A couple weeks ago, we posted a link to an interview with John Roderick of the Long Winters where he questions if there is even such a thing as “selling out” in this age of music licensing, co-branding, & corporate sponsorships.Perhaps it is just the new form of “selling” (something we can hardly begrudge artists for).
Today, we came across this article in the Village Voice about how Converse is opening a studio in NYC for bands of their choosing to use for free. Corporate curation is nothing new, but it IS becoming more common, and certainly more accepted, especially among the bands and genres that it most benefits.
Are you selling out if you take money, promotion, or “free” services from Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Nike, or Apple? Or are you simply making a wise decision on behalf of your music and business? Are there strings attached? Are they worth it? We’d love to hear what you have to say about “selling out”?
-Chris R. at CD Baby
(photo of shoe taken by Suat Eman, as featured on FreeDigitalPhotos.net who has kindly given us permission to use it for free)
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.