Apple’s use of indie music in their television spots has been quite successful. They present their products (iPods and Macs) as being young, hip, and trendy, while giving some artist (usually a relatively unheard of one) some much needed exposure and thus a “big break”. Most of the indie artists whose songs have been featured in an Apple commercial have done pretty well, particularly that song, getting very high sales, especially on Apple’s own iTunes.
Unfortunately what Apple does not seem to understand is that familiarity breeds contempt. This is especially true with music. While the more you hear a new song, the more you start to like it (voluntarily or not), there comes a point when the more you hear it, the more you hate it. Apple does not get that and has played many of their commercials so many times that you blow past liking the song and get quite sick of hearing it because the novelty wears way off.
Feist got a lot of attention from the Nano video that her song “1,2,3,4” was featured in, but seriously, how many people were sick and tired of hearing it by the time it was finally done? Yael Naim “New Soul” is currently getting the Apple treatment in the new MacBook campaign and like the others is already getting quite irritating.
As a fan of the Fratelli’s album Costello Music, I was quite upset that I was actually getting sick of hearing “Flathead” over and over and over and over and over again.
Apple needs to learn that too much of anything is bad, especially music. They need to make sure to cut the commercial before the song gets annoying and replace it either with a new commercial if possible, or if they don’t have a new product, then at least a new song.