Have you been following the story of the runaway Prius?

Turns out the guy declared bankruptcy and his lease was about to expire and…

Bottom line, science doesn’t lie, and his Prius just didn’t have the brake wear it should have if the story was true.  Take it from the "Wall Street Journal":

Questions Arise in Prius Case

Point is, the truth outs.  If there’s money involved.  And believe me, Toyota’s worried about its financial future.

Do we really care about the financial future of Sam Adams?

The Sam Adams sales are a fake.  Let’s just say a little birdie told me.

But I want to clue you in on the brilliant analysis Jay Frank did on his Website.  They say dogged pursuit of the truth can only be done by newspapers?  Mr. Frank is a perfect exhibit of the power of the Internet.  He’s an EXPERT!  He’s not starting from scratch, researching a story, he KNOWS all the background so he can ultimately deliver the truth, on an issue that’s important to him and his readers.  The filter isn’t Joe Everyman, reader of the newspaper, but hard core music biz denizens.

Anyway, from Jay:

SAM ADAMS: IS IT A FUTUREHIT?

March 14, 2010 – 10:59 am

This week, there is a controversy brewing over new Boston rapper Sam Adams. He released a new EP called Boston’s Boy that quickly shot up to #1 on the iTunes Hip Hop album charts and even debuted in the Top 75 of the overall Billboard album chart. Immediately, people have been questioning if the artist/management bought the tracks themselves which Adams not only denies, but provided a 3500 page document showing all the individual sales the song has gotten. It’s been a hot topic of discussions amongst labels and one conversation I had on it has since been immortalized by Bob Lefsetz.

So the question remains…is it real? Let’s look at the evidence:

SALES

It’s not just that he sold several thousand EPs and over 20,000 copies of his single in one week. It’s also that he sold a fair amount of individual tracks from his other songs on the EP. On the one hand, why fake that as buying the album tracks doesn’t help your chart position. On the other hand, the purchasing pattern of those other album tracks are typically at a much lower ratio to the single sales.

Also, while iTunes shows strong numbers and typically has the strongest sales for any artist, Amazon’s sales registered nowhere near as high. In fact it just barely made it into the Hip-Hop Top 100. There’s gonna be a disparity amongst the two charts, but if it was really hot, the Amazon chart would be a much closer reflection.

SIMILAR ARTISTS

If you listen to the song (which we’ll dissect in a moment), you’ll quickly hear that the song is more a pop/rap song than an actual traditional rap song. If that’s the case, why is it that people who bought the EP also bought more “street” rappers such as DJ Khaled, Wiz Khalifa and Ace Hood? And then, again on Amazon, why is the similar artists showing up as Vampire Weekend, Michael Buble, Colbie Caillat and Ke$ha? The disparity is rarely that great unless something funny is going on. And to my ear, the Amazon similar artists are more what I’d expect the audience to be.

SEARCH

A quick look at Google searches shows that the term “Sam Adams” did indeed grow by a noticeable amount when the EP came out. But it also cooled off considerably after the first week. If the song was truly becoming a hit, the searches would either be more sustained or they’d be growing. This is doing neither.

Then there is the searches itself. If you actually search “Sam Adams” on Google, you get what you’d probably expect: the beer, the Founding Father, and the Portland mayor. If the song was truly hot, Google should be recognizing that in search. The only thing that does show up is some news articles on the fix. In fact, the Lefsetz post has a higher search result than the iTunes link. A sign it’s a fix if there ever was one.

But the signs don’t stop there. With a typical hit, you see a lot of results for “artist + song title”. When you type Sam Adams in the search box, the song recommendation doesn’t come up. Even on YouTube, the full recommendation doesn’t come up. This means significant people aren’t searching for the track.

I talk about searchability a lot in regards to the Futurehit. The reality is that you need an artist name and song title that’s easily searchable so you can be found. People have very short attention spans. Don’t give them a reason to miss out on who you are. Sam Adams does neither. His artist name is terrible for search results.

