Dr. Forbush Thinks - music

The Long Tail

noreply@blogspirit.com (Michael FORBUSH) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:37:55 -0700

Yesterday I listened to a talk given by Chris Anderson, the author of the book, “The Long Tail.” He also has a blog over @ The Long Tail.

The idea behind his book is quite simple, yet it is also quite eye opening. Basically Chris tells us that all markets can be described as a power curve. OK, the mathematicians out there know what I’m talking about, but the rest of you are lost. So, imagine a piece of graph paper with an x and a y axis. The x-axis runs across the bottom of the graph and it describes items of different types arranged in order of popularity. The items to the left are the most popular and the items to the right are the least popular. Now, imagine the y-axis representing sales of those items. Obviously the most popular items sells the most and it will be plotted as the highest on the y-axis. So, now if you plot the points on the graph you should find that all the items lie on a curve that has a very long tail to the right.

If you are still following me, then I can assume that the math I’ve already described wasn’t to complicated so I’ll go on assuming that it isn’t.

The point that Chris makes is that in the last century mass marketing has concentrated on the few items to the left hand side of the graph and it has ignored the items to the right hand side of the graph, even though 80% of the potential market is ignored while 20% of the market is pushed with unrelenting marketing and advertising. This brings up many questions, including: “why is so much marketing money wasted on pushing items that are already popular?” It obviously has to do with what is desired by the business side of the equation, rather than what is desired for the customer side of the equation. The market shape described by Chris is not just hypothetical, it has been observed by the sales of music. The thousands of titles that are now available on line represent a market that is unencumbered by distribution of rare titles. And what is observed is a power curve with a very long tail.

One can imagine that the sales of 1000 individual rare one of type songs costs the same as selling 1000 copies of the most popular title. In the “old days” before the Internet, however it would have been difficult to know where to ship a single copy of some rare song so that the person who wants it would be able to find it on the self of the record store that he frequented. So, the idea of matching a person to a rare infrequently desired item is much easier.

Although music was the example that Chris used, this idea applies to all markets. Amazon.com showed us this with books, and E-Bay shows us this with the diversity of matching even rarer more random types of items. This long tail is the future and many new companies know this and they are acting on their own ideas related to targeting this long tail.

The key to using this information is the method needed to match the people to the items in the long tail. If we think of a plot of “all items transacted” we would start with the most popular item that is bought and sold. I have no idea what it is, but surely someone does. Maybe it is waste. Out in the tail there are cupcakes and coffeecakes sold once a year at the school Christmas fundraiser. Even further out there are even rarer transactions. If someone wants to make money out on the tail there needs to be a way to collect the things together in some way so that one can sell a lot of these rare items. For example, someone could start a business that specializes in selling home baked goods. They could collect a large number of potential bakers together online and they would submit web pages describing their food. The potential business would be a way to match all of these potential bakers with those that appreciate home baked food shipped overnight by FedEx or some other overnight shipping company.

Imagine the problems solved by the collection of all of these potential bakers. A person is not limited to one person or another person, but they could select from thousands of potential dishes or deserts. The person who cooks the meal no longer needs to advertise or search for business. Instead they rely on getting a hit on their item advertised at a place where people who are looking for food are shopping. Assuming that the business creator works out the shipping problem, then this model could offer unlimited diversity of food to a potential customer. Of course this model might not work for all food from anywhere around the world, but it is true that it increases the diversity available to the people that it can reach.

Now, this curve is not static. Items become popular and they become less desirable. This happens for various reasons. Some items just might be better than all other similar items. Word of mouth spreads this information, and the best item is sought by the majority of those looking for that type of item. Another way that an item becomes popular is by forced marketing where an item is advertised so much that people are unaware of any similar items in the market. People who need that type of item will select the only item they believe to be available fitting the desired class.

The point here is that there will be a large number of new potential business opportunities that are available looking for people to start new businesses. The idea is to create new ways to get diverse goods aggregated into groups that people will be able to search for particular rare items. There might be an opportunity for an online model train scenery supplier that collects artists together that will produce specialized pieces on demand. Or, it might be political blogs that aggregate all of the best writing on particular ideologically specific areas. Oh, I guess that’s been done already. Well, there are still phrenology and numerology aggregates that don’t exist yet.

