people who run record labels, go to clubs, and know the
business well) love Kenna. They hear one of his songs, and, in
the blink of an eye, they think, Wow! More precisely, they hear
Kenna and their instinct is that he is the kind of artist whom
other people — the mass audience of music buyers — are going
to like. But this is where Kenna runs into a problem, because
whenever attempts have been made to verify this instinct that
other people are going to like him, other people haven’t liked
him.
When Kenna’s album was making the rounds in New York,
being considered by music industry executives, on three
separate occasions it was given to an outside market-research
firm. This is common practice in the industry. In order to be
successful, an artist has to get played on the radio. And radio
stations will play only a small number of songs that have been
proven by market research to appeal — immediately and
overwhelmingly — to their audience. So, before they commit
millions of dollars to signing an artist, record companies will
spend a few thousand dollars to test his or her music first, using
the same techniques as the radio stations.
There are firms, for example, that post new songs on the
Web and then collect and analyze the ratings of anyone who