.

I think one of the best examples of this type of selling out is Billy Corgan rapping Bullet with Butterfly Wings for some sort of pay-per-view wrestling. That song used to be my favorite Smashing Pumpkins song but now I can't listen to it without thinking of being trapped in a "six-foot steel cage." It's moves like this that damages the artist's relationship with the audience.

YouTube - Lockdown PPV Open w/ Billy Corgan

I'm not sure if you know, but Billy is a HUGE pro wrestling fan, so I would guess he didn't see it as selling out. It's pretty common in pro wrestling (especially WWE) for the wrestling companies to have a theme song for their PPV. WWE has used many prominent artists over the years including U2, Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Rush and Peter Gabriel to name a few.

So, if anyone is a fan of Billy Corgan and his music, they would fully understand that Billy appearing in a promo for TNA was all in fun, especially for Billy. I'm sure he was paid decently, but do we really know what he did with his money? He could've easily donated that money to charity.

As much as people don't like when an artist is "selling out", what they fail to realize is that that artist is actually reaching an audience that has possibly never heard their music before.

Hell, use John Mellancamp as an example. I'm sure everyone was sick of hearing his song Our Country a billion times during Chevy commercials. But guess what? Chevy treated Mellancamp better than his own record company did. They featured his song prominently in their advertising campaign for many months and his music garnered more exposure to a new audience. They paid him a lot of money for one song. Meanwhile, John's own record company did nothing for his first single and couldn't have cared less. As a result of Chevy's help, Our Country was played everywhere and a whole new audience were exposed to his music.
 
I don't think contributing a song to a soundtrack is the same as having a company use it in a commercial. Also, I can't think of one artist that HASN'T had a song used in a film.
 
The Amstel Light commercial with the Fratelli's Cheslea Dagger is annoying me too. These songs are close to being removed my playlists.


YouTube - Amstel Light - One Dam Good Beer Ad [60 Sec Long VSN]

Good call. I loved that song when it first came out, still do. But that commercial has been overplayed. And they also play the hook of the song at a lot of NHL arenas after someone scores a goal. It's becoming too ubiquitous.

Also, biggest sell outs of the last 5 years = Kings of Leon

Fuck. I used to like those guys. Now I literally can't stand to hear a minute of any of their songs. Even stuff off of Aha Shake Heartbreak, which is a damn good album. I think Bono stole their souls when they toured with U2.
 
My dad still gives me shit about the Wilco/Volkswagen set of commercials. What's worse, I'm a raging Wilco fan and I own a VW. Sometimes I feel like shit if I'm listening to them while driving.
 
Let's not forget Spoon did a Jaguar ad as well.

That's correct. I was extremely disappointed when that happened. Though, correct me if I'm wrong, don't they only use the music and you don't hear any of Britt Daniel's voice? It's like they were trying to get away with something.

My dad still gives me shit about the Wilco/Volkswagen set of commercials. What's worse, I'm a raging Wilco fan and I own a VW. Sometimes I feel like shit if I'm listening to them while driving.

You should feel bad. That commercial is probably what created my disdain for this band. I just laugh to myself now at the pedestal of anti-corporate machine integrity they've been put on that is clearly made of paper mache. They're fucking whores, the fans need to reconcile that FACT and while some artists I really like have done commercials, no one who does will ever be in my Pantheon.

What's worse is the rationalization that came out of the VWilco (as they will henceforth be known as in my posts--can't believe I didn't think of that before) camp was about how they've always loved Volkswagens, happy to do it, blah blah blah. Shut the fuck up. In the words of Bill Hicks, they're just another whore at the capitalist gang-bang. Don't try to make excuses, just say baby needs a new pair of shoes, shrug, and take it like men.
 
I don't think contributing a song to a soundtrack is the same as having a company use it in a commercial. Also, I can't think of one artist that HASN'T had a song used in a film.

I am a Radiohead fan and don't really care one way or the other if they've "sold out", but I was more just making a joke about the whole thing. Regardless, Thom's argument of "ruining fan's personal memories of a song" could easily be applied to a movie as well as putting it in a commercial. Honestly, I don't see any difference whatsoever in that specific regard.

As a whole, I don't know what I think about "selling out". I mentioned being annoyed by the recent use of a Dodos song in a beer commercial, but at the same time I can't really blame the band as I'm fairly confident they didn't make much money at all on the last album despite it having been minorly hyped in the indie community. At the end of the day, music is their job and their life. If doing a commercial means that the band will be able to release another album, or have more money to hire a better producer, etc., I certainly can't fault them for that.

That all said, Oasis are definitely sellouts and horrible human beings.
 
I would care about Thom Yorke's opinion but since Radiohead managed to make the music of In Rainbows secondary to the marketing opportunity offered by new ways of selling an album I don't

for the record, I don't think Radiohead sold out
I do think they are shrewd marketeers
 
Yeah, because I'm sure Radiohead were focused on HOW they were going to sell the album more than they were on actually writing and recording it.

:rolleyes:

Just because the press makes the story about the marketing and not the music doesn't mean that was the intent of the artist.
 
I am a Radiohead fan and don't really care one way or the other if they've "sold out", but I was more just making a joke about the whole thing. Regardless, Thom's argument of "ruining fan's personal memories of a song" could easily be applied to a movie as well as putting it in a commercial. Honestly, I don't see any difference whatsoever in that specific regard.

As a whole, I don't know what I think about "selling out". I mentioned being annoyed by the recent use of a Dodos song in a beer commercial, but at the same time I can't really blame the band as I'm fairly confident they didn't make much money at all on the last album despite it having been minorly hyped in the indie community. At the end of the day, music is their job and their life. If doing a commercial means that the band will be able to release another album, or have more money to hire a better producer, etc., I certainly can't fault them for that.

That all said, Oasis are definitely sellouts and horrible human beings.

I agree with all of this...

With regards to film soundtracks; is it ok to have a song on a soundtrack for some obscure Indie film or something "cool" vs. a big dumb action movie like Transformers 2?
 
Yeah, because I'm sure Radiohead were focused on HOW they were going to sell the album more than they were on actually writing and recording it.

:rolleyes:

Just because the press makes the story about the marketing and not the music doesn't mean that was the intent of the artist.
by which logic are the Rolling Stones "corporate whores" then?
not that I care about the stones either
or about supposed selling out
 
The logic that has shown them sell some of their greatest songs to be used in commercials, including Satisfaction, Start Me Up and You Can't Always Get What You Want, and they were one of the first bands to tour with big corporate sponsorship.

They also sued The Verve for their sampling of an INSTRUMENTAL Stones track in Bittersweet Symphony, and wound up taking ALL of the royalties from the song. Keep in mind this is after The Verve had ALREADY licensed the sample from them, but they were sued on some technicality after it became a huge hit. And then they had the indecency to sell it to be used in a commercial against The Verve's wishes. Sure, this was all Allen Klein's doing, but the Stones could have stopped their manager had they desired.

Exactly how are they NOT corporate whores? I can't think of a greedier band in history.
 
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