I love music, but then again who doesn’t? Its magical and can capture a moment sometimes better than anything. Music generally enhances the experience of driving, running, sitting at work, watching movies and so on. Imagine all the recent Netflix you’ve seen without a soundtrack. Yah, it would more or less be two hours of solid talking. May as well go fucking sit at the mall and listen to people talk at that point. Even deeper, think of watching a horror movie without the audio queues when something messed up is about to go down. It wouldn’t be the same. Commercials have increasingly begun to use popular music in their ads to embody their campaign. I’m sure you can think of many ads in which the song choice makes the ad enjoyable. Hell, I may even re-watch it a few times while we try to catch the name of the song. The ad below for Heineken for example, did just that. The song ‘made’ the ad. I don’t even drink Heineken, but yah, the next time I was at the store I picked up a 12-pack. The song is called “The Golden Age” by The Asteroids Galaxy Tour if you’re wondering.
Here’s my beef though, recently a lot of advertisers and television shows, such as Glee (shudder) have used, or have tried to use artist’s music without their permission. Adweek points out the top 5 examples of which, whether they directly ripped the song, or had a band cover the hit. I’m not going to get into that, because you can read it for yourself. My issue is, what the hell do advertisers think would happen? If people were using my music without my permission I’d be pissed as hell. But then again if someone used my crappy songs I’ve written with my friends, go ahead, people will hate you. Not only does it make advertisers look like complete idiots, but then they get sued, which isn’t fun. For advertisers it would be as though I went out and made fake ads representing their clients and tried to pass them off as official. It’s just not a smart business move. If the ad runs with the intended song a few times and then the artist sues, the brand will suffer once the ad and/or music is removed. Of course, they may make the news but I’m not gonna run out and buy their product because of it. I will think less of the brand and the advertiser.
