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We need to look up from the spreadsheet, get our heads out of our…cases and welcome people to this wonderful activity we all love.

Some of us are passionate to the point of being geeked out completely (think “Star Trek” uniforms or basement shrines to the Yankees). There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it can get a little one-dimensional. The majority of us have a spectrum of interests, and each thing about which we’re passionate rises to prominence in the right season (be it football or gardening) or in the right company (other car enthusiasts, snowboarders or “Downton Abbey” fans). We blossom in the presence of like minds, and we’re invigorated when it’s time to indulge in our passions.

In this industry, passions abound, and gear passion is one you will encounter wherever you turn. It can be new technology, high-end instruments or boutique items like tube amps and vintage guitars; whatever the case, though, it’s not hard to start a gear conversation around here.

It would seem that gear passion is a core value of our industry…and, perhaps, it is. But although there is value and enjoyment in wallowing in the myriad details of spec sheets and exotic woods, I worry that some industry members have also become too one-dimensional, focusing more on products than anything else. I like to think that most of us are passionate about making music, too. But although it may be so, too few of us try hard enough to spread the passion for making music. Theoretically, we should be excited about bringing others into the fold. But that often takes a back seat to gearfatuation.

I communicate with scores of people in our industry, on both the retail and the supply side. Despite the usual litany of cares and woes we all have and hear, many are upbeat. I’m always impressed when someone talks about student retention, products for young or new players, or promotions that put music making in the spotlight. I believe these are the people moving our… (continue reading.)

By Dan Vedda

We’ve often talked about the “unique” aspects of our industry: the passionate, hands-on, geek-lust involvement of both consumers and purveyors of music products. “Outsiders don’t get MI” is the common refrain, usually referring to both the models and mechanisms of our business and the outsized passions and peccadilloes of the personalities involved. Legendary stories of CBS suits running Fender and other companies into the ground in the ’70s still resonate in the industry as examples. But, over the last few years, the industry has changed (in good and bad ways), the consumer has changed (ditto) and the very way commerce exists has changed. Although I still believe our industry has some aspects that only a “lifer” can fully understand, I think there’s more to be learned from the rest of the economy than we’re often willing to admit. And, furthermore, I think it’s past time that we change that attitude and learn everything we can.

Gone are the freewheeling days of generous, minimal-diligence, buy-now-pay-later stocking deals, markets with few competitors, “legacy” relationships with schools and a never-ending supply of guitar-obsessed teens ready to buy anything with a full set of strings. We’ve had to figure out new models, new products and new consumers, all while watching our old ways recede faster than our collective hairline. It takes fortitude, to be sure, but, more than that, it takes vision to see ahead on a road we’ve never traveled. It ain’t easy, folks.

Only the most visionary person would have walked around in the early 1990s anticipating that, within 20 years, we’d all carry around powerful computers that fit in one hand, communicating, watching movies, photographing, newsgathering and even shopping—anyplace, any time. Accessing the total of our collected knowledge and history in an instant wasn’t even a practical consideration. (Unless, of course, you were a “Star Trek” fan….) Only a near-prescient seer could look at the ungainly chunks of technology we were playing with then and believe that they represented the building blocks of a paradigm shift and, more importantly, comprehend what the new paradigm might be.

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Over the last couple of months, I’ve been talking about the need for each side of the supplier/dealer equation to devote more energy and attention to our respective customers. Now that the Christmas season is in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to look at the way we should move on the road ahead.

Surviving retailers with any luck at all have shed dead inventory. In theory, we’ve been able to figure out what sells in our market and budget our precious inventory dollars accordingly. A word: What SELLS is the touchstone. It isn’t the superb guitar that your gearhead Manager wants. It isn’t the $1,000 violin that your teacher wants her student to have, despite the parent’s $400 budget. It isn’t the brand that will be highly profitable if we could only convince someone to buy it.

As smaller
 stores, we’ll
never have the
ability
to present a
glittering array
of all the
marketplace
has to offer.

No, what sells in each of our markets is a smorgasbord of products made attractive to consumers by a combination of manufacturer marketing, teacher recommendations, our own merchandising and sales presentation, and peer influence. It isn’t necessarily about quality (a look at the history of successful audio and video storage solutions illustrates that convenience, price and content can trounce quality in a heartbeat). It isn’t any one factor, and the next town on the map can distill a different blend of products.

