alt Hacker NewsIt's very smart of them to recognize that.
The world is full of these weird business cases where people aren't aware of the actual product, like how Starbucks US morphed from a coffee shop into an iced dessert drinks company that also incidentally sells hot coffee.
Edit:
Other fun examples -
In the mid-2000s, Porsche was an incredibly successful hedge fund that also sold cars who tried to acquire VW using a short squeeze.
Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
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Starbucks is also (one of?) the largest payment processors in the world, with also a perpetual like ~$2B float from its customers
> Most US airlines are profitable frequently flier points companies that also operate airplanes to justify the program.
Freakonomics Radio had a series about airlines. They claimed this was not true and that frequently flier points only accounted for 5% of profits.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/freakonomics-radio-take...
WSJ said it was true:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTW8RDJUEE
I don't know who to believe.
And McDonald’s is known to be primarily a real estate company. Berkshire Hathaway is meant to be an insurance company. Military aircraft manufacturers are really maintenance companies.
> Target US is a real estate company that operates also (profitable) stores.
They're exactly as much a real estate company than a mom & pop store that owns their space. They just have a lot of stores.
Or that GM is a bank that also sells people the collateral for loans (i.e. cars).
Or Blockbuster being a massive real-estate company. Or McDonald's for that matter.
Now do the International Code Council, and Harvard, and Unicef, and government departments, and, and, and.....
The reason we don't evaluate things in this "measure what is actually goin on" manner is because the actual goings on are only able to go on as they do so long as a public image that emphasizes something else is maintained.
People wouldn't go to starbucks in the manner they do if they thought of it as a sugary drink place.
I don't know if the Starbucks example is quite the same as the band example. If anything, their focus on iced desserts shows that they know exactly what their audience wants and is paying for.
When I think about the band shirts, I think about this time an indie game dev youtuber did a full breakdown of their different revenue streams. They were a "full time indie gamedev", but the overwhelming majority of their income came from gamedev Udemy courses.
So really, they were an online course seller that used their gamedev youtube content to convince people to buy the courses.