Bill's point about the money makes a heck of a lot of sense - songwriter
royalties often times end up being more lucrative than the performer's own
royalty.  Case in point - Adrian Belew made more money in his career from
being a songwriter on "Genius Of Love" (once it was sampled by Mariah Carey
for whatever song she used it on) than from anything else he's done.  Sad
fact, considering his solo output, The Bears, and the Crimson stuff, but
that's how the biz is.  I'd be happy to have the royalty checks!

Me, I despise The White Stripes, and would likely buy Benson's original
anyway - but that's not the point.  The car commercial exposure doesn't
hurt, but honestly, how many people do you think take the time to search out
the information on who the artist or what the song is after seeing the
commercial?  Probably not that many...if they would superimpose a brief
credit onscreen during the ad, that might increase the sales.  I'm not
putting down the use of underground artists in commercials, as they are
likely generating a substantial chunk of royalty or licensing fee for the
artist & songwriter involved.  And that, sadly, is what keeps a lot of those
people afloat financially - probably moreso than CD sales.

And for those folks that do read every credit on their CD liners who then go
in search of new avenues of listening because of their exposure to something
other than the recording artist's own material - I raise my cup of grog to
you!  

Brioohs

on 4/27/03 2:00 PM, audities-owner@smoe.org at audities-owner@smoe.org
wrote:

> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 14:40:01 -0400
> From: Kevin <oddsmusic@comcast.net>
> To: "'*Bill Holmes*'" <bholmes_fm@msn.com>, audities@smoe.org
> Subject: Re: Too soon to be covering songs (was RE: Seven Nation Army)
> Message-ID: <001601c30cec$6ae2f5e0$6401a8c0@LAPTOP>
> 
> 
> 
>> Why, Kevin? Wouldn't it be nice if the fact that they covered
>> the song drew
>> some attention to the artist?
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't see it happening that way.  Lets say you've got 2
> artists.
> 
> Artist-A is a very popular flavor-of-the-month.
> Artist-B is an unknown up-and-comer.
> 
> Joe Schmoe walks into a music store and sees the same song on both
> Artist-A and Artist-B's CD.  He's never heard of Artist-B but he hears
> about Artist-A all the time.  He'll spend his money on Artist-A.
> 
>> Car commercials? Yeah, THAT will make him famous.
>> (see cash is good comment above, though). At least
>> the record will identify him by name.
> 
> And see, I think people are much more likely to hear a song now in a car
> commercial and then hunt down the artist.  Hell, the car websites
> recognize this enough that they even make areas specifically about the
> music in their commercials.  (see Moby, the Da-Da-Da band, etc)
> 
> I think when an artist covers a song thats STILL out and considered a
> "new" song, they end up hurting the band they're covering.
> 
> -kev
>