Just when you thought it was safe to turn on the radio…
This happens:
http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/09/products-placed.html
Courtesy of Wired.com
Its not that I’m shocked or anything. Just amazed that it’s actually been proved.
Fall Out Boy’s last US tour was sponsored by Honda. Thats fine, it lowered ticket prices for everyone and we all knew full well that the band themselves don’t drive Hondas as everyone in a rock band clearly has a Ferrari parked next to their guitar shaped swimming pool. Even drummers.
I can just about cope with touring bands being sponsored by car firms, festivals being sponsored by energy drinks/beer/mobile phone networks etc, and I’d always suspected that 50 Cents penchant for Crystal champagne was down to how much of it he got free as opposed to its ability to get you shitfaced. But to have it actually laid out infront of me that “aspirational” brands pay record labels to insert their product into a song just kills any remaining sympathy I have for both the brand itself and the label. Let alone the artist that actually agrees to it.
I hate the music industry sometimes.
On the flipside, I had one of those moments this evening. I was travelling home listening to The Gaslight Anthem wearing my aviators, cresting the brow of a hill driving into the autumn sunlight as the chorus of “The Patient Ferris Wheel” kicks in. Amazing.
