I Never Quite Got Selling Out Either
This post on “selling out” is great, and so are the first few comments (the rest may be great too but I didn’t read them all).
One thing that does bug me is hearing older music in ads when I know the original artists are dead or otherwise not in control of their music and probably wouldn’t have wanted it used that way.
But even then, as a firm believer in limited copyrights, I believe all art eventually belongs to the culture and if some ad company wants to use any old song in their ad they should have a perfect right to do so. If anything, the solution there is that those copyrights should expire so some stupid record company isn’t making royalty money off of old classic rock tunes by dead artists just because someone wants to use the tune in an ad.
Anyway, go read the post and comments. Good stuff.
Posted: May 20th, 2007 under Music, Politics.
Comments
Comment from Adam
Time Monday, May 21, 2007 at 8:22 pm
ooh, try to get to that pandagon post later if you can, that was addressed there, sort of. Also Atrios has been writing a bit about this.
You know I agree with you, though 
…pretty much.
Comment from Leshka
Time Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at 10:50 pm
“I know that the money they earned from the commercial gives the band leverage against their record company in terms of deciding how to tour and distribute their music, which results in cheaper ticket prices for me, if nothing else.”
OK, I got to read the post. Unfortunately, unless you’re smart or lucky, you don’t have the rights to your own music. The record company does. So it really is the record company that determines what song shills what product. Except for maybe the up-and-comers.
Comment from Adam
Time Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 3:31 am
Actually, that’s mostly correct - either the band earned the money directly, which gives them leverage, or the label earned the money, but with the band’s music which gives them leverage in terms of the value of their music and how much the label needs them to make more money in the future.
Comment from Leshka
Time Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Can you tell that we’re not in the same city at this point?
Comment from Leshka
Time Monday, May 21, 2007 at 8:13 pm
The page for the post on Pandagon wasn’t loading, so maybe my comments are redundant. Apologies…
Maybe for some, “selling out” is an easy term to use when you don’t want to hear a song being associated with a certain product. Most (if not all) songs that are being used in commercials today weren’t written to sell jeans. I know that I didn’t like Mercedes Benz’ use of Janis Joplin’s song to sell their cars, when the whole point of the song was to make fun of that. Maybe that was the point of the commercial. How post-post modern or something.
It’s interesting, though, when there’s a a not-too-well-known band whose song gets used. Then it’s a matter of “who wrote that song and where can I get it?” The product “sells” the song in that case. Entertainment Weekly will sometimes have a box detailing the songs you’ve heard in certain commercials and telling you were to download them, often off the band’s website.