For that reason, I believe we can influence our market best by becoming a curator. We need to stock our stores with a select blend of products we believe our community wants. Of course, we all think we’re doing that already. But how many of us could explain why we carry each specific brand, model and SKU on every peg—if you remove the variables of margin and saving freight? (Because those factors, although important to our bottom line, don’t mean squat to our customers.)

You may wax enthusiastic about the prestigious lines of guitars or professional horns you offer, but, once you get past the big-ticket items, what determines shelf allocation? Why do you carry this brand and gauge of guitar strings…this line of gig bags…this cymbal polish?

If the main answer has more to do with meet- (continue reading)

By Dan Vedda

As I write this, the Christmas season is still unfolding. We’re walking the tightrope hourly, scrambling to bring in the items our customers need while still having impulse goods and stocking-stuffer staples on a limited budget. Searching for an upside, I know that I won’t be stuck with piles of dead inventory at the end of the season.

As cranked-up as just-in-time inventory is, it’s multiplied because our store isn’t specialized. Our customers split very evenly between combo, B&O and print—and everybody has a special need, often for a product we have to hope a supplier still has in stock. For a small store like ours, it translates to more than a thousand “everyday” SKUs, plus all the specialty items. Yet, amid the stress of chasing down and budgeting for all the needs, one thing really has surprised me: Some of our competitors aren’t willing to do this job.

Over the last few months, I’ve become the point man on the phone. Partly from necessity, and partly because it’s the best way for me to gauge the market, I talk to most of the customers who call us. Sure, it ties me up sometimes when someone just wants to pick my brain, but I get a very clear picture of our average phone customer, and it’s encouraging.

You see, whether we’re further down the alphabet, further away or lower in search rankings, most of the new or casual customers I hear from have talked to other dealers or looked online before talking to me. Overwhelmingly, they thank me for taking the time to talk to them about their needs. “The last guy didn’t even offer to order this,” they say. “They made me feel like I was bothering them,” is a common complaint. Although some people mention less-than-knowledgeable salespeople, the appalling fact is that most never even got far enough to test the acumen of the person answering the phone.

Students and moms in particular seem to have the hardest time. “The guy just laughed at me when I told him what I was looking for,” I will hear them say. “I got a lecture for asking for a brand they say is ‘not good’. But it’s what her teacher wants!”
Sometimes, the attitude comes from other small stores, but, just as often, it’s a big multi-store or national operation that put some dude on the phone, perhaps because he’s awful at closing sales on the selling floor. I really thought our industry was moving past this, but the last quarter has startled me, I must say.

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By Dan Vedda

Today, our customers demand more from us than ever before. We’ve always had to be price competitive. Before the Internet, some guy across town took out full-page ads in the entertainment weekly that screamed, “We’ll beat ANY price!!!” Customers have always expected us to service the goods we sell, back up manufacturer warranties and show them how to get the most out of a product. But now, they also want it instantly. They want their cake, plus a fork so they can eat it on the spot.

In itself, this isn’t necessarily bad…just a corollary to the age of the Cloud. Today, Moses would bring down the commandments on an iPad, in the form of a PowerPoint presentation with embedded video, and it would be a streaming download from the Firmament.

So we adapt, tweeting and posting and e-mailing while still doing all the stuff we’ve done forever. Except, now, they expect meatspace to run at Cloud speed, even for non-merchandise transactions. Can we get the repair done not just today, but before 5pm? Better yet, now? Can we give their child a loaner horn for the lesson, plus repair his horn by the time the lesson is over? Can we text them with the open lesson times, and can we contact the teacher so he or she can start in two hours? Done, all of it. In this cranked-up world, we have ramped up our level of urgency to meet our customers’ ever-growing expectations. And where we control the results, we’ve done a good job of it.

But here’s my gripe: The results we don’t control are in the hands of our suppliers and, with a few exceptions, they suck at urgency. I realize that many of them suffer through the same crunch as retailers: lack of credit options, slow-paying accounts, reduced personnel, etc. That’s why my rant isn’t about fill rates. What bugs me is the lack of urgency on their part.

First, let me preface my screed by exempting two companies that, in my experience, have never subjected me to the things about which I’m soon to complain: D’Addario and Hal Leonard. I certainly can’t speak for all of retail, but, in my opinion, they prove that what I need can be done—if the intent is there.

