Wasn't that song in like, a Volkswagen commercial?

A month before the ski trip I was surfing the internet on my first computer looking for songs, and I typed in "British Folk Music", remembering that I liked the sound of "Scarborough Fair" by Simon and Garfunkle, which was based on medieval songs from Europe, and I discovered Nick Drake on the seventeenth list page.

Since his last name was a mythological creature I clicked on it, expecting ridiculously terrible dragon couplets, not an unknown musical genius that for a few precious days only I would know about. He became my automatic favorite... then just a week later, to my horror, I saw one of the first airings of a Volkswagen ad featuring the same person! It wasn't a bad commercial, but suddenly he had come to the attention of every "creative type" across the continent- it wasn't long before he was being featured on the soundtrack of films like "The Royal Tenenbaums", Brad Pitt shout-outs, everyday mixes of all of the college radio stations, and most recently a tactless Verizon wireless commercial.

Companies it turns out employ "music researchers" whose sole job it is to find really wonderful or cool tracks and then alert a conglomerate who will use it to push consumer products. I made it my personal mission entering high school to beat them to finding the best songs, else by the time that I came upon them it would be too late and appreciation would forever be tainted in my mind with associations to soft drinks or Nissan Altimas. Every time I find a good song before hearing it in an ad for the first time it's +1 point, every time the marketers find a song first it's -3. (My current score is 1538).