In the words of a Rolling Stone article, Moby "wisened up" when he said: "At one point, I thought about every ideological position I'd taken over the past twenty years, and I realized that I was generally full of shit."

If nothing else, Moby got business-wise, which according to current standards in the recording industry, seems to be the only kind of wise one should be.

Rolling Stone is still fond of referring to Moby as a "born-again Christian, vegan musician," implying the electronic music artist and sometimes disc jockey is possessed of a personal ideology and belief system that is not only somewhat exotic, but daringly at odds with the values of the recording industry.

But in reality, the most daring thing Moby has done lately is allow his bassist throw water bottles at the crowd last fall during a sweltering show in Philadelphia.

The man that "provided the theme song to . . . everything" this year made some beautiful music.

But ultimately, that same man became another symbol of the blind consumerist mentality and vacuity of nearly all of the artists on the pop charts.

Moby himself even said that the pop music climate is "dominated by formulaic releases," and while his quadruple platinum 1999 release Play is far from formulaic, the way in which he chose to market it most definitely is.

From a Nordstrom's commercial to countless movie and television show trailers, Moby licensed his music to virtually anyone who came asking -- and all of that licensing didn't come without a cost.

Only, unfortunately, this time the cost was to the freedom of the listener and not the artist.

Ohio-based dj_darwin recently articulated the type of freedom the listener should have. He wrote about something he calls "toneshifting," in which the listener is one of the key creators in the process of experiencing music.

He writes: "We now live in a world where entertainment and mental laziness are king . . . to the point where emotional outletting and creation are at times severely hampered."

Somehow listening to Moby's "Bodyrock" set to the inanity of a photomontage of Jack playing football on Dawson's Creek seems to the be height of control over the listener.

It becomes one of the best ways to hamper any kind of emotional outletting listeners might have initially had when they hear the song.

I remember hearing the songs from Play in 1999 right after the album came out.

That was shortly before the songs were synchronized to random clips of luxury cars sleekly trying to appeal to consumers at home.

As I drove down the highway and listened, no visions of Folgers Coffee or Acuras (two companies to which songs from Play were licensed) danced through my head.

Instead, I was left with the haunting vocals of "Why Does My Heart (Feel So Bad)" and the emotional and visual images they provoked.

That afternoon, there was no one attempting to mediate the experience of the music for me.

But unfortunately, that connection with music happens all too seldom.

Between MTV, VH1 and corporations hungrier than ever to snatch up the latest hit to sell their products, listeners are largely "taught" how to experience music.

Like it or not, we connect certain music with the products and images they are so insidiously paired up with.

I have no problem with a commercial like the one Volkwagen did a few years ago where a simple, but very appealing chorus of "DaDaDa" echoed as two men dumpster dove while driving in their VW Golf (Why a person who owned a $20,000 car would dumpster dive is beyond me – but the effect was definitely an understated cool.)

Even Toyota's usage of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People" falls within the realm of acceptability because the song had been out since 1969.

Most of us probably already had the chance to experience it independently — and it is a somewhat fluffy, shallow plea for racial equality made for a good chorus but was not exactly seminal material.

The problem now is that music is almost instantly being appropriated for the purposes of selling something.

If this weren't the case, listeners might have a chance to project themselves onto what they hear.

They might have the chance to actually come to their own conclusions about music, rather than having it dictated to them.

DJ_darwin writes that the beauty of toneshifting lies in the movement of the music beyond a predetermined message.

"The art is no longer the stand-alone piece or message of the artist."

Moby continues, "Instead, the listener adds, or better yet, projects and defines his or her own emotions onto the piece.

"The art is in the control of the listener."

Granted, this idea is somewhat disturbing coming from a generation already obsessed with the idea of tailoring our worlds.

However, it is about much more than some endeavor that will simply allow us to indulge in more narcissism.

So perhaps in the midst of personalizing, our e-date books, our cell-phone ringers and desktops, we need to figure out our identities beyond that of consumers.

We need to buck Moby when he says things like, "As I've gotten older, I've begun to realize how complex the world is — especially the consumer-driven, media-saturated world in which we live — and I like living in it."