Music’s role in advertising is essential, an associate element insinuating memories and emotions into products. Music eases the transaction, even makes it cool.

Recently, proclaiming the failure of the recording industry to provide a livelihood for its artists, advertisers have assumed the role of tastemakers, trandsetters. This obvious conflict of interest subverts music’s elemental capacity for communication. When every songwriter is a pitchman, the listener’s role is reduced to that of a consumer.

Advertising is the vernacular corollary to public relations’ formalized discourse. PR wins elections, electrics public support for war efforts, advertisers, though, propagate public opinion in less explicit, but equally concrete ways.

Is that cool?

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NOTES
1. THOM DUFFY “SONGS’ SELLING POWER EXAMINED: BILLBOARD MAGAZINE JULY 3RD, 1999 THE SOUNDS OF CAPITALISM’ -ADVERTISING, MUSK, AND THE COMQUEST OF CULTURE TIMOTHY D. TAYLOR, UNIV. OF CHICAGO PRESS, 2012
5. THE CONQUEST OF COOL:  BUSINESS CULTURE, COUNTERCULTURE, AND THE RISE OF HIP CONSUMERISM, THOMAS FRANK, UNV. OF CHICAGO PRESS, 1997.
6. ANGRA KRISHNAMURTHY”OOYI, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, PEPSICO
7. “KIDS LOVE MUSIC . . . ” IAN SUENONIUS, NATION OF ULLYSES
8. GENERAL KNOWLEDGE, 2014
9. KNOWING GLARE, THE MAN TO THANK/BLAME.
11. ROCHELLE GURSTEIN, QUOTED (FRANK, 228).
14. ACTUAL INTERVIEW
16. PETER NICHOLSON, DEUTCH, NY 2007 (TAYLOR, 227)