:-}

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Politics

Michael Stanley Band

noreply@blogspirit.com (Michael FORBUSH) — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:45:00 -0700

If you are from Cleveland, or grew up in the Cleveland during the late seventies or early eighties you already know who these guys are. But, the rest of the country missed out this truly Cleveland phenomena. In my opinion, these guys played Rock-n-Roll in the Bruce Springsteen working class tradition. They wrote songs about things that the average Clevelander cared about.

Well, on February 17, 1982 the Michael Stanley Band played the Cleveland Agora Ballroom at 10:00 AM, for a radio concert. This was a WMMS tradition during those days. Cleveland artists like MSB, Alex Beven and others played on the radio to a free concert at the Agora.

Way back when I actually taped this concert. Today I wish I had taped other concerts as well, but that is not the case. The tape floated around for years; I listened to it from time to time. I actually converted it two mp3 files a couple of years ago. I burned the mp3 files to a couple of CDs. And, now I am posting the files to the internet.

The problem with posting the files to the Internet has always been the size of the files. Since each file is about 30 minutes long, the files are about 30 Mbytes each. Most file sharing and e-mail accounts couldn’t handle the file size. But, today I discovered MegaUpLoad which claims to be able to handle 250 Mbyte files.

Although these are not podcasts they are audio files that you need to get through the server. Click on the link below and follow the download instructions. They will remain on the server until no-one download them for more than a month…

Coffee Break Concert - Part 1
Coffee Break Concert - Part 2

music, mp3, WMMS, Cleveland and MSB

The Rising

noreply@blogspirit.com (Michael FORBUSH) — Mon, 09 May 2005 16:51:56 -0700

I finally raised enough courage to go back and listen to Bruce Springsteen’s CD “The Rising.” I say, “raise the courage,” because the last time I tried to listen to it I broke down during the first song: “Lonesome Day,” and I couldn’t listen anymore. It might have been that the first time I listened to the CD it was to close in time to 9/11. After all, the entire CD is a reflection on 9/11 and the “new beginning” we all need to go through after the event.

So, this time I purposefully avoided listening “to close” to the lyrics so that I could get further into the CD and maybe listen to a more hopeful song. I thought about starting with another song, but I realized that “The Boss” put the songs in this order for a reason. I was hopeful that I could get to some more redeeming and hopeful song this time. I tried to avoid listening to the lyrics, but I was pulled into the music and I couldn’t avoid the lyrics.

Well, I am glad that I listened to it again, more than a year after I bought it, because there are more hopeful less sad songs on the CD. I don’t really want to review the CD, but rather write about the emotional experience of listening to such a heavy collection of songs.

Of course this brought back memories of what I was doing on 9/11 and what happened and all those questions again. It is almost like taking a drug because the mood and emotions can’t easily be changed after you start thinking about these things.

I’ve read about people who dropped acid back in the 1960s. Since the effects of the drug last for several hours it is quite important to have everything in order before you take the drug, because a little worry about not having something done could be magnified while you are under the influence of the drug. The experience of listening to “The Rising” was much like this. After listening to it I was quite melancholy for quite some time. Even when I put other music on I couldn’t shake the mood. In fact, I had to put more melancholy music on, because other music seemed to be quite annoying. Fortunately the effect of listening to the CD didn’t last for 12 hours or impair my driving, so it was much safer than dropping LSD.

Johnny B. “Good” is Dead

noreply@blogspirit.com (Michael FORBUSH) — Thu, 14 Apr 2005 16:18:58 -0700

Johnnie Johnson was Chuck Berry’s keyboard player and he died yesterday April 13, 2005 at the age of 80. In an interview with Terry Gross recorded earlier he admitted that he was “the Johnny” that Chuck Berry wrote the song about. Johnnie Johnson was a restless musician who wasn’t happy just playing in the band. He said that on most nights Chuck Berry was done playing around 9:30 or 10:00 which is quite early for the Club Scene. Because of his tendency to go out to clubs and sit in with other bands until late in the evening Johnnie acquired a reputation for being a hard partying guy. In fact drinking was the reason Chuck Berry used to describe why he decided to break up with the band and tour solo. Johnnie continued to claim that he was more interested in playing in bands that offered different styles than the Rock-n-Roll of Chuck Berry. None-the-less Johnnie’s reputation earned him the lead in the now famous song: Johnny B. Good. This phrase had been used to scold Johnnie Johnson many times before it made it into the lyrics, but he would argue that it wasn’t deserved. However, he was proud to say that the song was about him in the interview with Terry Gross replayed today on Fresh Air today, April 14, 2005.

