skronk wrote:The major difference is a) you work for them, as in clean, make coffee, sell muffins, chat with customers.

The other is B) You're an artist who is promoting him/herself through the use of Starbucks, and it's advertising. Your art is now tied into the Starbucks business, which in and of itself, has nothing to do with art.

With b, you are making your art the commodity, like the coffee they are selling. It (your art) ceases to become the end in itself, but becomes a means by which coffee is sold. It is a gimmick to try and get potential customers into their store by offering your art.

Option a has nothing to do with option b, even if it's in the same establishment. Making coffee for a paycheck doesn't amount to selling your art.

Good response. That's basically what I would have said before the start of this thread though and I want to push this further out of intellectual curiosity.

Wouldn't the act of selling art to anyone, anywhere make it a commodity? Isn't a commodity just something that can be bought and sold?

If I completed a piece of music and had it done, sealed and ready to ship but then sold it through Starbucks, how does it effect my art retro-actively?

steve wrote:Try reading them my response. Unless you'd rather just persist in saying two obviously different things are "the same." In which case, go right ahead.

Oops, missed your response. Sorry for that.

Well, I don't know anything unless someone explains it to me. I'm an agonizingly slow learner and I appreciate you have stuff to do rather than sit here and spoon-feed me stuff I should already know.

From SPIKE magazine:

Well, I was watching the Spice Girls movie" Moore recalls, turning unpredictable all of a sudden "and when they cover Gary Glitter's 'You Wanna Be In My Gang" I got goose-bumps. It was chilling. When they came out in those costumes with all the dancers I thought to myself, this is as great as the first time I saw Blondie at Max's. This is as exciting as sitting behind Sid Vicious at CBGB's right after he lost his mind. I could just see being an eight-year old girl, and wanting to be that."

"At the same time, there was something freakish about it, and it struck me as this completely total rock thing. God bless them all, that's what I say.

From REVOLVER, 2000:

On this particular day at SY Central, Kim Gordon's plan to record vocals get sidetracked when Moore mischievously begins jamming out on vibes, then switches to bass. ("I had plans to be the bass player on this record," he deadpans. "Maybe next time.")

unarmedman wrote:
Maybe the better question is "Are there any non-douchebag corporations out there?"

This is a good question. The issue to me isn't about corporation being inherently bad, it's the issue of greed and the implementation of viral saturation.

For example, I used to work at the flagship store for Whole Foods in Austin, TX. Upstairs was the corporate office for the whole shebang. John Mackey, the "hippie" guy who started it all, used to come down and buy groceries and whatnot. People who worked there would say "hey man, he's just this hippie dude, laid back, kind cool. This place ain't so corporate, man."

Then you'd open up the newsletter for the company, and see that Whole Foods was deliberately and viciously buying out local natural food outlets, such as Bread and Circus, etc. by essentially telling them "we're coming to your town, either sell to us, or go the way of the dodo."

The issue is whether or not a corporation is inherently happy with it's size, and really wants to help the community, to me. When an entity decides it wants to use the WORLD to gain income, that is obviously a douchebag move.

tommydski wrote:Good response. That's basically what I would have said before the start of this thread though and I want to push this further out of intellectual curiosity.

Wouldn't the act of selling art to anyone, anywhere make it a commodity? Isn't a commodity just something that can be bought and sold?

If I completed a piece of music and had it done, sealed and ready to ship but then sold it through Starbucks, how does it effect my art retro-actively?

Thank you.

Selling your art could make it a commodity, sure, but it doesn't make your art the means to an end. Having Starbucks do it, takes the art out of context, and just makes it one more "product". If you're the artist, are you doing it for your sake, or for the sake of money?

This is where it becomes personal. If you don't have a problem with a corporation or business having a hand in the "jar" where it doesn't belong, namely your art, then all is well, I guess. But don't expect your decision to be respected by everyone.

I'm not talking about you, Tommy, don't take it wrong.

gcbv wrote:

unarmedman wrote:
Maybe the better question is "Are there any non-douchebag corporations out there?"

