"Businesses should concentrate on their customers’ needs, not on specific products."

"Marketing Myopia" (1960)
Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School

What does the music customer want?

1. To easily be able to hear all recorded music

Now I’m not saying such ability should be free, but this does not undermine the desire.

If you read about a record, if a friend mentions a tune, you should be able to instantly click and sample it.  On your desktop, laptop and hand-held device.  Not jut a thirty second sample, but the whole thing.

The public hates thirty second samples.  They project an image of withholding as opposed to honest, fair dealing.  It’s like the music industry is a carny attraction behind a curtain that you must pay for, with very little advance knowledge, before you partake.

The best delivery of the ability to hear music is Spotify.  Which has been delayed in its American introduction because certain rights holders don’t believe in giving anything away for free.

Spotify is a music app, with a full catalog.

LaLa’s not bad, it’s just that you have to go to Google first, you’ve got to click a bit.

Rhapsody and Napster provide the end result, with very poor functionality, certainly compared to Spotify.  They seem to live in a land where the lessons of Apple are hidden, that usability and functionality are key.  Apple has also proven that people will pay premium prices for this usability and functionality.  Oh, here’s where you tell me it’s impossible to compete with free.  Well, Apple is competing with a plethora of computers a third the price, yet is extremely profitable and valuable.  So, rather than decry theft, the question becomes how can one make a profit by delivering exactly what the public wants?

And just a note.  The more access to music people have, the more they consume, the more tickets and merch they buy.

2. A fair shot at a good concert ticket

The number one complaint is not high prices, the big bitch is you just don’t get a chance at a good seat.  People know the value of a front row seat, they’re willing to pay for it, just give them a shot at it.

Sure, it works for the act to make a deal with AmEx, to have a fan club, to put so many layers of sale between the act and the customer that people are turned off instead of turned on, pissed instead of happy.

Yes, happy.  People may say the movie is lousy, but most concertgoers are thrilled to be able to attend the event, they fully enjoy it.  But, how do they get in?

Until all tickets are available at one time (how many credit cards and fan club memberships do you have to get to be a regular concertgoer, this works against the industry instead of for it), and are priced according to their desirability, fans will be unhappy.

If you desire to appeal solely to your fans, by allowing them to get tickets and requiring them to line up and show ID to get in…this is not a terrible strategy.  You’re satiating the hard core, while pissing off the public.  Then again, most of the public is willing to shrug and say they just don’t care that much about going to this show.

3. Access

What’s the number one thing a fan wants?

To be able to go backstage.

Not everyone can provide this, but don’t decry platinum packages that allow this, for this is exactly what the public wants.

If you want to make people happy, make yourself available.  That could be as simple as a response on a message board or as complicated as going out on a date with a contest winner.

But this is what people want.  Think about how you can deliver it.

4. Music that they want to play again and again

Note, this does not mean music that is given a thumbs-up in radio callout research, when a listener hears a short snippet.  After all, we’ve established above that thirty seconds is not enough.  If a listener does not get the urge to immediately replay your music, you’re not going to have success.  That could be playing a three minute ditty again and again, or a complete album again and again.  The form is unimportant, it’s about the desire.

5. More music by their favorite artists

Shorten the time between releases, deliver more material.  Fans want outtakes, rehearsal tapes, live tapes…almost anything and everything.  Sure, this is different from what the casual fan or the uninitiated person wants, but these are two different markets, and you make the lion’s share of your money from your hard core fans.

Don’t think about how you can placate radio, think about how you can placate fans.

This is as simple as a live album of the studio album a month after the original drop date.  YouTube broadcasts of live shows.  Downloadable content from your Website.  You can never have too much for a fan.  And don’t forget, fans are your number one evangelists, they’re the ones who spread the word.

6. More information

Where you are, who you’re recording with, the process.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, no one does this better than John Mayer.  And in the process he sacrifices not a whit of credibility or charisma.  Somehow, the public feels as if it’s in his back pocket and knows him, even though they realize the odds of in-person contact are slim to none.

7. Fewer commercials

Whether it be radio, television or a streaming music service, the public is fed up with commercials.  And unlike forty years ago, people have options.  Extended runs of commercials are abuse, never forget this.

8. A final concert ticket price

People hate being pecked to death by ducks, which is the equivalent of buying concert tickets today.  It’s not so much about the cost, as the feeling of being screwed by hidden charges that make no sense.  Print at home fee?

