Short Term Strategies, Pressure

The band fell victim to what Robert Summer, chairman of World Theater, Inc., and former executive vice president of Sony Music Entertainment, describes as the changing economics of the music industry. “The heightened pressure to make more money in less time has affected the view of longevity in the business,” he says. “The ability to invest the time and the funds required to nurture artists, help them mature, and build careers over time is eroded by the fact that the industry is owned by conglomerates with near term financial pressures. That pressure can also be distorting to the artist and the artistic process.” This results in an industry laden with overnight success stories that are overmarketed in the short term and underdeveloped for the long term.

Part of the problem is that some marketers fail to identify which products or brands are flash in the pan successes and which may start slowly but are likely to be adopted by a culture in the long run.

In a market driven by quarterly results, long term growth, marketing, and branding strategies that require intensive capital, labor, and resource investments have in many instances been sacrificed for short term strategies that quickly impact the numbers.

From Marketing Campaign to Brand Equity Today’s music world has become so marketing driven and imagefocused that the formula for success almost mirrors an algebraic equation into which various artists can be inserted to represent the unknown variables. The formula seems heavy on PR, standout clothing, eye appeal, and dance talent, and short on songwriting and singing ability, which has changed the type of artists that have recently racked up commercially successful hits.