This is a bad idea because...? Because you don't like MTV? I'm not following where you're taking this.

Have you turned on a television in the past few years? I'll take your word for it because you said you're watching it now. Yet, I have heard the Teddybears, the Caesars, Peaches, Silversun Pickups, Ingrid Michaelson, and Cat Power amongst other artists that people would be well-advised to add to their iPods in commercials. Plus, local bands like the Boss Martians were featured in an E-Trade commercial that aired during the Super Bowl and Throw Me The Statue is in a Rhapsody ad. Yeah, that's a terrible idea for people to know who those bands and artists are.

Please tell me you have a better reason that for why this is a bad idea. I really don't want to assume that you're a hack.

Gah...stupid double-posting.

it's horrible to have to agree that commercial advertisements have great taste in music... but it's true..

add to chris b's list Band of Horses and Feist... it's the wave of the future, because none of us buy music anymore, but advertisers do... so bands don't make money selling cds these days, they make money with placements on tv.

it's our own fault. if you wanna download single tunes for .99 each, or free if you can find them, then Pepsi is gonna bring you the next Death Cab for Cutie record. (hypothetically)

and actually it's a cool idea, really, the bottom of screen ticker, 'cause then you don't have to google lines from the song, the advertiser, etc., to figure it out yourselves.

(granted, i don't have cable tv, so i'll never see it)

As someone who spends a fair amount of time on music forums where people pop in every day or so asking "Who did that song on that one car commercial?," I think this is a fine idea (if only so the rest of us who don't care and/or know how to use Google will be left in peace). It really seems like you haven't been paying attention to TV commercials lately - which is fine, I pay attention to them as little as possible myself, just maybe know what you're talking about before you post.

I think it's a great idea too! I can't recall how many times I've been at a company party and have had a line of co-workers come up to me and ask about a song in a commercial b/c I'm the 'music guy.' Why should the advertisers hide this information? If I was in a band and a huge corporation wanted to use our music in an ad I'd say of course but only if the advertisers put our name and the song title plain as day in the commercial as well.

At the innitial moment I wrote this the only tracks I saw highlighted were Bananarama's "Venus", Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten", and Michael Jackson's "Thriller"...all of which I've heard a millions times by now. Because of the generic-ness of the music being presented, I found it a little gimmicky.

I agree, overall it's a good idea to help out up-and-coming bands. Heck, Jet pretty much got their start because of iPod ads. I just sort of see this as MTV's newest way to make themselves seem more music-centric. The concept is neat, but the intentions behind it are sketchy.

Conceptually it will be helpful and perhaps should be carried out on other channels as well.

It's just sad when a station has to connect music on a commercial to overall programming because there isn't anymore music programming.

This is a terrible idea, simply because it muddies the waters between MTV's programming and it paid commercial content. Not that MTV's a bastion of journalistic integrity and morals, but come on. This is just another way for advertisers to sneak into the spotlight by piggybacking on MTV's programming, it gives MTV an opportunity to provide a "service" to its advertisers while letting products parade how "hip" they are, through their association with MTV and whatever band they're using at the moment.

This is just one step closer to hour-long programs on MTV that showcase nothing more than "cool" three-minute commericals that feature songs by the "cool" new bands while trying to convince viewers to buy a new ipod, a fancy cell phone, a prius or whatever crap is being pitched at the 18 to 24 demographic.

Grim, are you playing contrarian or do you honestly believe that? It is a nice effort to try to salvage Jon's weak and poorly-reasoned post. I'm sure you (and I) believe that blurring the line between commerce and programming is a bad thing but I don't think that line has ever existed with MTV.

Ever since they and the Buggles killed the radio star, the station has been about selling products whether it be the music from major labels or bottles of shampoo. For better or worse, the programming managers decided that they could sell more beer or cars if they switched their programming from music videos to reality shows (Real World, Road Rules, etc...). The moment MTV stops selling pairs of shoes or tubes of lipstick is the moment that they stop broadcasting.

Now, I understand the argument that this is even more overt commercialization (which is what I think you're arguing against) but I still think this is a (big) net plus because people are going to buy (slightly) more pretzels and many more Throw Me the Statue CDs.

So I'm a little confused, MTV is telling us what ALL commercials' songs are? Because that would be great! But I don't know how it would be possible.

Still, lately more and more I've been desperately googling "honda civic commercial song" or "outback steakhouse song" just to name a few. Grandaddy and Of Montreal, not bad! I think a ticker would be great.

What is wrong with me? I don't watch any television. None. I have never had a single song that I love ruined (or at least severely compromised) by watching it play over some banal ad for deodorant or insurance. I used to watch tv but gradually drifted away when it started to be nothing but unreal reality shows and amateur hour talent contests. I can't say I miss it at all.