Even the song title is terrible for search results. If you search “Driving Me Crazy”, you’ll find that Sam Adams is competing against songs with the same title by new hitmaker Taio Cruz, Knightowl, Phil Collins, and an artist named Northern Cree. Not to mention a 1991 Dom Deluise movie and a 1988 Nick Broomfield documentary. All of whom have higher search traction. If you have a less relevant search result than an obscure 1991 Dom Deluise movie…

FILE TRADING

One of the things Bob left out of the conversation we had, which included Eric Garland of Big Champagne, was how many people were stealing Sam Adams. The answer is barely any. The reality is that any song that truly is a hit has theft to go along with it. This song didn’t.

THE SONG ITSELF

So, now let’s put “Driving Me Crazy” thru the Futurehit.DNA filter. Being a very commercial pop song, this should easily work within the filter itself. Aside from a short intro (2 seconds before Sam Adams starts shouting out the names of the producer, etc.) that I detail as a key success metric in Chapter 1 of Futurehit.DNA, the song is a surprisingly flat basic track. The song is basically two 64 beat loops repeated over and over, a structure that is on its way to being relegated to the structure of the last generation. The lack of dynamic range, the lack of truly stand-out lyrics (in my opinion), and then an overly long fade-out with no lyrics (at a time when you need short endings). These are all elements that, to me, suggest that this song has a very unlikely chance of being a true commercial breakthrough. Now, as with any formula, it can always be proven wrong in rare circumstances, but I don’t think “Driving Me Crazy” is that circumstance.

If there was some widespread purchasing of Sam Adams’ song, it is having the desired effect of said purchase: people have noticed, they are listening to a track with no radio play, and there are indisputable legit sales occuring (see: Amazon). The music business history is rife with many songs having purchased chart positions thru various methods. Why should the digital age be different? I’d love for purity to still exist, but this is the music business. iTunes has successfully blocked out many attempts at rigging their chart, so it’s interesting that somehow this may have slipped thru. However, in my opinion, if you’re gonna spend money on juicing a hit song, it should be spent on one with a higher likelihood of legit traction.

Now, this story hasn’t gotten huge mainstream press attention, and if it did, it would probably become a hit just because of the story. But it’s funny that the blog attention to date has been limited to:

-Song debuts high on chart, blog world cries foul

-Artist produces proof of legit sales, blog world says OK

I guess people don’t want to take the time to research and report. And it’s not like I did heavy duty digging. This came from just looking thru a few top-level Google searches (and one conversation with Eric Garland). I didn’t really intend to go all CSI on this track, and I have nothing against the guy. And I also can’t definitively prove that this is 100% not-legit. It could be a random fluke of college kids in New England (his obvious base) who truly love and want to support the guy.

But, then again, as I told Lefsetz…if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and looks like a duck…

FutureHit.DNA

I read a story on the airplane…

Not only am I not sure what time it is, I wouldn’t even bet on what DAY it is!

I got off the airplane and my BlackBerry said 3:22 AM.  How could that be?  My watch said an hour earlier.  Took me about twenty minutes to factor in Daylight Savings Time.  Fucking BlackBerry can’t figure out what time zone I’m in, but it can adjust for Daylight Savings Time?

Much earlier, as it rained outside, I had lunch on the twelfth floor of the Royal York with Roger Faxon, Chairman and CEO of EMI Music Publishing.  They say these guys are clueless?  Can’t agree with you when it comes to Mr. Faxon.  His views were practical, he had a handle on the landscape and informed me that EMI’s record company and publishing company were two separate entities under the same umbrella, they were already divided, it had been a condition of Terra Firma’s purchase.  So when the whip comes down…

Which it inevitably will.

Then I journeyed with Jake to the airport, which was a clusterfuck nonpareil.  The "Wall Street Journal" said to arrive two and a half hours in advance, ever since that terrorist incident at the end of last year travel from Canada to the States has been…well, let’s just say they’ve gotten a lot stricter at immigration.

Not that it made any difference.  My plane ended up being delayed by two and a half hours.

