As of late, I have accumulated a serious debt to Malcolm Gladwell. I read his articles for New Yorker religiously. However, his two books, The Tipping Point and Blink, have been most influential on me. I feel the Gladwell effect most frequently when thinking about music, which might be odd considering that he is not a music critic.
Last year, I had to teach one of the concepts from The Tipping Point to a class of undergraduates. I taught the only way I could and related the assigned reading to music. Specifically, it was a half-hour presentation on commercials as a vehicle for music promotion with Dirty Vegas' Top 40 hit "Days Gone By" cited as the "tipping point."
This summer, my self-required reading is Blink, which explains the power of snap decisions and the consequences of thinking to hard. In Chapter 5 of this book, "Kenna's Dilemma: The Right-- and Wrong-- Way to Ask People What They Want," Gladwell does more to explain the current state of commercial radio and, consequently, the music industry as a whole than any of the country's major music journalists.
Kenna suffers from a problem not unique to today's musicians. Place his music in the hands of people we call "heads" (industry folks on the creative side of the business, journalists, DJs and other assorted music geeks) and his songs are hits. However, Kenna's problems arise when he doesn't get adds on commercial radio. Gladwell attributes this to market research companies, who test potential singles and albums-in-the-works on random people. He likens this to the failure of all failures-- New Coke. Remember New Coke? It tested well but caused a major backlash. As Gladwell explains, taste tests do not account for how an item will taste after eating or drinking it for two weeks. Similarly, market research for songs that grow in beauty after a few weeks of regular airplay or, conversely, songs that prove to be more irritating upon each consecutive listen. He surmises that snap decisions of a hitmaking nature are best left to the experts. In the case of food, he means professional taste testers. For music, well, he is probably referencing a great number of people who read or write for this blog: people whose ears are trained to spot a hit.
I humbly hope that more music industry types read up on Gladwell. His work just might change how we view pop music.