Artist Sponsorships

Artist Sponsorships Team 21 Pilots: Hannah Kelly, Ian Green and Annalisa Canepa Music Copyright and Publishing Fall 2016 !1 It comes as no surprise that the music industry experiences change over the years. Most recently, streaming has become the primary way to consume music, artists grow less reliant on record labels to release music, and artist sponsorships are becoming essential in almost all aspects of an artist’s career. Artist sponsorships existed before streaming and record labels, but they have shifted in both deal structure and public perception. The history of sponsorship deals reveals why companies want to be involved with artists, and why artists want to be sponsored by a certain company. While the deals are different between the largest artists and smaller artists, sponsorships aim to benefit both parties. The industry is enduring change, and the range of sponsorships grows yearly, but sponsorships seem engrained as a reliable and expanding source of revenue for artists, as well as a source of branding for companies, both in the current music industry and into the future. In the first half of the 20th century, American music experienced great historical social and political changes, along with technological advances that allowed for greater access to music in the presence of vinyl records, radio stations, and television. These changes brought on opportunities for not only the music industry, but advertising for large corporations and companies as well. The growth and changes in the music industry introduced several generations of change, and the introduction of artist sponsorships has changed greatly from the experience at a typical concert today with prevalent artist and corporate partnerships. Before technology brought American music to everyday households, popular music became known in communities by way of the traveling shows, medicine shows and tent shows. Music evolved to accommodate the needs of a growing audience, where “bluesmen who migrated north and settled in cities found employment in clubs. Like the country artists who !2 created honky-tonk, and for the same reason (to be heard over the crowd noise), they started adding rhythm instruments to their sound, first piano, then bass and drums.”1 The rise of the influence of music was gradual, but it was not the result of large corporate sponsorships. Record labels, radio stations, or venues provided the primary financial support of these acts in development, touring and merchandising. Radio created promotional opportunities involving the music in the thirties and forties, and the live concerts, medicine shows, tent shows and traveling shows were coming of age. “These organizations, transported by horse-drawn wagons in the early days, would move into a rural community, stake out their tents, and hold nightly shows that might run as long as a week, and then move on to another excited community.”2 The start of a communal musical festival atmosphere began to blossom. In the forties, bluesmen transferred their guitar style from acoustic to electric guitar. “By the late Forties, the electric blues band was complete: vocalist/electric guitarist, piano, bass, perhaps another guitarist, and drums. This instrumentation became the nuclear rock 'n' roll band,” further setting a precedent for the highly influential music of the fifties and sixties that served to revolutionize the music industry and introduce music as a factor of cultural impact.3 In the fifties, with the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll music, popular radio, and recording artists, concerts were likely to be associated with either a record label, a radio station, or a venue. If did a promoter's name appeared on a bill, it would likely be in a smaller font and less prominent in comparison with the artists’ names. At this time, the artists themselves were the products and brands - the products and brands that would change the world. Live concert venues !3 shifted from ballrooms, country clubs, and dance halls to larger auditoriums and concert halls. The music audience was growing, and so was the influence of musical artists on society. In the sixties, music served as inspiration and agent for social change. During times of the civil rights movement, songs about social justice, empathy, social change, peace and love dominated the scene. Artists and audiences found an emergence of the folk rock movement, where the authenticity of the music became strongly valued, so any corporation or commercialism would be seen as an interference with the musical integrity of the music. The audience heard music as a call to social activism, and the musical audience began to identify with artists as spokespersons. The concept of authenticity during the sixties continued as a number of “musicians performed songs expressing their opposition to the Vietnam War, a sentiment that was enthusiastically shared by the vast majority of the audience. Later, the term ‘Woodstock Nation’ would be used as a general term to describe the youth counterculture of the 1960s.”4 The importance of the protest songs, anti-war songs, and themes of authenticity, peace and love would not translate well to advertising for beer, washing machines, or other commercial products, so advertising’s connection to music was not as easily accepted as it would be for later generations. Rock concerts in this pivotal decade evolved to fulfill the needs of a growing audience who demanded access to popular culture and music. Rock concerts held influence as a source of revolutionary counterculture, and served to “coalesce the disparate fragments of this eclectic society, several catalysts were necessary. One came in the form of rock concert halls… Concerts gradually moved to stadiums and sports arenas seating 50,000 and more.”5 The larger concert !4 venue, and rock festivals became an important influence on the culture as the identity of music fans as the masses became to take shape as its generation found connection and identity in the communal musical experience. Often promotional companies or management personalities, such as Bill Graham Presents, were known as the sponsors of prominent concerts such as in the San Francisco Bay Area during the emerging sixties rock counterculture. The late sixties and early seventies saw the beginnings of a transitional time for corporate sponsorships, as the opportunities for music fans to buy live concert footage, live concert records and tour merchandise began to grow out of the counterculture of the decade. One of the largest examples of this appeared when in “1969, the grooviest event in music history–the Woodstock Music Festival–[drew] to a close after three days of peace, love and rock ‘n’ roll in upstate New York.”6 Profits from film and concert footage from the event would eventually surpass the base profits of the event itself. The trend to consume more of the experience from the counterculture continued to rise. In the “mid-70s, when music sponsorships really began, the corporate side was very fearful of the countercultural image of rock ‘n’ roll, and most of Madison Avenue shared the same sentiment. Today, most of the senior and middle-level managers in the agency and client world are products of the baby-boom era. They grew up with rock ‘n’ roll.”7 The generational differences became divisive in the corporate world, and for the baby-boomer generation whose Depression-era parents grew up with a more clean cut image and big band and swing musical influence, the popular artists of the sixties and seventies had a rebellious edge. There was hesitation from both the artists and companies on forming corporate partnerships and !5 relationships to identify with one another, as generational views of sponsorships created a range of opinions on utilizing corporate money in music. Many artists in the seventies rejected the idea of a company’s advertisement, logo or ethical choices influencing the artists’ musical or artistic expression. For The Clash, for example, a strong punk rock do-it-yourself work ethic served as a struggle between the label and artist. The idea of selling out or going mainstream is still controversial today in some musical genres that support the idea of non-commercialism, or fight the idea of music going broadly mainstream or overtly commercial. The relationships between music and corporations drastically changed in the next decade with the influence of MTV and a new generation coming of age alongside technological advances. In the eighties, MTV and commercialism had great influence on the impact of music and popular culture, interweaving advertising and music together for artists, commercials, and sponsorships. Music festivals drew tremendous crowds, and “corporate sponsorship of musicians was one of the signs of the growing convergence of popular music and advertising, and corporate sponsorship of rock music tours reached new heights by the end of the 1980s, when many top musicians were expected to negotiate lucrative deals for sponsorship of their tours.”8 During this time, large festivals such as Farm Aid, Live Aid, and the US Festival grew, all benefiting from robust financial sponsorship backing from Steve Wozniak of Apple Computer and Bill Graham of Bill Graham Presents production company. The introduction of MTV meant more visible, direct opportunities for artist endorsements. Music in advertising was on the rise, often becoming fully integrated into television commercials as jingles. Advertisers such as Pepsi, Target and Budweiser developed !6 relationships with top tier artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna. One particular artist, Neil Young, created a parody song and accompanying music video that made a mockery of the overt commercialism prevalent in modern music. As a result, Young was initially banned from MTV. In response to the banning of the music video from the station, the artist wrote a letter to the popular network: “MTV, you spineless twerps. You refuse to play ‘This Note's For You’ because you're afraid to offend your sponsors.

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