You see there was weather.  Wind shear in T.O., our plane had to stop in Chi-town for more fuel after turning back, afraid of the waiting disaster at Pearson.  As for NYC…  Something was blowing really hard there too, flights were fucked up all day.  Seymour told me he’d considered taking the bus.  He had friends in for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he needed to get home.

THE BUS?

I couldn’t quite envision it, Seymour Stein journeying like Joe Buck from T.O. to NYC.  Only eight hours he said.  THE BUS?  I remember my parents making me take it from Connecticut back to college in Vermont.  This was before every kid in America got a car when he turned 16, so his parents didn’t have to schlep him around.  I was scarred for life!  Shit, if you want someone to strive for economic greatness, just make them take the bus.  It’s a window into a low class world that you’re dying to escape.  Shit, did they even HAVE buses anymore?  I thought the companies followed the railroads into bankruptcy.

Last I heard, the flight to New York was canceled and rescheduled for 7 AM.  Last I saw Seymour, he was heading for the gate.  Maybe he should have taken the highway.

And after two hours of insight with Seymour, covering the history of the music industry from Sid Nathan to Lyor Cohen, he was replaced in his seat by Vince.  Who I’d seen flying in the front of the plane on the way in.

NO, Getty Images doesn’t pay for business class.  Vince is EXECUTIVE PLATINUM!  Shit, the CEO of Getty flies in the back of the plane.  At least that’s the ticket he buys.  At least that’s what Vince said.

And like Bonnie Raitt sang, the luck of the draw got me upgraded to one of the two empty seats in business class.  Which was a godsend, having already spent the length of the journey to L.A. at the airport.

And the ride was bumpy.  But I read an article in "Vanity Fair"…

Did you read Michael Lewis’ "Liar’s Poker"?  He worked at Salomon Brothers and told the story.  One I’ve never forgotten. Of blowing up bankers all over the world.  Yup, Goldman Sachs had to unload paper, and if someone in a far-flung country, or the keeper of the pension funds lost a bundle, hell, it was just business.

And it freaked Lewis out so much he quit, married Tabitha Soren and started following baseball.

Well, not exactly.  He did end up marrying the MTV News queen.  His most famous book is "Moneyball".  But he’s still an expert on Wall Street.  He’s one of the few writers who can make it comprehensible.  Wow, you can read this story online!

Betting on the Blind Side

You’re never going to read it online.  Hell, you’re probably never even going to read it.  And that’s just the point.  The article is about Michael Burry, who figured out the mortgage market was gonna tank and bet against it.  Burry was the leading edge.

But this story isn’t about money.  It’s about dedication.

You see Michael Burry was passionate.  He was a doctor, training at the hospital, enduring those endless hours, but still he found time to pore over prospectuses, study stocks and pontificate online.  To the point when he went pro, some of the most famous traders in America found him, invested in him!

Let me make this clear.  This is like making music in your basement and getting a call from Doug Morris or Timbaland or David Foster.  But they don’t want to mold you, they don’t want to change you, they don’t want you to do anything different, they just want A PIECE OF YOUR ACTION!

Yup, they found Burry on the Internet.

Isn’t it interesting that warhorses in the music business will pooh-pooh the Net, saying you can’t break an act there, that it comes down to radio and television, but the real money men are trolling for info online?

And how did Burry get so good at picking stocks?  BY STUDYING!

Yup, doing the work.

This is Gladwell time.

We live in a country where no one wants to do the work.

Oh, I know that’s an overstatement.  But most people want to watch television.  They want to focus on their image.  Is it any wonder they’re left behind?

Not that you need a formal education to make it.  You can’t learn the stock market in school.  You’ve got to learn it on your own, like the music business.

And Burry’s returns at his Scion fund are confoundingly large.  It’s all about value.  He bets on fundamentally sound companies that are experiencing a bit of trouble.  He hangs in there during the downward spiral in order to ride the roller coaster to the top, making beaucoup bucks along the way.

This is like investing in a band that may not look great, may need to woodshed a bit, may need to make three or four albums, but when it gets it together will be a gold mine.  We can call it the Kings of Leon.  We can call it artist development. We can call it ANYTHING but flavor of the moment.

