Virginia Beach officials, pretty much now, have to be planning a statue fortune impresario Pharrell Williams right close to the sea.
The frequent Grammy winner and Virginia Beach local solved an excruciating headache for the leaders of the commonwealth’s largest city: How must they reply? At the same time, tens of thousands of—frequently black—university students flock to the Oceanfront each April, with barely any city-subsidized events.
Many teens come to the town from around Virginia and along the East Coast right earlier than the final assessments. Many attend historically black faculties and universities.
Since College Beach Weekend stuck municipal officials employing Marvel in 2013, the lack of structure and sanctioned activities has been a recipe for trouble, recrimination, and stereotyping. Residents have cited the race of attendees as the problem.
Shootings and robberies have happened. Felony arrests have been commonplace. In 2018, as an example, four human beings were shot. Police stated dozens of people had been arrested on gun, drug, and other expenses.
The Virginian-Pilot recently reported that Virginia Beach police statistics show crime “during the three-day college accumulating changed into largely like current Fourth of July celebrations.” Some College Beach Weekends drew as many as 40,000 people to the region. (Full disclosure: I worked at The Pilot from 2000 to 2018.)
I question whether or not a comparable crowd of white college students, year after year, would’ve been subject to such benign overlook without town personnel doing more to installation sports. Except for a strong police presence, town officials had hesitated to take the lead.
Enter Pharrell, the musician, report manufacturer, and fashion designer. He conceived, planned, and executed last weekend’s “Something Inside the Water” competition in less than six months.
Boy, did he ever.
A town official told me that Pharrell and the organizers spent $15 million on the three-day pageant. That’s five times the price range of any other unique event held inside the metropolis, stated Brian Solis, assistant to the town supervisor/ unique projects. Beach officers provided logistical assistance, including public protection, crowd management, and traffic oversight.
The musical acts (Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, and Rosalia), visitor audio system, or even a pop-up church carrier on the sand reversed the narrative associated with the annual weekend. That all blended to trap some folks older than the standard university crowd and humans of each hue. Similarly, the law of supply and demand must also be part of pricing your music as fine art. The law of supply and demand works like this: the greater the supply, the lower the demand, and the lower the supply, the greater the demand. In other words, the more of something there is, the less it’s worth, and the less of something there is, the more it’s worth.
The law doesn’t always work out this perfectly, but as a general rule, it works.
The problem with this law is that it only slightly considers mass psychology and how demand is created by advertising, marketing, and PR (public relations). Without these three factors working in your favor, there will be little or no demand for your fine art music LP, no matter how small your supply is. Only when these three factors work in your favor and demand is fairly high can the price of your singular or limited edition fine art music LP, CD, or digital audio files rise and skyrocket. To become fluent with the hope of employing advertising, marketing, and PR and ensuring the demand is there among your target audience before releasing your work so that you can be certain your album receives high bidding.
A Digital Point of View
Some of the ideas I’ve presented here so far can be applied to music in digital formats. For example, one approach is a limited edition, gorgeously designed iPod or alternative mP3 player with your fine art music programmed into a locked memory. For high-end buyers, there’s an iPod available made from 22k gold, and it features an Apple logo made of diamonds; it estimates the price is roughly $120,000.
Something like this could work or even look cool. A READ-only thumb drive could work. You plug it in and enjoy exclusive access to an album that only one collector or a select few have in their possession.
The number one problem with digital formats is that it’s too easy to copy files from one device to another, which is why a locked or unhackable memory is crucial. Without the locked memory, the exclusivity factor cannot exist, undermining the creation of a digital device for fine art music.