Come on.  That’s inane.  I’m using my own paper and ink.

We know it’s all about profits.  But why can’t it be buried in a final price?

9. A belief that the acts are in it for the music, not the money

It’s hard to sell an art form if people think it’s just a means to an end, a good lifestyle.  People won’t respect it.  People don’t respect towels, they don’t respect toilet paper.  Sure, they’re necessary products, the companies that purvey them make a profit, but it’s not art.

Art generates profits in a wholly different way than traditional industries.  Look at fine art.  The canvas may have been produced for essentially nothing, the cost of materials.  But only a few years later, it can sell for millions.

Stop calculating how to get to millions of revenue in a spreadsheet by maximizing this and that.  Just create something rawly desirable, then the revenue will come.  A great hit is more powerful than any marketing campaign.

People don’t need music, but they want it.  When it’s great.  When it speaks to them.  When it’s seen as integral to their lives.

10. Respect

In today’s connected world, the customer sees himself as equal to the purveyor.  Think of the wrath inflicted upon Wall Street.  That’s how much people hate the music industry, and that’s a problem.  Yup, fat cats who screwed us for far too long who want to continue to screw us!  You’ve overpaid for one good track on an overpriced CD, you’ve overpaid for a shitty seat, but you’d better not steal our product, we’re entitled to our income!  Huh?  Don’t make excuses, try and rationalize your behavior, just look how stupid it appears to your customer, without whom you’ve got nothing.

Record labels want to sell physical recorded product.  Or individual tracks.  Or albums.

Concert promoters want to sell food and drink.

None of these speak to the underlying needs and desires of the consumer.

The consumer wants music.  It doesn’t matter what form it’s rendered in, as long as the end result pours into one’s ears. People are not locked into vinyl or CDs, tracks or albums, they just want the listening experience.

As do they want the experience of hearing live music.  Sure, they’ll buy food and drink if they’re at the show, but those are incidental.  How can you make the show so desirable that people will willingly come and not care about parting with their dollars for extras?

Music used to be regional.  And despite being featured in all the Warner Brothers hype, nowhere I lived ever played Montrose on the radio.

But now the satellite’s got a national footprint.

Which is how I ended up hearing "Good Rockin’ Tonight".

I was driving up a leafy boulevard, the kind upon which XM maintains a signal and Sirius loses it, and this song came over the radio.  A cover of Roy Brown’s classic "Good Rockin’ Tonight".  Do we need another cover?  By Montrose?

Now I know Sammy Hagar got his start with Ronnie.  But this didn’t sound quite like him.  The vocal wasn’t quite full-bodied enough.  And I don’t know why I didn’t push the button on this lame remake by a latter-day incarnation of the band when suddenly the guitar started to SOAR!

Go to the NAMM show.  It’s in Anaheim next week.  You’ll see tatted up dudes with hair piled up high tapping their axes in imitation of Eddie Van Halen.  You’ll see wannabes with a lot of technique, but very little style.  This does not describe Ronnie Montrose.  Sure, he’s practiced.  But it’s when he chooses to play, and when not.  But, even more, it’s the lyrical sound of his picking, sometimes fast, sometimes sustained.  It’s like he’s dancing all over the fretboard, all over the track.  And sure, he can play fast, but it’s the way he puts the notes together, in a fashion that’s positively melodic!

I thought Ronnie was retired.  But Wikipedia tells me he’s still out there, after battling prostate cancer.

And I also learned "Good Rockin’ Tonight" comes from the band’s debut.   The 1973 album with "Bad Motor Scooter", "Space Station No. 5" and "Rock Candy".  All of which have infiltrated my brain over the decades.  They’ve survived, via play in bars, at house parties, occasionally on the radio.  Montrose may have made no initial impact in my neck of the woods, but their sound is living on.

And it is Sammy Hagar vocalizing.  He hasn’t fully developed his sound yet, it’s not quite as full-bodied, not as rich as "Eagles Fly".

How to explain this.

The way you go to the bar today, to move to the bass-heavy productions of studio wizards…  We used to go to the gig. For three, four or five dollars.  And these skinny guys used to stand on stage and wring this sound out of their instruments that made us shimmy and shake, writhe like bugs.  "Good Rockin’ Tonight" is positively seventies.

