What do you consider to be "selling out"?

When they start changing their music to make more money (going more mainstream), when they make games/movies, or endorse them, and when they do ads on TV.

good question

where do you draw the line.

i guess only the artist themselves can decide if they sold out or stayed true to their style.

but i will say this; imagine you like going to the club and dancing but you are tired of the songs, so you want new songs

record companies know you want a new song so they create a song, very much like the ones you hear at clubs."we need bass drum and a driving snare, we need a chorus written about some type of mixed drink, and we need a person that can act like this is their song so people can assosiate an image with it."

so the record label produces this track, sells it to clubs and you dance to it. it may not be a legendary song but it made money.

slowly record labels realized that if you make songs, they will get bought.

so instead of looking for artists to sign, they just manufacture an artist right there at the studio and then advertise and market the final product as if it was car or vacuum cleaner.

they make sure this artist has all the things the real artists do, cars in the video, glossy cd cover, professionally mastered audio with go to dime a dozen compisitions and arrangements, and of course sometype of backround story the artist can tell to generate an image that people can look up to and follow.

its like clock work and the fans are really the only ones who have control over any of it.

how do you know an artist is a sell out:

if they didn't get paid for their music, would they still play their songs by themselves at their house just cuz they themselves think its a good song?

when they have to work at McDonalds because they can't afford a new guitar