The Job To Be Done framework was codified by Clayton Christensen, et al. in a 2007 Sloan Management Review entitled “Finding the Right Job For Your Product.” Like so much of Christensen’s work — most notably, his essential book, The Innovators Dilemma, which has informed my and countless others’ business approach more than any other — the JTBD framework has proven durable and widely applicable to any number of industries.
In summary, the JTBD framework suggests that brands eschew demographic and psychographic considerations with respect to customer adoption of products, and, instead, simplify the product/market fit relationship by determining what “job” a customer “hires” a product to do for them. As Christensen states:
When customers find that they need to get a job done, they “hire” products or services to do the job. This means that marketers need to understand the jobs that arise in customers’ lives for which their products might be hired. Most of the “home runs” of marketing history were hit by marketers who saw the world this way. The “strike outs” of marketing history, in contrast, generally have been the result of focusing on developing products with better features and functions or of attempting to decipher what the average customer in a demographic wants.
I’ve written at some length about JTBD thinking, and find it useful with respect to helping define marketing and go-to-market strategic thinking. Now, in this unprecedented time — a time in which many musicians have seen their revenue go to zero due to the inability to tour — it’s essential to think in terms of the job to be done for music.
To help calibrate, the knee-jerk assumption of many in the music industry was that a stay-at-home order would result in more streaming of music. This has not been the case. According to Rolling Stone, streaming numbers “dropped 7.6 percent” in the initial weeks of the quarantine. Viewing this drop through a JTBD lens is instructive. Many consumers “hire” music, for instance, to do the job of making their commute more enjoyable. No commute; no job to be done; no streaming. Similarly, consumers “hire” music to do the job of drowning out noise from their co-workers when working in a cubicle/co-working area. No cubicle; no job to be done; no streaming.
Conversely, Netflix traffic has exploded during the same time. Watching movies is a fills a different job to be done during this time than music.
The imperative, therefore, is for firms and artists to re-consider the reasons people might hire music for during this time. I’ve written in this space about how hospitals can and should be utilizing music to provide comfort for patients; never has this been more true.
From a far less tragic, but equally important point of view, re-considering the ways in which music can integrate into our lives during this time is crucial, but must not be done via so-called skeuomorphic thinking; a skeuomorph is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues [attributes] from structures that are inherent to the original. That is, simply thinking that consumers will simply hire musicians to live stream the music they are making from their living rooms while in quarantine as a substitute for the job people hired them for when they went to a live performance is unrealistic and an example of how skeuomorphic thinking can lead you astray.Certainly, some people will tune in to live streams from artists performing from their home, but they are doing so to address a very different need than the one they had when they used to go out and see an artist in a venue, and artists must be cognizant of this.As an example, last Friday, The Grateful Dead kicked off their “Shakedown Stream” Series, with a streaming of their Fourth of July show from July 4th, 1989 at New York’s Rich Stadium On YouTube. During the show, viewers were able to donate to the COVID-19 Relief Fund.
As I and many others who watched this show experienced, this gesture addressed a very specific job that needed to be done. Knowing that it was happening gave me something to look forward to in the days leading up to it, and sitting in my house — with a decent surround sound setting — was a transcendent and meaningful experience. Was it the same as seeing The Dead live? Of course not, and it was not an attempt to replicate it. Rather, it was a different type of experience; one appropriate for the job to be done during these times.
Of course, few artists have archives of era-defining concerts that they can stream, but artists do have a distinct purpose and need, and, yes, an increasing number of people who are looking to hire music for a range of new and unexpected jobs.
I will be chronicling more of these in this space as they emerge, and please feel free to leave me comments with examples of music that you are hiring for a job to be done during these times.
George Howard is the former president of Rykodisc, the world’s largest independent record label, and cofounder of TuneCore, the world’s largest independent digital music distributor. He is also the cofounder of Music Audience Exchange, which comprises a team of digital marketers, engineers, and music lovers, using technology to redefine the fundamental structure of brand-artist relationships.
Mr. Howard is a professor of music business/management at Berklee College of Music, and the founder of GHS, a strategic consulting firm that advises a wide range of clients on how to integrate technology with strategy in order to increase brand awareness and revenue through innovation, social media, digital platforms, and strategic partnerships. A partial list of clients includes: Intel, National Public Radio, CVS Pharmacy, Alticor/Amway, Brown University, Paste Magazine, SpokenLayer, SingFit, The Landmark School, BigchainDB, Wolfgang’s Vault, and the Townsend Group. Howard is a sought-after expert witness who has drafted reports for and testified in many high-profile cases. He also is a columnist for Forbes, and a frequent contributor to the New York Times and many other publications.
This article originally appeared on Forbes. You can read more of George Howard’s writing for Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgehoward/#5cdcc7a05fea
