Idolator attacks the Moby Quotient. Concerns about selling out are just a tired boomer trope, it says here:

…Wyman still takes the idea of pop sellouts very seriously. The text of the article leans on all the leaky assumptions that will comfort the Post’s crusty boomer readership–that “Imagine” is more important than “Get Ur Freak On” and therefore in more danger of being “corrupted,” that Kelly Clarkson or Fall Out Boy are somehow less tainted by doing the advertising dance than the Stones.

Why the Stones, artistically speaking, might matter more than Kelly Clarkson is part of the “rockist” vs. “popist” debate. “Popism” is based on the straw man that “rockist” critics don’t appreciate pop music. “Popism” is conveniently indistinguishable in practice from “entertainment journalism” but it lets the people who practice it have a clubhouse and a neat handshake.

Idolator continues:

[C]heck [out] this quote from “one time rock critic” Bill Brown:

“The problem with branding yourself and selling your songs to commercials is the music is no longer for the listener.”

Huh? The repetition of a popular ad has the power to turn a song you love into an annoying earworm, sure. But it’s an odd quirk of boomer critics that songs already designed to reach a mass audience somehow void their warranty when they come into contact with “commerce,” or that a band hawking its song to an advertiser automatically equates to “greed.” It’s become a sad, but viable, option for many during the industry’s never-ending commercial downturn.

1) No one said anything about earworms. 2) Brown’s point isn’t that the song is besmirched by contact with commerce (though that is one of my points); he is saying that the artist is now crafting songs for the audience of the commercial. This has obvious implications, among them the fact that the motivations of the performer will inevitably be at least affected, and most likely changed, by the potential of scoring more Volkswagen money. 3) The rock in commercials epidemic long predates the industry downturn. This is another excuse for greediness. But of course, “popists” aren’t known for their critical thinking.