[4ec0755f5522]

This is such an interesting problem. I do think that new music that is competing with old music has an advantage in its newness, which humans tend to prefer. But it needs to be as excellent as the music it is competing with. If you as a musician are not writing music as compelling or interesting as, say Sgt Pepper, you are doing it wrong. You need to bring your AAA game if you are going to compete with the GOATs, yeah?

That said, the absolutely killer bit of this article is:

I learned the danger of excessive caution long ago, when I consulted to huge Fortune 500 companies. The single biggest problem I encountered—shared by virtually every large company I analyzed—was investing too much of their time and money into defending old ways of doing business, rather than building new ones.

[...]

But senior management hated hearing this, and always insisted that defending the old business units was their safest bet. After I encountered this embedded mindset again and again and saw its consequences, I reached the painful conclusion that the safest path is often the most dangerous. If you pursue a strategy—whether in business or your personal life—that avoids all risk, you might flourish in the short run, but you flounder over the long term.

This is sage advice. For your career, for your business, whatever. I'd spin it as this:

When an industry is on a downswing, it becomes cluttered. Market demand is falling so existing players are fighting for share of a shrinking market. For new entrants, there's no opportunity. So for example if you are trying to get a job in this industry, you won't find openings. If it's a market you're trying to enter as a business, you won't find demand/customers. Whereas in a growing market the opposite is true. Therefore we can say it is a truism that any opportunity is more likely than not to be a good one, because opportunities only exist in an upswing, and are pushed out in a downswing.

There's more to it, of course. Bubbles, for example. But the fact remains: opportunities signal a rising market and in general you should seek them out as the payoff, over time, is likely to be worth it.

[wolverine876]

> You need to bring your AAA game if you are going to compete with the GOATs, yeah?

The Beatles and Grand Master Flash didn't bother to compete with Duke Ellington or Bach.

[BeFlatXIII]

Besides, a pure focus on technical excellence only gets you so far. If technical capability were the yardstick of good music, the only remaining genres would be math rock and speed metal.