"Selling out" is the compromising of (or the perception of compromising) integrity, morality, or principles in exchange for money or "success" (however defined). It is commonly associated with attempts to tailor material to a mainstream audience. Any artist who expands their creative path to encompass a wider audience, as opposed to continuing in the genre and venues of their initial success, may be disdainfully labeled by disapproving fans as a sellout. Sometimes a sellout is seen as a person that is disloyal to one's group that he or she belongs (usually ethnic group) in order to gain money or become "successful". Selling out is often seen as gaining success at the cost of credibility.
In Wayne's World, Wayne breaks down the fourth wall, mentioning he would never sell out; in this case, to make his public-access television cable TV show more successful. To humorously contradict himself, as he talks, he displays several products, with the corporate logos highly visible such as Pizza Hut, Reebok, Pepsi, and Doritos. Wayne and Garth also spoof a Nuprin commercial where it is black and white, save for the signature little, yellow, different Nuprin pills.
George Carlin was accused of being a sell-out for appearing in television commercials for MCI's 10-10-220. Carlin had previously spoke of his dislike for MCI's commercials in his album Back in Town. In his album You Are All Diseased, which contains rants against advertising and business, Carlin admits the dichotomy but makes no attempt to explain himself, stating "You're just gonna have to figure that shit out for yourself". In interviews, Carlin revealed he appeared in the advertisements to help pay off a large tax debt to the IRS.
Comedian/actress Janeane Garofalo can be considered a sellout based on her participation with the TV show 24 playing Janis Gold. Garofalo initially turned down the role because of the way the show depicted torture scenes, however changed her mind later on, saying in an interview, "Being unemployed and being flattered that someone wanted to work with me outweighed my stance [on torture].”
Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is thought to be symptomatic of creators Ed Boon and John Tobias selling out, primarily due to a crossover with the likes of Superman or Green Lantern. In addition, the Mortal Kombat series is known for its exceptional violence and gore, which was removed from the game to achieve a family-friendly rating.
Valve Corporation was long known for an exceptionally protracted development schedule. Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, for example, spent an extended period in development hell before release to critical acclaim. At E3 2009, a sequel to 2008's Left 4 Dead, was announced for a fall release. Immediately after, multiple parties claimed Valve had sold out and become similar to their publisher Electronic Arts.
Other times, artists resent the term on the grounds that the perceived desire for material gain is simply a result of the band seeking to expand its message. For example, when questioned about signing to a major label, Rage Against the Machine answered "We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart".
Other bands (including those without politically-oriented messages) may also reject the term, on the basis that not going mainstream or signing to a bigger label—to avoid "selling out"—prevents a band from addressing a wider audiences, regardless of whether or not there is any real artistic change, and arbitrarily hampers the artists' course of mainstream success, with the assumption that mainstream success must be against the artists' intentions. When confronted with the accusation of selling out in 2001, Mike Dirnt of Green Day said:
"If there's a formula to selling out, I think every band in the world would be doing it", he said. "The fact that you write good songs and you sell too many of them, if everybody in the world knew how to do that they'd do it. It's not something we chose to do.
"The fact was we got to a point that we were so big that tons of people were showing up at punk-rock clubs, and some clubs were even getting shut down because too many were showing up. We had to make a decision: either break up or remove ourselves from that element. And I'll be damned if I was going to flip fucking burgers. I do what I do best. Selling out is compromising your musical intention and I don't even know how to do that."
Category:Ethics Category:Music industry Category:Popular culture
ja:産業ロック pt:Sell-out simple:Selling outThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.