McDonald’s recently revealed its plans to “improve the SXSW experience for everyone” by doling out free French fries and Wi-Fi—finally liberating festival-goers from toiling all day in Austin’s potato fields, composing their “Where you at?” missives with ink and quill. But the quest for bettering lives that has always been the mission of the world’s biggest downmarket meat-shack doesn’t end there: McDonald’s is also looking to liberate bands from the growing commercialization of music, by hiring them to play, then not paying them.
In an open letter posted to Facebook, Brian Harding of the Brooklyn band Ex Cops says a company representative recently asked the group to perform at a McDonald’s-sponsored showcase, in exchange for getting “a great opportunity for additional exposure.” Specifically, the band would “be featured on screens throughout the event, as well as POSSIBLY mentioned on McDonald’s social media accounts like Facebook (57MM likes!)”—thus POSSIBLY exposing them to McDonald’s vast social network of influencers, who regularly go to the McDonald’s page to learn about the hottest new bands and complain about milkshakes.
However, as Harding and Ex Cops have not yet caught on to this digitally innovating, “authentic content”-curating future that McDonald’s is pushing, they say they would still prefer to be paid in actual money, rather than in promised meetings with the McDonald’s “global digital team” to discuss “help with cross promotion.” Ex Cops still live in a 20th-century world, where McMuffins don’t even have social media integration, and artists employed to advertise French fries get paid for their troubles.
“There isn’t a budget for an artist fee (unfortunately),” responds McDonald’s, sadly. While, as Harding points out, McDonald’s is a company with a listed market cap of $96.91 billion as of last May, all of that is (unfortunately) being routed toward more important things, like making ordering a hamburger an invasively Orwellian ordeal.