Quarter Inch Holes

I could wax poetic for years about Ted Leavitt, marketing professor at Harvard. The hundreds of business books written over the last 25 years, in my opinion, merely restate the insights he provided in the 50's and 60's. While musing about people's buying habits, he famously said. "People don't want quarter inch drill bits. They want quarter inch holes."

Hard man, there, Mr. Leavitt. The movement of money from one pocket to another is reduced to understanding and fulfilling a need.

It's worth the effort to think about what job people are trying to get done when they hire out your 3:30 song. I recently read of a market researcher who was seeking to understand the jobs that customers were trying to get done when they hired a milk shake, so it's not a foolish effort. Music fans don't want recordings, they want the experience of feeling the way they do when they're moved by your music. And that experience is wrapped up into much more than your music (although that's where it starts). The totality of their relationship with you drives them to choose your sound when they want that experience. Wrap your music around an artist - fan relationship and the impact of your music will grow stronger.