Idolator

The mortgage market is turning itself upside-down, so what better way to fiddle while the real-estate market burns than to look at the music that's used to market glossy, upscale housing developments that you (well, I) won't be able to afford unless you knock over a bank?

Thanks, New York Times, for letting us know—in a Real Estate cover story, no less!—that New York realtors and condo developers have their eyes on the real prize—branding themselves through the glossy songs that autoplay on their Web sites and give pity-party Internet browsing the soundtrack of a late-'90s "upscale" restaurant. A special prize goes to The Setai (warning: browser-commandeering site), which has "Asian hip scene" music chosen by the chain-of-glam-bars Buddha Bar—and a "sound off" button on its homepage that doesn't work. Then again, I get the feeling that the clientele that "new downtown" space is looking for isn't exactly the type of person who gets dinged for surreptitiously browsing the Internet while at her crummy job.

Selling a Concept With a Song [NYT]