ABSTRACT
The presence of popular music in television commercials continues to be met with concern from fans, critics, and musicians worried about the meaning of “sellingout” and the potential consequences of tearing down the wall, however porous and poorly defined, between artistic and commercial interests. Even as individuals who formerly opposed the practice have started to relent and reconsider the practice on a case-by-case basis, most people would not want their favorite song used to sell a product or service. The protectiveness with which popular music as a popular art is guarded can be understood as a result of the combination of the ambiguity of art-ness as an attribute and the upward battle that popular music, as a form that relies on mass-production, -distribution and -consumption, has faced in being legitimated as art. The use of popular music in advertising thus engages with old debates about the status of popular music as art, the status of art as commodity, and the tensions between artistic and commercial endeavors.
