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the advertisement, and the public are happy with it. Looking at websites all over the Internet, people are asking Who sang the music for this advertisement or that advertisement, and to me it isn't a sell out. It's an extension of their career and if people can find a market for their music through advertisements, again, why should it be perceived as selling out ?

Taking the premise a step further, look at the good that television does to further the career of new stars. One may say they are selling out to commercial television, although the reverse is actually the case. Snow Patrol, little heard of before the program Grays Anatomy was screened, have now gained the reward that they merited, and instead of being considered as selling out, the artists that were used and paid for production of music for serials like Grays found a way to put music in the forefront of the publics mind, adding to the atmosphere of many episodes and selling music through their own merits.

Taking the sell out premise even further and looking at rock stars that have made it to the top of the historical charts as mega stars, is it not more of a sell out to behave in a manner that upsets and sets terrible examples to those young people who become their fans ? Do we really need to be reminded of their love lives, their indiscretions and brushes with the law ? Here, to me, this is the worst kind of sell out because those musicians that hit the tabloids in the manner described owe their public more than they are giving, and are selling out their private lives, their personalities, and forgetting the very reason why they are rock stars in the beginning, by producing music.

The ultimate sell out is that which is staged worldwide by mega stars that could be using their skills like other musicians that help international and little known artists to progress like Sting or Peter Gabriel to name a few, and consider themselves bigger than the music they are producing. These are the sell outs, though they should never forget that even at the height of stardom, each one of them has a sell by date, and for some, this has passed.

Learn more about this author, Rachelle de Bretagne.
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