Gene Simmons and Kiss have been some of the best marketers in the biz for a long time. No doubt, they’ve made a mint off of selling Kiss stuff. But Gene’s little interview with Billboard is hilarious.
The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work.
The problem is, suing your customers isn’t a business plan. That the record industry offered no useful, legal alternative for years was the error, not the dearth of lawsuits against college kids.
Trying to put all those chickens and eggs back won’t work now. It’s like trying to get people to cough up $1/minute for long distance phone calls again. Too late for that. Gene doesn’t really offer a solution, just a strange comparison of music to gold.
Even the idea that you’re considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There’s no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that’s what going on.
He may just have unwittingly captured it. The value is the price the market is willing to pay. Almost everyone — but Gene and a few others in the towers of the labels — has since agreed the value of music is much lower than 20 years ago. Does it matter then that there are a few hold-outs claiming it’s worth more? Perhaps the model has changed and it’s time to change with it?
Gene should probably read Thomas More’s Utopia and perhaps he can then free himself of his golden collar.
November 17, 2007 at 1:16 pm |
I really like the gold analogy.
I just wish the average person would accept the fact that making music costs some money, therefore some money should be spent to acquire it. Music is a product. It really bothers me that some people will just download the song from any unauthorized source without the feeling of guilt when they are perfectly capable of going to a store (physical or e-commerce) and buying the music.
February 12, 2009 at 11:23 am |
You’re missing what market professionals are saying whatigotsofar. You’re right that music is a product, but what the marketplace is telling record labels is the old pricing system found in music stores was not fair to the consumer. There simply was no other option of obtaining music other than recording radio music onto a cassette tape (which was still copyright infringement, it just wasn’t policed). People are willing to pay for products they want, but if the consumer isn’t content with a pricing system, they look for another which they consider to be fair or else they avoid it all together.
If record labels decrease music prices to where the market considers it fair, the problem fixes itself. And yes, there will always be a small number of people who try to take music for free, but it is much easier to target these people for harsher punishment once the masses have accepted a new pricing system.