Jim Markunas

Written By: Jim Markunas
Photo Credit: Brand X Pictures

Selling records, or any product for that matter, is a lot like picking up women. Women are smart. A lot smarter than us guys.  They notice everything, and judge instantly based on how they're approached. Consumers are the same way, once you anger one of them, or one of their close friends, you've killed your chance of having any sort of relationship. Selling a lot of records is comparable to you and your cool friends hooking up with a lot of hot women on a consistent basis. You have something of value, therefore, that thing of value is in demand, and that demand leads to an increase in demand for not only your value, but the value of everything associated with you. The major labels used to be like that - men with high social value. They had a hot artist. That artist sold. The fact that their hot artist sold led to an increase in sales of all their other artists, and their friend's (i.e., other label's) artists. This phenomenon was extremely prevalent during the Hair Metal, Grunge, Rap, and Nu-Metal eras.

With that said, forcing a college student to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a commodity that's essentially been free since 2002 is inherently bad for business... 

Try publicly embarrassing a hot woman in a crowded bar in front of all her friends, better yet, try telling her she's fat and ugly on national television. Not only will she A. not have sex with you, but B. all her friends and every woman in ear shot will not have sex with you for the mere fact that you've exposed your inherently low social value. This very public lawsuit between the RIAA and Joel Tenebaum is comparable to the previous scenario. The big 4, in a matter of 6 weeks, have completely destroyed the social value they spent 50 years building. They ruined a young kid's life for no apparent reason other than that they felt the insecure need to publicly flex their faux machismo. Just as putting up a bad front doesn't get one laid, it also fails to sell records. Would you get into bed with someone that sued you? How about someone that sued one of your friends? I didn't think so!

What we have is a PR nightmare for the music industry. A lot of music biz pundits have been saying the same thing I'm about to tell you here over and over since 2002, so... I'm going to kick the facts in a non-conventional way that we can all relate to: Whenever the word "women" is used, replace it with "consumers." Whenever the words "male" or "man" are used, replace it with the word "label." Lastly, whenever any word relating to intercourse is used, replace it with the phrase "selling records."

Women Hate Beta Males - Beta males are men who are not dominant, alpha, or leaders of men, but rather lower value males who go along with "group think." The RIAA and its affiliated labels have suddenly transformed from alpha males, with high social value, to lower-value beta males; metaphorically speaking. They've exposed their lower value by picking on someone powerless. Bullying is beta male behavior, and beta males rarely score with hot women, just like record labels rarely sell records (i.e., score) these days.

Women Hate Insecure Men - You've seen them... They drive Porsches and lead off every conversation with women with something along the lines of "Let me buy you a drink. I'm rich, you know? See that Porsche? It's mine... I'm also the vice president of a label, I hung out with Michael Jackson all the time in the 80s. I own WMG stock, but I sold it for a lot of money." Underneath all the hype, they're insecure and lack confidence. Men with high value never talk about how important they are in such a blatant manner, as this type of behavior exposes low social value. Men with high value let their confidence shine through silently. Back in the early 90s, Geffen didn't sue people for copying Nirvana tapes for their friends; they let their hot artist do their thing - Geffen and Nirvana had social value and acted accordingly. Therefore, they scored!

Women Hate Jealous Men - Jealous men will become irate when their actions don't lead to getting what they want. They'll pick fights, call incessantly, bully, and act petty when rejected by women. Jealous behavior stems from insecurity caused by past rejection and perceived future rejection. For example, a man meets a girl and they hit it off. After a few weeks, she becomes his girlfriend. One night, the man's girlfriend doesn't call. He sends her a nebulous text, "Hey," the text says, "What R U up to?" No response. The man, not liking to be ignored, sends another text 5 minutes later, "Are you busy?" Again, no response.

After stewing and worrying that his girlfriend is on a date with another man, the man sends yet another text, "Call me," it begins, "I really want to talk to you." Once again, the text is met with silence. The man is furious, his next text is something along the lines of "Why R U not texting me back? Are you mad?" Again, the text is ignored. The man flies into a rage. "How can she ignore me like this?" the man asks himself, "I'm a good boyfriend, why is she ignoring me?" In a rage, the man makes a critical error... He sends his girlfriend the 'ultimatum' text. "If you don't call me in 5 minutes, I'm breaking up with you!" Mellodramatic? Yes! Because the reason the girlfriend wasn't texting back because she had to work late and had innocently left her cell in her car after lunch.

The girlfriend, of course, is disturbed by the man's behavior. She finally calls, only to break up with him for acting crazy. The man becomes irate. He'll show her! He logs on Ping.fm (hopefully you read my last article), and proceeds to write a nasty blog about how mad he is at his "awful" ex-girlfriend. He then hits Twitter, sending a series of angry tweets, "My GF Sux," "She's a SLT," "F that stupid B." This behavior manages to further alienate his ex-girlfriend, eliminating his chance to hook back up with her. Suing your own customer is basically the same thing. Back in the early 90s, labels didn't publicly embarrass their consumers for not sucking up to them. In the pre-digital age, labels respected their own vibe. They had high social value, therefore they scored!

Women Hate Men That Don't Understand Women - A man's girlfriend says to him, "My birthday is this weekend, but you don't have to plan anything special." The man silently agrees, and fails to plan anything for his girlfriend's birthday. He doesn't even buy her a card or send her a "happy birthday" text. The girlfriend, realizing that her man didn't pick up on the fact that she did in fact want her birthday acknowledged, becomes irate (and rightly so!) She breaks up with the man the next day, leaving him in a stunned disbelief. The moral of the story is that one must understand one's consumer. Any market research expert will tell you, "Don't look at what your consumer says, look at what they do." Labels have failed to follow this advice for the last decade. Back in the pre-digital era, labels understood what their consumers wanted and gave it to them in many ways (no pun intended). Understanding their target gave them high social value, therefore they scored!

Labels, if you want to score (i.e., win back your social value), you have to start thinking about how to improve your value in the long term. Take a yoga class, come up with a new business model, eat healthier, and most of all, don't act like a jealous, overly-macho beta male in a public forum.

Jim Markunas is a music industry futurist and editor-in-chief of Chicks With Guns Magazine. Jim has a decade of new media and music industry experience, he's run highly successful new media campaigns and has worked with James Brown, Miles Davis, The Walt Disney Company, Sam Sparro, Mick Fleetwood, and Minty Fresh Records. Currently Jim's focus is monetization strategies for record labels and digital business development. He's a free agent available for hire.

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