SELLING OUT Page 6

The Truth of Selling Out

Real Big Fish, a band currently residing in the "where are they now" file, might have stated it best in their brutally honest radio hit "Sell Out", "Sell out, with me oh yea, sell out, with me tonight, record company's gonna give me lots of money and everything's gonna be all right". With lyrics like this, it is all too ironic that Real Big Fish are now labeled as "one hit wonders". Regardless of their career status, Real Big Fish captured the essence of "Selling Out"…money. Whether this is the artists' intent or not does not matter. The music business is just that, a business. Like any other business, its drive is to generate revenue. The artist has to know this, accept this, and use this. For an artist to be heard, they have to allow the forces to work for them, not against them.

Thus it is important that fans realize the exact same thing. If "their" band didn't have the backing of a label or didn't use the forces of the market, it is likely that they might have never even heard of the band in the first place. Even if they had, it is hard for a band to financially survive without any commercial success.

It is a hard reality to digest for many music fans, but in today's popular music market, there are forces that are stronger than simply the music. Accepting this as a fact is the key to understanding the nature of selling out. There is a fine line between selling out and not selling out, and it is often crossed. That line is crossed when the money becomes more important than the music, when the casual listener is catered to over the true fan, and when conformity to the mainstream becomes the main concern, but there is no harm in getting the music heard.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
DiPerna, Alan. Young, Lound, & Snotty. Guitar World.
(online) http://www.guitarworld.com/artistindex/9608.greenday.html.
Frith, Simon. On Record. Routledge, London. 1990.

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