Essay 4 - Allison Cuculich - Musicians Join Forces with Advertising

Musicians Join Forces with Advertising

As the channels through which music is spread around the globe are constantly changing, there comes the need to adapt to the popular medium of the moment.  Not only are the music industries worried about missing the current trend to gain world-wide appeal of their musicians, but that if they do miss that hot method that their music will be left high and dry without any audience.  Such pressure to keep on the medium that has the potential to make names out of these up and coming musicians has led to the pop successes we see globally and the dismemberment of the ones who did not jump aboard, and thus most of us have absolutely no idea who they are.  The Internet continues to be a strong force in the corner of the music industry, but there is the pessimism that the Internet is soon on its way out.  What is the next method that industries and musicians are turning to?  Commercials.

The thought of musicians using their songs and image to sell products was once thought of as the ?ultimate sellout? (Block, 1999, ¶ 3).  Most musicians are encouraged not to think about the idea of selling out, and this of course is stemming from their record label.  As of 1999, commercials first peaked its head into the music market as an untapped market to promote new albums (Block, ¶ 3).  That trend continued to fade, as most do, but is currently back on the rise.  Today, musicians are not confined to what products they agree to release their music to.  We hear these songs in the commercials for cars, mp3 players, brands of soda, and computers to name a few.  It would appear that the music industry has found a niche, if only for the time being.

The concept of power-geometry is important to how and why media companies make the decisions they do.  The record company along with their musician has the power, along with the company whose product they are licensing their music to, and are the ones who start the movement of the product and music hand-in-hand.  Although these are the groups that are distributing the communication, they are only as successful as the audience perceives them to be.  Power-geometry puts a heavy weight on the energy that happens as a result of the flow of the communication (Massey, 1993, p. 61).  This concept places the emphasis on the connection between the way audiences view these commercials and decide to judge the music. 

The correlation between the commercial and the audience?s feelings on the song, product, and even decision to lease their music to advertising all play into that power shift that occurs while transporting media.  This is very similar to the ?ideoscapes? that Appadurai discusses, except that the commercials these musicians are associating themselves with do not have any political agenda (1990, p. 300).  These decisions of the industry are trying to predict which medium audiences will be more likely to have a positive link (Appadurai, 1990, p. 300). 

While it is difficult (if not impossible) to guess which approach will spread music on a worldwide scale, that is exactly what music industries are attempting to do.  Connections are being made with almost every variety of media in hopes of profitable outcomes.  The major pursuit is to reach audiences that they did not anticipate to reach, and in multiple areas of the world (Dolfsma, 2005, ¶ 26).

References

Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global economy. Public Culture,
    2(2) 1-24.
Block, V. (1999). Advertising ties embraced by music houses, artists. Advertising Age,
    70(27) 1-24.
Dolfsma, W. (2005). How will the music industry weather the globalization storm?
    Retrieved June 13, 2007 from the First Monday Web site:
    http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_5/dolfsma/
Massey, D. (1993). Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. Ch. 4 in Bird,
    John, et al. (editors), Mapping the futures: Local cultures, global change. 59-69.

Posted at 10:01PM Jun 14, 2007 by CUCULICH, ALLISON in General  |  Comments[3]