That’s the point.  Are you willing to do it differently?  Are you willing to do the work and come up with your own conclusions, your own solutions?  That’s Steve Jobs’ way.  When everybody said you’ve got to have open standards, he promoted closed systems.  And now he’s the big winner.

And Burry got so deep into it, figuring out when and what mortgage bonds were gonna tank, that he bought credit default swaps and made…enough money to buy your entire neighborhood.  And the one next to you. And the one next to that.

By being brilliant.  Even though so many investors said his plan was lunacy and wanted no part of it.

THIS is the American story.  Not making a mix tape and partying with Paris Hilton and getting a photo in TMZ…  Snooki is a diversion for the masses, the losers.  Do you want to be a winner?

Winners start off in the wilderness.  They do it their own way.  They stick to their guns.  They work incessantly and they never give up.

Whew.  That just does not sound like enough people in the record business, on either side of the fence, talent or businessman.

We live in a confusing, crazy world.  But one thing is constant.  The winners pay their dues.  And it’s not solely time on the chain gang.  No, there’s a ton of anxiety involved.  Questioning yourself, taking risks, sticking to your guns when no one believes in you.

It’s every man for himself out there.  Shouldn’t be, but it is.

There’s a safety net in Canada.  In Sweden.  That’s the socialism you decry.  But in the good old United States, the game is stacked against you.  Those with power, with money, have erected walls to keep you out.  And if you think kissing butt is the way to get ahead, you’re delusional.  It’s not about how you can get signed, it’s about how you can beat Universal at its own game.  You’ve got to be smarter than Lucian Grainge.  Believe me, these people exist.  And they’re gonna be the winners.  They’re the ones we’re gonna be reading about in "Vanity Fair" five years from now.

Parking our asses on a couch in the lobby of the Royal York Hotel, we watched the endless parade go by.  I thought everybody was here for CMW, especially the young girls parading around in their pajamas.  Turned out they were Christian moms, aged thirty, in town for a conference with someone named Beth Moore and when they realized Jake was the judge from "Canadian Idol" they insisted we stay right there, as if we could move, while they went up to their room, retrieved a camera and came down for a pic for posterity.

It was me, Jake, Eric Garland of BigChampagne and Lane Dunlop of iTunes Canada.  And after discussing my presentation, Terry McBride and Glenn Beck and the Christian Right, I asked Eric about his business, selling information to media companies that they think they want but don’t really want to know about.

BigChampagne tracks online swaps.  As Eric says, don’t kill the messenger.  But, there was that label that threatened to sue the company.  But now Eric also provides data to movie companies.  Who are always stunned how much theft is already happening.  And when Eric tells them what he tells the labels, that their business is going to get smaller, they just don’t want to believe it.  But it will.  According to Eric.  Data doesn’t lie.  Windows will get smaller and disappear.  The public loves the movies, but the purchase options have been determined by the purveyors, now the consumer is going to have a ton of control, and revenues will go down.

Then again, everybody remarked about the price of a movie.  Have you seen "Avatar"?  Jake bought four tickets and the clerk said $70.  Yup, four times $17.50.  Used to be the price of a movie was an afterthought, but if film companies want to maintain their revenues and their employees their lifestyles, prices have to go up.  Just like concerts.  Then again, we’ve never found a way to project the concert into the home, not in a way that everybody will pay, you just can’t smell the crowd, scan the audience and feel the music.

Then Jay Frank strolled by.  Jay is Senior Vice President of Music Strategy for CMT.  How a Jew from New Jersey ends up in Nashville, I’m not sure, but Jay’s right at home in Tennessee, employing his scientific approach to hits.  Hell, he even wrote a book about it.  If you want to have a hit, if you want to play by the rules, you should check it out. 

Go to: Future Hit.DNA

Anyway, being deep into analysis, and living in Music City, I asked Jay about Taylor Swift.  Pretty right on response.  He said it depended on her next record.  Could she grow, could she mature, could she deliver something beyond what she’s sold/written before?

