Cidny Bullens-This Week’s Podcast

He sang backup for Elton John. And cut multiple solo albums. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of Cid’s amazing story. You need to hear it.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cidny-bullens/id1316200737?i=1000650716211

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/1c4235b9-0b71-4ba5-8a1f-dc1b18ec8550/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-cidny-bullens

Damon Krukowski On Streaming

“How are musicians supposed to survive on $0.00173 per stream?”: 

“The Guardian”: https://shorturl.at/mCIJ6

This is what I hate about America, it’s all about self-interest, people believe they’re entitled to a living, and the truth is irrelevant.

Mr. Krukowski was in the band Galaxie 500. Their albums were released by Rough Trade. Assuming the label gave them an advance to make them, I doubt there were any significant royalties paid. I’m aware of Galaxie 500, but even household name bands from thirty plus years ago never went into royalties.

Now Mr. Krukowski has since moved on from that band. Presently he has an act with his wife, entitled Damon & Naomi. Go to the desktop version of Spotify, where streaming totals are published. Damon & Naomi’s “hit,” entitled “E.T.A., has a whopping 108,821 streams. No other track of their Top Ten breaks a hundred thousand. This is a hobby, not a career, and this guy deserves to get paid?

Dig a little deeper and you’ll find out that Krukowski went to Harvard, has taught there, I don’t think he’s starving, he’s just standing up for the little guy. Who was standing up for me when I had fewer than twenty bucks in my checking account and had written a bad check for the rent? I don’t want to sound like a Republican here, but I made my own choices and I lived in the bed I made. I’m not saying everybody has to sacrifice like I did, just that if you go down a rough path there is no guarantee of success, very few people succeed, and we as a society have no obligation to support your journey.

Makes me crazy. All these acts who consider themselves professionals who complain about streaming payments. It’s very simple, NOBODY IS LISTENING!

Talk to any other vertical… Do the social media influencers have a lobby asking the government to pass a bill so everybody who declares themselves an influencer gets a living wage, that a view pays more than it now does? At least these social media sites are profitable. Spotify swings from the red to the black. But somehow it’s Spotify’s fault.

As for the payment per stream… Makes a good headline, but Mr. Krukowski pulled that number out of his ass. There are different payments for different kinds of streaming, but the public is drawn to over-the-top headlines, it makes the story sexier.

How come these acts can’t realize that you get paid based on the number of times people listen to your music? That’s basically fair. As for dividing up revenue based on what an individual subscriber listens to… That’s fine with me, but one study said that the big acts end up making more this way! And if people don’t listen that much how much money are we talking about anyway?

Reminds me of ticketing. Yes, you should be able to go see a superstar in the front row for fifty bucks, you’re entitled. And the promoter can’t make any money, it’s a public service, even though the promoter takes all the risk.

Did you know that the bridge collapsed in Baltimore because of the Democrats? Yes, that’s what the Republicans are saying.

As for Ronna McDaniel… Why are these same Republicans worried about what goes on at a mainstream news outlet that they tell their acolytes not to watch?

Then there’s Israel/Gaza. Those poor innocent children being murdered by the crazy Israelis, led by that madman Netanyahu.

I point you to yesterday’s “Wall Street Journal”: 

“What if the U.S. Helps Hamas Win? – The path Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer have chosen means the end of any hope of peace.”

Free link: https://rb.gy/glrbro

And while you’re at it, read this:

“Schumer Stumbles Into Israeli Politics – The Senate majority leader overstepped when he demanded Netanyahu’s ouster.”

Free link: https://rb.gy/usaq9x

Schumer and his crony poseurs keep talking about a two-state solution, but the facts tell us Jewish Israelis reject this by a two to one margin. As for the Palestinians…from the river to the sea baby.

And, only 15% of Israelis want Netanyahu to continue as prime minister after the war.

Yes, the Opinion page of the “Wall Street Journal,” which Democrats tell you to completely ignore. And I’ll admit there’s a lot of right wing hogwash on those pages, but not always. Talk about knowing how the opposition thinks.

The goal of a manager is to get their act paid. And that’s one of the reasons poor streaming acts have handlers complaining they should get more.

Forget that in the old days, Damon & Naomi would have a nearly impossible time getting their music into record stores, never mind getting paid. Retailers paid their big suppliers first, indies last, if at all, especially if they had little product.

As for Galaxie 500… That band would be deep in the rearview mirror. Man, bands from the sixties couldn’t make the bins in the seventies. And by time you hit the eighties many record stores only stocked greatest hits LPs, forget the individual albums. The internet is keeping these acts alive, they should be thrilled. But no, they want more, much more.

Everybody wants more, but there’s only so much to give.

