I remember some 20-30 years ago you would sometimes hear about an artist (usually musician, or a group thereof) being sellouts, or having sold out. This of course in a pejorative way, as this was the most heinous of crimes an artist could ever commit against their fan base.
However, I can’t recall having heard this term for at least a couple of decades. Has the term been replaced with something else? Is it more accepted? Or is it simply so hard to make it nowadays that the concept of “selling out” is basically just synonymous with making a living?
Are there any modern examples of this and I simply missed the online chatter about it?
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It’s because nothing is punk anymore. Everything has been commodified, especially radical art.
Because artists need to eat too.
Because selling out is the standard in America now.
It’s not noteworthy to sellout anymore. It’s expected.
Because artists now serve a younger generation who are far more authoritarian than Generation X. Selling out meant giving up the punk ideals that made one cool, and those ideals aren’t what’s cool any more.
You haven’t been listening to enough Reel Big Fish lately?
I don’t think I’ve heard anything newer than 20 years by them. Ska isn’t my primary taste in music, but they had a few bangers way back when. And yes, this includes “sell out”.
If your idols are youtubers and tiktokkers, their business model is selling merch.
So opinions had to change.
True, it’s not really a thing any more. Two reasons I’d say:
- If you want to make a nice living by being distributed by a label “selling out” is mandatory
- Anti-establishment musicians have a cheap distribution method in the form of internet. If they don’t care about making money, they just offer it for download directly to their fans
That being said, the term is still used in the open source software community quite a lot.
McDonalds started charging $15 for a Quarter Pounder Value meal, and everyone realized in this post 9/11 America, you need to make as much money as possible just to be able to survive, which is diametrically opposed to the 60’s and 70’s still post war boom(ers) playacting socialist/communist Hippies, pointing and laughing when an artist they liked took a big check, when they’re own rent was either subsidized by their parents, or cost them $200 a month and their University tuition another $500 a year. Shit was different. Shit changed.
I didn’t know I was living in post 9/11 America.
well, then you were mistaken, and being purposefully obtuse for some reason. there’s everything before 9/11, and then there’s everything after, and you can draw a clear line to differentiate the two time periods, in every country around the world
which is diametrically opposed to the 60’s and 70’s still post war boom(ers) …, when their own rent was either … cost them $200 a month and their University tuition another $500 a year
I think this is it. The cost of living was lower, so Boomers could get by without selling out. The attitude continued into the 1990s and early 2000s until it became harder and harder to lead a comfortable life on a modest paycheque.
Adding on to this, I’ll say the term is likely used less now because, for the reasons you mentioned, the common person actually aspires to get famous for the specific purpose of selling out and making a big payday to escape the hellscape of everyday wage-slavery.
But then there are also “sell outs” that are totally situational. For example, a content creator (who I won’t name because that’s not the point) who’s an OG that’s been around for over 20 years now, constantly putting out content, never had sponsors until a few years ago. Initially I was annoyed at suddenly seeing “Sponsored by NordVPN!” and “Sponsored by RAID Shadow Legends!” in every video, but then I learned he’d had a child with his wife. And his child had a bad birth defect that required a lot of expensive surgeries.
After that, I was like, “Get that paycheck, my guy.” It’s hard out there.
Loved hearing that story. Margaret Killjoy is a treasure, and as it turns out so is Chumbawamba.
She sure is! Have you read the Sapling Cage? I just finished it a week ago. Incredible.
From what little I know about them, that tracks. They just happen to have a song that was pretty in line with what was (became) popular at the time and made it big. Everything else by them is A LOT more punkish.
Can’t sell out when everything is a sellout.
Sellout would be what I’d call snoop doggy lapdog after his recent performance
the rich bought all the fuckers who were going to sell out back in the 00’s.
I only know this phenomenon from the punk scene and I think it still exists today. NOFX released a song about it 10 years ago.
First verse lyrics:
She asked me if I was a singer, then called me has-been
She said she really liked my band in the early '90s, oh yeah
I said stop saying those mean things, my ego is so fragile
And then she called me a poseur punk
Why don’t I drink up and get the hell out
'Cause I’m a selloutwe do hear about ‘industry plants’, however…
Came here to mention industry plants, too. There’s no “selling out” for the most part because most major artists are controlled from day one by the industry, versus back in the day when they needed to scrape their knuckles on their own to appeal to a major label. Social media and The Algorithm lets the labels build careers out of nothing.
“I didn’t sell out son, I bought in“
