by: Cameron MacKenzie
If you’re over 50 or under 40, I would bet you’ve probably never heard of a band named De La Soul. If you haven’t, that’s a shame, because they are excellent. I’d tell you to stream their music, but their best music isn’t on any streaming service. As a result, nobody knows who they are anymore; nobody is listening, and if nobody listens to the music, did it even happen?
Too bad for the kids today, who are missing out on a great band, but of course the kids who don’t know, don’t care. It's worse, I’d argue, for De La Soul, who are increasingly fading into obscurity with every month that goes by without people being able to listen to Stakes is High. Garth Brooks is another example—somebody a thousand times bigger than De La Soul who’s marketing power is shrinking every day that nobody is listening to him.
Now, the day that Garth Brooks goes live on Spotify he will dominate all downloading lists. But long term? It’s not that big a deal. He’s just one guy, with a handful of good albums, that don’t sound (to me) all that different from a thousand other guys. We’re not talking Wyld Stallions here; Garth Brooks isn’t going to save the world, so why treat his catalogue like it’s magic? Because, so the thinking goes, if you don’t give people what they want, it will incite desire. Keep it from them, they’ll want it more.
There’s some truth to that, but that game has a hard halflife. Getting that scheme to work is tricky, because it relies on keeping the consumer anxious for something that they could, in essence, get anywhere else.
When it comes to investing, I think it’s wise to be wary of shops who are promoting exclusivity and promising outsized returns based on a secret sauce only they possess. From what I see, even the superman hedge funds rarely outperform the simple chugging of the S&P 500.
In truth, everything we need to be successful is already available. There’s no big secrets we’re missing out on. All it takes is a little knowledge, a little patience, and a decent amount of discipline—the sort of things that aren’t particularly easy to execute, which is why fewer and fewer people get them straight.
At the end of the day, the argument for exclusivity is weak, and getting weaker every day, especially thanks to the increasing amount of content that is getting freed up by technology. And so, you don’t need Garth Brooks to understand and appreciate country music. And as good as “Friends in Low Places” is, for my money I’d take Alan Jackson’s “Chattahoochee.” Quicker beat, funnier lyrics, better instrumentation. Now, 3 Feet High and Rising...well that’s something I can’t quite put a price on.
Opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of SagePoint Financial, Inc.