Commercialism in Music

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
I Timothy 6:10

In as much as commercialism is concerned first and foremost with the bottom line, it has no rightful place in the realm of art. But musical artists today are told in no uncertain terms that there is no way around it. You must be marketed to be successful; you must be marketable. Commercialism is partly responsible for the fact that most people are largely insensible to artistic excellence in music and understand it primarily insofar as it serves to entertain them or to remind them of an emotional cliché (see ratings for ‘American Idol’). In the same way that IT has reduced beauty to fashion/sexuality and these to pornography, the exploitation of modern commercialism has reduced music to fashion/entertainment, and these to escapism.

Yes, modern entertainment/fashion, of which music is one of the biggest exports, is largely an escape—recipes are created to assimilate the dangerously profound into the familiar and deep fry flavor into the bland, and the important but scary things: the knowledge that each and every thing we do serves to permanently define us; recognition of the suffering in the world that goes unchecked; the moral ramifications of modern science/technology; the meaning of our individual lives in relation to society, history and the universe etc. are covered over and can be forgotten. Little by little we stop caring, we stop thinking, we stop being. But we are encouraged to concern ourselves with whichever superficialities cater to the system that commercialism perpetuates and exploits. And the musical artist is conditioned from an early age, along with everyone else, to desire the glamour of a rock and roll lifestyle. The commercial machine that perpetuates this dream holds the key to it, and the only condition is that the bottom line rules.

This obsession with money, which characterizes the marketing industry, is the biggest culprit. But, though the basic mechanics of this system are common knowledge, the moral implications of our investment in it are largely overlooked. A cursory glance at this process reveals an innocent and even beautiful concept, with the great fault that it lacks any defense against the corruption of greed. This is how it goes.

The public socializes in groups which share certain things in common: age, ethnicity, sex, background and religion. Shared interests further subdivide these demographics. Advertisers monitor all of these categories to ensure that production caters to their special demands.
If the demand of the public was proportionate to the true needs of its individuals then the success of a marketing campaign could be measured relatively accurately in dollars and cents. But advertisers and drug dealers have discovered that greater profit can be made through the exploitation of vices, which they validate as fashion and perpetuate as trends. Instead of facilitating an appreciation for the art of music in the public, the musical artist is pressured to conform their product to the existing consciousness of a particular demographic. And the consciousness of the people in these demographics is bombarded with petty vanities, greed, laziness, addictions etc. (ref. MTV), because these preoccupations turn them into consumers. In short, because of the materialistic ideology which has corrupted the commercial system, popular music is catered to the vices of the public; it does not perform the true function of art, which is to ennoble the consciousness of society. And, as Roger Waters bewails in ‘Welcome To The Machine’, this is how rockstars are made. “What did you dream? It’s all right, we told you what to dream. You dreamed of a big star; he played a mean guitar...So welcome to the machine.”

The rockstar is an absurd caricature—sketched by our culture over would-be artists—a purportedly original and independent person, someone who pretends to be too strong and proud to care a wit what anyone else thinks but who, in actuality, works with a marketing team to create this image according to the existing tastes of a target audience, tastes which have been molded over time by commercialism itself: clothing, hair and makeup that a target audience already likes; music that is really a slight variation on a formula that this audience has already been conditioned to understand and, therefore, enjoy; dance/rock moves; publicity stunts—whatever it takes for fame and a buck. The rockstar is as original as a McDonalds franchise and as independent as a whore…but the public has bought into this ideal, and successive generations of would-be rockstars push and shove themselves to the front of the line to “exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage” (Pink Floyd, ‘Wish You Were Here’).

Meanwhile, those who maintain their integrity are truly engaged in a war. As Thom Yorke put it in ‘Karma Police’, “I’ve given all I can, it’s not enough. I’ve given all I can, but we’re still on the payroll.” And two albums later, “We are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence and the mark and the yen and, yeah, we’re gonna crack your little soul” (Radiohead, ‘Dollars and Cents’).

But the majority of artists who ‘make it’ lose their selves to the system, where they either burn out quickly or manage to survive by disengaging themselves from what they do. And this translates into self-destructive behavior: drug and alcohol addiction and sexual promiscuity, which is then glamorized by the commercial machine…that’s what we call success!