Do people still care about "selling out"?

A few notes about the logic of this:

1) Crown Royal had a distribution deal with Capitol. While it wasn't a subsidiary, I would be surprised if Capitol didn't have a signing deal with Crown Royal that allowed them to scoop up their artists. I'm not interested in demonizing this sort of relationship (though I find it unsavory), but it's certainly not what I would call an entirely "independent" label. To describe it as "a label highly respected for its courage to challenge listeners with some really exciting new music" sounds like industry bullshit to me.

2) Ben Lee signed to Capitol (did this have something to do with an exclusive right by Capitol to pick up Grand Royal bands?) in 1999, a full two years before Grand Royal folded. So I'm not sure what "disaster" you're referring to that prompted Lee to sign to Capitol if not the collapse of the Grand Royal label.

3) Ultimately, no one gives a shit if some dude, who wants to play radio-friendly rock for a living, accomodates himself to the music industry. But it's not punk. And I don't understand this whining about "public outcry." Most people don't care a whole lot about whether the bands they listen to are commercial shills. The only significant exception (outside of d.i.y. adherents, which bands like this never had a chance to win over) is the young kids who are naively idealistic about the artistic purity of music because they have totally bought the music industry's sales pitch but haven't yet realized it's a sham. If that's who you're trying to crassly market yourself toward, you pretty much deserve any backlash you get.

4) I hate shit like this because it poses as if it were just advocating that bands and "artists" get a fair shake, but I always feel like there is an ulterior, personal motive to legitimate making a fat and easy living off of commercial music promotion.

"As much as I would like for every musician to be able to survive living the Ian MacKaye lifestyle, that's just not realistic"???!!!???

It's not realistic for people to work hard, save their money, encourage thriftiness and honesty and make no bones about it? In other words, it unrealistic for people to be ethical and concious of their own desires to be successful, artistically and financially, on their own terms?

Sorry, but I'm not at all interested in further encouraging an industry that, by this logic, opperates entirely outside the realm of what can be reasonably expected of people.

Ian MacKaye lives a very comfortable lifestyle. And he got there, not by being an industry shill, but through 20+ years of hard work. Just like most of our parents. Just like every great visual artist I can think of. Are musicians supposed to be in some special class of being that absolves them from work yet also allows us to pity them?

I doubt any artist that makes a career of being an artist. In other words, as soon as it becomes one's JOB then it stops being about anything I care about and more about simple production.

May as well argue about the integrity and passion of a shop floor screwdriver or assembly line quality checker.

Unfortunitely it's stil a sin. Except in today's world which the line is more of a blur than fine back in the 1980's

The problem with corporate sponsorhsip thesedays is that the bland and evilness of the organization is now more spread out to the point of exploitation wheresuch nobody would win. However, if the corporation is somehow designed to be a major plus for botht he general public and the underground then everything wil be honky dory. Yet, underground values and the will of the general public are on two different ends of the quality spectrum so we will never see any corportate structure as such.

The music industry is more resilient to change then governmental entities. Government officials have term limits, the music industry has the same old dinosuars working behind the engineer at recording studios for the past few decades. I personally feel that maybe it is about time that a label started to think about providing for artists as they would for their rank and file employees. If the artists nets in that much fr a label then i think the CEO can afford them a medical plan or a dollar for dollar 401K.

Get a decent royalty rate and buy your own insurance. If the label won't pay you enough for you to buy it yourself you really think they'll buy it for you? Ridiculous.

"The music industry is more resilient to change then governmental entities. Government officials have term limits, the music industry has the same old dinosuars working behind the engineer at recording studios for the past few decades."

Studio engineers, maybe, but not label personel and certainly not major label executives. These folks get churned out every few years as soon as records stop selling.

Even with high turnover, the general mindset within the industry is as ancient as an eight track player. The whole system is stragely skewed.

Rob Walker, who writes the New York Times Magazine column "Consumed", made an excellent argument (to me, on the phone—but read everything he writes anyway!) that part of what's changed about "selling out" is that we live in much more financially unstable times now than when the term was first bandied about. And, therefore, that we don't really worry about ideas of selling out because we're too concerned about just getting by.

