The Amanda Ghost Story
Why did Rob Stringer go on the record?
Rob is now 0 for 2. Rick Rubin and Amanda Ghost. If he wasn’t Howard’s brother, would he keep his job? Of course not!
But this isn’t the story of Rob Stringer. And it’s not even the story of Amanda Ghost. It’s the story of an infrastructure built to churn out something most people no longer want, a creator of buggy-whips in an era of automobiles.
There is a point atop the pyramid. There are acts that are going to be ubiquitous. But how many? It appears GaGa will last, then..? And she might not. She’s reliant on radio airplay and mainstream media attention and not only do those mean ever less, they’ve each got a plethora of candidates to choose from. And once you’re anointed, you end up playing the House of Blues? That’s where the new "star" Ke$ha gigs. It’s hard to make money there.
Hell, she’s just like a reality TV star. Famous, but not rich. Grist for the mill.
In the future, maybe two record labels will compete to produce mainstream fodder, signing good-looking, malleable people whose songs are rewritten endlessly to ultimately satiate a dying machine that rains down ever less coin.
But the real action will be in artists that take no feedback and speak to their audience as opposed to trying to endlessly reach those who don’t care, an ever more expensive proposition paying fewer and fewer dividends.
What we’re seeing is the crumbling of an old edifice. They like to blame Napster, but really it’s the inability to gain mindshare, and the ridiculous product that must be created to play across demos.
So Amanda Ghost was a self-dealing tyrant. She’s really no different from Tommy Mottola, it’s just when Tommy had a hit, he could sell 20 million copies. Now no one can sell 20 million copies.
Used to be stories like this never made print. They were the subject of late night bull sessions between insiders. But now nothing’s a secret. And sure, you can participate and try to create your own spin, but when everything you’ve done is wrong, shouldn’t you shut up, maintain plausible deniability?
I like Rob Stringer. But the problem here isn’t Amanda Ghost, but the man himself.