But you can’t convince people they must accept their fate. Tom Rapp had a band Pearls Before Swine, they had multiple albums on Reprise and then Blue Thumb. I knew who they were, they had a major label deal, which was a giant hurdle to jump, but they never broke through commercially. So what did Tom Rapp do? He went to law school. Not everybody can be Elton John or Don Henley. Especially those people who e-mail me their dreck every day. Let’s see… You can’t sing well, you have hackneyed lyrics, but because the tools of creation and distribution have a de minimis cost you’re entitled to a living as a musician?

Once again, I believe in a social safety net, everybody deserves food and shelter. But if you didn’t do well enough in college to get into medical school…should you somehow be compensated?

If no one watches your movie, that you wouldn’t have been able to make so cheaply without modern technology, are you entitled to a living?

Why don’t I declare myself a basketball player and agitate for a starting role in the NBA, at least a benchwarmer. I love basketball, it’s my right!

As for the Gaza conflict… Nobody wants innocent people killed. However, the dirty little secret is that’s a consequence of war. But that first article in the WSJ I linked to above makes the point that if Israel pulls out, it’s a Hamas victory, which will be celebrated throughout the Arab world. And how about the dirty little secret that Hamas could just return the hostages and get a ceasefire tomorrow?

Never mind that BDS on campus was grown by the Palestinians.

I’m not making any of this up, it’s all true.

But the truth hurts. It’s more satisfying to believe someone is at fault. And you don’t want to say anything unpopular, the consequences are too much for you to bear. Do you know how many subscribers I’m going to lose by not calling the Gaza war genocide, by not calling for an immediate ceasefire? Once again, I’m against war, period. However, in this case Hamas did attack.

Not every situation is black and white. But most of society acts like they are. It’s team sports. I thought America was about the rugged individual. But no, now it’s about somnambulant sheep.

As for Mr. Krukowski… Why don’t you just create music that more people want to listen to? That’s what’s wrong with the hit music of today, it sounds too much alike. People are afraid to make unique music for fear of starving. But recorded music is not the only way to make a living as a musician today. Not only are there house concerts, there’s Patreon… Believe me, if you have hard core fans you can make some money, enough to make a living, I don’t know. But I remember a bass player from a major label act who got his car repossessed and then had no wheels. Those were the good old days?

It’s B.S. like that of Mr. Krukowski that makes it so those in charge refuse to engage. Talk to anybody who runs a label, or a streaming service, they’re inundated with misinformation, they can’t fight it, so they don’t. People would rather run on emotions than facts.

And in a world of seemingly unlimited music, getting someone’s attention is the hardest part. If you’ve got attention, you can make fans and money. Why is that Spotify’s job? Seems like it’s yours.

Now the truth is there’s a huge living in giving wannabes hope. I’ve learned this speaking around the world. The audience hates the truth. They want to hear that there is vast opportunity and if they just stay the course they’re going to make it. And meanwhile, will I listen to their CD?

Now let me see… The laptop I take on the road doesn’t even have a CD player. You could give me a streaming link, but you’ll feel better if you give me something physical. Furthermore, when I tell these people if they send me a link to their music in e-mail I’ll listen and respond…they never do. Amazing.

But they’re entitled to a living playing music!

Millions of tracks on Spotify, tens of millions, are never ever listened to. We’re going to pay those people too?

As for the government… It can’t even understand ticketing. I’m for big government, I’m for the Deep State, but when it comes to business, Congress is always about grandstanding and getting nothing done, holding hearings wherein members demonstrate their lack of knowledge of the subject. I wish it were different, but it’s not.

But some wanker musician from Harvard knows better.

Yeah, right.

Dasha

I’m surprised there’s something here.

That’s how far we’ve come, or fallen. When there’s a bidding war over an artist, when we start reading about it in the trades, it’s usually dismissible, a youngster in a traditional genre spewing generalities.

But that’s not Dasha.

I’ll be honest, I only heard about her a few days back. I was on the lift with Zach Kuhn and he mentioned her, and how hot she was. And then I read about her being signed to Warner and I decided to check her out.

Now the hit, the single, is “Austin.” And if you listen, at first you’ll be turned off by the simple, monotone, machine-like rhythmic bed. And then there’s the voice, which isn’t that much more than a whisper. But then…

“Did your boots stop workin’

Did your truck break down

Did you burn through money

Did your ex find out

Where there’s a will, then there’s a way

And I’m damn sure you lost it

Didn’t even say goodbye

Just wish I knew what caused it”

She’s not singing to the back row. This isn’t a television competition, this is personal. You’re getting a peek inside someone else’s mind, their feelings, the situation they’ve found themselves in, that you’ve probably been in yourself.

