Blogger, itinerant rock critic, and former NPR Arts Editor Bill Wyman had a fine piece in yesterday’s Washington Post introducing the Moby Quotient, the formula he and, uh, “hyperbolic geometry” expert Jim Anderson have devised for quantifying exactly how egregiously a given artist has sold out when they license one of their songs to an advertiser. (Moby, in case you don’t know, won the dubious honor of having this formula named after him for his innovative marketing scheme of licensing all of the 18 tracks on his gazillion-selling 1999 Play album to advertisers.)

Wyman explains his formula here; and it seems pretty solid, though it’s unclear as yet exactly what figure denotes complete whoredom. The six sample songs Wyman uses seem to suggest that a Moby Quotient of 100 is roughly equal to a case of 100% sellout, as demonstrated here by the use of The Clash’s “London Calling” in a Jaguar ad — a grave crime against taste by any measure, a judgment seemingly borne out by its Moby Quotient of 100.22. (I don’t know whether the Jaguar ad in question came before or after the tune’s inclusion in a James Bond movie released a month before Joe Strummer’s death in 2002, which must have rubbed at least a few Clash fans the wrong way given that 007 is pretty much the ultimate establishment figure — it ain’t like he’s an agent of The People’s Secret Service — but which I readily excused on the grounds of sheer badassitude.)