Because selling out is the standard in America now.

It’s not noteworthy to sellout anymore. It’s expected.

True, it’s not really a thing any more. Two reasons I’d say:

• If you want to make a nice living by being distributed by a label “selling out” is mandatory
• Anti-establishment musicians have a cheap distribution method in the form of internet. If they don’t care about making money, they just offer it for download directly to their fans

That being said, the term is still used in the open source software community quite a lot.

Does Snoop Dogg performing for the Trump crypto ball or whatever the shit that was count as selling out?

If your idols are youtubers and tiktokkers, their business model is selling merch.

So opinions had to change.

It’s because nothing is punk anymore. Everything has been commodified, especially radical art.

https://youtu.be/L_-t3i6ipz4

I think the plot was lost when the piracy/drm wars reached a peak and set new norms. The ‘talent’ that emerged steadily became performers rather than artists and put out disposable, largely formulaic pop made with protools.

Nearly all the mainstream now are what many would have called sellouts prior to all this.

Maybe there will be a move back to quality over quantity. Granted quality music is still being made, but by and large the current listener just wants to jump from the current sensation to the next after the staleness sets in.

Long story long the internet changed a lot of things, attention spans are eroded, and we’re still learning how to deal with all of it.

we do hear about ‘industry plants’, however…

Sellout would be what I’d call snoop doggy lapdog after his recent performance

I only know this phenomenon from the punk scene and I think it still exists today. NOFX released a song about it 10 years ago.

First verse lyrics:

She asked me if I was a singer, then called me has-been
She said she really liked my band in the early '90s, oh yeah
I said stop saying those mean things, my ego is so fragile
And then she called me a poseur punk
Why don’t I drink up and get the hell out
'Cause I’m a sellout

Because artists need to eat too.

Many social media influencers nowadays try to get big with the goal of “selling out”, or getting sponsored. From what I understand, ad revenue on its own hasn’t paid well for years, so they take on sponsors in order to fund their channels and pay their bills. You then have influencers like MrBeast and Logan Paul living large and shouting out their sponsors, making it look glamorous to their (often younger) audience.

“I didn’t sell out son, I bought in“

Quote from the wonderfully hilarious movie Popstar: Never Stop, Never Stopping.

“Nowadays if you don’t sell out, people will wonder if no one asked you to.”

I suppose the bands / artists that were accused of “selling out” back in the day have weathered that criticism and inspired multiple generations of subsequent bands / artists that have also gone in to inspire multiple bands / artists.

Take Green Day for example. For me they were the canonical sell out band for my generation. But now nobody cares about that. And bands that rode the wave of their success don’t care. And bands that were inspired by Green Day don’t care either. Neither do the fans, neither does the press.

So I think it’s just less and less of a thing these days. So people don’t care as much when you leave your small indie label and join a major. In fact quite the opposite. Good on you for winning against the system.

When I was younger I’d frown upon artists making a pop record. Now that I know most working bands often barely scrape by and often get screwed over by labels and promoters, etc., I can’t really fault them for it. And usually they’ll keep making what they want on the side anyway.