“Was the whiskey flowin’

Were you in a fight

Did the nerves come get you

What’s your alibi”

There has to be a reason. There must be. We were in love, on the same page, and then you bounced. WHY?

“I made my way back to LA

And that’s where you’ll be forgotten

In forty years you’ll still be here

Drunk washed up in Austin”

She’s shoring herself up, with attitude, but we know it’s all a pose. Maybe if some superstar belted the lyrics we’d see it as a triumph, but not when Dasha sings.

“Hell of a bluff, you had me believin’

How many months did you plan on leavin’

What happened, bad habits?

Did you go back, go batsh*t?

I loved you, how tragic, oh-oh”

Once again, WHAT HAPPENED?

About two-thirds of the way through I realized why “Austin” was a viral hit. It speaks to people. It’s what Taylor Swift used to sell before she went Top Forty. It’s personal, raw.

But the rest of the cuts have nowhere near the same number of streams on Spotify. But as I listened to the album I was stunned that it contained the same viewpoint, the same personality, there was a person at the core of these songs and sure, she didn’t have a great voice, but she had something to say.

This is what we’ve been looking for. And funny how the fans found it before the labels. We crave authenticity, we crave relatability. With every celebrity selling out, how are we supposed to identify? We want to own the act, not the corporation. That’s the essence of music, it connects on a level that’s impossible to fully describe, but we know it when we feel it.

Now in the old, pre-internet days, Dasha wouldn’t have gotten a deal, her voice would not have sufficed. But today the script has flipped. If you’ve got a good enough voice we’ll provide the material, and that’s ass-backwards. You see when done right music is about artistry, inspiration, feeling, not some paint-by-number dream.

I could opine about the commerciality of Dasha, but that’s not my point. There’s definitely something here, and it’s perfectly clear, and it stands out in a Sargasso Sea of endless crap.

You know it when you hear it.

And you might not, and that’s fine.

Then again, the women have overtaken the music business. Because they have no problem being honest, displaying their emotions, their humanity, and that’s what we’re all looking for.

“Private Equity-A Memoir”

By Carrie Sun: https://shorturl.at/AWX38

At what point do you wake up and become your own person. At what point do you throw off your parents’ expectations and own your true identity?

Many baby boomers never have. The most passionate music fans I know are MD’s. They jumped through all the hoops, they aced Organic Chem, so they could ultimately fulfill their parents’ dream, becoming a doctor.

But that’s not what they really wanted to do.

Now maybe you didn’t have parents who instilled their hopes and dreams in you, didn’t get angry when you brought home a bad report card. Weren’t worried if you veered off course into drugs and alcohol. Years back, I might have envied you. Because my parents were relentless. There was no doubt I was going to college, and it had better be a good one! It was expected of me.

And I’ll save you the ups and downs, but I’m conflicted about my college experience. On one hand I feel superior, because of the focus on the ability to think, write and analyze. I didn’t take a single objective test in college, not one. You’d get those blue books and what you didn’t know you B.S.’ed about. Then again, the college experience so many of my friends had was completely different. They could take courses outside the narrow confines of the classical canon, they could study little and still get A’s. They could find people just like them in the student body.

The world is different now. There’s a bifurcation between the rich and entitled and the rest of us. I didn’t know I was underprivileged going to public school until I went to college where 45% of the students had prepped. Forget leaving home, they were so much better read than the rest of us. They understood the game.

Today everybody is looking for an edge. We didn’t see it as an edge. We didn’t do volunteer work so it would look good on our college applications. We just ground and ground to get good grades and…

Many people could never give up the grind.

That happened for me the first semester. With one extra point I could have gotten a B+. In high school, you went to the teacher and grubbed for it, usually successfully. I just couldn’t do that anymore.

But I did end up going to law school. Which was instilled in me as a destination before I even entered school, kindergarten, that is. But that was because I was down and out with the world’s worst case of mononucleosis and the only advantage of going to law school was I was an expert when Napster hit, that’s about it.

Took me a long time to become who I am. To accept who I am. I mean you see movers and shakers and are envious. Then you learn they’re different from you, and that is not a bad thing.

So what we’ve got here is an only child of immigrant parents who finished MIT in three years and goes into finance. Drops out after a few years at Fidelity, and then ends up at a hedge fund, supporting the majordomo.

Most people have no idea what a hedge fund truly is. They know almost nothing about finance. But at this late date seemingly everybody knows these people makes tons of money. And they do. But by time you’re done with this book if you still want to go into finance…well, you only care about money, like hedge funders in this book. They protest that they’re helping, solving problems, saving the world, but that’s all B.S. It’s money that they want.

Now don’t think you can make this kind of money being an artist, musical or otherwise. Never mind that the odds are nearly impossible.

