There is a thought-provoking article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal titled "Does Being Ethical Pay?" While reading it I wondered if "ethical music" could work. (Check out the article. It's a very good read.)

June Cotte (associate professor of marketing at the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School) and Remi Trudel (doctoral candidate in marketing at the Ivey School of Business) conducted a series of experiments to arrive at a rough dollar estimate of the premium consumers will pay for ethical products. In one experiment, consumers were given a pay range and asked what they would pay for a certain amount of coffee. The consumers were split into three groups. One group was told the company followed ethical business practices, another group received neutral information and the third group was given negative information about the company.

...we found that -- regardless of their expectations -- consumers were willing to pay more for ethical goods than unethical ones, or ones about which they had no information. Likewise, negative information had a much bigger bearing on consumer response than positive information. People punished unethical goods with a bigger discount (about $2 below the control group) than they rewarded ethical ones with premiums (about $1 above the control group).

So, what effect did consumer attitudes have? People with high expectations doled out bigger rewards and punishments than those with low expectations. Those with high expectations were willing to pay a mean of $11.59 per pound for the ethical coffee, versus $9.90 for those with low expectations. And the high-expectations group punished the unethical coffee with a price of $6.92, versus $8.44 for low-expectations consumers.

The lessons are clear. Companies should segment their market and make a particular effort to reach out to buyers with high ethical standards, because those are the customers who can deliver the biggest potential profits on ethically produced goods.

Music cannot easily be compared to coffee and organic cotton, but there's a moral in the story. When an industry has for years undertaken an unpopular legal campaign that many consumers consider unethical, there's a very good chance its products cannot bear as high a price as they did in the past.

Would "ethical music" work? Even if the product could be made more ethical, it would probably be difficult to communicate how the product is more ethical. Perhaps a marketing campaign could be built around artists and labels that -- just throwing out ideas here -- use green packaging, incorporate sustainable energy during recording, give to charities and refrain from suing consumers. Slap some kind of Juan Valdez-like logo on it and give it a premium price. It could work...if the RIAA's legal strategy changes first. Even if it doesn't create new sales, ethical music could at least help retain some consumers.

[music jobs] Brand and Online Marketing Manager at The Ascot Club/Am Only; Brooklyn, NY.