Some suppliers make it obvious that the tumultuous years since the Internet got its first coat of paint have passed them by. I feel like I should call them on a rotary phone so they’ll be more comfortable. There are several companies that let every call go to voicemail, it seems. Some of those never return my call the same day. Faxed orders go unacknowledged and seem to be processed by that big-haired lady at the grocery store who always takes time to chat with every customer.

I have dealt with suppliers seemingly unaware that the continental U.S. spreads across four time zones, because they close as early as 4pm Eastern time—still lunch time in California. I have companies with damaged-shipment procedures more damaged than the shipment itself. UPS destroyed a box from one of them. The warehouse received it back, and there it stopped. Had I not inquired about it and pushed for a solution, I’m sure the credit department would have been after me when the invoice was overdue.

Can we get the repair done not just today, but before 5pm?
Better yet, now?
Can we give their child a loaner horn for the lesson,
plus repair his horn by thetime the lesson is over?

Some suppliers in this industry can’t tell me if they have an item, or when it might ship. I have several that can’t give me an order subtotal so I can keep to budget. And, some charge my card days before the order ships. Some over-authorize my debit card, tying up funds I need. Sometimes, they even initiate a brand new authorization, effectively charging me double until the hold expires days later.
Why don’t I get other suppliers? As you might remember, a couple of paragraphs back I mentioned only two companies in our industry that share our sense of urgency. I’m sure others may exist for you, but the problems are endemic to our industry and seem to be growing. Suppliers might be saddled with many of our cash issues, plus many of their own (including customs, tariffs and currency exchange rates, to start the list), but it seems their solution isn’t better service; rather, it’s containing cost and loss. Unlike retail, they don’t seem to worry about capturing every customer possible. As dealers, we are flayed every day for failing to meet ever-growing expectations. We know that Amazon is only the most obvious of the many other sources consumers have for the goods we sell.
In fact, many suppliers seem to think they’re better off just serving large accounts that will buy huge amounts and capture the bulk of the market. They open high-volume Web dealers, chains and mass merchants for improved bottom line. Where would retailers be if we required minimum purchases to get a good price, high annual volume and a credit card on file from our customers? It often seems that we work at cross-purposes.

To be fair, we do deal with a lot of companies that are trying to partner with dealers, and sales reps themselves understand our plight. My gripe is against archaic or misguided policies coming from management, as well as a lack of departmental coordination and, in some cases, plain old sloppiness. I wish both sides of this equation could realize how much we have in common.

There are a relatively small number of suppliers in our industry, and a similarly small number of dealers. Efforts to grow dealers outside of our industry have been fleetingly successful but short-lived, because the outsiders don’t have passion…just a hunger for profit. The truly passionate are few.

Here’s where we get to the chicken-or-egg part of it. Suppliers will say they could do more if dealers bought more and paid their bills. Dealers can assert that we’d buy more and pay faster if we could get orders efficiently and with fewer profit-sapping glitches. The reason I side with the dealers on this is that, if we took the supplier position with our customers, we’d be dead wrong.
We have to provide properly to profit. And that’s where the urgency comes from.

The fall school band season was interesting in our market. For years, it was about dealers jockeying for position. The traditional “school music dealers” would use their influence to lock down parent meetings, whereas smaller operators fought to get on “recommended” lists, undercut rental rates, or leveraged their student population and neighborhood convenience. That old school way of doing business is still in place, but its foundation is rotting.

Not long ago, the big scare was Chinese instruments showing up in chains outside of our industry or streaming in via the Internet. Although a $99 flute seemed like a boon to consumers, it was soon painfully obvious even to “n00b” band parents that a hundred bucks doesn’t buy you anything but a relationship with your local repairman. I’ve made more money fixing many of these horns than the profit I’d have made selling the customer one of mine.
The big boxes washed their hands of us quickly, realizing that high returns do not a profit yield. Incredibly, though I still see a lot of questionable Internet horns, more parents shy away from them than I had expected. Thank the band directors’ steady campaign against them, paired with enough horror stories circulating on the parent grapevine.

Instrumentation Adaptation

But, this year has been far more disruptive to the band rental scene as we know it, because we’ve seen the opposite problem: lack of rental horns. Both the “shortage,” such as it is, and the fallout from it are grist for the disruption, and it’s not yet clear what that will do to the “tradition” of school music. But I don’t think we can count on business as usual there any more than we can ignore the Internet.