Believe me, these hedge funders, these financiers, they jumped through all the educational hoops, they work ’round the clock, but at the core their lives are empty. Because money can’t keep you warm at night.

For all the hype about elite business people being a-holes, usually that is not the case. When you get to the top you can afford to be nice. Get a meeting with some household name and this will surprise you. The people you know, who you hang out with, can only say negative things about these executives. But they’ve never met them. There’s so much they don’t know. And so much most people don’t know. But if you read this book…

Now if you’re completely unfamiliar with money, with finance you may not know what Ms. Sun is talking about. She describes everything, but doesn’t repeat herself. There’s lingo, and concepts beneath the lingo, and if you read the ‘Wall Street Journal” and “New York Times” Business section every day you’ll know what she is talking about.

Then again, most people buy the conventional wisdom that the mainstream media is anathema. It’s their loss. Furthermore, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Success all comes down to information. And it’s great if you’re a player, but interestingly so much of the information is public, available to all. And if you spend your time investigating, learning, you can truly come up to speed. But most people would rather complain that they were left out. It’s your choice.

But really, to succeed, you need to know how the world works. And the world runs on money. And if you don’t know money, you’re already a step behind.

And the truth is there is SO MUCH MONEY!

People watch television, read about the celebrities, they think they know rich, but they’ve got no idea. Never mind so many of the rich want no publicity, it only brings downsides. Carrie’s boss is all about time. And if it saves time, money is no object. NetJets takes too long to deliver a plane. So the boss buys a Bombardier. But is unhappy that he’s got to shake hands with those who built it. He just wants to get on it and fly home.

And there’s recreation too. The boss is into surfing. He has Carrie track the waves, and if they’re good, he’ll drop everything and go, But if you think he can go on a surfing hejira for months, you’re wrong, You see the boss can’t miss a thing. He’s constantly making bets, based on information. Not only trading stocks, but investing in tech companies.

And Carrie is his slave. Highly compensated, with 5k gift cards to boot. She can go to Stockholm for the weekend, the only issue is the time, not the money.

But she’s on call 24/7. And she’s never ever treated as an equal.

She’s overworked and ultimately complains, but the boss never hears her, never.

Meanwhile he keeps talking about the opportunity, the privilege of working at the company, the front row seat to what is really going on in the world. And he emphasizes self-subjugation, that it’s all about the team, put on a happy face, but that’s all hogwash, he only cares about himself and making money.

You know how this turns out.

But unless you’ve worked at a hedge fund you have no idea what is really going on.

So reading this book I wondered why anybody would go into finance. Sounds empty and awful, A lot of money, sure, but I’ve never lived only for the money. But so many of those who graduate from elite colleges can’t withstand the pull.

Now if you didn’t go to an elite institution, or if you’re not a math genius, you’ve got no opportunity here.

But having said that, everybody I know who is successful is working ’round the clock. If you have time off, either you’ve already made it or never will.

And if you want to make it in the arts… You’ve got to be the opposite of everything catalogued in this book. You’ve got to be unique, an individual. You’ve got to think for yourself. You’ve got to learn how to say no. This is what bugs me when people complain about streaming payments. Your focus is all wrong. If you are truly an artist of note the money will come, but the truth is almost nobody is an artist of note. The funny thing is they don’t believe this, but they would not say they’re ready to perform surgery or run a hedge fund,..but something even more difficult, become a unique artist? That they can do. Yeah, right.

Now when I went to college my parents never told me what courses to take and didn’t care about what grades I got. They figured just the experience was enough. If I was surviving, fine.

But today people think college is a glorified trade school. That you go to college to get a job. And that’s one hundred eighty degrees from my background.

Really, it all comes down to being able to think. And you can teach this, but people don’t want to learn. Because if you can think it separates you from the rest of the public, the somnambulant sheep who are afraid to go against the grain.

But you win by going against the grain.

I don’t expect most people to read this book. But if you think finance is your future, you must.

And you should read it just to discover how many hurdles candidates have to go through to get these jobs, which are nearly impossible to get.

But the system… The only people who can really change it are artists. But the “artists” of today have capitulated. The legendary artists were separate from their fans, lived outside the law, both literally and figuratively. But now that life is so hard, many who can think, who have the ability to become artists, see the long odds and play it safe, and go into banking.

And then there are the CEOs who think they are artists. That’s the change in the record business from yesterday to today. Used to be you signed a contract and delivered the record and the label marketed and sold it. The kind of meddling Clive Davis did is anathema to artistry. That’s the great thing about music, it comes from personal inspiration, and when you mess with the inspiration, adjust the product for commerciality, it loses its essence.

If you want to learn more about how the world works, read “Private Equity: A Memoir.”

Or don’t.