My good friend Seth just let me borrow his copy of Danny Meyer‘s book Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business. Meyer is a entrepreneur-restaurateur that runs a bunch of different restaurants in NYC, and an inspiration to me as far as he runs his businesses. I’m only a few pages in, but already came across something I had to share, and relate to the music business.
Hospitality is the foundation of my business philosophy. Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any business transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side. The converse is just as true. Hospitality is present when something happens for you. It is absent when something happens to you. Those two simple prepositions – for and to – express it all.
It’s incredible how true this rings not only for the restaurant business, but for any other, and perhaps even particularly for the music business. When was the last time you bought a major label release and felt they were on the receiving end of hospitality? The big FBI warning on the back doesn’t really contribute positively, neither does the standardized packaging, the lawsuits, the one good song bundled with nine mediocre ones, the overpriced retail experience, and I could keep going.
Music is a powerful medium that is very much based on hospitality. It’s there for you, to help you relate to your fellow humans and feel less alone, to bring you joy or education, to share with friends and have a communal experience to. We can once again create a culture of hospitality around this power, but we’ll have to destroy before we rebuild. We have to re-examine which parts of the current transaction model contribute positively to the hospitality experience surrounding our art, and perhaps make some tough choices that will be written off as ‘foolish’ by industry ‘experts’. We should building the new experience right away, transitioning there while we take advantage of the elements in the current model that can help us get there.
One thing we need to do is bring our customers closer to the artist and its surrounding community. Once again show them we’re speaking to them, and we’re only there because they support us. We need to show appreciation. You get back what you put in. And when you make a sale, and the attention you gave it comes back to you, trust me, it feels really really good. Below is a tweet from Family Records superfan Heidi, which I read after a grueling 18 hour day of work last night, and it made it worth it.
Related Post: What If Danny Meyer Worked In The Music Business.