The school music market is less than a hundred years old, and it’s always been challenging, whether you talk about recruitment, school budgets and serving isolated areas, or the newer challenges of the Internet. However, this season, although not exactly a “perfect storm,” contains elements that may start things on a different path.
First, while I relate conditions in my market, dealers, manufacturers and band directors I know around the country indicate that we’re not alone. The reason dealers ran out of horns starts with increased interest from the school kids. It seems the recruitment worry is off the table: Band directors are complaining—complaining!—that there are “too many kids.” As a former band director who only made sure the kids could fog a mirror before I signed them on, I don’t have a whit of sympathy there.
But that increased enrollment comes at a time when the many smaller dealers cannot get the fall dating terms they once had. Throughout the industry, you can hear complaints about truncated credit lines, personal guarantees and prepays. I had a conversation with a band instrument exec and he used the phrase “many of our prepay dealers.” The idea of prepay for band instruments—where dating amounts of $30-$100K or more were once common—hints at the huge gap. And he was speaking of these dealers as a significant group, not a mere handful of accounts.

Although there are still dealers with the financial muscle to wrangle a quarter-million-dollar note from a bank or finance company, there are fewer than ever. So those of us without that capacity buy what we can, coast on used horns and fold the hand early.

Windfall for the big B/O stores, right? Not so fast. Although they benefit, they don’t automatically get the rest of the pie, which is what makes this interesting. Large dealers can still have limits, and their capacity is tested when the neighborhood stores bow out. Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you’ll win the customer, either. I’ve had customers come to me to buy a horn because of ill treatment at the hands of a store with plenty of rentals. Far more are buying on craigslist, tapping into the thousands of horns we’ve allowed to go into closets because we haven’t taken any responsibility to keep people playing. Leaving the job up to the band directors is coming back to bite us. We’ve done so many horn refurbishings this season that August and September were our best repair months ever!

There’s also a credit crunch for consumers. I’ve been approached countless times by people denied a rental because of the credit policies of the bigger companies. I can’t fault the businesses completely; we all know the problems we can encounter with bad rental accounts. But it makes the decision an algorithm, whereas a neighborhood dealer might have taken a chance to get a kid playing. This skews music education toward those with the best credit record. I know teachers in comparatively affluent schools who are already trolling for donations so they can get instruments for kids denied the opportunity. Be warned—they tend to see the problem as our industry’s lack of empathy for the plight of the families.

Even the giant chain that has a satellite dealer here—and can supply them with a virtually unlimited stream of horns—doesn’t come off unscathed. People don’t always like the business that represents them locally, or their location, or the fact that an obviously corporate machine administers their account.

Fall band recruitment is an incredibly hands-on event when done the way people now want it. They want things explained, they want things smooth and, increasingly, they want their kid to succeed. Gone are the days when half the parents grudgingly rented a horn and looked forward to the day they could turn it in. The dealers need to be in touch—not be remote—and not just seeing the band directors.

My issue here is that we finally have legions of kids who want to be in band, and parents who (mostly) support them. Yet the band directors try to cull “excess” numbers, big chains turn away droves of hopefuls and the small dealers are not empowered to close that gap. The system is fractured, if not broken. Sure, programs can seem successful and at capacity, but the hidden damage is the number we turn away. Don’t whine to me about growth when we waste an unknowably large market with a shrug.

By Dan Vedda

Anyone with more than 20 years in this business remembers a time when GC was in California, Ash was in New York and Amazon was in the jungle. Truth be told, we still had plenty to worry about. There were still catalogs, shady competitors using bait-and-switch tactics, sales reps shaking down dealers, incessant price grinders with no store or brand loyalty…the Good Old Days were no worse than today, but not much better, either.

If you take a long view of our industry, you’ll see that we’ve always had an uphill climb for one reason or another. But climb we did, through the invention of radio, talking pictures, WWII, the accordion bust, school budget woes, the death of the home organ market and so much more. There were good times: if you bought into guitars right after The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan in the ’60s or if you sold synths and other tech stuff in the ’80s, for example. There are still plenty of opportunities now, if you’re willing to adapt your business model to trends—and adapt again when the trend has run its course.

