Selling Out to Survive

The television has hit a commercial break, and you go and grab a drink. While you are at the fridge, you hear something very familiar playing in the background of one commercial. You barely miss it, but find out the product advertised, so you hit up YouTube to see what it was. That’s when you realize the background song in that commercial was in fact a song off one of your favorite records. And it’s not even some pop artist that’s playing, it’s an indie or underground band that you doubt too many have heard of, but one you really like, maybe one you’ve even seen live a few times. You sit there, a bit dumbfounded. And you think, “What a bunch of sellouts.”

But what if that artist needed to do it to actually survive, let alone make a decent living?

After all, the goal of most musicians is to make some money off of what they do. It cannot be discredited that even the most underground artist hopes to make a buck or two out of their work. The problem is, being a musician these days is a hard business. Long gone are the days when musicians could hope to earn any money through record sales. In fact, it is becoming increasingly apparent that artists are being discovered through the sharing of their albums on P2P networks, with no money earned, but all-important “exposure” gained. This does contribute to increases in merchandise revenue and ticket sales, as well as chances to appear at prominent festivals. However, such income fluctuates wildly over the course of a year or few, and maintaining a consistent flow of money would require a musician to tour about eight to ten months out of the year, if not more. Furthermore, even touring cannot help matters when the world is in the middle of a mass recession, the likes of which was last seen when Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong were popular artists, live shows were broadcast over AM radio, and the term “Nazi” applied to an existing political party in Germany. In short, the ways of making a living as a musician have dried up.

So musicians have sought other means to earn money. One way is through song placement in advertising, an act that many fans of indie music, as well as many hipsters, still see as blasphemous. Even among the many bands who have done this, it remains a touchy subject. With this in mind, PopMatters spoke with a few artists whose music has appeared in advertising to find out what motivates them to do what some people claim is “selling out”. The results offer some different views as to what it means not just to place music in ads, but what it means to be a musician these days.

Meric Long, frontman of indie folk band the Dodos, lives out in the Bay Area, in a place he’s stayed in for about five years. The Bay Area can be really expensive, he notes, and he “really lucked out” with his living situation in a rent-controlled apartment that he secured back then. “My roommates are really nice,” he says, “and they just kind of let me live there and come and go.” It makes for an ideal situation for touring. Still, he says with a chuckle, “I live in the living room of a four bedroom apartment, which I suppose makes it five bedrooms now.” He says that his band mates are lucking out in similar situations in the Bay Area.

The Dodos are relatively new to the placement game. Their song “Fools”, from the 2008 album Visiter, was placed in an ad campaign for Miller Chill, a lime chelada beer, that started in May this year. Miller approached the band during the past winter. After the band accepted, “they came back with the commercial mock-up literally a week later,” Long recalls. “It happened like that.” They received, as is standard with most ad placements, a placement fee, as well as residual fees for each playthrough on television. While the Dodos had previously been offered placement in a few ads, this was the first ad placement they have actually done. Since that time, a few more offers have streamed in. But, “the offers that have come in have been for drinks,” Long says, laughing. “Apparently, we’re the ‘drink placement band’ now.”

In speaking to Long about how bands are reacting to placement, something becomes clear: A lot more bands are compelled to place their music in ads. “I’ve talked to some of my friends in other bands, and they’re looking for placements,” he says. “One of my friends in one of my favorite bands told me, ‘Yeah, dude, I’ve been sending stuff out [for ads] for long time, and nobody’s responded yet!’” A lot of other bands he considers respectable have done the same. To Long, the reason is obvious: “That’s where the money is these days.”

Petra Haden, a cappella artist and violinist, one-time member of the Decemberists, and frequent collaborator with the likes of Beck and the Foo Fighters, wears a lot of hats for a reason. “I’ve been a struggling musician, a struggling artist, if you would,” she says in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “Though I have been able to pay my bills and do recording sessions — do odd jobs as a violinist for other people’s bands.” She doesn’t mind the studio work too much, however. “I’m happy to be labeled as a studio musician. I see myself as both Petra Haden and a studio recording musician,” she says. “If I like the [collaborating band’s] music, I’ll do it.”

Haden’s a cappella work, however, is what got the ad people’s attention. Her cover of “Let Your Love Flow” by the Bellamy Brothers has been featured in a very creative ad for the Toyota Prius that has received positive reviews over the Internet. The development dynamic was a bit different for the singer. A music supervisor who was a fan of her work approached Haden’s manager about doing a song. “[The supervisor] thought that it would be a good idea for this ad because of the art… the environment being made of people,” she says. “She said that my vocals would work well with that commercial.” She recorded a demo of “Let Your Love Flow” and “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” by Jackie DeShannon. Toyota loved the former, so she went into a friend’s studio to record a full version with more tracks. After that, Toyota requested some original a cappella tracks to go with two additional commercials. “Basically, they sent me the commercial and I sang to it,” she says. “Kind of like scoring a movie or TV commercial.”

