Beatles Monopoly
The marketing of popular music and merchandising has gone on for many years. Merchandising does not bother me as long it makes sense and has a direct correlation to the music; for example concert t-shirts, and other clothing related concert paraphernalia. Granted there are exceptions to the rule, these being items that were released with the full knowledge and approval of the band members. Most popular bands would hopefully come to a point where they knew certain merchandise was silly or gratuitous. Others might milk the cash cow as long as they possibly could. For example, I will present my case with the Beatles Monopoly Game.
Why is it that we can have a monopoly game to collect our own private Beatles Anthology, but we can’t have the entire Beatles catalog remastered? The Beatles machine slowly doles out pieces of the Beatles library so you buy each piece one at a time, but will quickly license stuff like this game. Maybe it’s me, and I simply don’t understand the collector’s market and how that takes precedent over the music aficionados.
To me, it all seems a little bit off. What’s next? Will more musicians who are entering their dotage sign off on crap merchandise? Will I be able to purchase a duplicate green cardigan like Kurt Cobain’s? In the near future will I be able to play a Rolling Stones “Risk” game? Or better yet, a Kinks “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots” game? I could go on, but I digress, and I’ll leave that up to you.
