When Brands Miss the Mark: Inconsistency and Image Problems in the Music Industry
Long-term brand building and success is about consistency of brand imagery in the music world. Sometimes, brands lose their way because their messaging gets out of kilter, they make unpopular moves, or sometimes because they're just slow to evolve to meet changing audience expectations. Recently, two of the most well-recognized entities in the music world-Rolling Stone and Coachella-have made decisions that seem to work against their brands, diluting public perception of them.
Rolling Stone: A Legacy Brand Losing Credibility
Rolling Stone was once the gold standard of music journalism, deeply influential in culture and respected for its investigative reporting. Over the last few years, it has come under fire for sensationalized coverage, inconsistent editorial quality, and an overall perceived loss of authenticity.
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But probably one of the most serious blows to its image came in 2023 when the magazine presented its "Greatest Singers of All Time" list and left off major icons such as Celine Dion. Many fans and people within the industry called it pandering to clickbait-style rankings rather than any actual music criticism. The mistake shows a continuing problem: Rolling Stone seems to focus on viral moments rather than journalistic integrity, and audiences cannot seem to trust its brand.
For a brand built upon its credibility, such inconsistency serves only to break that trust with readers of many years. Instead of building on the successes of thoughtful, well-researched music journalism, Rolling Stone's pursuit of shock-value content weakens their position in the industry.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-singers-all-time-1234642307/
Coachella: An Identity Crisis in Music Culture
Once hailed as the gold standard of festivals, Coachella has increasingly been called out for losing its identity. Once championed for its ahead-of-the-curve lineups and indie credibility through eclectic music curation, it has since been eclipsed by influencer culture, brand activations, and a pivot toward mainstream pop acts more commercial than creative.
Controversies over the parent firm behind the festival, AEG, did not help matters. Reports about the financial ties of AEG with organizations that have controversial political stances raised tensions among artists and fans, leading full-on to the boycott of the festival.
While it still is a huge cultural phenomenon, the Coachella brand has become more synonymous with 'fashion influencer' and 'social media moment' than with any revolutionary musical experience. That fact makes it increasingly hard for the committed music lover to consider it as one of those events that just have to be experienced, eroding its authority among the same public that made it iconic.
Lessons in Brand Consistency:
Both Rolling Stone and Coachella serve as examples of the dangers of brand inconsistency within the music industry. The moment a brand drifts too far from what made it valuable in the first place, it runs the risk of losing the trust and loyalty of its core audience.
In the world of music, it's not about sticking with the times in the long term for a brand; rather, it's all about an identity people can believe in. Those will be the brands that with every evolution stay true to their cores and remain relevant and respectable in an industry based on perception.
