The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture

Abstract

Whether catchy or mellow, music has helped sell goods and services for millennia. Modern communication intermediaries, such as advertising agents, and the rise of broadcasting expanded commercial music's reach, intensity, and costs into national and international markets. Timothy D. Taylor's The Sounds of Capitalism draws out this twentieth-century story through extensive research in archives, the trade press, interviews, and, yes, the music itself, the evolution of which he insightfully tracks. His appreciation for the music's value as historical and cultural evidence (and fun!) inspired him to post online eighty-five historical “examples” of radio and television ads. This well-crafted resource greatly augments the book's pleasures and usefulness. Sounds of Capitalism is a lively, well-researched, generously illustrated, and scored history of aural advertisements' evolution after 1920. A 1982 advocate called music “the catalyst of advertising,” and a 1999 symposium on the topic was called “The Selling Power of Song” (pp. 119, 227). Taylor shows how marketers and musicians worked to fulfill those claims through musical reviews, then jingles, and, later, so-called authentic music that after 1980 further blurred the lines between advertising and popular culture.