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It’s insane that people think producing pop music is easy. Competing on the pop music market is a cutthroat business with a lot of competition and the good ones

It’s insane that people think producing pop music is easy. Competing on the pop music market is a cutthroat business with a lot of competition and the good ones get their price back in gold. When Scorpions wanted to be resurrected they hired Desmond Child to produce them and he absolutely crushed. These people are very good at what they do and there are very few of them.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago
It’s also insane people think running a large business is easy, or that management consultants aren’t worth what they’re paid.
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  Worth here is the key word. I did an MBA which was specifically designed to get people into consulting, we did many consulting projects for real multinantionals and the key lesson was: "What does the hidden client want?" i.e. someone has been tasked with getting some consultants to come up with a suggestion, the key question however is what does THEIR boss want to hear. If you can work that out and give it to them then you've earned your 'worth'
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Well, there's also the case where some internal engineering and product management think they have the right answer. But it may be a literally bet the company sort of thing. (Especially outside the software realm where once the bus has left the station it's not turning around.) Now I know there are people here whose reaction is that executive management should just shut up and listen to what the worker bees say. But it actually doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and I've been on the product management end of things in a case like this) to have some outside perspective from some people who are mostly pretty smart to nod their heads and say this seems sensible. As a bonus they create big spreadsheets that make the business planning types happy and keep them out from underfoot.
  - hcks 3y ago
    Wow I’m sure someone that paid some money for an MBA and then stopped at the gate of an entry level position has expertise in this matter.
- j45 3y ago
  I hope someone builds a management consultant gpt to find out. Until then, our leaders, experts and institutions were few of those things during the pandemic. How large businesses are built and run has changed faster and more in the past few years than the principled predictions of a business’ future vector that are based on lagging indicators. It also depends on how cookie cut the management consultant frameworks and “toolkits” are. It’s no coincidence that it’s mostly juniors doing so much of the work and billing. New or average talent is more profitable per hour to bill than experience. Financially, if $7-8 of every $10 for improvement went to a management consulting undertaking, the other $2-3 is what’s left over for the rest without even knowing. This would be the coup, if this were true. The fun part to watch for is is tech people will be able to learn business easier than business people will be able to learn and apply tech when they can’t understand it’s capabilities or possibilities beyond speaking points. The technical analyst will M&A the business analyst. Maybe they learn to extract Management Consultant type value too.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Mangement consultants get comparatively small money from (large) firms. The total revenues going to McK, BCG, and Bain are only about $30B annually.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Well, if it was that hard, chatGPT wouldn't be able to help them.
somenameforme 3y ago
The perception is that success in the field is driven largely by factors other than the quality of music. It'd be extremely interesting to see a Richard Bachman / Steven King [1] type experiment with a Desmond Child, Max Martin, or whoever else. Keep their existence completely out of the picture, and have them scout and produce talented no-name, but require the no-name to use only the sort of avenues that would be openly available to anybody/everybody: YouTube, Tunecore, social media, etc. Would the new party now be meaningfully likely to have a real breakthrough? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman
- lukas099 3y ago
  > other than the quality of the music The ‘quality’ of a pop song is how much popular appeal it has. That’s the basis of the genre, even reflected in the name.
  - MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
    But the qualities of the song are not what make it popular. With "pop" music there are far more important forces at play, namely the quantity and quality of the song's publicity. One of the big things you get with a big time producer is big time connections and a lot of "airplay" in mixes, commercials, TV shows, etc. You also open the door for more collaborations with other popular artists. Occasionally you'll have a song that breaks through due to sheer catchy-ness, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
- telotortium 3y ago
  In practice you need both. Max Martin himself has produced and songwritten for plenty of no-names, but for an artist that has the requisite marketing support, bad or uncatchy pop songs can absolutely ruin an artist who would otherwise make it big.
  - Nition 3y ago
    There is a third factor; the quality of the mix. People like Serban Ghenea[0] get hired to make the sound world class. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serban_Ghenea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serban_Ghenea
j45 3y ago
Is there a HN for management consultants? Depending you ask pop music is a formula and that one dude from Sweden has the formula perfected.
- moneywoes 3y ago
  fishbowl?
WalterBright 3y ago
There's the story of David Cassidy. He got cast in the Partridge Family (the rock band family) largely because of his looks and his mother (Shirley Jones). His voice was set to be dubbed for the songs, but it turned out he had a golden throat. (The rest of the cast, besides Jones, could neither play nor sing.) The producers hired top shelf songwriters to write the songs, and several hit albums were produced. (It really is good music, despite being bubblegum.) Cassidy, however, decided that he had songwriting talent and chafed. He eventually left the show, and with the megabucks he earned on the show, produced albums. They're terrible. The same thing happened to the Monkees.
WalterBright 3y ago
Check out the movie "The Wrecking Crew". It's about studio musicians fixing, rewriting, playing, and singing the music created by the "bands" you've all heard of, so the albums were good. Then, the bands belatedly had to learn how to sing and play in order to go on tour. I think about The Wrecking Crew whenever I hear the sob stories about bands being underpaid and the producers reaping the lion's share of the profits.

