In March 1968, Derrick Stewart-Baxter chided The Observer newspaper which, "for so long the best of all Sunday quality publications in my opinion, has of recent weeks apparently been making a desperate attempt to get with it and swinging, to borrow two current terms now in vogue". The Observer, it seems, had acknowledged the Beatles' contribution to "the arts" and since, according to Derrick Stewart-Baxter, anything which is popular is diametrically opposed to anything which is art, this was an affront to all "serious" music listeners. In an essence, if too many people without letters after their name like something, it cannot be art - art is serious, difficult and the plebs don't understand it, nor would we want them to. Elitist as it is, I'm sure it's an opinion still held by some today, even if few of them would be shameless enough to stick it in print and put their name to it.

A couple of months later, Derrick Stewart-Baxter responded to the many letters he received about this, and argued again that the Beatles had no connection with the art world, a contention that he was sure "Messrs Lennon and McCartney would be the first to confirm". I scoured the subsequent months' letters pages, but sadly there was no confirmation from either of the Messrs Lennon or McCartney to be found.

While I found Derrick Stewart-Baxter's flippant dismissal of popular culture short-sighted to say the least, purely because he sees it as beneath his exclusively middle-class 'high' culture, I do find myself partly sympathetic to his view in one small respect - I have an out-and-out hatred of the pollution / vandalism afforded to all kinds of music by the advertising world.

Is this all that different a view from the snobbery mentioned above? Why is it OK for me to dismiss the use of music in advertising, which brings music of all kinds to the masses on an unprecedented scale, as 'anti-art', while considering it elitist to view 'high' culture as something which needs to be kept away from the masses?

It is fair to say that the advertising world has come a long way over the last 50 years. I was recently watching some 1950s television ads for Lucky Strike cigarettes ("Why?" you may ask. Now that I no longer smoke I miss the thrill of finding a tobacconists in the UK that actually stocks my favourite snouts - just call it an exercise in nostalgia for the happy bygone days of addiction). The banal and repetitive ads in which we were endlessly told by some grinning half-wit to buy Luckies because they taste good is a giant step away from the abstract and artistic approach taken by many advertisers today. The advert has truly elevated itself to an art form - mind you, some galleries house exhibits solely sculpted from human poo, so make of that what you will. I believe there's an allegory in there somewhere.

Music has increasingly been appropriated by big business. Where once an artist sought only to tell us something about ourselves through their work, today an artist may temper their expression so that it may be used to foster an unquenchable longing for a Coke fix, another new car or an upgraded mobile phone. Many young bands today specifically hunt out that big break of having their music featured in a commercial - a guaranteed swift route to the top of the charts and further undermining any hope that bands will be given time to develop and establish themselves before imploding under the intense scrutiny and overexposure of the music press.

This is not some snooty, elitist preoccupation a la Derrick Stewart-Baxter. I believe that the increasingly predominant ubiquity of music in advertising has a very detrimental affect on the availability of genuinely 'daring' or innovative music - I fail to see how one can innovate musically when the message is always buy, buy, BUY! More to the point, albeit a subjective point, the appropriation of old classics neutralises their specialness. Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up", when used in a Citroen commercial, was briefly no longer the life-affirming slab of joyous funk that genuinely makes a shit day more tolerable, instead it was encouraging me to consume beyond my means by buying an environmentally damaging product to accompany an unsustainable lifestyle. And that isn't funky. Fortunately the intrinsic power of Mayfield's music is infinitely greater than that of a car advert, so I've managed to get over it, rekindle my enjoyment of the tune, and the world once again spins in greased grooves.

But why is this relevant anyway? Music is music and art is art regardless of the context in which it may be misused. However, the insidious branding of music, its gradual but inevitable assimilation with the product which is being advertised until the music is the product, single-handedly undoes everything that I want from a piece of music. It becomes impossible to disassociate the music with the product that it advertises. In selling every blooming tune on the album to advertisers, Moby has not so much created an album with Play, as the musical equivalent of a Nike t-shirt - the consumer not only willingly submits to the advertisements, but actually pays for them as well. And then feels at home during an advertisement for one of Play's associated products and is tempted to buy that as well. Thus the process, in which Moby is merely a stepping stone towards an ultimate destination - increased consumption - is complete.

I recently went to see the Jocelyn Pook Ensemble live, and my imagination was continually haunted by visions of young, attractive, androgynous waifs brandishing their chosen brand of mobile phone - I could barely hear the music above the noise of the associated brands involved. The opening sequence was a piece of music featuring numerous real-life answerphone messages from Pook's well-to-do friends and family, simply crying out to be showered with money and exposure by advertising one telecommunications company or another. It was with beautiful irony that my own phone began to silently vibrate in my pocket during the performance, and I regretted not forgetting to turn off my loud ringtone (the tune of "Voodoo Chile", incidentally) which would have been so much more appropriate than the polite applause emitting from the rest of the audience.

