Trends in Music Product Retailing
Key Events Timeline
Just about every time I do a trends process, someone wants to know why we start with a timeline. The reason is simple. It makes the process better.
Research into group prediction dynamics indicates that groups do better about looking forward when they look backward first. The reason might be that if you look backward you get a realistic idea of how important some changes can be, but also how long some changes take to make an impact.
The group in Nashville was asked to look back as far as the beginning of the 20th Century and identify key events that had an impact on music product retailing. We then compared that with a list prepared by a group of store executives in a smaller session. Here's the list the executives came up with.
1900 — 1950
- 240 piano manufacturers in the US in 1910
- Telephone
- Telegraph
- Radio
- Jazz
- Swing
- The first shopping center
1950 — 2000
The 1950s saw the beginning impact of the Baby Boom. The Baby Boom either causes or affects everything that occurs after 1946.
- School band programs
- The solid body electric guitar
- Rentals
- Sputnik
- The Beatles
- Credit cards
- Toll-Free ordering and catalogs
- Long distance delivery (UPS)
- Yamaha
- Humans on the moon and the space program
- The Viet Nam War
- Recessions in 1980s and 1990s
- VCRs
- The Personal Computer
- Digital Recording
- Big Box Stores
- The Internet
Once we had a timeline in place, we moved on to trend identification.
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