Selling your soul?

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 10:22 am Post subject: Selling your soul?

I found this one over at musicdish.
Dunno... perhaps we have some opinions on this?

Philip Glass selling Pepsi?
Arne Nordheim and his own brand of pasta sauce?
Xeroid Entity selling baby oil?

Shock? Horror?

~~~~~~~~~MUSICDISH NETWORK~~~~~~~~~

SELL YOUR SOUL TO ROCK-N-ROLL?
By Tom Leu, MusicDish.com

What's your position on musicians or any celebrity endorsing
and selling consumer products and services? To some, this
practice is taboo, akin to selling your soul. To others,
this is sometimes a survival and often lucrative
proposition. This topic has been, and surely will continue
to be debated by purists and capitalists as long as commerce
exists.

The argument is that musicians are watering down the value
of their artistic integrity by getting paid to hawk Doritos
or McDonalds for example. Does their credibility as
songwriters and players suddenly diminish because they're
doing a commercial for AT&T? Or are they simply padding
their pocketbooks and gaining additional exposure while
affording themselves the opportunity to continue to make the
very music that people love?

Read the complete article "Sell Your Soul To Rock-n-Roll?"
at MusicDish Network member site IndieFan.com, a community
of independent bands, labels and fans
http://www.indiefan.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=409

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 11:23 am Post subject:

Well, consider the view of Charles Ives' father. He said (paraphrase), "When the music makes the money, it ruins the music and it ruins the man". One could say that when a composer sells his music, he is selling his soul. When a composer endorses a product, he isn't selling his soul, he's just cashing in on the value of his name.

seraph · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 11:30 am Post subject:

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 11:40 am Post subject:

A great avatar! When was this?

mosc · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 11:40 am Post subject:

The picture is from a few years back. These avatars change in every post when you change them, so comments about them in the forums make no sense when they are changed in the future.

As I mentioned in a another post somewhere, many bands are making more money from T-shirt sales than from CDs or live shows.

egw · Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2003 1:35 pm Post subject:

If you have a reputation, I don't see anything wrong with using it to generate some income. That's different from selling out your music, which is making music you wouldn't otherwise do, just because you think it has a better chance of selling. However, even that can be justified if you need to put food on the table. But that's music as a business, not as an artistic pursuit.