Just reading this thread, and wow! I learn SO much on MJ’s! Thank you all for the articles/analysis, etc. Really interesting stuff.

And I kind of have my doubts about Jordin as a big solo draw or a big merchandise seller. That’s been my question about Jordin all along at pop ‘” I don’t see anything aspirational about her image for the pop audience.

Lucy, ITA with your points on Jordin. I don’t think Jive has successfully created a strong brand with her, for all the reasons you stated above. She’s not the disney princess, she def has a more mature sound (and even look), but at the same time, she’s still a kid. She doesn’t really attract any one demographic strongly enough. To the person who said that people like her singles, but maybe not HER enough, I think that might be correct. Her singles are catchy, hooky, and you want to buy them. But there’s not enough of a pull (imo) to really get invested in Jordin the artist. And pop, especially is SO brand driven.

Here is a really interesting analysis of the current digital music marketplace from Billboard.

Q3 - thanks for posting this – I really enjoyed the read. My take on it is: everything evolves, it’s the nature of business cycles. The ipod, albums, digital sales, are all reaching maturity. EVERYTHING in business goes through this cycle.

Music ain’t going anywhere, so, as with everything in this world, it simply must adapt to survive. The strong and smart will predict the changes, and move ahead with them to stay ahead of the curve. The weak and slow will fall by the wayside and fail. And if I knew what the winning move was, well, I’d probably be much wealthier right now

Similar struggle is happening right now with newspapers ‘“ many of which are struggling to stay afloat now that most people get so much of their news for free on the internet. In fact, the internet alone is probably the most responsible for all of these huge shifts in business practice. It will be interesting to see how it will all play out.