iPod commercials are the new ad outlet for music artists

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By Kayla Falgoust

While music channels like MTV are busy airing ridiculous reality shows about the lives of various pseudo-celebs, audiences are forced to look for new music beyond the scope of the small screen. As the art form formally known as the music video dies on the shelves of MTV executives, one last music outlet exists in the form of Apple’s iPod commercials.

The newest iPod + iTunes ad features members of Coldplay along with the song “Viva La Vida,” the first single from the band’s newly released album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. Even though Coldplay is one of the most popular and most successful bands in the world, the ad was undoubtedly a conscious attempt by the band to promote their new album.

But let’s not forget that the commercial is supposed to be selling an Apple product – not the music featured in it. Then again, in this day and age, it’s all the same to Apple, Inc., which recently became the top-selling music store in America with the ongoing success of iTunes.

Thus, Apple has gradually become the hottest advertising outlet for music via their iPod TV ads, turning nobodies into superstars all within a 30-second TV commercial – one that has the fundamental purpose of selling iPods.

For example, Feist has been around for a long time, but she didn’t come to widespread fame in the United States until recently. The Canadian songstress started playing music with a local punk band in high school and recorded her first album entitled Monarch (Lay Your Jewelled Head Down) in 1999 at the age of 23, an album that is currently out-of-print.

Today, even though most forget that she has a first name or is a member of the popular indie supergroup Broken Social Scene, Leslie Feist is most easily described by simply counting, and she has the iPod Nano commercial that featured her infectious indie-pop hit “1234” to thank for that.

“1234” was a single off of Feist’s third full-length album entitled The Reminder, which was released in May of 2007. In September of the same year, “1234” was used in the aforementioned iPod Nano ad, and sales for both the single and The Reminder experienced a phenomenal increase – not to mention that she later received a Grammy nomination for the song.

Similarity, other up-and-coming acts have received the same boost from the Apple ads, especially with debut albums sales.

The first such notable case is the single “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?” from the Australian alt-rock group Jet’s debut entitled Get Born. In April of 2003, an iPod commercial premiered that featured the upbeat song as the backdrop music to a menagerie of dancing black silhouettes. As a result, the song became an instant hit – even before the official release of the single and the band’s debut album later that year.

Later, in 2006, Wolfmother’s “Love Train” was featured in an iPod commercial. Although the single itself did not find tremendous radio success, the band’s self-titled debut album, which was released a month later, went on to peak at #22 on the Billboard 200.

Recently, lesser-known indie acts have been receiving greater mainstream exposure from Apple’s popular iPod ads.

On the heels of the widespread popularity of the ad featuring Feist’s “1234,” Apple released a new iPod commercial in October of 2007 that featured the song “Music is My Hot Hot Sex” by CSS, an indie-rock/electro-pop group from Brazil. The commercial was created by Nick Haley, an English student and avid Mac fan, and picked up by Apple for an iPod Touch commercial.

Likewise, in April of 2008, another indie rock group called the Ting Tings had a song featured in one of Apple’s coveted iPod commercials. “Shut Up and Let Me Go,” a single from their debut album We Started Nothing was used in a recent iPod + iTunes ad.

Surfacing from obscurity, both CSS and the Ting Tings are touring extensively and finding tremendous success even outside of the indie circuit.

Needless to say, Apple’s iPod ads have become effective advertising outlets for more than just Apple products, as Apple makes itself at home within the confines of the music industry.

Originally Published: Issue 691 - July 2, 2008

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