When ad agency DDB was contracted by Volkswagen to to create a new commercial, conceptually, the ad was built around Beach House's song, "Take Care".
After all, what's the big deal? Indie bands selling their music to commercial producers is now part of the indie business model.
The music biz ain't what it used to be, there's no MTV or radio to promote music. So fiscally, music revenue is dependent upon unit sales (which are down in the era of the download), touring, merchandising, and soundtracking the sales of other products - aka selling your music to ad agencies.
Some bands, like Matt & Kim, embrace this so much, it becomes hard to think of the music as anything more than a soundtrack for advertising - music for product sales.
But still, few fans these days cry "sell out", as if they understand the sad desperation it must take for any band with any level of integrity to sell their music to ad agencies.
But DDB ran into a problem when Beach House, citing an inconsistent aesthetic, declined to sell them song, despite the agency's repeated attempts to get the band on board. Beach House is not taking an entirely anti-commercial principled stand against selling out here, they have sold their songs to commercials before. The band simply did not want their song to be used in this commercial, period.
Evidently, this is an eventuality the advertising agency arrogantly didn't prepare for - that an indie band whose song they saw as the centerpiece of their sentimental, schmaltzy commercial would actually tell them no. But that's what happened.
At that point, what's an agency to do?
Well, one thought would be to buy a song from any number of Beach House sound-alikes. But that's where music as a signifier becomes important. Some other second-rate Beach House knock-off band would signal to the demographic that this commercial is aimed at that the product is, by association, a second-rate knock-off.
DDB and Volkswagen's solution? To contract Sniffy Dog studio to write a Beach House sound alike song. That way, there's no identifiable other band to connect to the product, and the commercial can still convey that Beach House feel without Beach House. And who knows, distracted listeners may think it's a Beach House song.
In the past, artists like Tom Waits and Bette Midler have successfully sued such commercial violations of their work, but it's unclear at this point if Beach House will follow the same track.
But it should be pointed out, that if this sort of thing is allowed to happen, it will completely undermine any indie band's position to negotiate with commercial producers over the use of their songs. Advertisers could offer bands a paltry sum to tie their songs to a product and if they say no, well, that's fine, they'll just hire a studio to produce a knock off song that swipes their sound.
Maybe, for those of us who don't like the bands we like associating their music with product sales, you know, selling out, this could be a good thing.
Source.
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