By Mike Miner
Growing up, I spent my life in front of the TV consuming the latest cartoons about the latest toys, watching heavily sponsored old movies and eating Froot Loops ad nauseam (my favourite baseball player attributed his success to some unholy pact with Toucan Sam). Most entertainment I enjoyed as a kid was basically advertising.
Most people today are fooling themselves into thinking they’re past this brand of blind consumerism. But marketing strategies are blurring lines between leisure and economic strategy and making their audience victims. Take a look at some words that have slipped into the vernacular. Beyond infomercials, and TV shows like Entertainment Tonight, referred to as infotainment, a new level in the merging of entertainment and advertising has arisen.
Wal-Mart has launched a concert series where the concerts of new country stars are beamed via satellite into their stores around the world. Garth Brooks and Faith Hill have already participated in what the multinational mega-corp has dubbed “retailtainment.”
If people really want to go see a concert at Wal-Mart, so be it, but these performers are a huge disappointment. They have bounded across that ambiguous sell-out line into the land of corporate prostitution. It has reached the point where a Shania Twain video doubles as an ad for makeup and is shown both on music television and during program breaks on network broadcasts.
Aside from the embarrassing association with Wal-Mart, these people can’t really be looked at as artists anymore. They have become retailtainers.
The pressure this puts on people who really care about their music to perform commercially is enough to force some out of business. For others, it forces them to decide where their values lie.
In Austin, Tex., there is a band called Spoon. They’ve released two full-length albums that received reviews for which most bands would sell their soul. But bad distribution, a few wrong turns and a major screwing-over by a vice-president at Elektra have left them back in Texas, dropped by their label only four months after the release of the artistically dazzling, but commercially dismal album A Series of Sneaks.
Right now, Britt Daniel, the creative force behind the trio, is looking for work, but hoping to release another album. Until then, he’s going to try writing new country songs for other performers. Even when you’ve paid your dues, you still have to pay the rent.