There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them.

When marketing collaborations are used to inform people of something actually good, then they can actually be great for everyone. The best example is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream collaborations. It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. And, what do you know, those collaborations have been wildly successful. It's hard to convince people that "putting ice cream cone in the ice cream" is surprisingly good, but if you just put Stephen Colbert on the label with a big thumbs up, most people will give it a try.

Marketing can be manipulative, but it can also be very, very helpful to customers who don't have perfect information. This is exactly the point of Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy

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tavavex 2 days ago | parent [-]

> It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it.

Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), they can't provide neutral or negative feedback. They're advertisers. The ice cream brand could pay them to promote ice cream blended with shredded cardboard for all they care, and because of the celebrity's face on it there would be an uptick in sales regardless of the quality.

If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it. Of course, some good ideas that deserved the light of day may not get appropriately rewarded, especially if the product is good but revolutionary. But I would take that possibility over having our singular, sellout, corporate mass of sludge of a culture dominate everything.

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scoofy 2 days ago | parent [-]

> If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it.

Most products fail. All the products you see in the stores are the result of a massive war that’s constantly being waged by companies fighting to the death.

Anyone serious about selling something either needs to bootstrap the crap out of it on tiny margins forever, or they need to launch their product.

Again, most products fail which often means bankruptcy for their creators. Having someone put their reputation on the line for something good-but-unintuitive is a great way to have consumers become more willing to take a chance on something they might otherwise be skeptical of. The George Forman grill is the perfect example of a bizarre product that benefited from a celebrity endorsement. I seriously doubt a “two sided griddle” is successful at all unless you give people a reason to listen to the sales pitch, and even then to give it a shot.

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xquce a day ago | parent [-]

In the capitalist Utopia that would be true, but that is not the case in any country on this planet. The war being waged is not based on customer choice, its based on backroom dealing, who you know and invester interrests.

The products used by many are the products their investors have an interest boosting. One example look at what SaaS startups seeded on this site use, other SaaS from same network and investors.

Nothing about it based on war of pricing, quality or experience.

	▲	scoofy a day ago \| parent [-]
		I’ve been investing in the VC space since about 2019. I can assure you that you are just wrong. Venture capital is alive and well well in America and it represents large swaths of products. These startups take on giants everyday and win.