Not only is music being polluted / co-opted by its use in advertising, but trends in advertising are having too much influence upon the music that we choose to listen to in the first place. One of the greatest coups for any small artist is to secure a guaranteed place in the nation's consciousness by getting a tune featured in an advertisement. Success is inevitable, if only for that one tune as 'Jas Mann', the walking, talking toss-pot behind Babylon Zoo, and witless Nirvana-lite alikes Stiltskin discovered to their chagrin some years ago. However, Naomi Klein argues in her unmissable, persuasive condemnation of branding, No Logo, that advertising campaigns have been directly responsible for revived interest in entire genres of music, claiming that, "The Gap's commercials didn't capitalise on the retro swing revival - a solid argument can be made that they caused the swing revival." (Klein, 2000, p46) It is therefore conceivable that if current trends continue then the ability of any music to reach an audience and thus remunerate the musician will depend on its ability to sell a product on behalf of a separate, commercial third party.

It seems that no style of music is safe - whether untamed and brutally experimental or vacuously calculable, there's an ad somewhere waiting for it to seamlessly slot into. The Aphex Twin, someone who I had previously admired and begrudgingly continue to do so, inexplicably not only sold a piece of music to Orange, but also released it as a single in an Orange sleeve, with the words "Aphex Twin. Commercial Item. As heard on the Orange^TM TV ad." Now there's a recommendation for you.

We are all becoming like the Simpsons who fail to think of any song to sing that hasn't appeared in an advert. Thank heavens for Tom Waits who turned the tables on the whole system by making his fortune not from flogging his tunes to the corporation with the fattest wallet, but by refusing to allow his music to be defiled in this way. Frito Lay, who infamously used a Tom Waits impersonator when they couldn't get the real thing, were successfully sued by our hero for millions. You can read the full story elsewhere. The beautiful irony of this whole affair was recently pointed out to me by Colin B. Morton who found it astonishing that a man who had assimilated the characteristics of the likes of Frank Sinatra, Captain Beefheart, Louis Armstrong, Perry Como, Charles Bukowski and countless others could consider suing anyone for impersonation.

These kind of issues will get more and more common until we end up with two kinds of musicians: the ads and the ad-nots; those who can be bought by any passing corporation and those who cannot. Over the last decade and a half the advertising industry has changed dramatically - those annoying advertising jingles of yesteryear have become an endangered species. Advertisers have long since learned that it is both easier and more effective for them to utilise a song which we already know and bend it to their needs, thus buying a ready made and instantly accessible target group for their product, than it is to create a snappy jingle that needs to rapidly instil itself in our consciousness. And that saddens me. Adverts were adverts when I was a lad - full of snappy little tunes about secret lemonade drinkers and doing the Shake 'n' Vac - tailor made in fact for comedy hardcore outfits to cover 'ironically' as was the case with the mighty Snuff who also did punk rock versions of "I Think We're Alone Now", "I Can See Clearly Now" and "I Will Survive". Those days have largely gone and the professional jingle-writer, who used to get laughed at by small children in the street, is now completely irrelevant. It’s a shame because, paradoxically, while it can be traumatic to hear your favourite tune being used to sell spot cream, it’s a real tonic to hear your most hated annoying advertising jingle covered by the likes of Snuff.

Yes, the jingle is out and the soundtrack is in. Just have a look at www.adcritic.com/music/ where you can (joy oh joy) watch recent advertisements and a link underneath the video proudly screams "Like the music in this ad? Buy the CD!" You can even write reviews for the adverts... I can see the benefit in this - any advertising consumer may be uncertain about whether they want to go to the effort of seeing an advert on television, in their favourite programmes / magazines, at the cinema, on the sides of busses / taxies, tattooed on the inside of their eyelids, etc, and now thanks to adcritic.com they can do a bit of research to see what others think about the ad in question and then make up their mind before they take the plunge. Phew.

They have a frightening list of recent advertisements and their corresponding soundtracks. I gagged when I noticed Charles Mingus' name on the list of music used in adverts. Seeing such a person associated with the likes of Vanilla Ice, Moby, Depeche Mode and the BeeGees gave me the heebie-jeebies.

If ever I needed proof that it takes all kinds, etc, I have found it at adcritic.com, possibly the only place on Earth where you will find a statement so completely double-wrong-headed as "The Oscars ruled, but the ads were better!". Is it me who lives in the wrong universe or is it them?

At times like this I'd usually retreat to the last bastion of anti-commerciality and listen to a bit of Trout Mask Replica, safe in the knowledge that even the brightest light at Nike, The Gap or Calvin Klein could not make the music of Captain Beefheart work for them. And then I recall that Holsten Pills advert which sneaked "Fast and bulbous!", the infamous Beefheartism, into the script. And I also recall a rumour that "Diddy Wah Diddy", the Magic Band's first ever single, cropped up on a Toyota radio advert.

It can't be true. What would Derrick Stewart-Baxter make of that?