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In a world where AI can churn out chart-toppers in seconds and ticketing algorithms treat fans like data points, we risk losing the soul of live music. But a quiet countermovement is making a comeback right in peoples living rooms, backyards and basements. Once the gritty domain of garage bands and DIY punks, house shows are becoming a structured, sustainable model for music communities embraced by a myriad of musical genres and accessible to all ages. House shows arent just an indie throwback. They serve as a blueprint for re-humanizing music and sustainable artist development, and cities should treat them as civic infrastructure. Today, fans crave authentic, offline experiences. In Huntsville, Alabama, were betting big on this grassroots phenomenon, not as nostalgia, but as a future-proof cultural strategy meant to empower emerging artists, foster authentic human connection and fill gaps that traditional venues cant. THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE SHOW Van Halens first gigs were at backyard keg parties in California. Hoobastank, Incubus and Linkin Park formed the alternative rock sound of the early 2000s in their parents garages. But what defines a house show? A house show is first and foremost grounded in a sense of community. Often, a local band or willing host offers up their home to community members for an intimate musical performance. Artists and hosts run the full show, from tickets and gear to promotion, gaining skills theyd never get in a traditional venue. In 2025, major acts like the All-American Rejects and Machine Gun Kelly are embracing the format. Beyond big-name acts, artists all over the world are curating experiences where audiences can witness the next big thing up close, all while creating connections across demographics. Families, young fans and seasoned music lovers can gather in intimate, inclusive spaces. Take Common Man, a Huntsville-based husband-wife duo who are now touring the U.S. but remain fiercely dedicated to their community. Now dubbed Common House, Common Man members, Meredith and Compton Johnson, transformed the basement of their home into a live music venue. The duo has not only used house shows to launch their own exposure but also to provide other touring musicians and artists in the community with a platform to perform and reach new audiences in an inclusive environment. Recently, theyve taken their house show model global and performed at homes throughout Scotland. And theyre not aloneHuntsvilles house show scene also includes Boardman House, another grassroots venue making space for live music. THE CIVIC BET ON THE LIVING ROOM Cities shouldnt just invest in amphitheaters. They should also invest in cultural infrastructure at the neighborhood level to create intimate, fan-focused environments where artists are in more control of their concert experiences and show revenues, in the venues where careers are born and communities are formed. When cities support smaller venues, theyre offering benefits traditional venues and platforms cant. For example, were: Helping with business and/or LLC formation for liability protection. Advising on ticketing and professional sound and lighting. Guiding artists through compliance with sound ordinances and neighborhood approvals. Prioritizing artist pay and sustainability. Cities often prioritize large or mid-sized venues due to their significant economic impact. House shows fill a different and equally vital gap. They empower artists to control ticket prices and profit margins, bypassing bar-sales-driven venue models. They create peer networking opportunities and act as incubators for emerging talent, offering artists the chance to book, promote and manage shows on a small scale, thereby building skills that can scale to larger venues. Most importantly, house shows democratize music, embedding it in communities instead of keeping it behind ticketing paywalls. In short, they rebalance the live music economy. THE REAL-LIFE ANTIDOTE TO AI In an age where AI-generated bands with entire albums have millions of streams and AI-enhanced performances of deceased artists are gaining popularity, ethical questions are being raised about authenticity and creative displacement. House shows deliver what algorithms cannot: shared human connection, local community and unpredictable magic in the room. Huntsville frames house shows not as nostalgia, but as a future-proof strategy for live music ecosystems. House shows arent replacing arenas or amphitheaters; instead, they complement them, with a thriving layer of hyperlocal, artist-first experiences. House shows are a missing piece of the live music ecosystem, and Huntsville is proving that cities can invest in culture not just from the top down, but from the living room up. As AI reshapes how music is made and consumed and fans crave authentic, in-person experiences, these intimate gatherings remind us that the real reasons we gravitate towards music are innately human and communal. Matt Mandrella is the music officer for the city of Huntsville, Alabama.
