Great music in bad commercials - what can you do?

Beethoven "Ode To Joy" for the Direct TV ads.

Worse, someone at my sons school identified it as the "Direct TV .....Movies, Movies song" when the teacher played it for the class.

At least my son was pissed about it.

Led Zep and Cadillac. For the life of me I cannot figure what prompted Cadillac to select Rock and Roll. Does Cadillac think they'll suddenly cater to the 40 year-olds? Unlikely. Equally puzzling, do Page, Plant, and Jones need the cash that bad?

I agree about the Beethoven. It is used by others also. I think it is a crime against humanity. I guess when it is in the public domain we are going to get this from time to time.

Beethoven's prototype for the 9th symphony the Choral Fantasy, has the solo piano passage that Dean Witter used for a long time. Everytime I hear the Choral Fantasy now, my mind waits for that voice to come on. !#&%!!

For copywrited music I find it interesting that David Byrne (Talking Heads), who became famous by making fun of the establishment with his music; sold the right to use his song "Like Humans Do" to Microsoft. It is the music featured with the Windows XP operating system, in commericals and what you hear when you turn your computer on for the first time.

I think David Byrne is still making fun of the establishment. At least the Heads always had a sense of humor. And nothing is better than that, is it? The bit on Windows is also almost unrecognizable. But to answer the question, that Cadillac thing naseates me. Zeppelin, whose music I love, has almost zero sense of humor and was always non-commercial, at least in attitude, and not including Peter Grant (big exception, I know, but he stayed out of the music). I want to think that it just can't be worth the money, although I heard somewhere that when Windows 95 was launched, the Evil Empire paid the Stones $7 million for Start Me Up. That's a ton. But I always hate it when music becomes tied to a specific thing; it's so limiting. I still can't hear After Midnight without thinking about beer!

I'm shocked! I'm truly shocked! Imagine somebody using music for crass commercial purposes. In a way this is a variation of hero worship. Just because someone is talented, athletic or beautiful, we as fans assume that these people share our politics, our interests or our ethics. There's a tremendous amount of money to be made in music for advertising. We should not be disappointed if people we truly admire have a price. I read that Microsoft paid up to $2.5 million each for the music rights associated with Windows XP. David Bynre is very talented and he is obviously no fool.

I agree with you Onhwy61, I just found the part about Byrne interesting. More power to him. Money still talks.

The only one that seemed unsettling to me was Martin Luther King's family selling his legacy to a telecommunications company. Imagine school children learning about Dr. King in school and putting down on a history quiz: "That's the telephone guy".

At least the administration was joking about raising money by changing the Lincoln Memorial in DC to the Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

I just heard a version of "Taxman" on an H.R. Block commercial. That's a "great" tribute to the legacy of George Harrison. One that I think is actually amusing is the NY lottery commercial with the Barenaked Ladies "If I had a million dollars" with "real" people singin over the tune.

I guess my beef is not that the artist sells it, but that the artist is dead, like louis armstrong, nico, or nick drake, and the music is thrown into a commercial without their permission or consultation. For example, Janis Joplin singin' about a mercedes in a benz commercial. When did she give her permission for that particular context? Flipside to this is that commercial soundtracking is often the only broad exposure some very quality songs and artists will get - they certainly don't get it on the radio. For example Nick Drake sold more albums after the volkswagen commercial than he did when he was alive.

Another beef: the artists are rarely credited, although their music has so much impact in the ad. The product, not the artist, gets the most mileage from the music. Often on the radio they'll use part of a song as a filler between ads or segments that they would never dream of playing next to britney or garth or u2. And they never seem to credit the songs, except if you call the station or look them up on the web, and maybe you'll find it. and maybe you won't.

I always have to chuckle when I see that commercial for a cruise ship that features "Lust For Life" by Iggy Pop & the Stooges. I'm sure the incongruity of that really appealled to his sense of the absurd. Like that scene in the Albert Brooks movie where he is lumbering down the highway in his huge RV accompanied by Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild".

It can be a good thing. I would never have heard the music of Nick Drake if Volkswagon hadn't used it in the ad.