Fresh Air today, April 14, 2005

Music

Art and Literature

noreply@blogspirit.com (Michael FORBUSH) — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 11:58:32 -0800

Art and Literature

I wrote a blog about Art and Science last week, and I thought I would continue from where I left off. In my blog I concluded that Art and Science are actually more alike than we actually realize. This is because Art and Science both observe the world and record those observations. Art includes emotion in both the observation and the communication. Science on the other hand attempts to exclude emotion in an effort to measure the world.

Based on this simplistic view we can move forward and ask the question – “What makes art ‘good’?” Most people have a personal idea of what makes art “good.” I have heard people express these opinions as long ago as I can remember. For example, one person may tell me that they saw some fantastic art, because the paintings were so realistic. Realism is one aspect of art, but does that mean that art that isn’t realistic is bad? Similarly, some people may say that like a particular style of music because they really enjoy the beat or the lyrics reminded them of a romance they once had. Does this mean that if music doesn’t have the catchy beat or lyrics that remind us of something out of our lives, then the music is bad? If the answer to these questions is no, then how do we know if art is ‘good’?

We should go back to understand the purpose of art. The artist observes the world and records those observations in a form, which communicates them to an audience. Paintings and drawings have an audience that trickles in and moves on over time. Live music and dance have an audience that witnesses the performance simultaneously, but only once. Literature, like paintings and drawings, have an audience that trickles in, but the audience must also have their interest held for a long period of time, or the reader may just put the book down and never pick it up again.

People know what they like when it comes to literature. Most people have strong opinions about what type of books that they prefer. Some people will wander through the mystery section looking for another mystery. Some people will peruse the science fiction section looking for another science fiction novel. People know what they like and they like what they know. So, how does one know if a book is a ‘good’ book?

We can go to an extreme example here. Everyone knows that sex sells. Include sex in your book, and you are bound to sell more books. This is because people like to read about what they know, and everyone knows about sex. Even a young teenager who hasn’t experienced sex is programmed by nature to desire something when it comes to sex. So, does including sex in a book make the book ‘good’? Most people would argue that including sex in a book only makes the book ‘cheap’, not ‘good’. Why is this? In our capitalistic society we are taught that creating demand for a product is the most important aspect of your product. Including sex in a book increases demand, therefore including sex in a book should make a book ‘good’.

Maybe the answer lies in the purpose of art. They purpose of art is to observe the world and to relate those observations back to the audience. By writing a book that includes sex in it we are relating the observed experience of sex back to the audience. But, if the book merely tells us what we already know the artist isn’t breaking new frontiers or relating new observations. The author is relying on telling us what we already know and telling us something that we know we like to hear again and again. It is like the pop musician that uses the I, IV, V chord progression over and over again. The musician knows that this is what the people are familiar with and he knows that people won’t complain. He is giving the people what they want, but he is not exploring new ways of communication with the audience. Lots of people will buy the music, but is it ‘good’ music. Is the musician a ‘good’ musician?

Obviously the answer lies somewhere in between. People want to hear the music that they are familiar with and the styles they are familiar with. But there must also be a place for musicians to explore new forms of music. Similarly artists need to create art in both traditional and new ways in an effort to understand the established styles and create more powerful new styles. Likewise literature will continue to rehash the old standards and also look at old observations in new ways.

To this end I’d like to alert people to the novel, “I am Charlotte Simmons.” by Tom Wolfe. Mr. Wolfe uses sex in this novel in a completely different way. It gives the reader a new view on an old observation. Of course if you are someone who believes that sex doesn’t belong in literature, then you won’t like this book. But, if you have an open mind you may be surprised at what Mr. Wolfe is saying and how he says it. Is it ‘good’ literature? Time will tell.