Gerry Villareal (gerryv@massive.com)
Thu, 8 Oct 1998 12:19:19 -0400 (EDT)
To me this discussion is relevant, good, and healthy for our little forum.
Obviously the music we love/hate is much more than just ear candy, but
cores of culture(s).
That said, go see Adweek Online's Culture Trends
<http://www.adweek.com/culture/> page, especially Video Monitor, Concert
Grosses, and EuroCharts. It gives a little insight into the Marketing
Machine - and shows a bit how "culture" gets quantified. It doesn't
surprise me that Sprite (Coke) uses hip hop artists or Mobil licenses from
R. Kelly. That VW, Gap, whoever use relatively lesser-known artists
(especially for America) to help brand their products is much more risky
(to their bottom line) than Toyota enlisting Sly Stone's "Everyday People"
or Microsoft rocking out with the Stones and Bowie. Branding is about
attaining ubiquity. Why bother picking a name and designing a logo for
your company, product, group, if not for it to be visible and memorable?
The Net is buoyed in large part, whether you like it or not, by marketing.
Hotmail, Yahoo!, Excite, Xoom, and others give you "free" services in
exchange for direct access to you every day - all in service of the mighty
advertising dollar. I don't believe there is an antidote, or that one is
even necessary, for branding, advertising, marketing - they are
inevitable. Media watch/watch media. We all should promote truth and
reveal misinformation and misdirection. Hopefully we can help each other
navigate the present reality of our commercial world.
*And now back to the music... Double Dee and Steinski are back with a
remix of "Jazzy Sensation" from Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats - Remixed.
Their website <http://www.tommyboy.com/" has info and (measly) RealAudio.
Remixer bios are interesting. Jason Nevins remix of Run-DMC "It's Like
That" is multi-platinum - I never knew.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Oct 08 1998 - 18:23:13 MET DST