John Lydon advertises butter in a ridiculous suit.
Iggy Pop does car insurance with a puppet of himself on a golf course.

That's selling out imho....

The market's so saturated with bands and artists, that I think most people would be fools not to do something which could get them more promotion and, as a result, record sales.

That said, I'm sure there are plenty of companies and causes that lots of artists wouldn't go near with a bargepole.

There are some who'd advertise Zyklon B if the price were right.

That said, who among us can afford to sit on our moral high horse forever? Principles don't put food on the table.

It doesn't particularly bother me when a high-profile artist licences their music for advertising. It bothers me even less when it's an emerging artist, struggling for an income.

the concept of selling out is redundant on many levels today. You can make an argument that releasing your music through a record company is de facto evidence of selling out when you could be releasing it yourself without using the capitalist "suits". But then again those acts who take the self-sufficiency route are, in effect, making themselves entrepreneurs as much as musicians so where does selling out start and end in that equally valid model of capitalism?

If selling out means associating yourself or your music with something like butter or insurance then I suppose it can be affected by how much you like the product/service that the artist is associating themselves with. I like butter but I don't like insurance so the former is OK for me even though it's "not punk" Mr. Lydon, but Iggy's ad annoys the tits off of me and is no better than Howard in those f**king Halifax ads. But that's because it reminds me of the political and economic bullshit that dominates our lives. So I listen to Iggy records and occasionally find myself thinking of those insurance ads which in turn reminds me of the all wankers in the world who think that someone's worth and contribution can only be measured by a bottom line and a profit margin.

So for me, selling out is about whether or not you compromise to the detriment of my impression of what you were before you agreed to commodify yourself or your art by associating it with a product or a service.

But we all die by differing degrees in the capitalist world it's just more painful to watch artists we love do the same and down right devastating when they do it with such apparent relish and lack of shame.

(i) The Big Label Sell Out: Maybe the artist signs to a big label that can ensure a proper release..is that a sell out to big business?

(ii) The Top of the Pops sell out: When the artists start doing promos and interviews in multinational media outlets. Is that Prostituting Art?

(ii) The Big Stadium Sell Out: when an artist only plays Wembley-scale gigs and sells tee-shirts costing £30 a pop. Is that rampant commercialism?

In my view unless an artist distributes free music through My Space and does free gigs, then they are involved in a commercial business environment. Even if they are on their own label they want people to hear them and buy their product.

So, why do we get annoyed when Mr Pop does an insurance ad? We don't bat an eyelid when, say, Stephen Merchant voices over yet another ad (including those ones for a Big Bad Bank). Okay, if The Ig was endorsing Smith and Wesson Saturday night specials then a real moral dimension would arise and that would be entirely different.

..and brands jump on it to get kudos then it can be a mine field. If its just a case of targetted marketing - young people = music = the people we want to reach then fair enough.
If you have room for some unsigned bands I can point you in the direction of many unsigned bands.

unintentionally sell out. Take for example Chumbawumba - I don't suppose they ever in their wildest dreams thought they would have a song as phenomenally successful as 'I get knocked out' or whatever it was called yet I am pretty sure that song developed a life of its own and eventually accompanied all sorts of commercial ventures.
Moby gained international star status with Play and much of its success came about because of the number of songs from it that were on tv ads or as background music for documentary and drama programmes. I doubt that Moby had previous capability of selling anything to tv or advertising companies. Sometimes it occurs accidentally.

Unprincipled greed to me is the real issue.

When you have multi-millionaires jumping through hoops for corporations and dodgy dictators for an extra million or two then I think the criticism is justified. It's unedifying and it always seems to be the richest ones that are the most shameless about doing it.

What do people think of artists distributing their work by bypassing the standard music business model? Prince going via the Sunday Mail, say, or Faithless putting out their last album as an exclusive with Tesco.

Are those two outlets, worse, better, or equivalent to going via traditional label means? Because both could be construed as 'selling out'.

Double post: Drupalitis.