Loren's Music Room

There is nothing wrong with 80s music even though i am not a personal fan of most of it. But has anyone else noticed that the pop charts have become filled with 80s sounding songs? I mean they are not taking inspiration from the 80s they are just straight up jacking everything from the 80s. Will music ever become original again?

Marketing Creates Value, Wine And music Provide The Evidence

In their bones sales-oriented entrepreneurs believe that marketing is a cost centre. Some might quote Peter Drucker in support, “Nothing happens in a business until somebody sells something.” Financially-oriented entrepreneurs “know” that marketing is a cost centre best placed on a starvation diet along the way to zero overhead growth. Technically-oriented entrepreneurs are often not even sure of the value of the sales function. After all, sales people are coin operated, the antithesis of devotees of product beauty and elegance. Build it and they will come is the techie’s belief and sometimes that does happen, for a while. In most techies eyes, marketing is management stuff: sales is also redolent of management. Technically-oriented entrepreneurs might also quote Drucker in support, “(M)ost of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.” Aside from alleviating entrepreneurs’ angst about marketing and sales by the consumption of wine and enjoyment of music, how else can wine and music help entrepreneurs succeed, particularly new entrants?

Wine

Useful and usable empirical evidence comes from an experiment on wine tasting undertaken by scientists at CalTech and Stanford. People were given the same wine but some were told that it cost $5.00 a bottle and others up to $90.00. The value the subjects placed on the wine, measured as “tasting good”, was recorded in conjunction with a scan of their “brain waves”. When expectations were not set, the cheapest wine got the highest ratings. When expectations were set, the higher the price, the better the taste. The research supports the view that, “people experience reality not the way it is physically (objectively), but as they expect it to be.” The subjects’ brains made the wine taste better, not their taste buds. A financially-oriented person might assert that, the brain “cooks the books” in line with expectations.

In another experiment Frederic Brochet at the Universite of Bordeaux gave 54 experienced wine tasters red and white wine. They described each with the standard set of descriptions for the colour. The red was “jammy” and full of “crushed fruit”. The white tasted of lemon, peaches and honey. Next day the experts were given two red wines. In fact, one was the white with red colouring added. The peaches and honey became “black current”. Brochet’s experiment provides evidence that the customer experience is, “the end result of an elaborate interpretive process, in which our brain parses our sensations based upon our expectations. If we think a certain brand is better than we will interpret our senses to preserve that belief.” “Such distortions are a fundamental feature of the human brain.” It is a fact based upon hard evidence.

Music

The musician, a nondescript man wearing a baseball cap removed his violin from its case, seeded it with a few bucks and started to play classical music in the subway entrance. A thousand and seventy people passed by. Twenty seven pitched in a total of $32 plus change with one person giving $5.00 – not quite 20% of the total. An expert who had known what was to transpire had forecast that 75 to 100 people of a 1,000 would stop and give a total of $150. The expert knew that three days before this same musician playing the same instrument, a $3.5 million dollar Stradivarius, had commanded $100 a seat for so-so seats in Boston’s Symphony Hall. Two weeks after his appearance in the subway, out of respect for the quality of the musicianship, an audience stifled their coughs until pauses occurred in Joshua Bell’s playing. The audience was in Bethesda MD., just a few miles north of the subway station.

The person in the subway who threw in $5.00 was a trained classical musician and only he plus another musician knew that what they heard was something special. Yet, though one of them is a fan of Joshua Bell, even he did not recognize the violinist during the entire six minutes he stopped to listen on his way to work that morning.

Our Take

The music story shows that product beauty in itself can get a sale or two. Product alone does not get recognized or appreciated by enough people to create a large enough customer base to generate enough money to support a fast growing business. Both the wine and music stories confirm that people don’t pay based upon the product’s technical merits. This is a fundamental fact of customer behaviour with which a new entrant has to cope. It is not just a pitch by a marketer raiding your scarce cash. Odd that the connection is not made with the well known phrase, nobody gets fired, etc.

