Selling out is so ’90s – it’s time to put Australian music in your ads
20 years ago, the iPod launched onto Planet Earth with a song written by a teenager locked in the bathroom of a Melbourne bungalow.
The song was Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet, and its Motown meets Iggy Pop stomp is still inexorably linked with those neon-backed silhouettes on the iPod ad in the minds of millions of people.
Jet was, at that time, a largely unknown quantity, so the band was paid a relative pittance for the use of its music. No matter – Apple launched the iPod, Jet sold 4 million copies of their debut album, and everybody won.
I get Ben Lee’s point about touring. But also many artists snub regional centres and stick to smaller cap city venues. As a former radio programmer for regional markets, smaller towns go nuts when somebody tours there because it happens so infrequently. Sure, taking a full band might be cost-prohibitive, but can it be acoustic? Can you use backing tracks? Could the road trip be an opportunity to shoot a or several music videos?