WendyTheWillow 3y ago

It’s also insane people think running a large business is easy, or that management consultants aren’t worth what they’re paid.

jack_riminton 3y ago
Worth here is the key word. I did an MBA which was specifically designed to get people into consulting, we did many consulting projects for real multinantionals and the key lesson was: "What does the hidden client want?" i.e. someone has been tasked with getting some consultants to come up with a suggestion, the key question however is what does THEIR boss want to hear. If you can work that out and give it to them then you've earned your 'worth'
- ghaff 3y ago
  Well, there's also the case where some internal engineering and product management think they have the right answer. But it may be a literally bet the company sort of thing. (Especially outside the software realm where once the bus has left the station it's not turning around.) Now I know there are people here whose reaction is that executive management should just shut up and listen to what the worker bees say. But it actually doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and I've been on the product management end of things in a case like this) to have some outside perspective from some people who are mostly pretty smart to nod their heads and say this seems sensible. As a bonus they create big spreadsheets that make the business planning types happy and keep them out from underfoot.
- hcks 3y ago
  Wow I’m sure someone that paid some money for an MBA and then stopped at the gate of an entry level position has expertise in this matter.
j45 3y ago
I hope someone builds a management consultant gpt to find out. Until then, our leaders, experts and institutions were few of those things during the pandemic. How large businesses are built and run has changed faster and more in the past few years than the principled predictions of a business’ future vector that are based on lagging indicators. It also depends on how cookie cut the management consultant frameworks and “toolkits” are. It’s no coincidence that it’s mostly juniors doing so much of the work and billing. New or average talent is more profitable per hour to bill than experience. Financially, if $7-8 of every $10 for improvement went to a management consulting undertaking, the other $2-3 is what’s left over for the rest without even knowing. This would be the coup, if this were true. The fun part to watch for is is tech people will be able to learn business easier than business people will be able to learn and apply tech when they can’t understand it’s capabilities or possibilities beyond speaking points. The technical analyst will M&A the business analyst. Maybe they learn to extract Management Consultant type value too.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Mangement consultants get comparatively small money from (large) firms. The total revenues going to McK, BCG, and Bain are only about $30B annually.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Well, if it was that hard, chatGPT wouldn't be able to help them.

somenameforme 3y ago

The perception is that success in the field is driven largely by factors other than the quality of music. It'd be extremely interesting to see a Richard Bachman / Steven King [1] type experiment with a Desmond Child, Max Martin, or whoever else. Keep their existence completely out of the picture, and have them scout and produce talented no-name, but require the no-name to use only the sort of avenues that would be openly available to anybody/everybody: YouTube, Tunecore, social media, etc. Would the new party now be meaningfully likely to have a real breakthrough? [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman

lukas099 3y ago
> other than the quality of the music The ‘quality’ of a pop song is how much popular appeal it has. That’s the basis of the genre, even reflected in the name.
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  But the qualities of the song are not what make it popular. With "pop" music there are far more important forces at play, namely the quantity and quality of the song's publicity. One of the big things you get with a big time producer is big time connections and a lot of "airplay" in mixes, commercials, TV shows, etc. You also open the door for more collaborations with other popular artists. Occasionally you'll have a song that breaks through due to sheer catchy-ness, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
telotortium 3y ago
In practice you need both. Max Martin himself has produced and songwritten for plenty of no-names, but for an artist that has the requisite marketing support, bad or uncatchy pop songs can absolutely ruin an artist who would otherwise make it big.
- Nition 3y ago
  There is a third factor; the quality of the mix. People like Serban Ghenea[0] get hired to make the sound world class. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serban_Ghenea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serban_Ghenea

j45 3y ago

Is there a HN for management consultants? Depending you ask pop music is a formula and that one dude from Sweden has the formula perfected.

moneywoes 3y ago
fishbowl?

WalterBright 3y ago

There's the story of David Cassidy. He got cast in the Partridge Family (the rock band family) largely because of his looks and his mother (Shirley Jones). His voice was set to be dubbed for the songs, but it turned out he had a golden throat. (The rest of the cast, besides Jones, could neither play nor sing.) The producers hired top shelf songwriters to write the songs, and several hit albums were produced. (It really is good music, despite being bubblegum.) Cassidy, however, decided that he had songwriting talent and chafed. He eventually left the show, and with the megabucks he earned on the show, produced albums. They're terrible. The same thing happened to the Monkees.

WalterBright 3y ago

Check out the movie "The Wrecking Crew". It's about studio musicians fixing, rewriting, playing, and singing the music created by the "bands" you've all heard of, so the albums were good. Then, the bands belatedly had to learn how to sing and play in order to go on tour. I think about The Wrecking Crew whenever I hear the sob stories about bands being underpaid and the producers reaping the lion's share of the profits.