Re-NY Times/Private Equity/Music

I liked the comparison between 5 guys and ticket fees.

I got a burrito and a bottle of water and paid $28 at the airport the other day. Then there is an add on for a tip shown to you that the cashier flips around for you to sign off on. Now I’m at $31.

In today’s economy, you are right, Bob. $57 is a bargain to see a show that is 60 years in the making, that’s how long Jon Anderson has been singing, give or take.

Bottom line, you are paying $57 and getting a breakdown of how it got there. Why all the heartache?

Concert tickets, like sports tickets, plane tickets – ALL have fees. Ask Avis or Hilton. You gonna sleep on a bench instead of a hotel over fees?

Buy your ticket, Tom, go to the show, and have a blast. You deserve it if you are paying for it.

See you at our show in Denver. His tickets are selling great, by the way, because it is a great show. You don’t wanna miss this over fees.

Next time thru, this will be a bargain. That’s the way it is.

Danny Zelisko

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We’ve been touring and making records since 1981. These days we “tour” one or two weekends a month. 3-4 gigs then go home for two weeks. It might not be the most efficient way to tour, but if we went out for 3-4 months, we’d probably end up hating each other. And, it’s hard to sell tickets for a Tuesday show in Des Moines. Though we do still love each other, and enjoy playing together, we’d rather be home with our families and dogs when we can.

Our agent, Jerry Lima at Mint, basically doesn’t even look for dates, he takes offers and if we like the money, the venue, town, routing, we take them. We have a $$ number we’ll accept. Anything less, (unless it’s Hawaii, Park City, Key West, Brazil etc..) we say no thanks. The guarantee decides what the ticket price is. Most of our shows are $50-$80 a ticket. 300-500 seat venues. Often multiple nights which we enjoy. We mostly play sit down, dinner clubs (City Winery, Birchmere types) and we sell out most of them, so there’s usually a small back end. I’m 67 and though I don’t go to many concerts anymore mostly because of the awful 24/7 tinnitus I suffer from years of being stupid with the stage volume, I’d prefer sitting down with table service to watch a show. If the band moves me to get up and dance, I do. If there’s a band I really want to see, I don’t care what the ticket price is. I’m happy to pay for it. After all, as a musician, it’s a tax deduction.

Love your letters. I used them when I taught the business of music at our community college.

10,000 Thanks.

Steven Gustafson

Founding Member/Bassist

10.000 Maniacs

www.maniacs.com

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This article is ridiculous. Focusing on catalog sales and streaming payments somehow affects the entire music industry? I’ve lived long enough to know that, for me, any performers worth listening to get it done on the road.

Case in point: Billy Strings. Not a household name, but has a very passionate fan base and enough attendees to his shows that he plays multiple nights in some markets.

I could cite more examples, but I’m not the one writing a piece for the NYT.

Regards,
Chris Adams

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From the NY Times article: “Private equity firms have poured billions of dollars into music, believing it to be a source of growing and reliable income.”

At first superficial sight, private equity is an easy target for spleen venting. However, the NY Times essayist’s ire overlooks one key point, namely the source of the funds invested by the PE firms. Sure, PE executives usually co-invest in the companies in which they invest the funds that they have raised from institutional and private investors.

Those institutional investors of course frequently include pension funds. I suggest that many of those wailing and gnashing their teeth about private equity are simultaneously reaping the benefits of PE investments via their pensions.

Best wishes

Nick Shilton

London, UK

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The problem with consumers is, they hate profit.  They have been conditioned by the media to be pissed off at any entity, especially a large entity, that makes a profit.  ANY profit.  They have no problem when a huge corporation loses money, but they just hate to see them have a successful year.  They don’t understand that without profit there is no business.  No innovation, no new locations, no new products, no nothing. No jobs, either. It all relies on profit.  Why don’t people understand that?  BECAUSE THE MEDIA NEVER TELLS THAT PART OF THE STORY.

