I certainly agree with your underlying thrust about MBA-driven CorpSpeak not doing much good for patient care.
The one thing I will say is that at least some medical practices in the 1980s seemed to operate on a DMV model: you have an absolute need to come see us, and therefore we don’t have to care about how you find the experience, just that the product was delivered competently … eventually.
Having customer-friendly features like extended hours, enough staff to handle the workload, realistic appointment times, friendly staffers, etc., are all not really practicing medicine, but are all part and parcel of customer-oriented custmer-centric service. Rather than an older model of provider-centric management where production efficiency isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.
Now of course my own industry is righty infamous for totally sucking at delivering a customer-centric experience. So I’m a very black kettle here speaking to a pot of any shade. But in a high touch one-on-one industry such as yours, leaving out the “customer” aspect from the “patient care delivery model” becomes really obvious by omission.
My objection here is just based on linguistic conservatism, which those who have been exposed to my opining on matters of language in the past will be accustomed to. (The aforementioned may be reworded for those allergic to ending a sentence with a preposition. )
The three common definitions of “consume” pertain to ingestion of food or drink, using things up, or, in the more modern marketing sense, of purchasing things. I’m perfectly fine with the latter concept in the context of consumers as a market force, or of consumers consuming “x” amount of resources. But in the context of “consuming” music, art, or literature, not so much. Unless, of course, one has burned down an art museum, in which case the perp can be fairly credited with causing art to be consumed.
I listen to a number of podcasts and many of them advertise other, newer podcasts they think the listener might be interested in. The line I often hear is “wherever you get your podcasts.”
I have no issue with “consume media” because it’s a catchall for reading, listening, watching flickering images, and other things. “Consume music” sounds a bit ponderous to me since you could just say “Listen to…” like the rest of us hoo-mans.
I understand, they don’t want to bring any attention to the fact that the relationship between the streaming services and the artists (without whom the streaming services would have no reason to exist) is predatory, at best. But still - I don’t consume music! I might, in fact, be one of the last people on the planet who buys it, because I have a direct understanding of how much it costs to produce a recording versus how little money one will ever see back from that process, unless one is fortunate on the same level as a lottery winner…
Look, once upon a time they would say “our new release is available wherever you buy records”.
Since “buying records” is no longer the primary way to acquire on-demand access to a work of music (and in fact actually acquiring fixed possession of a medium of access has had a large part of its share taken by streaming) , well, they had to figure out another way of saying it. And that’s how colloquial speech evolves.
I guess you can make any word mean anything if you get enough people to go along with it but I’ve never thought of “consume” (use, ingest, process) to apply to the act of buying something (you’re a consumer because you use what you’re buying, not just because you bought it; a rewholesaler isn’t a consumer). If you need to combine record stores, digital stores and streaming services, just say “…available wherever you buy or stream music”.
If you’re not enjoying it, why are you listening to it?
I mean, this is all about ‘if you like this’ you can find it at/on these streaming services. I don’t think the ad copywriter is trying to say ‘If you don’t like this music, you can hear lots more of it on Spotify’…
I read the OP’s “one can acquire “wherever you consume music”” as a functional specification of the purchase/whatever process, which should be precise.
Yeah, this is what bothers me about it. I buy vegetables at the supermarket. I borrow books from the library. Then i consume the vegetables in my kitchen and consume the books in my bedroom and living room.
I can’t think of a single word that works well for buy/stream, maybe “obtain” or “find” or “acquire”? None works great for this pitch, though.
No. Computer languages are “functional specifications”. Natural languages, as spoken by humans, particularly in casual contexts like conversation and advertising, are less about strict precision and often more about the nuances, imagery, and emotions they evoke. If you’re trying to promote music, it’s far more welcoming to say that you can now find it wherever you find the music you enjoy rather than proclaiming that it may be acquired wherever you “consume” (or devour, burn, destroy, or greedily purchase) said product.
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