Business lessons from the music industry
- Jan 05, 2011
Virgin guest blogger Emiliano Canal is the owner of Eternal Sunday records, Argentina, the only Argentinian record label specializing in releasing local music with songs in English. In this post he shares a business lesson he has learned from the music industry.
The best product is the one with the best response
The number one complaint in the music business is about talented people not getting anywhere. We have all heard this a thousand times: "I can't believe how these horrible bands top the charts while my friend (my sister, me, my boyfriend's band), who is/are way more talented, can't even find a venue to play a gig." "I can't believe (insert name of famous singer here) is a superstar when they cannot sing, while I know some singers that are superb and no one is calling them." You get the idea. People say these things all the time.
The most important lesson I learned in the music business is that, as in any business, it's not really about how good you are (or your product is) but about what kind of response you get from the public (your consumers). When the average musician tries to convince a booker or an agent to hire his band he usually tries to convince the other party that the band and the music are good ("we are a five piece band, the bass drummer is an Ivy League graduate, the guitar player was in this and that band, the singer has a four octaves range…"). This is OK, of course, because no one wants to hire an amateur band, but at this point the agent or booker will interrupt the musician with the key question: How many fans do you have? Or: How many tickets do you sell for an average show?
I know it doesn't seem fair, but the booker/agent/venue (label/publisher/radio/everyone else) is not only looking for a "good" band, in musical terms, they need a band with a good following. Their business is not purely good music, their business is based in selling tickets, drinks, records, whatever. We can argue all night about how good a band is, but that's not the point, the bottom line is what does that band evoke in people in order to make them paying fans. Artists that can convert strangers into paying fans get ahead, those who cannot stay home complaining about how unfair the world is.
Am I saying that in the music business a musically mediocre band with many fans can be more successful than a great band with less fans? Yes, I'm saying that. Have your heard of punk rock? Those guys that played three chords (or less), shouted into the mic and in many cases wrote very simple lyrics. Punk acts became a respectable phenomenon because whole generations of kids became crazy about them, not because their music was immaculate. As I always say, if the music business would be strictly about selling great music, the number one album in the charts would be Mozart's greatest hits. And the rest of us couldn't compete with that.
Think about the great rock stars. Was Elvis that good? Well, of course he was good. He was good looking, he had a great voice and he had an understanding of country/rockabilly music as well as of the blues/ R&B of his time. But if we study the local scene at Elvis' times there were dozens of singers that were as good or even better than Elvis, technically speaking. So, why is it that Elvis is Elvis, and we never heard of the other ones? Of course it is because Elvis had the fans. Elvis was the one who drove girls crazy, the one who sold the tickets and the albums (in fact at the beginning he sold singles), the one who created controversy on TV. In other words, he was the one who got the response.
This lesson is valid in any other business. Think about restaurants, are the ones with the most delicious food the ones that make it? Not necessarily. For a restaurant to survive you need paying customers, so if your cook the most delicious food in town but people don't cross your door to taste it you're probably getting out of business soon. Think about technology and format wars, like the early 80's battle between Betamax and VHS (two systems of video tape recording for those too young to remember). Betamax was developed by Sony and was based on the very successful Umatic professional tape. It had a better definition, more lines per frame and colours more vivid than VHS, backed by JVC. But VHS' tapes lasted two hours, and when people were faced with the choice they chose VHS so they could tape movies from TV, because movies lasted more than an hour. At the end Sony discontinued the Betamax format and embraced VHS, which had an inferior image quality but was what people were paying for.
Whether in music or any other business don't get trapped in thinking that the only thing to consider is how good your product is; it is not. It is about what kind of response your product has, and if no one is willing to pay for what you do, start doing something different. The music business (as any other business) is not about doing what you want but giving people what they are looking for. This is what make bands get to the next level and it can work for your business too.
Emiliano Canal runs www.eternalsunday.com.ar
This guest blog complies to Virgin.com terms & conditions.
