February 25, 2010

To be or not to be cool...

Just a short follow-up thought on Peter’s comment from yesterday. To some extent I agree that selling your music to companies for use in commercials isn’t very hip or especially cool. However this is no longer the age of the Vincent’s and the Wolfgang’s where poverty and great art seemed inseparable and today you cannot really blame artists for making decisions having their bank accounts in mind. Basically meaning that if they cannot make a living by being musicians (writers, painters etc.), they’ll most likely have to find some “real job” instead to help paying the bills. So when an offer like this comes up (though I obviously don’t know how great an offer it really is), it is rather easy to understand why it’s accepted, as it could perhaps help pay next months rent. And judging from the number of visitors who’s ended up visiting this blog the past 24 hours while searching for Death Valley Sleepers; being feature in that commercial has meant some much deserved exposure for the band, and hopefully given (and continue to give) the band bunches of new fans. Which sort of makes this whole commercial thing an even better idea! Cool or not? I’ll let you be the judge on that, but if you ask me Death Valley Sleepers was and remains immensely cool. And no car commercial is really going to change that!
+ Left Me High (disabled)

5 comments:

Johannes said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Johannes said...

Morten, you are absolutely right.

moz said...

Yeah. But back to you post that started it all: You wrote "How cool is this?". And the commercial itself is not cool, it's quite rubbishy, except the Detah Valley track they use ;-))
And still: It's not cool to be part aof a commercial nor is it the end of the world or the total atristical buyout as ringtones for example really are...

Unknown said...

Moz - I agree. I have no opinion on the commercial and what I meant by "how cool is this" was indeed the use of the DVS track. Thought it was extremely cool to hear a familiar track by a not-so-well-known artist getting that kind of exposure.

I work with finance and always think money first - so I cannot blame any artist for allowing their music to be used like this.

Indie is cool, but artistic stubbornness has probably killed lots of bands?

Peter said...

Being in a commercial is quite uncool but being in a CAR commercial is what I find extremely disturbing. I guess I'd never sell my songs to such a company whose products ruin the world. But since I'm no musician I can easily say that ;-) (well, in my blog I already refused payed ads by a company who works for many ugly big companies like Pepsi & Coke so I'm sticking to my rule in that part of my life.)

Bye,
Peter
(Coast Is Clear)