Mike Blakesley

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We are less educated and more entitled, a population that is either in denial or delusional about where we really stand. Ultimately though, we are afraid to admit the reality that luck plays more a part of our good fortune which stems the tide of what should be an inherently natural altruistic mindset. We’ll get what we deserve because the concept of deserving is an illusion and the driving force behind the misunderstanding of the reasons behind why things happen.

Marty W. Winsch

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The uniquely American quality of indefatigable pluck is vanishing.

We are now awash in a sea of victims and cry babies. Our grandparents would be shattered to know that they sacrificed so much, only for these people to devalue all of it.

Facts don’t matter any more. Only emotions do. Here’s what they think: “I feel disappointed, I must’ve been cheated. Facts be damned! They make no difference in how I feel. I want what I want and I deserve it. Now, who do I see about this injustice!”

If they weren’t emotional about it, they’d have to admit that if, for instance, they wanted to go to a concert, the venues and the ticket services have to get paid as well as the artist. The problem is that in their minds, no matter what, it’s their right to have whatever they want. Otherwise, it’s an injustice. And their leaders join them in this puerile behavior.

And that’s the biggest difference between Democratic politicians and Republicans — Dems are not making an emotional case. They are not connecting with people. They must wake up NOW and learn how to make an emotional connection to people’s pain points. It’s basic marketing for God’s sake.

Bill Maher had on Ro Khanna, the Democratic California Congressman, who was going on and on with factual information, cogent arguments, reasonable thinking, and solutions to problems, begging politicians to work together. Throughout it all, he was sitting next to Nancy Mace, Republican Congresswoman from South Carolina, who spouted nothing but outrage-driven partisan baloney. When Maher asked her how she, a rape victim, could support a man found civilly guilty of sexual harassment for President, she instead talked about how George Stephanopolous was evil and insensitive to her when he asked her the same question with her daughter backstage. See? Emotional.

If Democrats don’t start connecting with people emotionally ASAP, Trump and his henchmen will take over and destroy the country. HE’S SAYING SO! And they love it because they connect with him as a fellow cry baby.

When an American presidential candidate declares his admiration for Putin, Orban, Kim, Jinping, and HITLER, and lets you know he wants to be your dictator and strongman, and you cheer him on?

That’s an emotional connection.

Paul Gigante

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Is this Tom Newsom even real? $67 to see a band favorite from a good seat and he doesn’t take it? Smells like some bullsh*t here.

John Parikhal

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OK Bob, you win.

I definitely do not feel hate or disgust for LiveNation. How dare me question the price of a show for an 80 year old guy with a pickup band who I used to admire a lot despite his quirkiness in so many ways. My hate and disgust is now redirected.

I don’t shop at Five Guys, but  you can get a meal for 2 at Applebees for $25 (Date Night).

https://www.applebees.com/en/specials/2-for-25

I guess there is no show without fees. Perhaps no show without attendees either. I agree that $35 is cheap. Perhaps $57 plus parking, etc is not quite as cheap. And $114 for a date night is 4.6 Applebees.

Thanks for telling us what’s really going on. I do enjoy your notes. I am sad indeed that the music industry has basically been taken from the artists by tech companies. But yes, this is the world we live in today.

“Even Siberia goes through the motions….”

or perhaps even better…

“I crucified my hate and held the word within my hand
There’s you, the time, the logic, or the reasons we don’t understand”

Tom Newsom

(p.s. if I used any more words I’d probably have to pay a fee!….)

NY Times/Private Equity/Music

“Same Old Song: Private Equity Is Destroying Our Music Ecosystem”:

free link: https://shorturl.at/yHJR9

How could the “New York Times” print such horsesh*t?

This is my favorite e-mail of the week:

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Subject: Fees

I read the post you found about concert fees a while back. I was surprised and enlightened. So I scaled back my hate and disgust and decided to be a good citizen and accept the realities of the modern concert world.

However….

I went to buy a ticket to see Jon Anderson with the Band Geeks ( I was a big Yes fan, and surprisingly the videos look decent). I found a $35 balcony ticket at the Paramount in Denver. Good venue, not a bad seat.