Chris, I was there when MTV started and I don't remember it being like that at all. There may have been some commercials, but if so they were few and far between and I don't remember any of them. All I remember is one really cool music video after another, for hours on end. Music videos were a totally new art form then; it was heaven for me and my slacker stoner friends.

I have to say, I definitely agree with Grim.

Of course, I agree more with the whole don't watch MTV thing.

The moment MTV stops selling pairs of shoes or tubes of lipstick is the moment that they stop broadcasting.

Hate to be the big downer in the party here, but this applies to EVERY television station outside of PBS. Once advertisers deem their plugs on CNN, MSNBC or Nick at Nite aren't effective, those networks will stop broadcasting as well. The funny thing is, CNN, MSNBC and Nick are all doing OK with the traditional differentation of advertising/content that MTV is slowly abandoning.

Think about this. Your "MTV was always kinda crappy argument" is like saying "Well, the person I'm dating was 10 pounds overweight when we met, and now is 35 pounds too chubby, and in a couple years is going to be morbidly obese, but hey he/she was kinda fat when we started daing, so who cares."

The thing is, it's not just MTV. If it was, I wouldn't care. This is the trend media is heading. We were just talking on TIG yesterday, I think, about how a company using money from Universal Music has purchased Idolator and Stereogum. You think that's being done out of Universal's admiration for music coverage? It's going to be, without a doubt, a way for major labels to covertly squeeze promo into those influential blogs. I'm not saying those sites are going to be hyping crapola every day, but, come on, Universal via Buzznet expects to get a return on its investment. And I'm not talking karma. Sadly, I'm going to have to take virtually EVERYTHING those sites say with a grain of salt from now on, especially how there's been no up-front disclosure about the links between it and the world's biggest music company, at least as far as I've heard. That's duplicitious, shady, untrustworthy and unethical. Period.

It's just not that. It's that constant stream of piddly product-placement that's made "The Office" nothing more than a commercial disguised as a sitcom. It's Rolling Stone's ability to let Camel cigarettes put a gigantic insert into the magazine that's purposefully crafted to deceive readers into thinking it's editorial content. It's that Transformers movie that was just a transparent ploy to try to get kids to purchase toys and their parents to purchase the cars.

Maybe it's because I was a journalism major in a program that put a large emphasis on media ethics/media effects that I'm so sensitive to this sort of issue. Maybe I'm just being paranoid. I do know, however, that we're slowly inching down a road that's leading us to a point where all mass media will serve no higher purpose than to shift products. And, yes, that's how it is now, but it's at least nice to have some sort of transparent separation between the two.

There isn't going to be a dramatic watershed moment where all media shifts to being purely promotional vehicles of industry. It'll be a years-long series of tiny steps like these, tiny steps we just sat back and complacently contemplated, tiny steps that, through our own lack of backbone to ignore all content-intrusive promotion, have the potential to utterly destroy the media.

Tiny steps when we shrug off little things like MTV's latest marketing/advertising ploy.

This will be my final word on the topic.

I know that those channels are there to make money from advertising (or subscriptions like HBO) or have the government give it to them (like PBS). That's the way it has always been, I get that (and wasn't arguing about it).

Was it just a nice bonus that people bought Dire Straits and Peter Gabriel albums in the mid-1980s? My recollection of MTV was that their commercial breaks (at least as far back as the early 1990s) were longer (around 4-5 minutes) than typical (2-3 minutes) but I could be wrong.

Like the issue with the plastic sacks, I think we're in agreement on a lot of things and I certainly don't like over-commercialization as much as anyone. I don't like being the unwitting subject of a focus group and have all of my spending habits tracked and analyzed any more than you do.

The Camel ad was atrocious and appropriately the subject of lawsuits. Rolling Stone should be ashamed of themselves for that move. I'm not even going to try to defend it - and don't believe any defense is appropriate.

Yes, I was a dick to Jon for his post, but all I was trying to say is that I'm in favor of people discovering great new music and there is a lot of it in commercials now. If advertisers are going to make it just a little bit easier for those bands to continue making music and MTV is making it a little bit easier for people to find those bands, then I'm all for it. If it saves me (and Mike) from being asked at parties "what's that song in the ______ commercial" at parties or work all the better.

I agree with Grim as far as the distinction between commercial and show being blurred, but I think I missed the connection between that and MTV running a ticker of what song is playing in their commercials.

To me, whether it gives MTV it's cred back (it doesn't) is not the point. From the musicians perspective (and I'm not a musician), they are allowing their songs to be played so that they can receive money and use that money to fund the expenses that come along with making more music.
In that sense, the ticker seems to me to be a good thing because it makes more people aware of good music. To me if an artist is talented and makes good music, then more power to them if they want to make a decent living doing that.
For some bands like the Go! Team who use a lot of samples in their music, it's beneficial for them to allow their music to be used in commercials so that when they make their next album it's easier for them to get those samples cleared.
I think artists need to be discerning about how their music is used and for what company they are used to advertise with. I remember Band of Horses several months ago agreeing to let Wal*mart use their music and it not going over very well with fans of their music.

