This is your CD with Advertisements?
I just ran across this article about Mariah Carey’s forthcoming CD. I don’t pay attention to that style of music (she has a lovely voice, it’s just not my preference for songwriting), but this article wasn’t about the music: it’s called The Monetization of Mimi and it’s about how Island/Def Jam is paying for the CD by putting advertisements in the CD booklet.
Art and commerce are sometimes uneasy bedfellows, sometimes nearly indistinguishable. Obviously, this is more the latter—nothing uneasy about this paring, everyone is gung ho about it. And frankly, I don’t know enough about Carey’s career to know if at this point she is as much a “product pitchwoman” as a singer. But somehow, this novel way of making money leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I understand that CDs aren’t as profitable as they once were. But this “ad-booklet” is also the downloadable booklet, so it’s everyone gets it. I understand that huge, big studio records have a lot of overhead. And I’m guessing that pop music doesn’t have loyal fans like Nine Inch Nails that will buy expensive boxed sets, offsetting the losses from those who download the album for nothing.
But still, this smells funny to me. Yes, all music sold in the market place becomes “content for sale,” but this feels like the music is truly secondary to advertising the products. And the record company is trying to pass this off as a great “lifestyle” thing that fans will like, I guess to take some of the sting out of it.
I guess I always looked at the CD booklet as art…something special for the fans who wanted to buy something physical, not just download the music. I understand that you need to cover your costs. And maybe I’d feel different if Gillette offered Ember After $50,000 to put a razor ad in our CD booklet. But it still smells like cheapening the art. And that makes me sad.