The Passion Pop Curve

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This comes from the blog of marketing guru Seth Godin - the full post is here and here's the curve:



"The reason you need to care is that gap in the middle. Every day, millions of businesses get stuck in that gap. They either move to the right in search of the masses or move to the left in search of authenticity, but they compromise. And they get stuck with neither.

A delta blues guy who plays for tiny audiences in Memphis is in the sweet spot of the passionate. John Mayer is in the sweet spot of pop. Both are great guitarists, neither is too edgy or too trite. Both made a choice. But there are a thousand guitarists who are neither. They're afraid to embrace one curve or the other and end up with neither."

Presented (for now) without comment. Over to you!

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think if you add up the comments on all Ashlee threads so far they will easily outweigh this, which is likely to be Seth Godin's only appearance on Poptimists!

I started the discussion because Seth Godin is a fairly to very well respected figure in the world of marketing and this post seems to have been particularly well received. I found it interesting because he's using what he assumes to be a fairly well-understood truth about music and applying it to everything (his other example is dentistry!). But of course his fairly well-understood truth about music is nothing of the sort. What it may be is a fairly well-entrenched belief about music - certainly it seems to be so with Godin. And as I said downthread in a reply to Mark, what's interesting to me is whether people believe they themselves act like this.

[koganbot]

This makes sense. My initial reaction was "Why are we stomping on something that's already been well-stomped many times before. But from the perspective of "What is it that marketers believe and what do they do with their beliefs" this is a bit intriguing, since a lot of the way that music is sold is to convince consumers and creators all across the spectrum that they're on the left side of that graph.

So you're right, there is a wrinkle here in that a respected marketer isn't noticing that, for instance, Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" is #1 in urban airplay, #1 in hip-hop/r&b airplay, and #12 in pop airplay, and no matter how you look at it (either as something that is pop but flourishing first in a specialty market, or as something that is black but compromised towards pop, or as something that is black and not compromised towards pop but somehow crosses over to pop) it completely confutes/refutes his "graph" - unless I suppose he considers all major radio formats pop and what he's talking about for the left side of his graph is... not sure what it would be: indie that doesn't cross to the alternative stations but has a strong market somewhere?

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

even worse than relative lack of responses to ashlee thread - we have BARELY DISCUSSED weezy f on poptimists at all, ever!

(nb Tom I actually can't believe that this dude is well respected in any field b/c this shit is utter nonsense)

[ms-bracken.livejournal.com]

likely to be Seth Godin's only appearance on Poptimists

I do hope so, I had to unsubscribe from his blog's feed for the sake of my blood pressure. And yes, will be weighing into Ashlee related discussions once I have the album...