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Stoneage
When does something become a sell-out? Are setlist painted with felt pens in bright
colors for steep money a sell-out? Or giving your name to a shoe, like this one?
Any opinions?
What are the various categories of sell-out, I wonder?
-Product endorsements
-Tour sponsorships
-Music licensing
-Artistic abdication (i.e., creating music you don't believe in for commercial gain)
The Dylan example below is an interesting one -- what category does that fall into? He's using his brand to create a new product line (which carries with it a certain business risk) ... he's not just cashing a check from Maker's Mark. (Although if memory serves he did cash a pretty famous one from Victoria's Secret, no?) Does that make his whiskey endeavor less of a sell-out or is it still a sell-out?
Are the Stones more of a sell-out because they associated themselves with Windows rather than with the MacOS? Or because they allowed a shitty cologne onto tix from their '81 tour?
And when does a band licensing its music for use in a film become a sell-out? Does it depend on the quality of the film?
In many cases, a product tie-in probably seems more like a sell-out when the core quality of the product being hawked is diametrically opposed to the public image of the hawkee ...