Natalia Yanchak, keyboardist and vocalist of Montreal baroque pop pioneers the Dears, has a certain comfort and advantage to her current situation: Establishment. Her band has been around for about 14 years, though they had only gained wider notice starting in 2000, and has four albums in their catalogue with a fifth being worked on. “We have an established audience,” she says. “Not to say that they will be there forever, but it’s like we’ve laid the foundation for our career in a certain way. We have a sense of security because of that.” The only time they notice any significant trouble is on the road, but even then, Yanchak has a better understanding of the situation than most. “Nobody goes to shows, and not even just our shows, but any show,” she says. “People have to choose only one show for that month because they don’t have that kind of disposable income.”

The Dears’ veteran status extends to placement as well. The band’s first placement was actually “End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story”, from their debut album of the same name. “It was used for an ad for a wine company in Ontario,” Yanchak recalls. Since that time, they have placed songs in a few ads here and there, but have rejected a few as well, mostly taking an aesthetic stance. Of particular note was a recent request for placement of a song from last year’s album, Missiles, on a website “radio station” advertising a shoe company’s product. “Companies are getting strategic now,” Yanchak says, “because they want the music to give an identity to the product they’re selling now.”

There is also an additional dynamic involved with how the Dears manage their existence. In 2005, Yanchak and Dears frontman Murray Lightburn had a daughter together named Neptune. The costs of raising a child, especially in the first few years, are incredibly high, and can influence the business decisions anyone makes, especially those in bands. However, the Dears’ structure as a real-life couple made raising Neptune less an impact on their band decisions, particularly with regards to placement. “The band is not just like a job, it’s a part of our life,” says Yanchak. So when Neptune came around, “it didn’t change the dynamic much. It was like she became another member of the band.”

Bishop Allen, an indie rock duo from Brooklyn, have seen as much luck as the Dodos, though they’ve been around for longer. Despite being located in one of the most expensive cities in America, they still manage to do quite well for themselves. Christian Rudder, the guitarist half of the duo, remarks, “We’re doing pretty well. We don’t spend much money, and we’ve saved up in case of bad times.” Even in terms of touring, they are bucking the downward trend. “Actually, our audience has gone up quite a bit,” Christian says. “I guess part of it has to do with the fact that we’re kind of lucky, but I also think it has something to do with us not charging as much for our shows.”

Bishop Allen are also veterans of ad placement, though not to the extent of the Dears. Of particular note was the song “Click, Click, Click, Click” from the album The Broken String, fittingly placed in an ad for a Sony digital camera. “Usually, when the ad companies ask you for a song,” Rudder says, “they tell you what it’s for. They usually are openly transparent about it.” Recently, another song off The Broken String, “Middle Management”, was included in the soundtrack to the sports video game Major League Baseball 2k7. While the artistic merits of video games remains a matter of debate, it seems at least a non-issue for musicians to place their songs in there. “I feel like video games and movies are apiece, and they’re more much similar than video games are to ads,” Rudder says. “Ideally, you hope that your song contributes to the mood of the game somehow, and that in a small way, it is an artistic component to it.”

All of these artists have placed their music in ads. While many of them go for placement for obvious reasons (i.e., money), what makes placement more appealing these days is the subtlety of it. “It’s definitely more feasible nowadays,” says the Dodos’ Long, “You can find placements that are pretty harmless. They have a small impact on your career, and a great impact on your ability to sustain yourself and keep making records.” In context to the ad placement itself, Long says “it’s an unrecognizable thing. It’s a ten second blip of a song. It’s not like our faces are being shown.” Rudder also argues that “commercials are irrelevant in terms of long term grosses of a band.”

Commerciality vs. Piracy

Still, even with this subtlety, there is a general concern about the usage of a particular song for any particular product. When the aesthetics clash between song and product, even the musicians themselves can be concerned. A recent example can be found in synth-pop duo Matt and Kim, who in recent interviews maintained that while they are doing an increasing amount of ad placement and sponsorship, they have always approached it in a “tasteful” manner. The artists we spoke to have taken great care with it as well. “We never license anything unless we know what exactly the song is going to be in,” Yanchak says. “You’re taking the identity of the music, and you’re attaching it to another artistic vision. As soon as you attach that vision with something else, you’re taking the personal experience away, for it’s been decided for you by the product.”

As a result, sometimes even the largest offer seems implausible due to the lack of aesthetic integrity. Yanchak relates the story of how they were recently offered a placement with a car company ad for six figures. “Murray and I could have bought a house,” she says. However, “it was tough for us to accept, with what oil and cars represent to us.” While they hoped that the ad would at least talk about alternative energy or a hybrid, “it was the exact opposite,” she says, “it grossed us out. We had to turn it down.”

Rudder, while just as concerned, takes a different approach in regards to how aesthetics are handled. “You just can’t compare the aesthetic of a song to a commercial,” he says. “They’re just two different things.” Bishop Allen as a whole decide on these offers based on whether they wish to be associated with the product. In the case of the Sony digital camera, even though the song is about taking pictures, “it’s kind of irrelevant that there’s such a coincidence.” They have done other ads before, and there are some cases where the song and product don’t match up. In those cases, though, “it doesn’t feel any different.” Given that the band has no direct contact with the ad agencies, they don’t know what these agencies see in their songs either. “In a perfect world, you’re licensing a song to a product that is as great as your song,” Rudder says, “but that is never the case. You have to decide whether or not to take the offer, regardless of what you may think the ad agency is thinking.”

