on 7/24/02 9:30 AM, Patrice L. Roussel at proussel@ichips.intel.com wrote:
Hello Skip,
Even though I don't think there is a real problem in American culture spreading, I have to disagree with you about forcing. It is quite obvious that American corporations use all their facilities to spread to markets other than American. It doesn't really matter is it KFC "restaurant", Madonna's music or Hollywood movie. The methods and results are basically the same: huge investments in ads, reduced prices in the beginning, prepaid critics' articles (so called hidden advertisement) and then big sales and dominating among domestic products, which often cannot compete with lower quality but bigger money American ones.
Huge ad investment up front? Prepaid critical raves? You sure we're not recounting the markeying strategy from when Medeski, Martin, and Wood got signed to Blue Note? You can spread anything you wat to any market you want, and you can advertise as much as you like. If somebody buys and likes KFC the first time they try it, they're gonna buy more KFC. That's how KFC gets to stay in the marketplace. The means by which one is enticed to that first piece of KFC chicken might overdominating, but if people eat it and decide they wanna eat more, where's the application of force? I'm not not one of these people who believes that if millions of people were exposed to John Zorn then millions of people would like John Zorn. You could advertise it all you want, but TORTURE GARDEN is not meant for everybody. Doesn't make it bad. Just makes it designed for a more specialized audience. It's a miracle that records like that can get in print and stay in print, and I'm thankful for that. American corporations might be making vertain kinds of artists relatively unavoidable in terms of hearing their music -- Norah Jones leaps to mind at the moment -- but this has doesn't mean I think she's the only game in town. It's my money, it's up to me. skip h np: janis siegel -- i wish you love