When getting more than you asked for is a bad thing

I remember in the mid 1980s, that though I was from a family of relatively poor means, my love of technology combined with hard earned dollars led me to be one of the first on the block to acquire a CD player.  The sound quality was much better than I had imagined and the hype around digital music was justified. What I did find hard to justify though was the cost of CDs and the relatively limited choice on offer as compared to other media which within the space of a decade would become almost extinct – the cassette and vinyl record.

I could understand that in a new market with a small but soon to grow customer base and a lack of distributors, that the cost of production and distribution of CDs would be high and that it would only be a matter of time before CDs would increase in number and decrease in price.

But one of the things I did find hard to swallow was that even as the choice increased I found myself often buying a CD album only for one track. In most cases the other eight to fifteen tracks I simply had no interest in. Now you could argue that the music industry was just offering music as it had done before – after all there was nothing new about the concept of an album – it had existed on cassette and vinyl record; all that had changed was the media and the technology to play the media. Tradition and heritage can be problematic when market perception is changing, though. You could also argue that the music industry felt a responsibility to fill up the media to its fullest capacity of up to 74 minutes of audio for a traditional CD, though the CD single offered reduced capacity when it was released – after all this is just adding value.  But it should be noted that if a CD contained only one track or a dozen, the physical space it occupied was the same. But all I often wanted was one track – sure having some bonus tracks might be nice, but not when it comes out of my hard earned expenses. What I wanted was to pay only for the tracks I wanted.

In the late 1990s the status quo of the music industry would be sent into turmoil with the release of the MP3 and even more so when it was seen as more than a fad but as a revolutionary business model in 2004 when Apple legitimized it as a business to sell MP3s via its iTunes Store. It is important to note Apple did not invent the MP3, which is important in itself, because a business does not have to be built on new inventions – it just made the MP3 more accessible, and accessibility is key to building a strong market with a strong following. Now here is what I had been waiting for – the ability to buy just the tracks I wanted. Furthermore there was a lot more choice – any music artist who could produce an MP3 could sell it, whereas previously we were at the whim of the music industry who decided what they thought we should listen to.  But the most important distinction is that it was in a convenient format ready to go without requiring me to pay for the artwork and more costly distribution and other tracks which I simply did not want.

The music industry received a long overdue wakeup call. The best businesses in the world deliver exactly what the customer is looking for, nothing more, nothing less. If there is more to deliver, then separate it into a different product or offer it as a free bonus.

Don’t make customers pay for what they don’t want.

Andrew Bycroft

Andrew is an online entrepeneur who is passionate about helping people achieve results by building an online businesses to gain an unprecedented level of ongoing success and wealth. Andrew feels empowered when reading or learning and likes to relax with a good movie. Andrew enjoys spending quality time with his beautiful wife and mischievous but adorable 1 year old daughter. More information about Andrew's journey to success can be read here.