Category:
E-Commerce
Strategy textbooks taught us that sustainable competitive advantage that commanded premium prices was best protected by powerful barriers to entry. Build a moat, create switching costs, leverage access to high costs of entry, own distribution channels, and it would be difficult for startups to compete for your markets. But the forces of disruption operate by different rules, systematically destroying the very foundations of pricing power by making the previously difficult and expensive suddenly easy and cheap. The basis of competition changes, from excellence along well understood dimensions of merit to good enough. The ‘good enough’ revolution in pricing I have sympathy for incumbents. Theyre accustomed to working really hard to deliver on demanding criteria for quality, reliability, and excellence, only to find that fickle customers are spending their money on good enough that do just fine. Consider some examples: Peak book and the advent of e-readers. E-readers lack the tactile satisfaction of turning pages, the smell of paper, and the aesthetic appeal of a beautifully bound book, not to mention the satisfaction of having an author personally sign your copy (if the latter doesnt matter to you, please dont break my heart and tell me). Yet e-books offer instant delivery, the ability to carry thousands of books in one device, adjustable fonts, built-in dictionaries, and search functionality. For many readers, thats good enough. Further, Amazon can sell bestsellers for $9.99 because the marginal cost is near zero, undermining hardcover pricing power. And were now in a world where AI makes it easy for anybody to author a book, commoditizing the authority that being a book author used to convey. Digital Board Games vs. Physical Board Games. Electronic games lack the social ritual of gathering around a table, handling physical pieces, and reading opponents’ body language. But they enable play with friends anywhere in the world, handle all rules automatically, provide instant matchmaking with strangers, and eliminate setup/cleanup time. A $40 board game becomes a $5 app. Of course, there is a big debate about whether becoming subservient to the companies that want you to rent, rather than own, is a good thing or not. Streaming Fitness vs. Gym Memberships. Peloton, Apple Fitness+, and YouTube workouts can’t replicate the full equipment range of a commercial gym, the fine-tuning of a professional coach, or the energy of in-person classes. But they eliminate commute time, remove scheduling constraints, offer unlimited class variety, and provide privacy for self-conscious exercisers. A $30/month digital subscription undermines $150/month premium gym memberships for many users. In the industrial age, you could count on scarcity. It was hard to manufacture with quality at scale. It was hard to do advanced engineering. It was hard to source and assemble materials. For many of us, disruptors change the basis of competition entirely by removing the constraints that once justified premium pricing. The mechanics of price erosion Traditional pricing power rested on three pillars: scarcity, complexity, and friction. Companies could charge premiums because their offerings were hard to access, difficult to replicate, or cumbersome to replace. Disruptive technologies attack all three simultaneously. Take professional photography. The scarcity of skilled photographers, expensive equipment, and darkroom expertise once justified substantial fees. Smartphone cameras and AI-powered editing apps haven’t just reduced these coststhey’ve eliminated entire categories of photographic services. The wedding photographer still commands premiums, but passport photos, real estate listings, and product shots have been democratized beyond recognition. The financial services industry offers another compelling example. Robo-advisors now provide portfolio management that once required expensive human advisors. The algorithms aren’t more sophisticated than what top wealth managers offer, but they’ve made “good enough” portfolio management available for basis points instead of percentage points. When Charles Schwab can offer comprehensive financial planning for free as a customer acquisition tool, traditional advisors’ ability to charge 1-2% annually becomes increasingly tenuous. Strategic implications for incumbents In a world where technology makes everything easier and cheaper, competitive advantage increasingly comes from business model innovation rather than product superiority. Amazon Web Services doesn’t charge premiums because its infrastructure is superior; it dominates because it transformed computing from a capital expense to an operating expense, fundamentally changing how companies think about IT resources. The most successful responses involve three strategic moves. First, companies need to be open to unbundling their offerings, recognizing that customers will no longer pay premiums for features they don’t value. Second, they must shift from product-centric to ecosystem-centric thinking, finding new sources of value in sticky network effects and data rather than in the core product itself. Third, they must embrace the reality that in many categories, the price will trend toward marginal costwhich in digital goods means effectively zero. The new basis of competition As traditional pricing power erodes, new sources of competitive advantage emerge. Speed of innovation, ecosystem orchestration, and customer intimacy become more valuable than product features. Creating stickiness that makes it hard to switch, adding value to the experience and reinforcing new forms of scarcity perhaps embedded in algorithms are all powerful ways that digital firms sustain competitive advantage. Spotify, for instance, operates in a world where recorded music is effectively free. Its pricing power doesn’t come from exclusive content but from its recommendation algorithms, social features, and ecosystem integrations. The premium isn’t for the musicit’s for the experience around the music. And for artists, their revenue is increasingly coming from what is scarce the experience of attending a live performance. The bad news is that for many experts with years of investment in the old paradigms, the good enough revolution will make their experince less valuable. The good news is that democratizing who can create whats good enough can be a basis for massive growth.
