I read this article about Tide:<\/p>\n
“Tide Already Dominates Detergent. Why Is P&G Pushing a New Version? – The company controls about 60% of the market, but won\u2019t stop reinventing. Now, it\u2019s betting the future of laundry is ’tiles.'”<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/business\/tide-laundry-soap-procter-gamble-2938e8b6<\/p>\n
https:\/\/apple.news\/A43i010C7TpOk1pHMBgFdnQ<\/p>\n
Tide was introduced in 1946, before that Procter & Gamble purveyed Duz and Oxydol, which were juggernauts. Bottom line, the introduction of Tide would kill those two products, and it did.<\/p>\n
And now, the standard of laundry detergent is those Tide pods. You know, the little two-toned balls that you have to make sure kids don’t swallow.<\/p>\n
But now Tide is introducing these Triscuit-type tiles? They look like a step backward, but the truth is that they couldn’t push Tide forward technologically with the pod product. Ergo, the tiles.<\/p>\n
This whole article is about Procter & Gamble disrupting itself. It’s Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” in action. But it’s not a young tech company, but an old company selling soap…<\/p>\n
And this made me think about record labels.<\/p>\n
Now the labels were disrupted by Napster back at the turn of the century. People predicted their demise, but this never happened, primarily because of their catalogs. And now, more than ever, catalog music, old music, is keeping these now-consolidated companies alive. When it comes to new music, there’s no innovation whatsoever.<\/p>\n
Now I’ve got to give the majors credit for buying the indie distribution companies, distribution is king, and if you own the pipeline…never mind getting the data, you can amplify that which gains traction. But as far as building it from scratch?<\/p>\n
The major labels are categorically unable to do that. They OWNED new music production, but now they can’t break an act and the indies keep gaining market share.<\/p>\n
So what do the major labels do?<\/p>\n
Cut staff and release fewer and fewer records in ever more dwindling categories. Sure they’ll tell you they work DSPs, do their best on social media, but they’ve still got big radio departments, to a great degree it’s the same as it ever was. They’re resting on their laurels when they need to disrupt themselves in order to maintain their power. And they’re not, which is why they’re losing power.<\/p>\n
Today lasting acts are built on the road. Live Nation is in the artist development business more than any major label.<\/p>\n
But the major labels could change course.<\/p>\n
Instead of waiting for acts to break themselves, to make noise on social media, gain a following, major labels could search out great talent. They’re not even in this business today, it’s all commerce all the time. It’s kind of like the movie studios who are focused on superheroes and horror, they’re not serving up anything for so much of the public, especially oldsters.<\/p>\n
But records are so much cheaper to make.<\/p>\n
So labels should be searching out talent that is…TALENTED! New and different. And commit to these acts for a period of time and product, it used to be five albums over five years. So that the act can evolve and people can gravitate to them.<\/p>\n
You don’t hear a single?<\/p>\n
Forget the single. The single has never had less of the market. The focus should be on careers, acts testing limits, innovative musicians who have something to say.<\/p>\n
No one is absolutely sure what will catch on with the audience, which is why you have to take risk. But today the majors are risk averse. They’re just protecting their market share doing it the way they always have, the opposite of Procter & Gamble and Tide.<\/p>\n
And P&G has so many people working in R&D, after all this represents the future. Meanwhile, if it doesn’t contribute to the bottom line immediately, the major label has excised it.<\/p>\n
The major labels need more A&R people. Not paid that much, who penetrate scenes, go on the hunt for new trends, who get their finger on the pulse, who sign thinking artists who will push the envelope.<\/p>\n
Look at it like Netflix. It became a behemoth by putting out a plethora of product. Netflix puts out a comedy special a week. HBO? Every once in a while. And now Netflix owns comedy.<\/p>\n
And not all of Netflix’s standup specials are great, but when you give someone a chance, you never know what they’ll deliver.<\/p>\n
A great artist is rarely a great business person. They need help. A manager and a label. But the deal must be different, financially fair. All upside.<\/p>\n
I’d pay attention if a major label nurtured an act that was outside the Spotify Top 50 musically and promoted it. We are looking for gatekeepers! Now we’ve got a vast online audience overwhelmed with musicians seeking attention when most of them don’t deserve it. Please, please, please sign something worth my attention, worth my time, and point me to it.<\/p>\n
I don’t need another me-too rapper, or built by committee pop star. Hell, stop swinging for the fences. Almost everything worth paying attention to grows slowly and evolves, and the audience wants to go along for the ride, see the changes.<\/p>\n
This is what the Beatles did.<\/p>\n
But in the sixties record labels didn’t expect every album to be gigantic, they recorded them on a budget and tried to hook the audience up with the music.<\/p>\n
And we were constantly surprised. Stuff that seemed completely uncommercial broke wide.<\/p>\n
Those days need to return.<\/p>\n
But it will only happen if the majors disrupt themselves, change their systems. Fire the dead wood. Flatten the pay scale. Make everybody think they’re in it together. Get people looking for new music instead of just promoting priorities.<\/p>\n
A few innovative acts lift all boats.<\/p>\n
But the majors are not doing this, they’re promoting the same dreck and the public knows it. Diva schmiva. Deliver someone who has something to say who makes the audience think. Someone who makes music that confounds people. Something that makes people talk about the music itself as opposed to ticket and merch sales.<\/p>\n
We need to bring excitement back to music.<\/p>\n
And to do this, we need a total reset regarding discovery and promotion.<\/p>\n
But everybody at the labels is baked into the old ways. Sans their catalogs, the majors would be wiped out by innovative new music enterprises. They could disrupt themselves, but they’re not even trying to do this. They’re focused on financial engineering, when they should be focused on emotions, feelings… Just because some nitwits keep buying crap that doesn’t make it good.<\/p>\n
Don’t focus on riches and fame, focus on music. Don’t hype, deliver.<\/p>\n
Or maybe some hedge fund will come along and realign the whole company. Yes, hedge funds have a bad rep, but the truth is they evaluate a company, cut fat and create something shiny and new that is so efficient and hot that they flip it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, major label stocks go down.<\/p>\n
Think about it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I read this article about Tide: “Tide Already Dominates Detergent. Why Is P&G Pushing a New Version? – The company controls about 60% of the market, but won\u2019t stop reinventing. Now, it\u2019s betting the future of laundry is ’tiles.’” https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/business\/tide-laundry-soap-procter-gamble-2938e8b6 https:\/\/apple.news\/A43i010C7TpOk1pHMBgFdnQ Tide was introduced in 1946, before that Procter & Gamble purveyed Duz and Oxydol, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-65P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23426,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23425\/revisions\/23426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}