You remember the music industry, don’t you? You know, the enterprise sunk by pirates on dry land? But, light shines brightest in the darkness. An article came across my computer that shows the ingenuity of these creative enterprises. The article is New iPone apps are changing how music is marketed and made. This is a good example of a strategist using the Blue Ocean Strategy to create a long tail. (See Chris Anderson’s video on the Long Tail and the music industry).
In the IPhone article, the creator of the BandApp has designed an app that helps bands to launch their own virtual record companies. The app “works as a record store, marketing department and cameraphone-wielding stalker combined.” The app seems to take out the middlemen between the band and the fans. This of course is creating a blue ocean strategic plan for both the bands and the app owner because the traditional record company cannot compete on this level. The record company can advertise more, create more tours, but ultimately there will be forced to confront this app (or some derivative of it) head on. There will be no avoiding it. The app is creating a blue ocean where there is no direct competition.
Likewise, the owners of BandApp also are looking for the long tail. “Equally, rather than trying to sign five bands in hope of selling a million records each like a record company, he can, without risk, “sign” 100,000 bands, even if they’re only likely to sell 50 records each.” What that means is instead of focusing on the big-selling bands in the top tier, they are focusing on all the rest of the bands regardless of popularity. On an X-Y axis, with the Y axis representing dollars, and x axis representing band ranking, the graph would look like a big mountain with an infinitely long tail. That tail gets smaller as it stretches to the right. This is the money-making arm of BandApp.
During times of economic gloom, strategist who find their blue ocean will more likely survive now, and maybe prosper when the economy improves. The long tail combines the strategy with the new viral markets.
The individual who signs the check has the ultimate power.
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If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.
Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.
How interesting. I’ll have to mention that to my oldest son who is a poet entering graduate school. Thanks for writing.
An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
I was curious on where that phrase came from. I thought you might like this:
Several famous authors have uttered lines to this effect. The first was Daniel Defoe, in The Political History of the Devil, 1726:
“Things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) used the form we are currently more familiar with, in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 1789, which was re-printed in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, 1817:
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“‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Another thought on the theme of death and taxes is Margaret Mitchell’s line from her book Gone With the Wind, 1936:
“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.”
As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension.
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I do not pray for a lighter load, but for a stronger back.