Well, when I went to check out, they added $22 to my $35 ticket. Yes, that’s 63% of the ticket price for fees.

Hate and disgust has returned. And, I will live with memories of Jon and Yes. They can have 100% of my zero dollars.

Tom Newsom

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Sound reasonable, right?

OF COUSE NOT, IT’S INSANE!

Do you really expect that you can go to see Jon Anderson in concert for a flat $35? Been to Five Guys recently? It’s going to cost you nearly twenty five bucks for a cheeseburger, fries and a shake. If you eat really slowly, maybe it’ll take you a half hour to consume all that. But you should be able to see Jon Anderson, with a backing group and sound and lights for ninety minutes and it should only cost you ten dollars more?

I mean I wrote about all this, and this person, who is not the only one who e-mails me this nonsense, can’t get it through their head that without the fees, there is no show! That most of, if not all of the face price goes to the act, but the act does play in a building, there is a ticketing service and if the promoter makes no money Jon Anderson can’t play anywhere! Sure, the ticket price should be all-in, one final price, and Live Nation has said it is in favor of this. Who’s against it? The acts! They want you to think that tickets are cheap and if it weren’t for Ticketmaster you’d be paying a lot less.

Hogwash. The acts are guilty, once again.

And if I hear from one more manager complaining this isn’t true…

Sure, when you come up you have little leverage, but as you ascend the ladder and can draw more people the power shifts. And don’t forget, sans acts, the promoter has no business at all.

But as much as I hammer this, people refuse to believe it.

So this nitwit, who the “New York Times” didn’t properly vet, asserts that the problem with music today is private equity.

Let’s be clear, it’s not the major labels who are selling to private equity, but individual rights holders! They may be famous, but they own those rights. To songs, to royalty streams… If you think this affects the new production of music, you have no idea how many songs are added to Spotify EVERY DAY!

Now it could be that the old music is better than the new music. Or that in today’s cluttered, overwhelming society, it’s hard to break a hit. And that’s worth investigating. But NO! This outsider prick, just like the hoi polloi complaining about ticket prices, believes the system is rigged. Someone must be at fault, there must be an enemy responsible.

Like Biden and inflation. It’s all his fault, don’t you know! And gas prices too!

Talk about personal responsibility, isn’t there a responsibility to divine the truth?

And if the “Times” can’t get it right about music, it brings into question whether it can get it right about the more important topics, like the election, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza… Sure, this article is an opinion piece, but you don’t get into the “Times” by accident, it must have resonated with someone with power at the paper.

And then you’ve got the closing canard about musicians not getting paid enough in the streaming era, two grandstanding politicians introducing a bill to raise remuneration.

That’s right… Mercedes-Benzes are too expensive, let’s let everyone buy one for twenty grand. I’m here, I drive, I’m entitled.

I mean you wake up one day and you call yourself an artist and you’re entitled to make a living? THAT DOESN’T WORK IN ANY VERTICAL! You can go to three years of law school, owe hundreds of thousands of dollars and not be able to get a job. But some wanker who watches stars on TV thinks they’re entitled to a living playing music.

Not to mention if you are any good, there are so many more ways to monetize than in the pre-internet era. And you can make your record cheaply with a computer and reach your fans for free online, even distribute on streaming services for a de minimis cost, but Spotify is the enemy? How about the public, that hasn’t embraced your song!

As for other media… Some of the biggest streaming shows are not new, but catalog. Let’s blame Netflix for that! But in truth, Netflix is making a ton of new programming. But someone has to be at fault.

Well, the old stuff got great distribution in an old world and it’s hard to break new stuff, but not impossible. Look at “Squid Game.” Ever seen anything like it? When’s the last time you heard a new song that was equally different and worth your attention?

But some wannabe Drake or Taylor Swift deserves attention and a living? I mean come on.

As for private equity and songs… So this guy doesn’t want a free market economy. He wants to tell all those writers/performers who slaved for decades that they are not entitled to the fruits of their labor.

