October 5, 2005
"...If Densmore is a dinosaur, he is not the last surviving one. Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles continue to say no to commercials. So do Neil Young and Carlos Santana..."

And my personal favorite, Tom Waits, is suing GMC for using a sound-alike on one of their German ads after he repeatedly refused to allow his voice or music to be allowed in their advertising.

Well I cried the day I heard the Cadbury Chocolate version of "Wouldn't It Be Nice". Poor Brian... he doesn't deserve that.

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Personally, I think he's doing the right thing by not selling out...and that's exactly what it is. Art loses some(ok, alot!) of its integrity by being co-opted to represent something unrelated for commercial motives simply because a word or two in the lyrics are common reference points.

I was never a fan of the Aerosmith's song "Dream On", but now after it's use in those car commercials ad nauseum, I absolutely loathe it!

From a zen point of view, it doesn't effect the universe in any real way...but as a conscious, rational member of society, I say IT STINKS!

Soylentgreen, I agree.


These bands are selling out. It's about the money not being heard.


They still sell lots of cds and have royalties on all of that. Shoot, they make more in a year than I ever will.


I was really sad to see Willie Nelson doing Pizza Hut commercials. Bob Dylan, folk hero, selling out was very dissapointing.


Those two especially should be above that.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
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Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Why? Why should we expect someone to turn down licensing offers on their products? Because these particular people produce something that someone else has an emotional bond with? Becuse it's "art"? Or because you don't like the particular company who's licensing the music? Please.

There's no "above that" here. Someone wants to use someone else's work to promote a product. If those people don't have a problem with their work being used in that way -- either because they like that particular product, or because they like the particular paycheque that's being offered -- who are you to judge? It's their music after all. It's not your place to feel sorry for them, or to try to shame them into behaving how you want them to behave.

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Kristophe,,

That expresses my sentiments. These performers sell their music into a commercial market. Get royalties for play on commercial stations. Sell tickets for money to their concerts...and so on.

People want the sanctity of their false idealism preserved? An idealism that never existed except in the imagination of their adolescent naivity.

I totally agree. I've never understood this selling out business.

All the major musicians sign multimillion dollar deals to the large record companies. There isn't a band today that plays a concert without a corporate sponsor. Who exactly are they selling out to? Their music is there business model, and they expect to receive compensation for it.

So what if they sing about the big bad corporate greedy machine. At the end of the day, they recieve a royalty from the exact same big bad greedy corporate machine.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

My point is that some bands claim to be against the big bad corporate greedy machine then Sell out to that same machine.


principles get thrown out for money.


hypocrisy at its finest

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

Well, I kind of sort of agree with some of this.

It all depends on what you want from a musical artist. If their work is really all about the music, they'll carry on touring and gigging no matter how many ads their music ends up being played in. What I object to (personally) is artists who expect to make huge amounts of money but don't tour, or do only one concert a year or something.

Especially since these last 3 years, for the first time in my life, I've been living close enough to a big city with a good venue that bands I've heard of come and play regularly. In the last year alone I've seen Motorhead, Judas Priest and Rammstein. And the added bonus - Motorhead were supported by Sepultura (superb) and Priest by The Scorpions (who were a lot better than I expected). I know that one of Motorhead's songs has been used in at least one advert. I don't think any Judas Priest songs have been used in adverts, and I'm not sure about Rammstein (though I doubt it - but one of their songs was in the soundtrack of The Matrix).

In fact, if the band puts the money they earn back into the stage show for their tours, the more ads that feature their music the better, as far as I'm concerned.

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If it's not a case of hypocrisy, then these guys should have been writing commercial jingles to begin with! Why bother with any pretenses to the contrary.

And, let's face it, anything played over and over(...and over and over and over) in 15 and 30 second chunks becomes nothing more than noise. I would think that if you appreciated an artist or a song, you wouldn't want to have a sensory burnout attached to either.

Yes, it's easy for a band to claim they're against the machine when they're living in multi-million dollar homes, drive cars with 6 figure price tags, travel the world in private jets, and so on.

