Can artists and musicians also use brand positioning? : Alice Wo's Blog

When entrepreneurship comes to mind, you don’t initially think of artists and musicians. I can see the appeal of this career path, but after reading a BBC article where a UK music business professional compared establishing yourself in the music industry to “… trying to create a hurricane by running around a field in circles” I was pulled back into the reality of why I’m at Sauder and not busking on a street corner. Brand positioning is a technique that effectively markets a product, so why don’t musicians/artists apply it? Firms first develop a frame of reference and find points of parity with other products, and only then do they begin differentiating. With music and the arts, the former two steps are often skipped. It goes as far as categorizing yourself into a genre or type of visual medium which is extremely broad. Then considering that artists don’t often cater their products toward consumers, they create abstract forms of value and hope that it will appeal to an audience, these “entrepreneurs” jump right into differentiation. Art cannot be concretely categorized, nor is it the intent of most artists. If you are considered a pop artist, you didn’t make it so, your style coincidentally suits the tastes of many.