Selling with singalongs: community singing as advertising in cinema, radio, and television

Abstract

This chapter examines the use of community singing as advertising in cinema, radio, and television, especially the tradition of singalongs characterised by the use of on-screen lyrics and the “bouncing ball” animated indicator. While some traditions of community singing examined in this handbook were motivated by musical or civic betterment, here it was in the service of consumption and profit. Illustrated song slides and early singalong films at the start of the twentieth century commonly served to promote sales of sheet music or recordings. Cinema clubs and sponsored radio shows in the intra-war period used community singing to build brand identities and bind consumers to them. Television commercials have utilised singalongs to bridge temporal and spatial distance between viewers. While all examples aim to induct audiences into a community of mass consumption, several changing vectors and historical variations are characterised: the balance between direct selling and brand formation; the changes from in-person communal singing to mediated imagined communities; a development from local or regional brands to a global marketplace, as well as subsequent nostalgic resistance or reversion. This chapter investigates English-language examples of the use of singalongs as advertising from the early twentieth century up to the present to understand the ways in which they aimed to sell products, direct audiences to adopt specific viewpoints and behaviours, and form brand identities and customer loyalty.

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