First Team Music: The Power Of The Consumer

The power of the consumer from my book "Water From Turnips" out 10/08

My interpretation of business in a free market country is very simple. The consumer demands a product or service, and the company supplies that product or service to the consumer for a price. The price is based on:
♦ how much the consumer is willing to pay for the product
♦ the cost to manufacture, market, and deliver
So in theory, free trade markets are completely consumer driven. In America, and most free trade countries, one must include laws, taxes, and subsidies into the equation. This is typically done to control or stabilize the growth of the market, to make an effort to ensure product quality or consumer safety, and to generally make sure that the government is getting a piece of the action itself. The entertainment industry is the purest form of this...

Begin Sidenote- I always get into it with people over consumer power in the music industry. "I don't really listen to rap, because it's gotten too misogynistic and violent"; however, those same people are quick to hit a club or listen to a radio station that plays that very same music they say they can't stand. Radio stations depend on advertisers. If noone's listening then advertisers aren't buying spots. If advertisers aren't buying spots then radio stations aren't making any money.

Another thing that I always hear from a lot of my female friends is, "It's just a song. They're not talking about me, because I'm not a bitch. Plus, I just like the beat". Sometimes I start singing bitch to them, and tell them that I'm not talking about them. They still get offended. Then I say, "Why won't you get offended when these cats are saying the same thing? Newsflash, unless they speak specifics, they mean it in a general sense. Stop fooling yourself!"

Also, one of my revolutionary homies told me, "We should boycott these record companies they start putting out quality material". I asked what he had in mind, and he told me the usual bullshit. You know like picketing, letters to the CEO's, and have meetings with the head of the record labels about putting better images forth. "Why not just buy music that doesn't placate to those images, and then talk your friends into doing that. Don't you think that this would be a more practical way of approaching it?" Of course he didn't..

The fact is that record companies are in the business of making money (which they don't seem to doing well anymore). If ignorance and dope dreams sell, then why wouldn't they present it to us. It's what we want, and they shouldn't take more responsibility than us on what we want to buy. Britney spears sold a lot of albums because we bought it (for the record, I speaking about 'we' in the general sense.) For as many people that complain about the images that hip hop and urban music put out there, Common and Talib should have sold 10 million albums every release.

The consumers power is absolute with no exception. All you have to do is use it. It's like a vote. You couldn't pay me to own an R. Kelly CD. The fool had sex with a little girl. Michael Jackson's pedophile ass will never be in my CD player again. Everything that I owned made by them went into the trash can, because the fact that I owned their music felt like I was okay with what they were doing. That's my right...my responsibility as a consumer and human being. -End Sidenote

...because the market is 100% consumer driven. The only things you need to figure out are who is the consumer, what am I selling, and how do I get it to them.

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