The stories also make clear that a common engineering approach to pricing, mark up costs by a factor large enough to make a profit provides only a hit or miss basis for a pricing policy. It has no anchor in reality. People pay relative to the value they perceive as customers, not what it costs the producer. The wine story shows that by setting price expectations independent of technical product quality, marketing works with a fundamental fact of human behaviour to establish individual expectations about value and hence selling prices and margins. The music story shows that creating physical context also sets expectations about the product’s value to the customer, in this case by more than 20 to 1.

Think about what might have happened had the subway context not been no name. What would have happened had Bell been wearing a tux? If advertising had been used to tell people it was Joshua Bell? How many people would have stopped if there had also been a video showing the world famous Joshua Bell playing his multimillion dollar Strad in Boston? What sum would the 1,070 passersby have thrown into the violin case? Replay the scene but assume there had been a TV ad or a news story the day before the event and then answer the questions again.

We suggest an extension to Drucker’s first comment so it becomes, “Nothing happens in a business until someone sells something but nothing good happens unless the sales function is led by marketing.”

Great marketing works by setting favourable expectations about your product and business amongst prospects and customers. A great sales machine captures the targeted portion of the additional value created by marketing. In sum, your business gets higher gross margins. Marketing clearly and directly contributes to the overarching objective of a business, wealth creation generated from a growing positive cash flow.

Failure to understand the distinct but complementary roles of marketing and sales is rife amongst entrepreneurs. They often have sales and marketing as a single expense category on their income statement! This intellectual failure is akin to failing to distinguish between labour and materials. Simply put, the coin-operated salespeople are responsible for getting the best price possible at the client’s premises within the limits set by marketing and competition.

Because marketing creates value by creating a favourable context for prices, for example, positioning the product in prospects’ minds as a unique category and thus worthy of a higher selling price or shutting out competition, there is no link to the cost of production and sales. Because there is no automatic rule that says costs are less than the selling price, marking up costs to establish a selling price amounts to the equivalent of looking in the mirror. It is a special form of business lunacy to say you must pay this so I can make a profit. Governments and monopolies successfully get away with a cost-based approach to securing their revenues. Entrepreneurs do not.

Only marketing-led firms generate enough wealth to be able to afford to credibly offer competitive returns to early stage investors and to generate wealth for entrepreneurs. This is why Acorn describes its equity product for high growth rate businesses as Marketing-Led Sales-Driven Equity™.

Wine and music do indeed provide the necessary evidence that while pleasure awaits those who orchestrate marketing and sales, the duo provide only solace for those who do not.

(Quoted with permission from www.acornpartners.com)

http://kingsfordconsulting.ca/?p=232

About the Author

Kingsford Consulting Ltd. is a Strategy and Business Development firm that provides business planning, market research and strategy development services. www.kingsfordconsulting.ca

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Death Quotes

11 Kenny Rogers Quotes to Celebrate the Birth of a Country Western Great

Ready for some Kenny Rogers quotes? Whether you love him or hate him, you have to admit that Kenny Rogers is one of country western music’s most famous players. His birthday is right around the corner and I’m kicking off a quotes celebration to honor it. Let’s celebrate with Kenny with these 11 quotes from life and from his music.

1. “Growing older is not upsetting; being perceived as old is.”

2. “There is a trade off — as you grow older you gain wisdom but you lose spontaneity.”

3. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great.”

4. I never had a doubt in my mind. I always knew that, with the right material, I could pop a hit.”

5. “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”

6. “All good things must end. Like two heroes in a story, let’s go out like we came in — in a blaze of glory.”

7. It seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones you can’t get.

8. Some folks called me a dreamer, other folks left and called me a fool. All I ever wanted to be was a winner, because I know a winner can never lose.”

9. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

10. “And the ball goes up like the moon so bright, the boy swings his bat with all his might. and the world’s so still as still can be, and the baseball falls, and that’s strike three. Now it’s supper time and his mama calls, little boy starts home with his bat and ball, says I am the greatest that is a fact, but even I didn’t know I could pitch like that.”

11. “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.”

and how about this version: “Know when to hold ‘um, know when to fold ‘um and know when to walk away from cameramen.”

While some of the words Kenny has spoken throughout his life have definitely held meaning, his songs hold a lot of depth too. As his August birthday quickly approaches, let’s remember the man who told us it’s okay to fold em, let us know we sometimes need to fight and taught us a bit about being optimistic with these eleven Kenny Rogers quotes.

