There has been a lot of discussion concentrating on the effects that may occur from mainstream appropriation of underground genres such as hip hop and punk. It has been argued at length that often when music is commodified, it is used as a device in advertising to sell other products. The general consensus (which I used to agree with and still partially do) seems to be that this is a negative effect. However, upon seeing the new Yahoo!Xtra ad campaign whose TV advertisement uses Regina Spektor's song Fidelity I've started to view things differently.
Previous to the campaign, Spektor was an unknown, working on the margins of popular culture within the Anti-Folk genre. Notably, the song Fidelity appears on the album Begin To Hope, which was released last year to much critical acclaim but little popular media attention. Post campaign, her single and album is sitting pretty in the charts and getting high rotation on top 40 radio stations and popular music TV channels like C4. I've liked Regina Spektor for a while and my initial reaction was feelings that she'd "sold out" and let the meaning of her music be "tainted". However, a bit after it dawned on me that she was benefiting as an artist in reaching a larger audience and that being popular isn't entirely negative-it just means more people are enjoying your music. You could even look at it in a kind of post modern way and argue that the 'little guy' (Spektor) is taking advantage of, and subverting the power of, "the big guy" (Yahoo!Xtra) by profiting from their use of her music, while simultaneously using the ad to heighten her profile as an artist. This means although an advertisement may use music solely to sell a product, positive outcomes for the artist and music can still occur. Thus, it can be seen that an advertisement can be as much a platform for a marginalised artist, as a song is a platform to access the viewers’ attention and gain interest in a product.
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