Music as Trojan horse

Converse is building a recording studio in Brooklyn. Yes, that's the shoe company, building a facility in which bands will be able to record for free.

For the brands the desired payoff is coolness by association. And while a generation ago these arrangements would have carried a stigma for the artists, branding deals are now as common in rock as guitars. A band’s decision to do business with a soft-drink company is often no different from its decision to sign with a record label.

A few details of the scheme:

Converse’s studio, called Converse Rubber Tracks, is the brainchild of Geoff Cottrill, the company’s chief marketing officer. On a tour of the raw space he wore a pair of ripped jeans, a Rolex watch and a big, I-swear-it’s-true smile as he described the plans for the studio, which is to open by the end of the year. After applying online, bands deemed dedicated and needy enough will be able to record whatever they want there. No need to prepare rhymes for “Chuck Taylor” — Converse says it will have no influence on the music, the artists will keep ownership rights, and, as with many brand-as-patron projects, the songs aren’t intended to be used in ads.

Mr. Cottrill said the company wants to “give back” to its loyal customers, but of course the enterprise is not purely altruistic. The idea is that helping new bands will build good will for the brand (and generate future sales) and also give Converse an advantage over all the other companies out there competing for young eyeballs.

Furthermore:

[T]he patronage model grows out of the same kind of margin-trolling philosophy that has led big companies like Apple and Nike to license music by rising but still low-profile artists, said Josh Rabinowitz, director of music at the Grey agency.

“Indie-inflected music serves as a kind of Trojan horse,” Mr. Rabinowitz said. “Consumers feel they are discovering something that they believe to be cool and gaining admittance to a more refined social clique.”

I can't claim that Converse operating a record label is any worse than Sony operating one: the profit motive is the profit motive, after all, no matter who's in charge. As a practical matter, this tactic has "fad" written all over it: Marketing is desperately seeking a way of differentiating and enhancing The Brand, and this is one more thing they'll throw against the wall to see if it sticks. If it does, eventually we'll end up right back where we are today, a handful of survivors monopolizing mind- and market share and the rest absorbed or shut down.

Still, I can't shake the feeling that there are downsides somewhere, downsides we can't see -- yet. The companies that are most hard-headed about this, the ones that have a strategy beyond "let's see if we can generate street cred," are likely to make their private labels serve their corporate needs in ways we can't imagine (and, perhaps, in ways we can; who's to say that other companies will follow Converse's example and pledge not to interfere with the creative side?). Then the question will be, can those companies get the talent to play the company tune?

Coming at it from the other side, I have to wonder if musicians who are predisposed to work with corporate patrons are compromised before they start composing.

Ms. Cosentino of Best Coast said that her decision to work with Converse was not just about the publicity. She’s a fan of the company — “I’ve been wearing Converse since I was a child,” she said — and noted that when she recorded “All Summer,” the Converse-sponsored track with Kid Cudi and Mr. Batmanglij, the company gave no instructions other than that it was looking for a “summer vibe.”

“We just made something that is a fun song,” she said, “that will hopefully make people dance around in their Converse during the summer.”

Listening to the guys footing the bills is not, in itself, unprecedented or even wrong. Music labels and music producers have been making specific requests of their composers and performers since the industry began. Yet it seems to me that would-be musicians looking for their big (or even little) break will look to tailor their sound or image to what they think the would-be patron is seeking. It's not unlike the practice of customizing one's resume to the job opening, an accepted strategy in today's job market. However, music isn't just a business: it's a form of self-expression.

As a music fan and music consumer, I've heard enough music to know that there's a discernible difference between those artists that are in it for the money and those that have something to say on their own behalf. While there are always exceptions, the ones who are in it for the money first are generally less interesting and less vital than those who write and perform because they must, because the music within them is crying out to be heard. For instance, I loved Death Cab for Cutie from the moment I saw them for the first time because I could tell they were telling me about themselves through their songs. Would their music have resonated with me to the same degree if they had been focused at the start on getting a deal with a boutique music label owned by Microsoft instead of writing and performing without knowing if the band would go anywhere?

In short, I worry that these little buzz-seeking labels will cause otherwise decent musicians to jump past the necessary phase of finding their own voices in favor of catering to someone else's to gain a contract.

As for the elusive coolness factor these labels are intended to cultivate (and thence to impart to their parent companies), I'd like to share a few observations from my years of listening, rather more intently than most consumers, to many different music styles and artists. In hindsight, these observations should have been bloody obvious to anyone with four functioning brain cells, but they weren't to me, and perhaps they won't be to you, either:

• Coolness is not branded.
• If you think coolness is defined by others, you will never be cool.
• Music and coolness are unrelated to each other, no matter what Miles Davis thought.
• Corollary: if you're listening to music for its coolness, you're not listening to music.