Brand references in song lyrics function as fungible assets within a financialized marketplace

Evidence

A final, simple, but telling observation to be made about these visualizations of alcohol and automobiles in hip hop lyrics: references rise and fall in stable patterns of discernible supply and demand. Of course, one would expect that shifts in popularity would influence the choice of liquor brands within lyrics, but the smooth, systematic rise and fall of brands, in conjunction with the advent of branding opportunities, indicates the rising speculative potential of intertextuality. Musician-speculators both shape and are shaped by a marketplace of opportunities to sell. When composing music, musicians write lyrics that may or may not mention a brand name; that brand name may or may not involve a current or future financial relationship; and the choice of what brand name to use is both exchangeable and replaceable, decided upon by many factors, including cleverness, popularity, thematic resonance, and possible economic gain. In a financialized system that produces derivative media, lyrics are rendered fungible assets and securitized into a speculative instrument. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 350

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies what ‘derivative media’ means concretely: lyrics rendered fungible assets and securitized into a speculative instrument.
• ADDENDUM: Central warrant for the reader’s thesis: ownership/financial structure leaves fingerprints on the text’s formal features (which brand gets named, when).