But I save old articles, a habit from the days before digitization. I came across a listing of the top retailers from 1997 that shows how much we’ve had to adapt in 15 years. Comparing that roster to a similar listing from 2012 is somewhat unsettling.
First, the similarities: The top two retailers are Guitar Center and Sam Ash. To make the list, you only had to do a paltry $3M in business in either year.

That’s it for the similarities.

Back in 1997, GC was careening through its acquisition/expansion phase with a vengeance, and Ash was expanding, as well. Those of us who had one in our market saw what happened to combo sales. If you had GC and Ash open near you, the shakeout was harrowing.

In 1997, some major players were still on the map—businesses that later either failed spectacularly, were acquired by the big guys or both. MARS was there…and while they’re only a meteoric memory, their flameout weakened the dealers and manufacturers that encountered them. Who else? Manny’s…Musician’s Friend…Thoroughbred…Woodwind & Brasswind…Daddy’s Junky Music…Brook Mays…West L.A….and the litany goes on: major concerns that left the retail landscape or became the chattel of one of the biggies. In the Cleveland market, Lentine’s was a $14M concern at the time. Gone.

The real problem, though, is that, even ignoring the acquisitions, the failed businesses alone left millions up for grabs, and little of it fell into the hands of the smaller survivors. There are reasons for this: Small stores were already battered when the opportunity hit, and stretching further was impossible for many. A second reason is that big begets big. If you like to shop at a big store, you’ll look for another one to fill your needs, because that’s what you value: size, selection, vibe, etc. But the biggest beneficiaries of the fallout—and, in 1997, I don’t think you can really cite them as a cause—were the Internet merchants. To have that vacuum just as online sales were taking off certainly helped to fuel the rocket. Fast forward to 2012, and many of the top 15 companies are Internet-based, from the good folks at Sweetwater to names that didn’t exist even a decade ago. GC, in the meantime, has gone from $200M+ to more than $2 billion—a factor of 10. Ash quadrupled, leveling off at about 20 percent of GC’s volume. Past those two, the drop is dramatic.

But the most recent rating doesn’t tell the most dramatic part of the story, because it leaves out one major player that I think should at least occupy the number-two spot. It’s never been transparent, and it thrives on having information that others do not have. Does anyone believe that Amazon isn’t near the top of the list?

They are crafty, the Amazons. They let us use their storefront. They watched every transaction for our products; found the best, most profitable, fastest-moving items; and, soon, “ships from and sold by Amazon” was a byline everywhere. They make it easy for manufacturers to use Amazon as their distribution center. They know what we want before we want it. And they’re selling mountains of music products.
Perhaps some of that is “found” business. We’ve talked about the number of people who don’t think of music stores when they look for music products. I’m sure some amount of sales would otherwise be missing from balance sheets.

But, to me, the unsettling part is that we don’t know anything. We don’t know how much they sell or what percentage of revenue that represents to the manufacturer. We just know there are sales we don’t get. Lots of them.

Looking back, it would have been easy to predict that most of the small stores would be gone, crowded out by the big chains, mail order or the Internet. In reality, although many have gone, there are still plenty of less-than-$5M stores around, and the low end of the listing is, if not unchanged, at least similarly constructed. But the number of big failures—many of them at the hands of lenders calling notes—decimated the largest operations in our industry. Manufacturers could only look on in horror as each bankruptcy slashed at their accounting department, strengthened by additional loss of revenue as a big dealer folded. They’ve been bailing furiously, which is why so many smaller dealers are moaning about credit strictures and personal guarantees. I don’t blame them for selling to Amazon and others: With all the failures, they needed money…NOW. In your business today, would you rather call a thousand customers hoping to generate $1M in sales, or take a check for $1M…NOW? Survival often dictates the latter.

What’s next? I won’t project 15 years forward, but, short term, I expect interesting things on school band, Internet sales tax and other fronts. We’ll watch together the next few months. Wear a helmet.

That middle ground, to me, is where the best cost-to-benefit ratio
becomes apparent.

By Dan Vedda

I’ve been thinking about the way I use technology in my business. Although the benefits are obvious and well documented, I don’t believe just any use is an automatic gain. It’s a balancing act: We need to be progressive and technologically adoptive while still retaining our core values and focus on the customer. In some ways, these efforts pull in opposite directions, but they can also complement each other. The challenge, of course, is deciding the mix and direction of new additions—and when to pull the trigger.

