In her blog entitled ‘Can artists and musicians also use brand positioning?’ Alice Wo argues 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.” I would like to examine this statement from a musical standpoint.
Music is a versatile product because its value proposition varies from person to person. To customer X, music’s main value proposition may be that it provides entertainment, while to customer Y it provides an escape from the mundane. Musicians recognize that the product is not the sound mixes or the lyrics, but the value that these things collectively generate.
Therefore, if applied to music, the validity of Wo’s statement is dependent on what ‘the product’ is believed to be. As a musician myself, I agree that, although my style of music is not universally favored, I create it anyway hoping that the market will appreciate it. However, I ensure that I sing about issues that my audience can connect with and extract meaning from. I propose that many musicians freely challenge music trends because they believe their product’s value proposition is strong enough to attract their target audience.