But listen today and you’ll find it’s not even dated.  It’s like a rocket ship from outer space has entered our atmosphere. You’re wide-eyed, you’re dazzled, you want MORE!

Montrose Good Rockin’ Tonight

Hang in there until 41 seconds in, that’s when Ronnie Montrose starts getting under your skin.  But it’s only for a moment.  Stick with the track and he’ll pull you by the collar, jerk you out of you chair, make you stand up and exult!  By time you’re at 1:30, at the solo, you’ll be stunned!

And every time you play the track thereafter you’ll hear more.

And you can’t but help but play it again.  And again.

He not busy being born is busy dying

"It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)"
Bob Dylan

I’m reading the new "BusinessWeek".  Or as it now says on the front page, "Bloomberg BusinessWeek".  And that makes all the difference.

I noticed it last week.  The usual tech suspect was gone.  The guy who was a mealy-mouthed me-too reviewer is history, replaced with a nerd who doesn’t appear to ever see sunlight, who’s willing to go a bit deeper and show an edge.

Somehow, the fat has been cut from the magazine.  And the features in the latest issue hit a bit harder, they’re more incisive, more authoritative.  Rather than worrying about pleasing advertisers, there’s a bit of independence.

Well, I’m not sure that description fits Charlie Rose’s interview with Howard Stringer.  A well-liked man with a terrible track record, Sir Howard has yet to turn Sony around.  And Charlie, who first and foremost yearns to be your friend, tees it up for Sir Howard in classic Larry King fashion, he lets Sir Howard shine.

Until the end of the magazine.  Forty five pages later, Mariko Yasu analyzes Sony’s stock.  Its shares trade for less than the assets’ value.  Sony’s stock surged 39% from last year’s battered price.  But Samsung’s rose 77%.

Samsung.

Ten pages earlier, the strategy of the two rivals is delineated.  Sony’s gone to outsourcing, Samsung’s still making all elements of its LCD tvs, selling Sony glass in the process.  End result?  In 2006, Sony had 17.1% of the LCD market and Samsung 15.3%.  Last year, Sony’s share declined to 15.3%, but Samsung now maintains 22.7% of the LCD market.  And Samsung makes high-priced sets.

Meanwhile, Samsung sold $17.5 billion worth of electronics in China while Sony only moved $18 billion in all territories outside Europe, Japan and the U.S combined.

In other words, Samsung is the new Sony.  Happened just about that fast.  While you were focused on the travails of reality TV stars.  While the iPod became long in the tooth and was superseded by the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Wow.

Just as interesting is the resurgence of Atlantic Records.  Columbia ended up winning the market share race, with the combined once in a lifetime sales of Susan Boyle and Michael Jackson, but up until this last SuBo surge, Atlantic was number one.

And Interscope was..?

Jimmy Iovine is off revolutionizing sound at Best Buy, selling Beats headphones.  But if I were Vivendi, I’d be worried. Is this strategy contributing to Universal’s bottom line?  What is Jimmy Iovine doing to prepare Interscope for the future?  What is Universal doing to prepare for the future?

There’s Vevo.

But didn’t Warner prove that you’re better off not operating outside of your core competency?  With both Bulldog and LaLa?  Vertical integration is a failed eighties concept.  Once upon a time, CBS owned record stores, that didn’t help them sell more product and they ultimately got rid of Discount Records.

Howard Stringer talks about 3-D, he’s banking on music…  Seems to me, he should be focused on electronics, that’s Sony’s core competency.  But  Sony is losing there.  Dramatically.

Atlantic is leading the way in 360 deals.  And Warner derives much more of its revenue from digital than any other major.

My point is not that the major label paradigm is the future, it’s just that if you are a major label, what is your strategy for the future?

More than ever, it’s a tough row to hoe.  Because there’s always someone around the corner poised to eat your lunch. Motorola rode the RAZR to the brink of irrelevancy, the mobile phone company might never recover.  NOKIA peaked. Apple demonstrated that people would pay a lot for functionality they were previously unaware of.  No one can compete with Apple’s App Store.  Not even Google.  All Android phones reserve only 190 MB for apps, whereas on an iPhone, you can fill up the entire memory, 8, 16 or 32 GIGS!

But better than that, the iPod Touch has all the same functionalities, except for making phone calls.  Making the market for apps that much stronger.

In other words, Apple’s got market share.  For now.

Microsoft is Universal.  The shrinking behemoth.  So busy protecting what they’ve got, overburdened with overhead, neither can make a move, it’s just too risky.

