A kung fu fighter in a disco

The X Axis I think is measuring both accessibility of output and commitment of producer.

From:

WTF is going on with that graph? Why are there two distinct curves?

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

those should certainly be on different axes!! (unless commitment means just "commitment to accessibility")

and this is only an interresting graph if (assuming the x-axis can be salvaged with the correct unit), you had a time z-axis observing how those bumps perhaps converge during some eras (mid-60s?) OR EVEN CROSS OVER

(i haven't looked at the piece yet -- perhaps he talks about this)

From:

Because Godin is hypothesising that there are two distinct types of audience - people who respond to "passion" and people who respond to "pop".

From:

martinskidmore.livejournal.com

I think it's a fantastic graph! We need more with multiple curves and individual axes 'measuring' completely unconnected concepts!

From:

martinskidmore.livejournal.com

It's a good thing no one has ever tried to make pop music with any passion, or his thesis would be complete bollocks.

From:

OK there is NOTHING about that which makes any sense! I am not convinced he knows what any of the words he's using mean. or indeed if he's ever heard any music of any sort.

From:

or indeed if he's met any people who consume music!

From:

I had it down as some sort of 'credibility-as-viewed-by-S.Godin' axis.
You can't really bundle accessibility to consumer and commitment of artist into a single variable unless you already have an ideological stance that automatically pits one against the other.

From:

And that edginess has never been vapid, ever.

From:

I don't even get who the 'obsessed' bit refers to - the artist? the consumer?

also 'vapid' and 'trite' are both value judgments (and surely unquantifiable) whereas 'obsessed' and possibly 'edgy' (if it's measuring 'how cutting edge or fashionable something is') are definite measurable things? BUH?

also 'edgy' and 'obsessed' are two concepts which have nothing to do with each other!!!

From:

Yes Godin's assumption that there is a direct (inverse) correlation between the two is one of the more startling implications of his argument!

(Actually "accessibility" isn't quite right either. Do you know, I think he's using the X Axis to represent "authenticity"!)

He talks about changes over time but not in such an interesting way: he says (possibly in the follow-up post) that the "passion" curve changes all the time, but I think he means it as a handwave to let post-facto rationalisation do all the work of 'proving' his ideas.

From:

Oh, ok, that will teach me not to read the article. Still, it is poor design - if you sum the two curves, that middle dip doesn't look like such an awful place to be. Sure, you're not at the peaks, but it's a damn sight better than overreaching in either direction.

From:

Incidentally, as a thought experiment I am also posting this link in a marketing/research forum to which I contribute. We'll see where that gets me.

From:

martinskidmore.livejournal.com

His delta blues guy playing to tiny audiences appears to have half the audience numbers of John Mayer, whose last album went double platinum, wiki tells me. That's quite a big tiny audience.

Actually we should stop doing this, since we are basically picking holes in a badly made net that hasn't been finished yet, and see if we can find anything that makes sense.

From:

ms-bracken.livejournal.com

This is how I feel every time I read anything by Seth Godin; I'm genuinely uncomfortable with the idea that he's some kind of marketing 'guru', because he just doesn't seem to think that people matter, or are different from each other, or not that different from him.

So this applies to his view of music* - I think it's pretty clear from his examples that he doesn't listen to a particularly wide variety of it - but it also applies to his view of how you market products, because I never get the impression that he cares about anything, particularly.

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

if x measures "commitment", and you draw two curves, one of "commitment to the material" and the other of "commitment to the audience"?

you would probably get bell-ish curves (when don't you?) -- but the problem then is how do you line up the apples and oranges of the two species of commitment? they both (presumably) start at the origin (assumption = music made with no commitment to the audience OR the material has marketshare of 0), but how do you scale them?

what you could do is sketch the different topological possibilities (ie "graph" where bulges are switched; "graph" where bulge peak comes at same point on x-axis; "graph" where larger bulge is "passion" bulge) and than analyse these, as shapes manifested by different kinds of music?

(the non-passion bulge would be more an "audience-satisfaction" bulge then i guess)

From:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/more-on-passion.html

From:

The problem is how would you define "maximum commitment to the audience" AND "maximum commitment to the material" and why would that not have a big market share (i.e. why are these curves bell shaped?)

Unless you're saying "well you can't be committed to both" (which Godin sort of it) but then where does the switch happen if 0 commitment + 0 commitment is possible but 100 commitment + 100 commitment isn't?

From:

i certainly think from readin the original post that X does roughly equal commitment

he has just made the curves up out of nowhere though. just his instinct, right?

From:

The y-scale could be logarithmic, I suppose.

From:

Yep, no sign of any actual EVIDENCE.

From:

i think in the end he's saying

"there are few things that we are all very passionate about"

which strikes me as trite.

From: