Disruptive innovation and musical upstarts

Most mainstream bands aren't very good, and countless memes and entire websites are devoted to mocking the worst of them. Indie rock, by contrast, prides itself on putting out really, really good music first and foremost. So on those few occasions when an indie band finally breaks into the mainstream, it's reasonable to assume that they'll quickly mop up the place with their superior talent and artistic brilliance. And yet, more often than not, they end up being the ones getting mopped. Why is this?

I think the answer lies in my previous blog post, the one about scalability in music. The average indie band might be far more palatable than the average mainstream one, but it's not any more scalable. It's like a pizza joint in this respect. There might be one in your neighbourhood that's very popular and makes the tastiest pizzas, but it would face serious resistance if it tried to scale on a national level. Why? Because there's a million pizza joints out there, plenty of which are just as good, if not better.

The backlash against Bon Iver might be understood in this context. Despite its beautiful sound, and despite being critically acclaimed and Grammy-approved, his second album is currently rated 3.8 out of 5 stars on Amazon, on par with Coldplay's latest. Why? Probably because we all know bands similar to Bon Iver that are at least just as good. And while we don't mind the Pitchfork lovefest, a Grammy takes things into new territory. Bon Iver's music might be very good, but it's just not very scalable.

This won't trouble Jagjaguwar, of course, who surely found a windfall in Bon Iver's modest success within the mainstream, but it isn't reassuring to those of us who'd like to see another Beatles or Radiohead in our lifetime. That is to say, a band that combines widespread popularity and cultural relevance with critical acclaim, artistic brilliance, and pioneering invention. If the one scene that prides itself on putting out really, really good music isn't capable of bringing us this band, then what hope is there?

I think the solution might be found in The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, which seeks to answer the question of why so many top companies take a nosedive in the face of advancing technology and societal change. The examples from history are endless: Western Union, Xerox, Montgomery Ward… and so forth. Popular wisdom, of course, would argue that they suffered from poor management, neglected their customer base, and failed to continuously innovate. But the book refutes this argument by showing that these companies were actually managed very well, extremely attuned to the needs of their customers, and constantly investing in new research.

The key lies in Christensen's distinction between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. The early automobile, for example, was a sustaining innovation, because it didn't change markets or assumptions. Only the rich could afford it, so they simply replaced their primary means of personal transportation. The term "horseless carriage" might sound whimsical to us today, but it genuinely captures how this new contraption was understood and accepted by those living at the time. By contrast, Henry Ford's Model T was a disruptive innovation, because it changed both markets and assumptions by bringing the automobile to the middle class.

Now, it was obvious to all that the switch from carriage to automobile represented a huge leap forward in technology. The mass-produced Model T, however, looked so plain and dreary next to the shiny fittings and plush interiors of its predecessors. What respectable steel magnate would be caught dead in that? For this reason, the other companies didn't treat it as serious competition until it was too late. The lesson here is that if your understanding of progress is defined by sustaining innovation, then not only will you fail to recognise disruptive innovation for what it is when you see it, you might even consider it a step backward.

What Christensen also observed is that established companies enjoy a huge advantage when it comes to staying on top of sustaining innovations, so upstarts tend to fare worst when trying to compete within established markets and values. The ones that do well and eventually take over, on the other hand, are those that create new markets and values⁠— in other words, they create disruptive innovations. Personal cars, personal computers, web-based email. And there are plenty of cases where it wasn't even planned at all; the upstarts resorted to it in last-minute desperation, simply as a matter of survival.

And that's the problem with indie rock's forays into the mainstream: They don't challenge prevailing assumptions or values. There's no real difference between what Bon Iver fans and Coldplay fans listen for in music⁠— as opposed to, let's say, those of classical versus hip hop. At best, Bon Iver fans can argue that his music represents a superior take on what Coldplay has to offer⁠— in other words, a sustaining innovation. But as we've just seen, that's not enough for an upstart to compete with an established act. On its own turf, Coldplay still wins by default.

So the next Beatles or Radiohead to truly succeed in the mainstream will only do so by fundamentally challenging our assumptions about what good music can be, where it might come from, and how it gets made⁠— in other words, it will represent a disruptive innovation. Which means that unless we're open to the lessons offered by The Innovator's Dilemma, it's quite possible that when the time comes, we'll look this upstart straight in the face⁠— and then immediately dismiss them as representing a step backward.

In fact, it might have happened countless times already.