On Sunday, The New York Times published an article about efforts by organizers of the Electric Zoo Festival, a three-day electronic dance music (EDM) event in New York, to curtail drug use among attendees.

A year ago, the event shuttered a day early after two people died from apparent drug overdoses. In more recent weeks, six drug-related deaths occurred at EDM festivals in Canada, Maryland and Nevada.

I was drawn to the article both as a parent of a teenage son who listens to EDM, and as a curious fan of music of all types.

The article includes a quote from Robert F. X. Sillerman, a media mogul whose SFX Entertainment now holds a significant financial stake in the Electric Zoo Festival:

“Electronic music is the soundtrack for this generation. In my day, music was a series of short stories, with a beginning, middle and end. But what’s fascinating about Electric Zoo is that what you see are 10,000 kids dancing in unison, without a narrative, and not all hearing the same thing. The paradigm has changed. The Internet has created a collective mind-set of individuals. The audience is now in charge.”

I wasn’t expecting the article to offer any insights about retailing new/used vehicles, but there it was — today’s vehicle buyers are definitely in charge, and dealers who embrace this new reality will fare better than those who resist it.

Dale Pollak is the founder of vAuto. This entry and Pollak’s entire blog can be found at www.dalepollak.com