Sunday, April 12, 2009

Brit Music Scene

Brit Music Scene

Franz Ferdinand Snub Cash, Retain Integrity

Posted: 11 Apr 2009 02:11 PM PDT

In this day and age when record sales are down, artists have to do more than just record an album and hope it sells by the bucket load in order to survive. Instead they have to sell merchandising, gig all year round, and get their music out there in all manner of other ways.

One method is to license tracks for use in adverts, which can be a very profitable way to go about it. Just ask Moby, who famously licensed every single track on his Play album. He consequently made a mint but it’s now impossible to listen to that LP without brands floating into your mind.

Some bands are stronger than Moby, possibly not motivated by greed quite so much. As it is with Franz Ferdinand, who have snubbed the chance to earn extra cash to instead hold on to their integrity.

While being interviewed on the radio recently, the band stated how they’d been offered the chance to license Bite Hard from current album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, to a large Mexican fast food chain in the United States.

Without ever naming the chain involved lead singer, Alex Kapranos, told Absolute Radio:

“They asked if they could use our song ‘Bite Hard and I think the idea was people were going to be biting into their chili enchilada while the song was in the background.”

“It would be like going to McDonald’s or something like that. It just didn’t seem right.”

I suspect it would have been used more for adverts than in-store but the point remains the same - Franz Ferdinand snubbed cash in order to retain their integrity as artists. And I take my hat off to them for doing so.

[Photo Source: Newscom]

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