<img src="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/head.gif" class="left frame" align="left" alt="" />Seth Godin, one of the 'nets chief marketing gurus, lays it out in an essay he calls <a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/the-live-music.html">"the live music talk"</a>. Nothing you haven't heard before as far as independent bands and what it takes to be successful but, as always, Seth is clear and concise with his thoughts.
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The next thing is this idea that people care very much about who is sitting next to them at the concert. They care very much about the secret handshake. They care very much about the tribal identification. “Oh you like them, I like themâ€. The Grateful Dead is an amazingly successful paradigm for many of the things I’m talking about. They didn’t make any money selling records compared to the way they made money doing everything else. Part of it was, you knew if you met someone at a dead concert, they had some things in common with you. The secret handshake, the clothes, whatever it was. And that was important and you were willing to pay money to be with those people. And after Jerry died it was very interesting. Because obviously there was thousands of hours to listen to but that’s not what the people missed. The people missed the place they could go to meet the people like them.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The next idea is this idea of liking. There is a lot of music I like. There is not so much music I love. They didn’t call the show, “I Like Lucyâ€, they called it “I Love Lucyâ€. And the reason is you only talk about stuff you love, you only spread stuff you love. You find a band you really love, you’re forcing the CD on other people, “you gotta hear this!â€. We gotta stop making music people like. There is an infinite amount of music people like. No one will ever go out of the way to hear, to pay for, music they like.</blockquote>

How many people have you given a Grace Potter and the Nocturnals mix to? How many people have you dragged to a concert? That's the way it works baby, so keep it up. (OK, I'll take my cheerleader costume off now).