It's called maketing. Show me a band that sings the praises of corporate culture, and I'll show you a band that would never make it past the local bar scene. I'm not saying that all bands are like that, but when you start getting $10 million dollar contracts for your music, you're outlook on the world is going to change. They may not like the big corporate world, but like anyone, they're not going to complain about a nice big fat paycheck.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

I think it's called FM radio :-)

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

From an advertising perspective, I personally dont think using famous songs is always effective, but they keep doing it. Many of the best ad campaigns, at least in US advertising, created their own jingles or changed a song enough to make it their own (i.e., Coca Cola), and those stuck in people's heads. Advertisers think consumers are beyond hokey jingles now, but I think it often backfires. I'm not exactly sure how much Led Zeppelin's songs have helped Cadillac shed its "your father's car" image--does it work for anybody? I often resent the associations of classic songs with an ad where there's no real tie-in to the product...I think it's lazy advertising, especially with cars. Other times it works, such as with Mitsubishi's ad where they used the Wiseguy's song, "Start the Commotion" or Volkswagen's commercial with the guy in the car moving to "Mr. Roboto." That's what people do in cars--get into music--but simply using a song like "Dream On" as background music just doesn't do it for me from a marketing standpoint.

Adtunes.com points out irony in using "Dust in the Wind" for a Suburu SUV. They also have other some other interesting tidbits.
http://adtunes.com/

A lot of musicians are sick and bored of their classic songs (Led Zeppelin had stated that they were tired of everybody asking for the same classics), and don't care about them as much as we do. I don't think I can blame them for selling the rights to them if they don't care about them that much, and some of them are so overplayed on the radio, I'm sick of them, too. I like Densmore's thinking, but business is business. Advertisers are willing to pay a hefty price to use those cultural associations and there's no end in sight: new songs are licensed asap and often there's a gray line between ads selling music and music selling products.

I freaked out when I heard a Janis Joplin song used in a commercial, but I can't remember the product--just blanked it out in disgust. Using pop music in ads has always been done, but I believe it was Nike's using the Beatle's "Revolution" that started this huge modern trend of music in advertising.

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In most cases the perfomer has absolutely no choice in whether their songs get used for advertising. Rarely is the performer the copyright holder - that falls with the publisher. And if the publisher decides that a big chunk of money can be made in spite of the performers wish not to be associated with a product there's not much the performer can do about it. Some are big enough and carry enough weight that they can force their publishers into giving in - but it takes a Springsteen to do it.

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

dont be to quick to judge, a band with a cool song trying to break out onto a world market, doing the ads are the best way to get exposure. IPOD commerials have used music you wouldn't have otherwise even heard of.

I would expect the money earned in these adverts would pay better than alot of record contracts.

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"In most cases the perfomer has absolutely no choice in whether their songs get used for advertising.'

why? Because they SOLD (for evil money) the rights to a recording studio, etc. If a performer doesn't initially SELL OUT they have control of their own music and can veto its use at their discretion.

OR...it never was their own product to begin with. The song isn't their own to control but belonged to a writer etc. Why can't the writer sell his own music? I once recited a poem in Grade School in front of the School assembly...as the performer I didn't expect to have the rights to that poem by Dr. Zeuss. It was the right of Dr. Zeuss to sell or not sell his product to 'whoever'...eventually sold to CBS for a Christmas special. Nobody called me up and asked my permission even though I once recited the poem in public.

Museline: good thoughts but:

"but I believe it was Nike's using the Beatle's "Revolution" that started this huge modern trend of music in advertising."

I mean this in a nice way but how old are you? I can remember this 'modern trend' long before there was even a NIKE. I was about 8 years old and some candy company was using the 'Monster Mash' to sell it's Hallowe'en product. Large corps like the Car companies, airlines, AT&T, Coca Cola have beeen using hits for decades.

I remember Eric Clapton on a beer commercial quite a few decades ago. Of course, I thought he sold out at the time. Of course, he just wanted to make a quick buck. Nothing wrong with that.

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

hey, fossilnut, it's Seuss, not Zeuss. poet, not misspelled Greek god.

the composer of the song generally, unless they explicitly sell it, holds certain copyrights to their songs. in such cases, it is generally required that both the publisher and the composer must agree to sell the music.

I, personally, find it tedious, in no small part because, if it's a song I like, I don't hear the whole thing, but if it's a song I don't like, I hear some of it all the time. both are pretty irritating.

however, if Beatles' songs are played in commercials, it's Michael Jackson's fault, and Paul McCartney and I are both pretty peeved about it. (man, Paul tried to get Yoko to help him outbid . . . .)

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