Millions of words will be written about the death of David Bowie, the theatrical pop singer who died of cancer at the age of 69. He was famous for the various dramatis personae he adopted over the years—Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke—and for his experiments in androgyny, having surfed a wave of sexual indeterminacy (the rumored affair with Mick Jagger, etc.) right up until the moment that wave crested, at which point he married a famous supermodel and adopted a somewhat more conventional aesthetic. Very few men will ever be able to say that they aged as gracefully.
Bowie was an influential figure in music, art, and fashion, but he was a pretty good armchair economist, too, having chosen a necessarily entrepreneurial occupation. He was quick to appreciate the cultural importance of the Internet, and in 2002 he gave a famous interview with the New York Times in which he made some predictions about the future of the music industry: the decline of labels, the emergence of the utility model of music distribution, the blurring of previously clear lines of ownership and authorship, the decline of effective copyright (he wasn’t quite right in predicting that copyright would simply cease to exist in a decade) and the return of performance as the central economic activity for musicians.
He was a financial innovator, too, raising $55 million via the now-famous “Bowie bond,” in which he traded future royalties for cash money in hand. (This turned out to be a much better deal for Bowie than for his investors.) That wasn’t entirely successful, but the idea clearly influenced subsequent projects such as Kickstarter. No one has quite figured out what business models are in fact going to be effective for cultural undertakings such as music, publishing, and journalism, but Bowie was ahead of the curve in identifying the underlying problem.
As any entrepreneur will tell you, recruiting the right people is an enormous challenge. Bowie had the good sense to spot Stevie Ray Vaughan, whose contribution to “Let’s Dance” was simply irreplaceable. Bowie in fact had nearly impeccable taste in guitarists: Reeves Gabrels, Adrian Belew, etc. He was an excellent personnel man.
And without being cynical, there was a fair amount of marketing savvy behind his enigmatic image and his penchant for playing a new character every few years: He was like a fine restaurant with no fixed menu, where the atmosphere “isn’t painted on the walls,” as they say. He wasn’t all things to everyone, but his portfolio was well-diversified.
The artist was admirable, to be sure, but the businessman wasn’t half bad, either. The free market isn’t only about investment bankers and factories. Increasingly, it isn’t even mainly about that. It is about human flourishing. David Bowie’s career was a reminder that business can be beautiful.
David Bowie was a brilliant businessman