>
> When I was an errand boy and tape dubber at Sigma NYC (1981-83 summers),
> the commercial business was transitioning away from a squad of crack
> studio musicians showing up, getting a chart and cutting a commercial in
> 3 hours to where one guy showed up with a Synclavier and dumped 8 tracks
> onto tape and then a singer showed up and a voice-over guy showed up and
> they cut a worse commercial but in half the time. Nowadays, it's a guy at
> home with a MIDI rig cutting even worse commercials but for a fraction of
> the cost. That's a large part of what killed off the big studio business
> in NY -- the agencies took most of their production in-house and
> musicians' union rates got to where no one could afford big sessions with
> large ensembles anymore. Plus, the um "talent" pool has gotten very
> brackish in recent generations of "musicians."
>
Forgive me if I am not too concerned about the lack of musicianship in 
commercials, of all places --except as one of the few places musicians 
could make some decent dough (although sometimes barely legitimately). But 
perhaps this decline is what led to some companies such as Volkswagen to 
use already available recorded music for their commercials --quite 
successfully, of course.

Marcos