I sold you my car, I see you put stickers on the back, you’re ruining the highway driving experience. You sold it, you’ve got no rights! Or, you could make this a condition of the sale. But if someone pays, in many cases overpays, for your vehicle do you think you’re entitled to have control over it?

So Primary Wave is doing an excellent job of maximizing their investment. This is anathema? Talk about backwards thinking. Someone does a good job promoting music and they’re the enemy? One might ask what Primary Wave is doing that its competitors are not. And Primary Wave paid for those songs, it’s not entitled to a return on its investment?

And Spotify, the so-called enemy… It gives the lion’s share of its revenue to rights holders, the business doesn’t scale, i.e. the larger it grows the more royalties it must pay, it struggles to make a profit yet the fact that some new musicians are struggling means they must pay them? From what pile of money? And the aforementioned Drake and Swift, uber-popular, must donate some of their earnings to self-declared wannabe artists? Why? You don’t see the tech billionaires doing this. They may choose to give away some money, but they’re under no obligation.

So what we’ve got here is an article that speaks to one’s emotions, facts be damned.

Isn’t this what this same newspaper says about Trump supporters? But why should we listen to the “Times” about Trump when it gets it so wrong about music, a minor cog in the system.

Yes, the “Times” sacrifices credibility when it prints dreck like this.

Meanwhile, everybody actually in the music business knows this is crap, part of the endless spew by the public, the press and the politicians that can’t be combatted, no matter how many times they’re confronted with the truth.

So the music business gives up explaining itself not only to the public, but to the media.

The “Times” wouldn’t print an article about the negative effects of robotic surgery, the business losers… And when it’s an important subject, they have fact-checkers and there are levels of review, close scrutiny, but that damn music business… It’s an easy target and the readers will love it!

Speaking of readers, now Tom Newsom is going to come to my house and beat me up. I shouldn’t shed any light on the truth, for my own safety if nothing else. Like all the sheep supporting Trump no matter what in Congress. They’re afraid of losing their job, even their life.

So everybody goes with the flow, let’s inaccuracies slip by, because the team is everything, irrelevant of whether it’s right or wrong.

Yup, truth and justice, it’s the American Way.

Maybe in Scandinavia, but not here in the good old U.S.

(Yup, I’m a commie socialist. But I’ve been to Scandinavia… In Denmark college is free, contrast that with John Oliver’s exposé on student debt last night. Oh, that’s right, I don’t want to pay for your mistakes. But it’s more complicated than that, but you don’t want to listen, because it must be their fault and people have got to clean up their own messes. But don’t we live in a society? I mean everybody should be entitled to food and shelter, never mind an education. But to make a living as a musician? NO!)

Eric Carmen Playlist

Spotify: https://shorturl.at/JMPXZ

THE CYRUS ERIE

“Get the Message” – 1969

RASPBERRIES

“Go All the Way” -1972

“I Wanna Be With You” – 1972

“Let’s Pretend” – 1973

“Tonight” – 1973

“Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)” – 1974

“Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)” -1980

Cherie and Marie Currie

ERIC CARMEN-1975

“All By Myself”

Celine Dion version – 1996

“Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”

“That’s Rock and Roll”

Shaun Cassidy version – 1976

BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT – 1977

“She Did It”

“Love Is All That Matters”

“Marathon Man”

“Nowhere to Hide”

“Run Away”

CHANGE OF HEART – 1978

“Hey Deanie”

Shaun Cassidy version – 1977

TONIGHT YOU’RE MINE – 1980

“It Hurts Too Much”

ERIC CARMEN – 1985

“I Wanna Hear It from Your Lips”

DIRTY DANCING – 1987

“Hungry Eyes”

Franke and the Knockouts version –  1984

RASPBERRIES POP ART LIVE – 2004

“Go All the Way”

“Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)”

“Ticket to Ride”

“Baby’s in Black”

“I Can’t Explain”

Eric Carmen-SiriusXM This Week

Tune in Saturday March 16th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz