As a follow-up to the interview we did for this
ABC News article --
Ad Music Brings in Big Exposure for Artists -- about TV commercials as a venue for new music artists like Yael Naim and Sara Bareilles:
"It's completely taken over as a first-hear venue for new artists," said Jon C. Allen, co-owner of AdTunes.com, a blog for music fans who are seeking out the names and titles of songs they hear on commercials.
Ad Tunes was born five years ago in the wake of a memorable Mitsubishi Eclipse ad, but Allen says music junkies continue to visit his site as more ads introduce fresh acts to the mainstream.
"When was the last time you heard new music on FM radio or MTV?" Allen asked. "That doesn't really happen anymore."
To expand on our point about
MTV and new music: viewers do not tune into the channel to hear new music in videos since the network devotes little airtime to music videos. Those videos as a source of new music have been replaced by songs appearing within the soundtracks of MTV shows. Labels are no longer fighting to get their artists latest video onto the network -- they are devoting energy to getting songs into MTV reality shows. For example, in the new season of
The Hills, the network runs captions with the name of the song and artist you are currently hearing -- similar to what was used in music videos. This type of exposure on
The Hills soundtrack backing Lauren Conrad and the gang means much more to an artist's career than having their music video play at 3am. MTV has even embraced the idea of music in commercials through their own
MTV Artist of the Week (recently featuring French-pop singer
Yelle), which features new artists performing in the MTV commercial "bumpers" running over the credits between shows.
