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Lesson Learned From America's Got Talent


over60

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Yes, that's what I'm saying.

The professional market for the current types of music DCI corps are playing continues to shrink and find it difficult to survive financially. Our excellent but sill amateur outdoor versions of the same material will have the same problem.

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Yes, that's what I'm saying.

The professional market for the current types of music DCI corps are playing continues to shrink and find it difficult to survive financially. Our excellent but sill amateur outdoor versions of the same material will have the same problem.

Hmmm....interesting.

Considering that most pop music is fad-based, constantly changing according to the whims of the fickle public and the money desires of the recording industry, doesn't your contention suggest that DCI will have to continuously re-invent itself to keep up? And what's to be done when the pop music in demand doesn't translate onto the marching field well, as in four-bar repetitive rock and roll, for example. Do DCI designers just wait until a music style that is translatable emerges?

How does the activity create or retain an identity when it's required to continuously change itself, fad after fad?

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Garfield, now you begin to understand DCI's problem. Yes, indeed, they must change with the public's taste. That's how any company stays in business, by giving the customers what they want, not what the business wants to sell.

Think of the fashion industry. Do they sell the same style of clothes from year to year, decade after decade? How about the types of TV shows? Do they stay the same? Hardly. Personally, I think Reality TV bites, but if that's what the public likes then that's what the TV executives give them. And the sponsors of the shows don't care about the type of shows, either. All they want is the public's money so the sponsors give the TV companies money to support the most popular forms of entertainment of the moment.

Any type of entertainment you can think of is in a constant state of flux, by necessity. Even the symphonic music ensembles, although playing music centuries old, still play modern pieces---grudgingly. But the great symphony orchestras are all struggling to survive. Their audience is tiny as indicated by the 3% share of the music market they garner.

I have over 50 years worth of drum corps memories and CDs and DVDs that I can choose from to entertain me. I just think DCI is fooling itself if it thinks it can meaningfully increase it's revenue continuing to ignore the public's taste in entertainment. I hope the best for the activity as it is one of the finest youth programs possible. But, alas, it's also one of the most expensive. What would be better, for the activity to disappear by being stubborn and not changing, or for the corps to start getting into mainstream music, expanding the fan base, and thereby increasing revenue? Wishing doesn't make it so.

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I chuckle every time I see this. Pure cheese, but oh, so much FUN!

The Westminster Chorus was outstanding this year as well.

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I chuckle every time I see this. Pure cheese, but oh, so much FUN!

The Westminster Chorus was outstanding this year as well.

Meanwhile in the quartet category, this year's

seems to be channeling the Bridgemen and Velvet Knights.
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are-you-not-entertained_medium.jpg

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!?

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I chuckle every time I see this. Pure cheese, but oh, so much FUN!

The Westminster Chorus was outstanding this year as well

A faux drum major at 2:10. didn't the Cadets get raked over the coals on this forum for putting little Jeffery on the field in 2010?

No personal disrespect (toward you or your opinion) intended - all in good fun,

Fred O.

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Over60, you assert that the customer is ALWAYS right.

Which customer? We have a unique activity in which the paying audience want something, but there is also the dues-paying membership that must be considered. The activity has created expectations of "education" in order to make the dues seem worthwhile to the membership and the parents. Many members are using drum corps experience to help build up their resumes so they can go teach marching bands in the summers while they are in college. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but it does mean we have to remember that these organizations are having to drive their product toward two very different markets.

Having said that, I bet there is a way to serve both customers well. The pendulum swing could be headed back toward shows with more entertainment value to the more casual customer while still offering a high standard of musical and visual "education" for the paying membership.

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