Buying muzak is cool with busy boomers.

July 4, 2001 5:18 PM

Buying muzak is cool with busy boomers. "Oh I listen to Victoria's Secret brand muzik." This is creepy if you generally self-identify with music, but in another sense perhaps just marks another way music is increasingly just a design choice for many people. After all, I see a lot of brand logos on t-shirts, so? Somehow this ties in with digital music and the equalizing of the artist/audience relationship, too. (Music is rarely foreground for me, but I'll mix my own sets, thank you very much.)
posted by aflakete (11 comments total)

I blame decaf.
posted by dong_resin at 6:09 PM on July 4, 2001

My favorite line (also the last one):

"For a platinum-selling artist, that is a really unusual thing to do," said Jeff Daniel, Rock River's executive vice president. "They realize there is no stigma to selling out."

posted by jaded at 6:17 PM on July 4, 2001

interesting. corporate mix tapes.

"Ten years ago I would have been younger and hipper and more self-conscious about it," Mr. Corrigan said. "Now I'm like, 'I like the songs.'" so a lot of this has to do with with distancing oneself from music as an ego-definer and having the self-confidence to buy the music one likes, whatever the source. that ability to *really* follow your own heart, to actually not care what the world thinks, is one of the advantages of age. weird to see it exploited by corporate america.

the only part of this that really bothers me is that sales at victoria's secret go up when the cd goes on the player.
posted by rebeccablood at 6:57 PM on July 4, 2001

I saw a little piece in a travel magazine recently that talks abou the fact that while the big hotel chains are making a bundle selling big ticket things like beds, smaller "boutique hotels" are putting out CDs of the music that they feel respresents their "ambiance." And yes, according to the bit, most of it sounds like new-agey, ambient musak.
posted by fpatrick at 7:36 PM on July 4, 2001

Oh, by the way, as a 50-year-old "representative" of that infamous "pig in a python," not all of us boomers are so busy/lazy or out of touch that we have to rely on Victoria's Secret or Starbucks for our music. Why just the other day (he said in a pretensious, self-congradulatory manner), I was showing off iTunes on my G4 Powerbook and was complimented on having Radiohead, Aphex Twin, and The Orb liberally represented along with the Beach Boys, Dave Bruebeck, and Pere Ubu in the playlist. Enough real music in my 5+ gigs of mp3s to create my own muzak when I flip the switch to random play.
posted by fpatrick at 7:50 PM on July 4, 2001

Sunn 0))), elevator music from Hell... I actually own one of their albums, and it's damn cool 'music'.
posted by Dark Messiah at 7:57 PM on July 4, 2001

I linked to this before in another thread about that uncool stuff we cherish but hide.

In 1983, Jean Michel Jarre made an album called "Music for Supermarkets", pressed one copy, destroyed the master tapes, broadcast it once on the radio, then auctioned the album which eventually sold for $15000 (no idea what that's worth in todays market, but considerably more I'd have thought).

The whole opperation was a symbolic flicking of the bird to both the recording industry and to artists in general selling out.

This year his music is being used in a huge campaign to sell a french car. I guess there is no stigma to selling out.
posted by davehat at 8:34 PM on July 4, 2001

I hope you guys aren't talking about my "Best Of Old Navy" CD. I really like those bands like "Tool" and "Outkast".
posted by GriffX at 10:23 PM on July 4, 2001

"EH? EH?!" It got too loud. I got too old.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:29 AM on July 5, 2001

Wouldn't it be cool if someone pressing one of these discs of watery muck slipped in a song by Japan, Shudder to Think, Cardiacs, Dali's Car, etc.?
posted by 4midori at 9:04 AM on July 5, 2001

The Starbuckization of the world continues as planned...
posted by rev- at 10:45 AM on July 5, 2001