Written By: Margaret Blaha
Selling out or “whoring” as Hemingway called it has sort of become a hallmark of our generation. In most artistic industries, a person has to sell out to make a living. The common conception is that an artist has to sell out for a period of time in order to gain some notoriety, which will allow him to do the work he wants to do. But how often does this actually pan out? And what is it that you are actually sacrificing by selling out? As it turns out, it’s not something that an artist can just turn on and off while still maintaining his individuality.
But perhaps none of this matters in a social media-saturated society where anyone can become a phenomenon by simply posting a YouTube video of a flying Pop Tart cat. With all this noise, it’s easy for real talent to get lost in the shuffle. Basically, an artist won’t be able to sell anything unless he can help to sell a brand. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the music industry, which has probably been hurt the most by the technological revolutions of recent years. No one buys CDs or records anymore, so the industry had to evolve in order to make money. The music industry at pretty much every level–from mainstream to independent–has become part of one huge marketing scheme.
An article in New York Magazine back in 2008 described the business model of the then up-and-coming Brooklyn pop phenom Santi White, which has now become the norm for virtually every artist. Every artist who cares about making money, that is. White’s music had been used in scenes of Grey’s Anatomy and in commercials for Bud Light and Converse. People find new music these days because they heard a song playing in a Target commercial or on an episode of Girls.
Marmoset Music is an agency that actually helps independent artists license their work. They began as a company that strictly composed its own music for “story-driven mediums” before it started receiving requests from artists who needed a way of getting their music heard. Marmoset claims that it is fighting the good fight by garnering respect for the music of the artists they advocate. But the company’s mission isn’t to attain respect for the music itself; it’s mission is to market the music to be included on a television show’s soundtrack. Co-founder Ryan Wines has even stated that the company is in the business of “helping artists sell out.”
Though can we actually call this selling out anymore if it is what every industry has come to? Is it really damaging to the artist on an individual level? Integrity and principles seem useless in an increasingly unstable industry, and it’s not just the music industry that lacks stability. The world of publishing has been tumbling down a rabbit hole for years now, and navigating the industry has never been easy for young, aspiring, “serious” writers. Serious writing doesn’t pay the rent. In order for a writer to establish herself, she often has to sell her soul to a publishing company to ghostwrite a well-established series that is not her own. These, again, are brands that are wildly popular and spin into larger franchises like movies.
On Salon, Anna Davies gives a personal account of how she took a job as a ghostwriter for such a series to make money and ended up losing her voice as a writer. She was given characters and plot for each book; her job was to move the characters from point A to point B. While she tried to separate this job from her “real writing life,” there was no way for her to keep the two parallel. As the job consumed her, her own novel languished. She started to be passed over for projects because none of her work had “heart.” As Davies said, she had given it to the company she was ghostwriting for the moment she signed the contract.
Heart. Voice. These are important in the creative industries. Otherwise all you’re making is noise, all you’re doing is pushing to become a phenomenon. Selling out is commonplace, but it shouldn’t be. Artists are eventually bound to feel the effects of doing what they enjoy for someone other than themselves–their hearts will harden. You can’t blame an artist for selling out, either. Fame may not be important to an artist, but recognition is certainly necessary for one to thrive. That’s hard to do when millions of other people are vying for attention and becoming famous for anything short of creative. Selling out is just a way to cut through all the noise.
Photo Cred: milwaukeedrum.com