Category:
E-Commerce
Timothée Chalamet just posted an 18-minute-long video to his Instagram to promote his upcoming A24 film, Marty Supreme. It might be his best role yet. In the video, Chalametsporting a bright yellow tank top, buzz cut, and dainty necklacejoins a Zoom call full of supposed marketing executives who will be leading the promotional campaign ahead of the film’s release on December 25. After awkward introductions, Chalamet proceeds to fill up the meetings airtime with increasingly ridiculous suggestions for the films marketing efforts, leaving the eight other members of the call scrambling to accommodate his wild ideas. On A24s YouTube channel, where the video is posted under the title Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme, its gained almost 100,000 views. And on Chalamets personal Instagram, its been watched almost 10 million times. The campaign, which is a parody of an actual marketing meeting, sees Chalamet fully commit to the part of snobbish actor with no regard for his coworkersand clearly, its resonating. The meta concept sticks the landing by balancing absurdist humor with an uncanny eye for the moments that make our digital workplaces just a little bit universally awkward. An absurd ad campaign you just might buy into Marty Supreme, directed by Josh Safdie, is a sports-comedy film loosely based on the life of American ping-pong player Marty Reisman. The most information that we have about the film thus far comes from A24s official trailer, released on November 11, in which Chalamet embodies a version of Marty whos brash, determined, and extremely self-confident. Those characteristics come out in full force through the new Marty Supreme ad, which plays like a surrealist comedy of errors about how not to behave in a Zoom meeting. Less than two minutes into the call, Chalamet has already taken control of the meeting, explaining that his philosophy for the movies marketing is led by three principles: culmination, “integration,” and fruitionizing” (which he admits is not a real word). Things only get weirder from there. First, Chalamet suggests that his character, Marty Supreme, appear on boxes of Wheaties cereal. Then he gears up to introduce something his creative director has been working on for six months, only to reveal a single orange color swatch. Finally, he escalates to suggesting that Marty Supremes marketing should include a fleet of blimps, an activation at the Statue of Liberty, and an orange Eiffel Tower. [Poster Image: A24] As Chalamets ideas get more and more grand, the other people on the call are forced to keep a straight face. Its a particular genre of humor that plays unbelievable absurdity against the everyman, a concept thats seen success in shows like Nathan for You, The Rehearsal, and I Think You Should Leave. Subtly skewering Zoom meetings for the sake of cinema Where the new Marty Supreme ad really shines, though, is in its subtle dissection of the awkward Zoom call, an experience that almost every remote worker suffered through during the pandemic. From the painfully long introduction sequence to the clunky shift to screen sharing (during which Chalamet reveals a computer background of himself receiving an award), constant interruptions, and sprinklings of corporate-speak, every beat feels like a truly torturous meeting. While it’s unclear exactly why A24 chose to advertise Marty Supreme through advertising parody (considering that it’s a movie that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the marketing world), the video does seem particularly geared toward an online audience of young Chalamet fans. By balancing the ridiculous with the real, the ad strikes a relatable note thats perfectly suited to attracting modern viewers. i feel like I am an imposter in a professional zoom meeting, one Instagram user wrote under the video. i know this is supposed to be a joke, but I’ve been in a lot of entertainment marketing meetings, they are exactly like this, another fan wrote on YouTube. Some may argue that Dune or Call Me by Your Name represent Chalamets best work. Marketers everywhere know its Timothee_Chalamet_internal_brand_marketing_meeting_MartySupreme.
Category:
E-Commerce
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