The sounds of capitalism : advertising, music, and the conquest of culture

From the early days of radio through the rise of television after World War II to the present, music has been used more and more to sell goods and establish brand identities. And since the 1920s, songs originally written for commercials have become popular songs, and songs written for a popular audience have become irrevocably associated with specific brands and products. Today, musicians move flexibly between the music and advertising worlds, while the line between commercial messages and popular music has become increasingly blurred.

Timothy D. Taylor tracks the use of music in American advertising for nearly a century, from variety shows like The Clicquot Club Eskimos to the rise of the jingle, the postwar upsurge in consumerism, and the more complete fusion of popular music and consumption in the 1980s and after. The Sounds of Capitalism is the first book to tell truly the history of music used in advertising in the United States and is an original contribution to this little-studied part of our cultural history.

• List of Illustrations p. xi
• List of Examples p. xiii
• Acknowledgments p. xvii
• Introduction: Capitalism, Consumption, Commerce, and Music p. 1
• 1 Music and Advertising in Early Radio p. 11
• 2 The Classes and the Masses in the 1920s and 1930s p. 43
• 3 The Great Depression and the Rise of the Radio Jingle p. 65
• 4 Music, Mood, and Television: The Use of Emotion in Advertising Music in the 1950s and 1960s p. 101
• 5 The Standardization of Jingle Production in the 1950s and After p. 127
• 6 The Discovery of Youth in the 1960s p. 147
• 7 Consumption, Corporatization, and Youth in the 1980s p. 179
• 8 Conquering (the) Culture: The Changing Shape of the Cultural Industries in the 1990s and After p. 205
• 9 New Capitalism, Creativity, and the New Petite Bourgeoisie p. 231
• Notes p. 247
• References p. 297
• Index p. 331