Commodity Concert

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The other night I attended a concert at the Sound Academy for French electronic duo Justice. When I received the tickets in the mail a few months ago, I was hit with a disturbing sight:
MYSPACE TOUR
with
JUSTICE

Myspace Tour? Myspace??!? Suddenly going to see this band had taken on a whole new meaning, a whole new 'brand' image. Now it came into question: Does this make Myspace more trustworthy, or the band Justice less trustworthy? Why is this commodification so disturbing? Seeing as well that this show was all ages, I began to think of the expansion of this community that would be there. Instead of just older fans, there will be younger fans as well, and instead of just die-hard Justice fans, there will be casual fans that discovered them through the promotion of the show on Myspace.

At the show, when we entered the 19+ area there was a ton of Myspace merchandise left out for anyone to take home. There was dozens of buttons, Ipod holders, and t-shirts. The t-shirts were actually good quality, and had very cool designs, but because it said Myspace on them I knew that it would just be a way of advertising the website. All this was free though. It wasn't sold for profit, and even though it is for the purpose of advertising the website, a lot of work and creativity was put into the merchandise. The Myspace bandanas were adorned by half of the audience by the end of the night. Nobody was forced into taking the items, it was completely up to them.

So really, turning this show into a promotion for Myspace was also a way of promoting the band Justice. It was an equal opportunity, for a company to help an artist, and an artist to help a company. Justice made Myspace 'cool', and Myspace made Justice more popular. Unfortunately though, this ends up commodifying the band because the band is placing value on quantity. Maybe there would have still be more of a pure aura of the event if it were held at a smaller venue and wasn't promoted - but maybe then I wouldn't have gotten tickets.

The media and it's polarizing ways of discourse with the public can be quite confusing.