Then there is the matter of rewriting original songs to fit an ad. Such a practice was in play in probably the most controversial ad placement of the decade, Kevin Barnes’s rewriting of Of Montreal’s “Wraith Pinned to the Mists and Other Games” for an Outback Steakhouse commercial. (Of Montreal declined to be interviewed for this article.) Artists remain split on the issue. Rudder is hesitant about the whole approach. “That’s something we’ve never been asked to do, and I don’t know if we’d do it,” he says. “It’s impossible to say what would lead someone to do that, because it is extreme stuff. And yet people still do it.” Haden, herself an artist who has scored ad music, is disinclined to accept the idea, especially for the company involved. “I would consider rewriting a song if it were who I’m working for now, but I wouldn’t do it for most places, especially a place like Outback,” she says. Yanchak, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to mind the concept. “You’re being hired to write something. It’s just a gig,” she says. “You’re not writing a great piece of art, but you are writing something artistic, something that has an identity. At least it’s something well-written.”

The necessity of going to such measures has been linked to various factors bringing down the rest of the music industry. The most prominent of these, at least according to the labels, is piracy killing record sales. Artists have been generally split on the matter. Amongst the four artists PopMatters spoke to, the Dodos can probably cite the most recent and immediate impact in regards to piracy. In early July, their newest album, Time to Die, was leaked on the Internet, well ahead of its planned October release. In response, their label, Frenchkiss Records, released the album digitally in late July, while the physical release was moved up to September. Despite this, the Dodos seem to be very upbeat about it. “I’m actually kind of glad it leaked,” Long says. “We’d been playing with these songs for a while, and people wanted to listen to them. It messed with our schedule a little bit, but me and Logan [Kroeber, the keyboardist] had a very mellow response to it. I guess it doesn’t surprise me that people still care about us!”

While the Dodos seem to be okay with their album leaking, Petra Haden is not okay when even a streaming song is made downloadable without her knowledge. She once spotted a website that offered her a cappella covers for 15 cents a download. “I couldn’t believe it,” she says. “Why would someone do this without asking me? I don’t get it! It bothered me.” Of particular note was her cover of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”, which was not even released publicly. “I had only made that available through my MySpace page, not downloadable,” she says. “I don’t know how it even got to that point.” It became an awful experience for her.

Meanwhile, both the Dears and Bishop Allen take the sort of detached view of the situation that many bands in the post-Napster era have adopted. Bishop Allen feels like they were never part of the industry’s old order. “So not having been on that side, we’re not really sure how it has affected us,” says Rudder. Still, the Internet has been a helpful tool for them. “Without it, I doubt that anyone would have ever heard of us, because it’s not like we’ll ever be on the radio,” he says. The Dears, on the other hand, have taken a rougher stance on the Internet. “Our last two albums, Gang of Losers and Missiles, leaked,” says Yanchak. “Hearing about that elsewhere, it’s kind of disappointing.” Still, she sees some reasoning to the situation. “Piracy kind of seeps into the recession, and people having less money to spend on music,” she says, “But they still want the music.”

Over the course of many years, the fan response for even the slightest attempt at earning money through this method would have been to call the band sellouts. Some bands still get a harsh response from this, especially those with DIY roots and/or those who have pledged to be as anti-commercial as possible. However, the overall backlash from fans has subsided considerably. “[The response has] been mostly positive, which was kind of surprising to me,” Meric Long notes. “I was expecting more of a backlash. But I think we’re a small enough band that people understand we need to make our money somehow.”

The subtlety of these ads certainly helps. “When people do see them, they’re like ‘Oh, cool, there it is,’” Natalia Yanchak says. “I think a part of it is we aren’t doing ads that are so gross or jarring, so fans go through the experience pretty well.” Some have even gained fans out of it. “I’ve been getting comments from strangers, and from people who I haven’t heard from in years,” says Petra Haden. “All of them are very impressed, not just with the cover, but with the other two songs as well. It’s really helped.”

Even with all the support, both financially and fan-wise, does placement still feel worth it in the end? Ideally, not really, but still, it’s a better option than most. “I don’t think bands like to have their music on a commercial,” Christian Rudder says, “but they aren’t outside to clout, either. So, sometimes, you need to do it.” Sometimes, it allows a band to be a better band and reach out. “Placement allows us to do things like more touring, especially internationally,” Yanchak says, “it allows us to do more of the things we weren’t able to do before.”

Sometimes, placement does more than pay the bills. “When they were mixing the song to the commercial, all the Prius people were there,” says Haden. “When they watched the final cut, they all had smiles on their faces. If I can see that, and know I’ve affected people in that way, then that’s the biggest payoff.”

But more importantly, placement can allow a band to be a band. Long says, “I’ve been able to experience, for the first time in my life, getting paid to play music and nothing but. Now, I won’t just do anything for that, but I will do a lot, just to get paid for something as simple as that.”