Lou Pearlman saw a structural hole in the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 He foresaw a desire for cute, young boys singing melodic songs, dancing all the while.<\/p>\n
Was anybody producing anything similar?\u00c2\u00a0 Was melodic music dominating the charts?<\/p>\n
No, as the nineties wore on, beats were the key.\u00c2\u00a0 Rap was king.\u00c2\u00a0 If you wanted to compete in the music business, you went into the rap business, after all, that’s what radio wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you listen to anybody established in the business, you don’t pour money into something radio doesn’t want.<\/p>\n
And U.S. radio didn’t want the Backstreet Boys.\u00c2\u00a0 What traction they got was overseas, singing the songs of foreign producers and writers.\u00c2\u00a0 It was costing Lou Pearlman money.<\/p>\n
Then suddenly, boy bands blew up.\u00c2\u00a0 And Lou Pearlman made a fortune.<\/p>\n
This was before Internet downloading.\u00c2\u00a0 CDs were expensive.\u00c2\u00a0 But the company kept the lion’s share of the money, and you could sign wannabes for next to nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 Good-looking boys with good voices were a dime a dozen.<\/p>\n
In other words, how risky was Lou Pearlman’s venture?<\/p>\n
If you listen to anybody in the business today, they still say the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0 That everything starts with radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it costs you money, but radio reaches many people quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 And it requires beats, that’s the Top Forty radio sound, so you should make dance-oriented, bottom-heavy music.<\/p>\n
But few of these beat-oriented acts do good road business.\u00c2\u00a0 And the savviest know that most of today’s revenue comes from the road.\u00c2\u00a0 So, you should focus on what puts people in seats.<\/p>\n
Jam band aficionados will tell you it’s all about the players.\u00c2\u00a0 Get some long-haired twentysomethings who can noodle and the college audience will find them, it’s a sure thing.\u00c2\u00a0 But there are two problems…\u00c2\u00a0 One, the field is already populated with a throng of acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Two, despite being established for forty years, most people aren’t interested in jam band music.\u00c2\u00a0 This doesn’t mean that you can’t make good dough improvising to a rock beat, it’s just that it’s not easy to break through the clutter, and it’s almost impossible to become ubiquitous.<\/p>\n
But there is a hole in the business today.\u00c2\u00a0 Interestingly, it’s analogous to the one Lou Pearlman saw a decade and a half ago.\u00c2\u00a0 People want melodies, songs they can sing along with.<\/p>\n
That’s what separated the Backstreet Boys from New Kids On The Block.\u00c2\u00a0 The material was good.<\/p>\n
But as soon as Justin Timberlake grew up and went solo, he started making beat-driven music.\u00c2\u00a0 Britney too.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because the acts wanted to shed their adolescence, because they wanted to be hip, they wanted to be where everybody else was.<\/p>\n
But if you make that music, you’re dependent on hits.\u00c2\u00a0 As big a star as Justin Timberlake is, he won’t do much road business if he doesn’t continue to release hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Just talk to Mariah Carey.\u00c2\u00a0 With hits, people want to see her, without them, not so much.<\/p>\n
So what if we get together a group of good-looking people (that always helps.)\u00c2\u00a0 And we have them sing melodic tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 Even better, what if they write this material themselves, giving the act substance, allowing adulation to be more than skin deep?<\/p>\n
Then we’ve got the Beatles.\u00c2\u00a0 Yup, that was the formula.<\/p>\n
And the Beatles sounded like nothing on the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 But soon, the sound that dominated the radio before them disappeared.<\/p>\n
Please read Malcolm Gladwell’s article "The Sure Thing" in this week’s "New Yorker" (January 18, 2010).\u00c2\u00a0 In it, he debunks the myth of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are not big risk-takers, they’re very conservative, but they exploit the structural holes to achieve success.<\/p>\n
Gladwell references a book by two French authors, "From Predators To Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero".<\/p>\n
I first encountered this book in a "BusinessWeek" review<\/p>\n
\n