Combatting The Mute Button

[koganbot]

I posted this on a Blackbeard Blog comment thread; the subject was Tom's commentary regarding ads on Spotify, and this was my largely off-topic analysis of an old phenomenon:

There was - to my mind - a big rise in the quality of TV commercials in the mid '80s, when, among other things, rock and other forms of popular music began to be used in the commercials. The commentary among critics tended to be "Oh, noes! Our music has been irreparably violated, everything is cross-promotion, and music as a democratic project is finished." Whereas actually what was finished were various broad associations between musical styles and social divides (class and generational). Not that music stopped being a social marker - that will never happen - but it was less a marker of Sides In The Great Battles Of The Sixties (And Seventies); hence in using rock and soul and modern pop in commercials one's risk of alienating a large segment of potential customers was now far smaller. But even more important, on a practical level, was that, given the ever-increasing ownership of remote devices for controlling the TV, the watcher could hit mute, change channels, or hit fast forward (if watching a program she'd prerecorded). Previously, advertisers had a captive audience, and their goal was to hammer their message into the consumer's brain; but they could disregard whether the viewer was having a good time during the commercial, as long as the message got embedded. Now, however, commercials had to compete almost as programming. (One of the stupider beliefs about music videos was that they were fundamentally advertising, and whoah! and woe! here was a channel, MTV, devoted to nothing but advertising. Whereas obviously, if people were watching MTV on their own volition, they were treating the music videos as programming.) Not that people turned on a regular program for the commercials, but the commercials now really had to appeal. The music was one way to make them appeal, and to combat the mute button.

Comments

Re: "all shakespeare is just an advert for the globe theatre"

[koganbot]

Surely the Spotify adsters can learn to do something better, a way of integrating talk and sound, perhaps. I'd think they'd have to, though if Spotify has successfully grabbed and monopolized the British streaming market, maybe they won't. (As for my own online listening, MySpace streaming has become useless for me, 'cause ever since their great changeover, MySpace's expansion of what they offer, my DSL connection can't handle them. Or maybe it's my Web browser. In any event, at least once per song the music will simply lurch to a stop for a number of seconds, then eventually resume. So I basically don't use it. Also, the way they make you look at ads - there's no interpolated sound - is to bring you to a stop after about four songs and make you click on a little x to resume the sound, so you need to go back to the page and at least for half a second look at what's there. This is also irritating, but not a deal killer. The killer is that the songs themselves don't play through, and I don't think that's deliberate, just some tech glitch that maybe only applies to me, though who knows about that.)

Re: "all shakespeare is just an advert for the globe theatre"

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

notoriously trailers for some movies are way better than the movies -- they use no techniques of manufacture movies don't have to hand, but the trailers are freed from various conventions of shaping that moviemakers uneasily cling to (for what reason?)

with pop, the problem seems to be the other way round: the interesting thing really being that by far the best advertisiment for a 3minute song is the song itself: but if you play the listener the song you no longer need the advert -- what would a trailer for frankie's two tribes be? at most one of its myriad remixes -- basically it's its own trailer (and of course the montage technique which an ad could help itself to would turn the ad into a "song" of its own...)

i notice the radio-ads problem whenver i'm home at my dad's, because his carers keep the radio in the kitchen tuned to local stations all the time: i wouldn't expect shropshire to be at the forefront of innovation, but it's more like "we don't accept there's a problem in the culture: this is what radio ads have to be like*, and if you don't like that fuck off, i mean, no, wait, come back...!"

*which is clumsy, simplistic, slow, bullying, just lame compared to their surroundings...

Re: "all shakespeare is just an advert for the globe theatre"

[koganbot]

Why aren't Spotify ad spots used to promote movies? Hair replenishment regimes? Books? Is there a rule that such spots must only promote music?

Re: "all shakespeare is just an advert for the globe theatre"

[koganbot]

and of course the montage technique which an ad could help itself to would turn the ad into a "song" of its own...

And why not!

But there can be a difference. Songs are designed for multiple upon multiple listenings, but commercials need not be, so commercials can use surprise effects, talking, etc., that would lose force in a couple of weeks that songs themselves can't use.

The commercial for Frankie's "Two Tribes" could be snippets of song interspersed with outraged voices commenting on the depravity that will overtake someone who even casually listens to it. And the commercial won't be just for the song itself, but for the song plus all its commercial tie-ins: see the video on MTV (which will help underwrite the ad), buy the album, see [Film Title] that it's featured in, listen to [TV Star] endorse Frankie (and sell himself by association), etc.

Re: "all shakespeare is just an advert for the globe theatre"

[koganbot]

(Many radio commercials are local, e.g., the blowout stereo sale at Crazy Eddie's; the excitement at Club Boob & Stud, ladies in free on Tuesday; this wouldn't work for Spotify, obviously.)

Re: "all shakespeare is just an advert for the globe theatre"

[koganbot]

Listening to it, I'm struck by how much "Two Tribes" is a blues. Not a classic 12-bar, but still blues form and blues notes.

(But of course, owing to its beats etc. it's postdisco new pop rather than blues, just as "Johnny B. Goode" is rock 'n' roll not blues, etc.)