We’ll see.

But when that topic was covered, Jay turned to Lane and asked him about Sam Adams, was it real?

We’re not talking about the beer here.  Even though Sam Adams is from Boston, even though if you Google his name, the results will spell beer.

That’s just the point…

If Sam Adams really earned number one on the iTunes hip-hop chart, you’d think there’d be some Google action.  Scroll down and you can find some recent news results, but the links, the stories?  Not to be found.

And when you go to Amazon, you find little action, only two reviews.

And when you go to iTunes, the comparable purchases are not similar material.

So, is it fake?  Or, as Jay put it, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck is it really not a duck?

Apple is so secretive, I won’t give you Lane’s response.  But he did indicate that people have tried to scam iTunes in the past, and that they have techniques for uncovering the fraud.

Then conversation wandered to the Chris Brown wedding dance video.  Was that fake?

Jay laughed.  Eric too.  OF COURSE it was fake.

How come the mainstream media didn’t pick up on the story?

BECAUSE THEY DON’T LIKE TO BE DUPED, THEY DON’T LIKE TO LOOK BAD!

Fascinating.  Yesterday, in the "Globe and Mail", they had the story of the Facebook war between Nickelback and a pickle. In case you don’t have an Internet connection, the pickle won.  But the spicy cucumber won WEEKS AGO!  Where was the paper then?

No viral video has ever had that many hits on YouTube in less than a week.  Other online indicators of success were lacking.  But the press bought the story, hook, line and sinker.  Shit, does the "Today Show" do any investigative journalism?  It’s a feel good story!  Don’t argue with me!

And speaking of YouTube, it came out last night that that’s where people go to stream music.  Check the statistics vis a vis MySpace.  Plays have plunged on Murdoch’s site.  And speaking of MySpace, if Sam Adams is working a record, how come he hasn’t logged in to his page since the last week of February?

Samuel Adams MySpace

Did he steal credit card numbers?  Did he organize a ring of college students to amass this manipulation, this fraud?  Or could it truly be real.

Come on, how could it be real?  Tech-savvy youngsters have been running circles around the establishment for almost two decades now.

Ain’t that America.  If a President lied about nooky, I might as well cheat and scam to get what I want.  And Lehman Brothers cheated too.  And if the rich cheat, what are the poor to do?

I don’t want to convict Sam Adams yet.  There’s been no trial.

Then again, trials are irrelevant in America.  It’s about how rich the defendant is.  If he gets a great lawyer, he runs circles around the attorneys paid by the government.  See "O.J."  People are convicted in the court of public opinion.

And I don’t really give a shit about Sam Adams’ music.

But as a modern business story, it’s fascinating.

Boston Rapper Sam Adams Accused Of Buying Own Album To Top iTunes Charts

PAPERLESS TICKETING

From: Matt O
Subject: Thom Yorke tix avail a week after release?

14 US shows, 2 in california.  A week after release there are still Thom Yorke tix available for the tiny Santa Barbara Bowl.
At first I thought it was a misprint.  Turns out, you have to swipe the credit card you used to buy the tickets in order to get in to the show.  Not a scalper in sight.

Atoms For Peace
Santa Barbara Bowl

Whoa.  Is scalping the new Internet bubble?  In other words, what exactly IS the demand for tickets?

Could it be that there’s been an artificial frenzy, of brokers buying up tickets creating fake shortages that fuel further buying just to get into the building and that demand is actually lower than perceived?  In other words, is the perception different from the reality?

Miley Cyrus goes on tour and there’s mass hysteria, parents complain they can’t get their little girls in.

Miley goes on tour with paperless ticketing and there’s no problem getting a seat.

Oh, maybe Miley’s a has-been.

But Thom Yorke’s credibility is as high as ever.  Maybe it’s not Radiohead, maybe people don’t know who the act is…  Then again, could a performer have more rabid fans?