Although I’ll never claim to sit on the bleeding edge of technology, I’m no Luddite, either. I have steadily occupied the middle ground, waiting for a pattern to emerge in each new trend, from Web sites to social media to payment systems. It’s helped me avoid paying big bucks for new stuff before I understood its place in our business. Certainly, it has put me behind the earliest adopters, but, in most cases, their business goals are different from mine. I knew from the beginning, for example, that a big eCommerce site wouldn’t be right for us. I want to make eye contact with my customers. That’s neither right nor wrong—it’s just me. But scrambling for cashflow, as so many businesses do, I also understand that I’ll get money faster if I make it convenient to pay. So, even without a full eCommerce solution, I still added a way to pay rental bills online.

I’ve also found ways to speed our cashflow using check-scanning technology, and just added PayPal’s card scanner on my phone to get the money into use instantaneously. Once again, I feel I’ve taken the middle ground: I find that some people are already using it (I even know of a local garage sale that took all its payments using Square’s version, for example), some are thinking about it and some are completely unaware of it. I’m neither at the forefront nor lagging behind the pack.

That middle ground, to me, is where the best cost-to-benefit ratio becomes apparent. Early adopters have paid the high prices, worked out the bugs and a frontrunner has usually emerged when several competitors vie for the market. Economy of scale kicks in and hardware and service prices moderate or even drop dramatically. The tipping point for me will always be cost and ease of adoption. I know the benefits, and I’m certainly not averse to poking my head under the hood a bit and getting things going. But I resist grabbing any gadget just because it’s cool, and I’m adamant that the more of my time spent making things work or maintaining systems, the less compelling the benefit. The check scanner was free and simple to set up and use. It costs us $60 a month for the service. But, it extends our deposit day to 8:00pm instead of 6:00pm, and so many checks come in after the bank closes that it has been a game changer. As checks fade more, I’ll reassess the value, but it’s working for us now. PayPal’s solution was free, competitive with our credit card processing rates when all the “extras” are taken into account and, again, simple to set up and use. Most importantly, the money is spendable within seconds.

Is there technology I still want? Of course. But, either we can’t afford it or it would take all my time to surf the learning curve needed to apply it. I’m willing to wait until affordable solutions are available. Burned once buying technology that I didn’t fully understand, I jumped off that merry-go-round for good.

One reason I balk at expending too much energy on technology is that I believe, at our core, we’re a people industry, and it’s too easy for technology to demand our attention. Layers of technology can distance us from our customers, instead of making it easier to serve them. We all complain about convoluted voicemail trees, Web sites that are counterintuitive, automated replies and other evidence that “labor saving” actually means “service cheapening.” So do our customers, and they really appreciate the “human touch” with us.

Every bit of technology we use has to show its worth on that scale. How does this hardware, procedure or service make us better at serving our customers? Are we saving time by communicating less, or are we saving time to communicate more? Does this new app, widget or gadget simply please my inner geek, or does it better engage our customer and, ultimately, help him or her to make music?

It’s so easy for any of us—and some of our customers—to turn into tweaks. We appreciate the new effect, mouthpiece, microphone or whatever new and better item hits the store. We want knobs to 11, audiophile sound and instant gratification. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, the vast majority of mainstream consumers are too unaware to care. They would rather have their shopping experience, their music making and their ongoing relationship with us be simple, direct and reassuringly human.

I think that’s the one thing smaller businesses have going for them at this time. Although most of us don’t have the time and resources to launch an IT department, actually helping the customer trumps the tech. We are seeing so many people who want to play music, particularly in non-traditional categories. Many of those who want a high-tech experience are doing it at home using the Web to buy and learn. The people coming into our stores want to talk to a person who will help them.

There’s plenty of room for technology to aid this process, but it should amplify our efforts rather than substitute for them. I’d rather spend $100 on brochures than $100 on Facebook ads. The former allows me to hand my message directly to a person who has asked for it and is engaged with me; the latter is an annoyance that appears for a few seconds in front of a person engaged with their “friends.” I’d rather make a person’s dream come true than become their Internet-annoyance nightmare.

The Future Is A Moment Away

By Dan Vedda

While reading an issue of Wired (20.05, May 2012), an article by Thomas Goetz, “How To Spot The Future,” jumped out at me. Trendspotting has always fascinated me, particularly since trends are driven by people’s choices rather than by pure technology. Trends determine how we use the technology: what happens when availability is filtered through societal shifts, economic development and, well, the power of too much free time.

