SHOPPING AT THE DOCK

Seth Godin (follicle-challenged marketing guru majoring on new media) wrote this recently:

Had shark for dinner last night. $10 a pound and totally worth it. Really fresh and delicious.

The fisherman, of course, was lucky to make a buck a pound. And all those middlemen added little in terms of value (they cut it, of course, and kept it cool, and allowed me to buy it midday, but they also added several days to the process of getting it from the dock to me).

What if the fisherman had my preferences and just let me know when he had a good haul? I could meet his truck at Union Square and buy direct, fresh, for $5.

Twice as efficient, twice as fresh.

No, of course it's not going to happen soon, because fishermen like being fishermen and don't want to deal with all of these hassles.

But the new middlemen are going to be a lot more efficient than the old ones!

{Read his whole post here.)

This only confirms my belief that there are other ways, more efficient ways to get music to people - and sell music to people - than handing a boatload of songs off to a label, who then hands them off to a distribution company, who then hands them off to bookstores and sub/independent distributors who then put them on a physical or digital shelf to wait for purchase. The fisherman gets 8% (before his expenses and after recouping the cost of the boat's gas and the store's electric bill) and everyone else in the distribution chain splits the other 92%. And of course this is fair since, like fishermen, most musicians don't want the hassles of doing anything other than being musicians.

And stores, labels and distributors won't go away anytime soon and shouldn't but still I'm thinking: How many people would be willing to just meet me seaside and pay $10 or less for the same catch going for $16 in stores? Better yet, how many want to ride on the boat and watch the fish get reeled in?

We'll see.