This is a good question. The issue to me isn't about corporation being inherently bad, it's the issue of greed and the implementation of viral saturation.

For example, I used to work at the flagship store for Whole Foods in Austin, TX. Upstairs was the corporate office for the whole shebang. John Mackey, the "hippie" guy who started it all, used to come down and buy groceries and whatnot. People who worked there would say "hey man, he's just this hippie dude, laid back, kind cool. This place ain't so corporate, man."

Then you'd open up the newsletter for the company, and see that Whole Foods was deliberately and viciously buying out local natural food outlets, such as Bread and Circus, etc. by essentially telling them "we're coming to your town, either sell to us, or go the way of the dodo."

The issue is whether or not a corporation is inherently happy with it's size, and really wants to help the community, to me. When an entity decides it wants to use the WORLD to gain income, that is obviously a douchebag move.

So Whole Foods ain't as great as they seem. I suspected as much after reading The Omnivore's Dillema, but I also took away that they are better than other grocery stores (the give benfits, etc.).

This still leaves the question open: are there any non-douchey corporations that are big enough to do heavy lifting?
I would argue no. To get big, you have to do douchey things, so give your money to the least douchey when you can.

That's why I say Starbucks is a little better than Whole Foods, who is better than Lowe's who is better than Target, who is better than...
Vote with your dollar the best you can, but ultimately you will have to make a choice.
Huge labels are owned by companies like Vivendi and Bertelsmann, who suck in many ways. More than Starbucks in my opinion.

So, I'm still of the mind that releasing a record on the Starbucks label is better than releasing one on Sony, assuming a label like YepRoc couldn't put it out.

-A

I accept that. I'm just grateful to discuss this kind of thing with anyone.

It's not like I ever meet anyone who wants to talk about the dichotomy of creating and selling art.

If you haven't yet seen J.P. Melville's Army of Shadows, I heartily recommend it.

The French Resistance was not for cowards.

tommydski wrote:I've said I would work for Starbucks if I needed the money and it seems sort of hypocritical for me to say Bob Dylan shouldn't be allowed to do the same.

"Come On" isn't such a comprehensive response. I'm genuinely interested in the reasons why these two things are different because if someone asked me for a reason why it was different, I wouldn't know what to tell them. Tell me now so when I have this discussion on three other message boards, I know what to say.

Bluntly, one is saying that you would whore the art that you have created.

By agreeing to sell through certain channels, you are associating your work with the connotations around those channels, bad or good.

The argument is that by associating your art with these external associations, this is no longer purely your art with only the connotations that you originally intended for it to carry.

In addition, this gives the appearance of endorsement. In this example, if true, Sonic Youth are endorsing Starbucks, whilst Starbucks are endorsing Sonic Youth. If this is true, of course.

This is a personal choice: as said above, this a subjective matter. You have to choose at what point you would say "no".

However, it is certainly not akin to working as a dishwasher. There, you are selling a specific service. I think that most of us probably see art as aspiring to being something less material and more substantial than a product or service, a part of ourselves.

If we are allowing this part of us - if you subscribe to this view - to be co-opted by a coffee-seller, a software manufacturer, or a political campaign, then we are allowing something to become attached to the creation that is not part of us.

tommydski wrote:Wouldn't the act of selling art to anyone, anywhere make it a commodity? Isn't a commodity just something that can be bought and sold?

If I completed a piece of music and had it done, sealed and ready to ship but then sold it through Starbucks, how does it effect my art retro-actively?

There are artists who play around with this issue,with oft-contested results.

With rock bands, the relative ease of communication (whether through playing gigs, releasing records, or putting music on the internet) makes them a unique case.

Unless a band wants to make a living from being a band, then there is no need for them to take on dubious associations. If a band does want to make a living as a band, this obviously makes the ethics of their actions more difficult to maintain, and their position as artists murkier. Considerations other than personal satisfaction must surely leak into artistic processes.

Thanks a lot, sparky.

That's an excellent response that has given me a lot to think about.