Take surveillance cameras, for instance. There seems to be one on every corner, in every store and in an increasing number of households. When I was in college at the end of the Vietnam era, student demonstrators would rant about Big Brother…how THE MAN can’t control us. And they would have climbed poles and taken down or disabled cameras in protest. Now, we shrug off their ubiquity or even say, “I feel safer.” Society has shifted, and cameras are everywhere.

As cool as cell phones might be, they only outnumber landlines (and now smartphones outnumber “feature” phones) because of developments like unlimited calling, free long distance and subsidized phone prices. Sure, there are many who will pay any price for gadgets. But the fact that the number of wireless devices outnumbers the U.S. population (as of October 2011) can’t happen while people pay top dollar.

I’ve often said that I came along 20 years early. (OK…30.) If YouTube were available when I was in college, I would have had the sort of viral channel a lot of 20-ish people have today. I was making audio parodies and all sorts of ridiculous stuff, but I lacked the opportunity to have it go beyond a few friends. Why did I do it? I had the energy and, as so many people reminded me, “too much free time.” Today, the new paths are being forged by legions of people who have the time to mess around without worrying about profit or productivity. There’s something magical about geeking out and just having fun with a new toy.

But, in the music industry, we’ve only recently acknowledged societal shifts (and some still deny their influence on us). We’re small enough that economies of scale take longer to trickle down to us…and few of us have the free time and resources to experiment just for fun. So, we have to find an easier way to latch onto the future, because the future is coming at us faster than ever.

Goetz’s article has several sidebars offering takes on trendspotting from prominent futurists in education, venture capital, industry and other disciplines. Here are a few nuggets. See if you can spot the connection:

“A clear view of the future is often obstructed by taking too much for granted.”—Juan Enriquez

“Go where other people aren’t…approach something as an outsider.”—Esther Dyson

“See how normal people make product decisions.”—Chris Sacca (my italics)

There’s a lot more, and I recommend that you look up the article if this sort of stuff intrigues you. But for the average person in our industry, my main point is this: Pay attention, lose the preconceptions and get real. We’ve been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century, and it’s time for us to dedicate ourselves to evolving as an industry.

We’ve come a long way, but we’ve come here still holding on to our cherished preconceptions of what our market is. Almost a century ago, we were doing the same thing: protesting against the use of sound in motion pictures, because legions of theater musicians were out of work, lamenting that the record player and radio killed the player piano market and trying to figure out what to do when the Great Depression hit.

But we figured it out: We changed our product offerings, found creative ways to finance the desire to make music and (most radical of all) created the entire school music market from scratch. As an industry, we’re creative, we’re resourceful and we’re determined. I think we’ve forgotten that recently and, with all the (admittedly immense) challenges, hunkered down and gone into a shell.

Oh, I still see a lot of creative effort. But much of it is centered on fresher ways of doing the same thing, or an idiosyncratic approach that is hailed as a solution for an unjustifiably broad swath. Still more of it is simple opportunism: a well-capitalized newcomer taking advantage of underserved markets thinned by dealer attrition. There’s nothing wrong with any of this. It’s just not enough creativity, and too little of it is forward-looking. The future will blindside us—yet again—if we continue this way.
We need to ask challenging questions. What do we do about the fact that an increasing percentage of our market isn’t “school music”? What effect will the Maker movement—with its open-source coding and ability to print 3D circuit boards—have on amplifier and signal processing design and sales? Or simply, what are our customers asking for that we’re not giving them?

That, to me, is the critical difference between simple creative innovation and trendspotting. Many wonderful people in our industry have initiated great programs or products. Some of them serve a niche that no one identified, and props to them for recognizing it. But when rank-and-file customers regularly ask for something that is not available, it’s a trend, and we’re missing it. It doesn’t take a genius to see it…just a pair of ears that is ready to hear.

Past example: Customers were asking me for a combination metronome/tuner for two years before I saw such a product, and another year before an affordable one was available.

Current example, and one we can only thoroughly address as an industry: Day after day, adults who want to play ask me where they can find groups to join. Other than scattered community bands, there isn’t much. We need to address this, industry-wide. The culture is ready. We started the school band movement. Why can’t we do more for the adults? RMM is just the tip of the iceberg. This is a societal shift, and we need to address it.