About the Author

For more quotes related to music and musicians, check out the popular music quotes section at Famous-Quotes-And-Quotations.com, a website that specializes in ‘Top 10′ lists of quotations in dozens of categories.

The Wonder of Life – Sunset & Wisdom Quotes with Yoga Music from the album Yoga Sunset Chill Vol. II

How do I get World discovered, in music?

My best friend and I are starting a hip-hop music group. How do we get there, we must be where

It caused a lot of hard work and dedication, but with the new technology will make it easier and easier, there is a new out let's for the musicians themselves to put out there. It is a great new website called Music Nation on the rise, and I recommend every band or artist, check this out. Your music needs all the exposure see you when your trying to attract attention, and even after you made a name for yourself, you must still keep your music in the public ear.Bands Profile pages and invite you to create YouTube videos, share them with fans and much more. Music Nation is also re-direct yourlinks on MySpace, personal website, on your Blog, or what ever you choose. their goal is you move forward to help. Music Nation is to use many awesome resources for you to further help your presence as a musician, Band, etc. Their commitment is the biggest key to your success. This is something you can do now, so I recommend it.

Michael Jackson ” We Are The World ” Music Video (HQ)

Welcome to Pot City!
To save the Humboldt County economy from legalization, we have to become the Napa Valley of weed. Here’s how.
Inspirational Quotes About Life and Success: Words To Live By.

Some sobering thoughts on the Web, consider the first site on seven sites list this month, a public service announcement. Believe me, many of you will thank me Thursday.
my favorite life quotes

I’m totally confused… please read the whole thing!!!?

Ok I asked a few days ago about my odd break up, for a quick recap: my boyfriend and I have been dating for 4 months, everything was going great then after a date he kissed me good bye and shot me a text saying he wanted to break up…..
Now today at noon he calls me, doesn’t say anything, just puts me on speaker and sets the phone by the radio and plays country music… I don’t know my country songs and it was hard to hear them so I couldn’t really identify most of them… but I know one was that one song that one song that goes “who’s that one guy that you go running to when your love life goes tumbling… something something who’s your baby who’s your man” and some quote “touching” unquote songs by chrystina agulara… and after 10 minutes of music he hung up… what was that all about?

he could have called you by mistake =/ if he seriously broke up with you over a text that’s very immature, you should find someone better =]

PHILOSOPHY: The Writings of Jim Morrison

What does "life" for you?

No attacks here, on me or anyone else – - just please, I would be interested really People talk about the quality of life – - – - What does this mean for you? And no attacks on Bush and the Democrats either – - – no "quality of life means that no Pelosi "or" no Karl Rove "- seriously, what you are looking for, why you live where you live, what you like about it? Fee To quote the consignment note:" What do you want from life? "Me, I love my children, I love playing the game of football, I love football with my children, I love art, women, wine and song – I love beauty. I love the creation – I collect old Asian (especially Chinese) piece, much CERMICS but some statues and sculptures as well – not painting, but I frame pictures of my kids and hang them up – it represents a set of abstract images, it really well with the rest of the body. I love food too much – and music: Jazz, blues, classic r + b, some rock, some old country, some classical. And the beach, the sunrise over the Atlantic …

I think it means different things to different people. Therefore, I have it appalling when people make decisions for others on their own definition of "quality of life "……….. Base found

Brooks & Dunn Interview + “Believe” LIVE on The Today Show

How did Michael Jackson change the music world most?

Think about it.

Before all that the single most basic contribution he made was he revived the life of the music industry. Before Thriller came out, no one was interested in buying albums. After Thriller and people bought his albums then they became interested in other albums as well. That is why the label pedophilia is the least of the titles the befits him.

We Are The World 25 For Haiti [OFFICIAL VIDEO] HQ

‘We Are the World’
The first week of February, a group of more than 75 celebrities met in a studio on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles to re-record “We Are the World.” The occasion was the January earthquake in Haiti, which left the bedraggled, destitute country even more bedraggled and destitute.
Donnie Darko – Mad World