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NY Times: Rockers Celebrate Brand Awareness

Here on the Riff, we've covered the thorny issue of putting your music in commercials (with commenters coming down pretty evenly split, if I'm reading their incoherent ramblings correctly), but today's Times goes straight for the top: Duff McKagan, formerly of Guns N' Roses, currently of Velvet Revolver, and business school graduate. The Times kind of rubs in that the dude is 43:

Like other rockers easing into middle age or seniorhood, Mr. McKagan is also experimenting with new partnerships in response to a music business in flux. Amid plunging record sales and Internet file sharing, rockers are eagerly plastering their names everywhere. Their “brands” are now found in television commercials, tour sponsorships, and merchandise as diverse as cars, private-label wines and celebrity cruises.

"Seniorhood"? Ouch. The article brings up more aging rockers who have left their youthful anti-commercial ideals behind: The Stones (Budweiser!), Paul McCartney (Starbucks!), Sting (Jaguar!). Why is everybody shilling for The Man? Because nobody's buying records:

All of this has been set in motion by a well-known reality: record sales “fell off a cliff,” says Jonathan Daniel, a former musician and now a partner at Crush, a management company that represents such bands as Panic! at The Disco and Fall Out Boy. Shipments of CDs were $9.16 billion in 2006, down 31 percent from their peak of $13.21 billion in 2000, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Panic! at the Disco and Fall Out Boy: the Beatles and Stones of our generation.

Posted by Party Ben on 10/29/07 at 1:24 PM | Comments (0) | Email | Print

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