• Variety, Friday, August 22, 2008 9:30 AM

Is Apple an electronics brand or a media outlet? At some point, Apple commercials have morphed into musical tastemakers, resulting in overnight stardom for the artists being featured.

For instance, after the Canadian pop song "1234" was used to peddle the iPod Nano in September, it skyrocketed from 2,000 downloads per week to 73,000.

Apple asserts there is no set formula for picking artists used in campaigns. Israeli singer-songwriter Yael Naim was plucked out of obscurity when her song "New Soul" accompanied the Macbook Air ads in January. Without radio airplay or a major label push, the song debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, and there have been more than 1 million paid downloads of the tune in the last seven months.

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