I’m not saying Taylor Swift isn’t selling out.  Or Lady GaGa for that matter.  But I’m questioning what the demand for shows really is.  Even when there isn’t paperless ticketing.  Bon Jovi blew out tickets at 55% off in Kansas City

APPLE SURGES PAST WAL-MART TO BECOME 3RD MOST VALUABLE U.S. COMPANY

Apple surges past Wal-Mart to become 3rd most valuable U.S. company

How does a mercurial bastard who ignores conventional wisdom end up running a company bigger than Wal-Mart?

Isn’t it funny.  Today’s acts are told by managers and agents and labels to sell out, quick, to do it just like everybody else, but the big winner, Steve Jobs, does it his own way, listens to nobody, doesn’t license Apple’s technology, prices his products high and makes you believe your life will be empty without them.

Steve Jobs is a rock star.

You remember rock stars, don’t you?  Those people beholden to no one, who wrote their own rules?  Who created music totally different from what came before, which people flocked to?

And Apple is Warner/Reprise.  The old company.  Run by Mo Ostin.  You know, the one where every band was good. Sure, the ultimate recording might not capture the magic, but if it was on Warner, it was worth checking out.  There might be some duds, like Apple TV, but the winners made it all worth it.

When Steve Jobs does his keynote, I get up early to see what he has to say, I watch the endless presentation unspool, a condensation by some tech reporter just will not do.  I want more.  The same way I wanted to know everything about Led Zeppelin and had to go see the Who perform "Tommy" at the Fillmore East.

The rabidity has left music and entered tech.

And who do we have to blame?

The boomers.  So inured to their lifestyles that they don’t want change, they just want it the way it used to be.  Overpriced CDs and concerts performed by bands who perfected their music on a spreadsheet.

Steve Jobs specializes in selling us what we didn’t even know we wanted.  Remember when the music business used to do this?

FREE MUSIC

Just had a conversation with Marty Winsch, manager of Corey Smith.  He said he doesn’t consider giving away MP3s online as free.  People are paying with their time.

What a concept.  That’s the one thing we just don’t have enough of.  The one thing that’s precious.  If people give you their time, you’ve got a chance of building a relationship.

If you ambush somebody with an unsolicited e-mail, you’re just pissing them off.

Remember this.

PEREZ HILTON

I like Mario, I really do.

But he’s toast.

TMZ killed him.  One person can’t compete with an army.

And now he’s getting desperate.  Evidencing the behavior of his generation.  Promoting himself, begging to be a judge on the new "American Idol" or "X Factor".

It hasn’t worked that way forever.  Sure, you can line up to be in the audience for "The Price Is Right" and clamor to play, but if you’re lucky you leave with a toaster, it’s the producer who makes all the money.

People have to come to you.  The Internet has allowed individuals to amplify their message, but that doesn’t mean anybody’s paying attention.

CLASSIC ALBUMS

Don’t pay too much attention to the Pink Floyd/EMI skirmish.  That’s not about albums, that’s about money.  As in how can the legendary band extricate its early albums from the clutches of its label.

The Internet unbundled the album, and no one can put Humpty Dumpty’s pieces back together again.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t like the albums of the past.

Jake was telling me about seeing the Musical Box.  You know, the Genesis tribute band:

The Musical Box

He went one night, and then had to go the second.

Tribute bands have been building for years.  Now’s the time to elevate the concept into the equivalent of a Broadway show.

They bring back "South Pacific", why not bring back "Sgt. Pepper", "Beggars Banquet", even "Rocket To Russia"?

It’s the music that survives, unlike many of its makers.

License the rights from the original band or its heirs and tour it, playing a classic album from start to finish for a fair price, in the neighborhood of $40-$50.

Let’s just canonize the music of yore and get it repeated endlessly.  Shit, sell it as a series.  There’s no hype, no smoke and mirrors, it’s not the original band, it’s an experience, that mimics the original, that reminds you if you were there and clues you in if you were not.

Yup, we’re gonna tour "Physical Graffiti".  And "Aqualung".

Doesn’t matter if the originals are still alive.  Do they use the original performers when they restage a play on Broadway? No, they use younger performers.

It’s the material, stupid.