Let someone else sell the music.  Whether it be Apple, Spotify, MOG or…  Focus on creating that which is desirable.

And one thing we’ve learned, most of what the major labels create is not fully desirable.  It’s made to run up the radio chart, not to do live business.  But live business is where the revenue is, and if you’ve got a 360 deal, you want big grosses.  Meaning that to prepare for the future, you should be selling what appeals to ticket buyers, not radio stations.

Whatever innovation Live Nation has delivered has not been viewable by the public.  And Ticketmaster has an image that eclipses that of the RIAA…as in negative.  Ticketmaster doesn’t even seem to be making an effort to change its image.  It’s just banking on its exclusive relationships.

But what we find in the modern era is the public catches on to quality very quickly.  It’s hard to sell crap for long.  Just ask Detroit.

So to continue to come out on top, you must constantly be reinventing yourself.  And this takes risk.  And stunningly, too many entertainment companies are afraid of risk, even though the riskiest projects create the most revenue down the line.

We don’t want to see the 1910 Fruitgum Company, we want to see Paul McCartney.  Even Jethro Tull.  There’s some substance underneath.  Vanilla Ice may have turned his image around, he may now be somewhat likable, but there’s still very little there at the core.  He’s got fame, but no revenue.  Whereas Phish has got a modicum of the fame Rob Van Winkle possesses, but tons more revenue.

But Phish has not figured out how to tap the younger market.  Their audience is aging.  And this is problematic. There’s no enticement to today’s college students.

And there you have the modern music business.  Let’s just continue to do what we’ve always done.

But that hasn’t worked for Sony…

Sony and Samsung’s Strategic Split: While Sony bets on outsourcing TVs, the Korean giant is building an edge by making its own

How To Play It: Smart Moves To Make Now

Sir Howard Stringer: Why Sony Is About to Snap Back Charlie Rose talks to Sony’s Sir Howard Stringer

Usually, they die during Christmas.  The axiom is, if you make it through the holidays, all the way to January 1st, you’re golden, you’re safe.

How great was Willie Mitchell?

Let’s just say without him, Al Green was never able to ascend to the same height.  And that was positively stratospheric.

Thank god there have been full-fledged obits.

But will Tony Clarke get the same love?

Once upon a time, the Moody Blues was a British Invasion act with one hit track, "Go Now".  Pretty great, Denny Laine traded on it in Wings and beyond.  But by time the Moody Blues became the band we remember today, Denny Laine was long gone.  It was a new act, produced by the sixth Moody, Tony Clarke.

"Days Of Future Passed" was the only album I could listen to with my father.  He’d sing along with the orchestrations.  I remember playing the cassette on the drive to my freshman year of college.

And once I got to school, it was a Moody Blues extravaganza.

I already had "On The Threshold Of A Dream", and the latest, "A Question Of Balance".  But this meant I’d missed out on gems.

Like "In Search Of The Lost Chord".  And "To Our Children’s Children’s Children".

I’d say the latter was a stoner album.  Hell, the album opened with "Higher and Higher".

But if we call "To Our Children’s Children’s Children" an album to get high to, how do we describe "In Search Of The Lost Chord"? Where we lost our minds to "Legend Of A Mind"…  That whole first side, I drifted in and out of consciousness as the Moodies referenced Timothy Leary…  Their music was even more atmospheric and out there than the Airplane’s.

Then the Moodies focused on hits, and it wasn’t quite the same.

But there was a multi-album run where they seemed unconcerned with trends, where they marched to the beat of their own drummer, and we went along for the ride.  The music was sweet, exquisite, without being saccharine.  It’s the soundtrack of my freshman year.

The younger generation has embraced Led Zeppelin, can they ever embrace the Moody Blues?

I think so.  If you started with "In Search Of The Lost Chord".  In an era where it’s in your face, where we constantly deal with harsh reality, it’s a thrill to go along for an uncharted ride…into your own mind.

And on the back of every album was Tony Clarke’s name.  He was as integral to the Moody Blues’ sound as George Martin was to the Beatles’, as Gus Dudgeon was to those early Elton John records.  Every time I hear the Moodies on the satellite, I smile.  Because it means someone remembers.  And I can never forget.  Below zero weather, sitting in the dark, watching the zilch drip plastic into the bucket of water as Justin, John and Ray sang…