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

Timothy D. Taylor, professor of Ethnomusicology and Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, discusses his book The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Taylor tells the story of an infectious part of our musical culture and tracks the use of music and jingles in American advertising for nearly a century. He traces its presence from variety shows like The Clicquot Club Eskimos to the rise of the jingle, the postwar rise in consumerism, and the more complete fusion of popular music and consumption in the 1980s and after.

Taylor has written books and articles on popular and classical music and sociocultural theory, and is currently working on a book entitled Capitalism, Music, and Social Theory. He is an avid performer of Irish traditional music and can be heard regularly at sessions in southern California.