VISIONARY - Music Inc. Magazine
VISIONARY - Music Inc. Magazine
VISIONARY - Music Inc. Magazine
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FREAKY<br />
MISCONCEPTIONS<br />
Conventional wisdom is usually<br />
wrong. Larry Morton, president<br />
of Hal Leonard, made that<br />
point during “Freakonomics<br />
for the <strong>Music</strong> Business,” a session<br />
based off the book Freakonomics by<br />
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.<br />
Morton shared a few examples from the<br />
book to illustrate his point. One involved a<br />
day care center with a late-pickup problem.<br />
The center began charging parents $3 when<br />
they showed up after 5 p.m. The result?<br />
Late pickups doubled during the following<br />
six weeks, and parents who used to be 5<br />
minutes late started arriving 10 minutes<br />
late. “When people thought you were letting<br />
them pick up late, they thought it was<br />
a service,” Morton said.<br />
A second example involved a man who<br />
always brought bagels to his office. He finally<br />
began asking people to start chipping<br />
in money. It raised the question: Do honor<br />
systems work? “Eighty-seven percent of the<br />
time, people paid,” Morton said.<br />
Larry Morton<br />
Larry Morton on<br />
‘Freakonomics’<br />
and common<br />
misconceptions<br />
within the music<br />
products industry<br />
He then addressed some common misconceptions<br />
within the music industry:<br />
ference<br />
in 1922 said the bicycle would put<br />
the piano industry out of business.<br />
cent<br />
of the music products industry, making<br />
it the fourth largest segment.<br />
<br />
total book sales.<br />
<br />
the biggest book seller in the world.<br />
JULY 2011 I MUSIC INC. I 37
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