Vivisecting Media

Commercial Credit

Recently I have been watching a lot more TV. I mean, a LOT more TV. It’s one of those things that happens to you after a long day on the hill and all you want to do is sit back in front of the fire and veg out.

The major problem with this habit is that I don’t have a Tivo hooked up at the cabin and this mean I have to watch the commercials. Gah. One thing I have noticed while watching the commercials is that more and more of them are actually putting up the name of the artist and song that was licensed for the music in the background.

Some of the commercials doing this are obvious, like eMusic or Verizon pushing their new online music downloads, but I have seen a few other non-music commercials that are giving credit. I feel this is great for both the artist and the consumer.

A good friend of mine, Anna, told be me a story about hearing a song on a commercial. It was a VW commercial, the one were everything syncs together while they are driving (this was a long time ago). Anna was so taken by the song that she jumped online and ended up in a forum that was full of people asking the same question. It ended up being Air and she went out and got the album, all because of a 30 second commercial.

I would really like to see more of this. If a PR firm thinks that the song represents their client so well they should be willing to facilitate this back by listing who the artist is. I hope more licensing firms push for this in the contract because this is a great way to expose an artist to a very large audience.