I also think that there's quite a big argument to be made, as the above posts indicate, that "selling out" has become impossible to track because all the lines between what is and isn't independent and corporate owned have been crossed and recrossed so many times, they're indistinct now. And so there's no one point at which you become a sellout, you're just asked to compromise on larger or smaller scales, depending. You can sell out by making a change to your music to make it slightly more radio-ready, or you can do it by taking that endorsement deal from Hummer. Really what you're doing is compromising your integrity. Whether you get a check for it, a bigger audience, or the best piece of ass you've ever had, you're making a decision to change what you do for a certain benefit—and not because you feel it is the right change to make for its own sake, or for aesthetic or ethical purposes.

Moreover, I think that our notions of selling out have always been a little idealistic. I did workshops on selling out over the summer of 2003 and people seemed to feel like, well, you pretty much sat around all day until a knock came at the door, and a guy in a suit was standing there askin' if you're gonna sell out to him. The term selling out overlooks the fact that what you're doing is being asked to make compromises, and those aren't really cut-and-dried events. They're tiny little changes to how you do things that you've come to see as necessary to what you do.

Anyway. . . and "in conclusion". . . I still care about selling out, cause i'm writing a book about this stuff for The New Press. I've been able, in the course of writing the book, to identify a good 15 other people who care about selling out, too. So: 16 people. That's not so bad!

go read this now: www.robwalker.net

independents' day media rulezzzz!

Well, it'd be nice if the dogmatic element of this debate died away. Y'know the folks who consider any ambitions beyond playing your friend's basement to be "rock star shit." Especially since the most outright dogmatic types have a tendency to end up in L.A. or New York working in the advertising industry or as "creatives" for major corporations.

I think the people who have maintained their credibility--such as Ian MacKaye, for example--realize, as Anne mentions, that selling out is a process that comes out of seemingly minor compromises we make every day. Compromise is part of daily life (unless you're a fucking asshole, most likely driving a Hummer) and the key to retaining your principles is being aware of which compromises are minor, or even preferable, and which undermine your core beliefs. It's certainly not some Uncle Scrooge figure handing you a bag of money. It's the choices you make every day. Most are minor, rarely are they dramatic, but they add up over time.

I think a good number of people still care about "selling out," though the meaning of the term is more confused than ever. They at least care about living what they consider a principled life. I also think, though, that we are living in one of the most proudly, gleefully, capitalistic times in this country's history, which obscures the message. In a time when even punk rock is bling-ed out, it's sometimes hard to remember that there are those of us who aren't ready to jump on the Victory Records Hummer and don the Famous Stars 'n' Straps.

Gosh almighty.

Please discuss.

HOWEVER, I think what's really dangerous here is that those of us who care about living what Paul calls "a principled life" aren't always given the information they need—or given the information they're requesting. There was a great piece in THE NEW YORKER a few months ago about organic foods and it traced the term organic from its roots and its current usage into the marketing term it is now—which basically means that when we SAY "organic" we THINK we mean:
sustainable
grown without pesticides
locally produced
created with other certifiably organic materials
Although technically, all "organic" really means is: grown without pesticides. And the same happened to terms like "indie" and "alternative" years ago, right?

So it's tricky, I think, because these are compromises we're not even being asked to make. They're being snuck into the system at a really early level, and we're sort of agreeing not to dig too deep to discover them.

And who else, besides Ian MacKaye, can we all agree has maintained credibility? That's what I wanna see, that list.

independents' day media rulezzzz!

I just think that discussing the compromise at this level is basically a discussion of misdirections and misnomers. Because compromise is not the issue, rather the control and decision of the compromise is what is at stake.

I mean even dischord records and ian mackaye have participated in stupid marketing ploys and bad faith consumerist practices. Such as repackaging music that I already own and reselling it to me on a new format - the cd.

Did I need to repurchase the Minor Threat discography on cd? No. Yet they made it available and attractive, with new and additional artwork, added tracks, etc. These are major label tatics to make MORE money on an outmoded product by coercing the consumer to re-purchase a product already owned.

Not to mention the fact that the ink, cd, plastic casing and all the mass production aspects of a dischord release are all controlled exploitation and manipulated (at one level or another).

Where I would locate the heart of this debate about "selling out" or living a "principled life" is not in the "marketing" of the means of production, but rather in the means of production themselves.

In other words, if a band signs up for the majors, then more than likely they are looking to turn that band into a full time J-O-B and in doing so surrender the shop floor to the foreman (IE management). But if a band slugs it out in the semi-nebolous world of DIY money laundering, then they are closer to controlling how that product is produced, managed, and so on.

And yes there are compromises every step of the way, but a life without compromise is a very lonely one indeed. For compromise is the heart of collaboration, contribution, and living a principled life.