If it saves me (and Mike) from being asked at parties "what's that song in the ______ commercial" ...all the better.

...yeah, I would be the one getting asked that, too. haha.

ChrisB, you weren't really being a dick, I just didn't really see the bigger picture.

With a focus completely on MTV and its focus on music, I've found their not so sly ways of tieing in music during nonmusic programming a cheap way of staying music-oriented.

While I'm all for healthy debates, which this one has been completely, I think it would be completely a moot point if everyone did what I and apparently Randy up in #10 do: DON'T watch TV. The whole dilemma of corporations filling our minds with junk would be dramatically reduced if everyone made the cultural shift to stop watching so much TV. Yes, the internet is chock-full of advertising as well, which is part of the reason I boycotted ad-heavy MySpace (okay, my current account is purely business-related), but it is much easier to avoid, especially with Macs or pop-up blocking software. And we're constantly getting inundated with more ads on the sides of buses, picnic tables, etc. However, outside you can look the other way; but purposefully situating yourself in front of a monitor you know will show 20 minutes of commercials for every 40 minutes of programming (sometimes the balance is even worse) is just asking for it. I know this comment is completely off-topic, but it seemed the debate was heading into commercialism and consumerism, which leads to talk about capitalism, of which I cannot avoid, so I throw my two-cents down and step off the soap box now...

Oh yeah... Chris was worried about coming across as a dick, here's my jerk comment: How cliche is a blog and comment thread griping about the evils of MTV and commercialism on an indie website?

It's funny, I don't really mind advertisements. I mean, I feel like as long as you have a discerning eye and know what the company is, what they're selling and why you don't want it, you can actually enjoy them.

I see many commercials as art with a purpose, and I enjoy them a lot. Target commercials, car commercials, apple ads, they're all very artful and I respect them for that. It doesn't mean I'm going to go out and buy all their products, or that I'm somehow controlled by those corporations. I'm not saying all ads are creative, those myspace ads are hideous, but I understand why they're there and I think it's just another part of our culture. We just have to be smart consumers.

Of course, I think I'm in the minority here, and I may feel very differently once I take all those media ethics classes in college.

Haha. Damn those Media Ethics classes! I've had to take my fair share of 'em, too.

Yeah, there are a lot of neat looking commercials, I'll agree, but in the end, they're still trying to sell you something.

I love how this thread has turned into a conversation on the ethics of advertising.

While we're all on the subject, it's official: Buzznet (who bought stereogum and Idolator) just got 25 million dollars in funding from Universal Music Group -- and it looks like they're trying to accumulate more blog purchases too.

All this has turned into some really interesting discussion. Is it possible that stereogum and Idolator can continue to provide what I consider some of the best music writing out there, now that they're owned by a parent company like UMG?

I support music blogs earning money in the same way I support musicians earning money -- I'm in favor. :)

I know firsthand what an intense amount of work it takes to run a music website, and in theory, I would hope that those sites should only get better, once the editors and writers have the financial means to work on the site full time (read as: no more dayjobs). But yah, when the sugar daddy also owns over 25% of the record labels (according to wikipedia), then yeah... ya gotta wonder what the expectations are. I think the readers of those sites are a bit savviet than your average bear. If stereogum is suddenly premature evaluating all over the new Fall Out Boy, they're gonna get eaten alive. That's the beautiful thing about comments and user generated content. Checks and balances. Hopefully Buzznet is aware of this and won't try to disrupt editorial of the sites they acquire. But who knows. I haven't noticed any changes to content quality yet... but I will have my guard up for sure.

Also, I just looked at Buzznet and it made me feel about 1000 years old.

Wow. This is actually the best discussion about this sort of thing I've had in a long time. Nice.

stereogum is suddenly premature evaluating all over the new Fall Out Boy, they're gonna get eaten alive ... I haven't noticed any changes to content quality yet ... but I will have my guard up for sure.

See. It's already undermining their credibility, if only just a little in your mind. Now instead of explicitly trusting idolator and stereogum's judgements, we'll be scouring them for bias. The only problem we're going to have is when, say, for sake of argument that Fall Out Boy's next album is the new Sgt. Pepper's, and Stereogum rightfully wants to cover it. Now there's all sorts of questions and suspicions.

I'm hoping these mergers or whatever are more based around using those blogs as a way to launch traditional advertising, house artist widgets and whatnot, but I'll be skeptical until we see how the transition goes.

And, for the record, I'm not braznely anti-commerical (and, like Kiku said, think clever marketing/advertising is pretty cool). I just think it's only fair to know when we're being targeted by marketing and when we're reading content created because someone unconnected deemed it worthy of our attention.