“With traditional sources of revenue falling, the music industry is now desperate to get advertisers to use original pop songs to sell everything from handbags to hamburgers. This trend, which media types call ‘synchronisation’, is leading to another: the decline of the jingle. Once pop songs in their own right (America’s first radio jingle, Pepsi’s “hits the spot”, became a jukebox hit in 1939) catchy jingles are being discarded. Despite the $90,000-plus cost to license a pop song (compared with $15,000 for a customised jingle), advertisers, especially those aiming at younger consumers, think it money well spent.”