More Great Moments In Music Licensing

Here's something YOU oughta know, VH1: I'm going to have a seizure if I hear that Duffy song one more time.

Maybe it's not really fair to complain, though, since any small gesture by the mainstream entertainment overlords to promote up-and-coming artists should be encouraged. I have over 700 hours worth of music on my iPod, and even I'm bored. Given that I'm inundated with new music on a regular basis, I can't imagine how people with real jobs and no access to free album advances manage to stumble across anything other than what the marketing monkeys dangle in front of you.

Ah, but there is a way. Music supervision to the rescue. However, they will only take you halfway there. Like all good things, you have to work for it.

Generally I have very little patience for car commericals since (along with erectile dysfunction medication) there are few products that I'm less likely to buy, no matter how hard you sell it. I do have to applaud Kia, though, for a clever concept as well as for introducing me to Joe Purdy.



After seeing the commerical for the 30th time, I realized that I found the song endearing rather than annoying and did a little research online. Having an intense fondess for gifted songwriters, I promptly added all of Joe Purdy's albums to my collection. I can't imagine I ever would have heard of him otherwise, given that he is unlikely to collaborate with Timbaland and my refusal to watch Grey's Anatomy.

One afternoon there was a marathon of that short-lived Dick Wolf experiement Conviction on SleuthTV (yes, it's really a channel, and I feel sorry for you if you don't have it - Simon & Simon reruns!). I got sort of suckered into the show itself, but after 12 hours of hearing the theme song, I was intrigued enough to find out who it was. The song was edgy and electronic and not really the sort of thing that you'd think would lend itself to a show about 20-something Manhattan ADAs and their wacky hijinx. Oh but it works! Thus my introduction to Syntax.




Streaming episodes of Conviction are archived here, for the curious - it's really pretty entertaining.

More recently, VH1 was running an ad for it's trifecta of trainwreck narcissim featuring Rock of Love, My Fair Brady and Scott Baio is 45...And A Tool, using the inspired choice of (thanks for the chyron in this case) Ben Lee's "American Television." Solely through pop culture osmosis, I knew two things about Ben Lee up until that point - a) he is Australian and b) he once dated Mandy Moore. While I wasn't totally in love with the album after I finally listened to it, there were certainly enough good songs to make it worthy of downloading. As a matter of fact, I apparently wasn't the only one who realized there was a possible marketing opportunity here (really? you think?) - about a month after the ad stopped airing, VH1 added the actual video to its limited rotation of music video programming.



So this is how it's going to be now, I guess - we're forced to use commercials for things we don't even want as our introduction to new music. I just hope the cold hard truth of that inspires the creative use of lesser-known artists. I'm proof that it actually will entice people to purchase music by the artist in question. It does take the extra step of digging around on the internet sometimes, but when your iPod has 10,000 songs that you don't want to hear, isn't it worth it?