Music for Profit

(This post is the first part of a series of posts regarding the business exchange of goods and services inside and outside of the music industry.)

One of the books I read as a child was a number of Aesop’s Fables, only instead of Aesop and a bunch of personified animals, it was a wise old judge and an unruly village in ancient China. In that book was the tale of a poor man in china who was telling his friends that in order to make his very plain rice more palatable, he enjoyed the scent of the buttered rice floating up from the restaurant below. Meanwhile, the restaurant owner overheard this conversation. To the poor man’s dismay the restaurant owner came upstairs and confronted the man for the theft – using the smell of butter to improve the enjoyment of otherwise boring white rice.

Fast forward to after they arrived at a court where a judge listened to both sides of the story. The poor man became even more dismayed when the judge ruled in favor of the restaurant owner. The poor man pointed out that as the “poor man” in this story, he was as a matter of fact poor, and pulled what few coins he had in his pocket to present his life savings.

The judge in his wisdom thought for a moment and then asked the poor man to jingle the coins back and forth. He then shocked the restaurant owner by proclaiming the debt settled and the matter closed. “The fragrance of butter has been paid for with the sound of money.”

There are two (2) main points I’m trying to convey by retelling this children’s story:

First, I want to point out what is called OPPORTUNITY COST. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the restaurant owner was justified in his actions, and the poor man really was a sneaky thief. Furthermore, let’s take for granted that the judicial system in ancient China operates at warp speed, and the entire story from hearsay to verdict took place in a single hour of time. And let’s say that instead of the jingle of money, the restaurant owner won enough to buy a whole new stick of butter to flavor his rice. Even with so much of this taken for granted, did the gains justify the COST?

This little exercise cost the restaurant owner at least an hour of his precious time of his life, some stress and anxiety, good will, and his attention from what he does best: selling buttered rice to people with money to pay for it. Instead of chasing this distraction to its completion, he could have been selling enough buttered rice to buy MORE than just an additional stick of butter. That hour of time could have been spent positively increasing the good will with his customers, or promoting his business, or hiring a lawyer or assistant to represent him in court, to deal with this and future thefts of the fragrant nature on his behalf. That’s what I mean by opportunity cost. Instead of pursuing an opportunity more within his area of expertise, he was chasing down an opportunity that at best would end in a single payday of limited reward.

Now for the second reason for sharing this story. That reason is that the story is based on a very simple business transaction. Party A has something of value that is enjoyed by Party B. In return for this enjoyment, Party B gives something of  value to Party A.

For these two ancient chinese villagers, the business exchange was mediated by a judge, who decreed: Party A smells butter. Party B hears money. Transaction concluded.

The next few posts will further elaborate on how this children’s story relates to making money in the music industry.

In the meantime, I leave you with a challenge:

In as few changes as possible, can you turn the business exchange of smells and sounds into an attractive modern-day exchange we in the music industry today might actually sign off on?

Get crazy with this challenge. See what you come up with. I’ll give you a whole month to work on it. As a reward to incentivize your senses, I’ll send the winner of the most creative equation this very stick of butter, pictured below.

Prize Butter

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.