"It’s not about a master plan and it’s not about promotion."

Mark Kates
Manager, MGMT

MGMT wasn’t even a BAND!  They’d gone to Wesleyan together, but they weren’t even living in the same damn town.  No one serviced records, but KROQ found a copy and started blasting them.

It’s about the music, and luck and…not needing to be rich.

Then there’s Don Strasburg.  Not only did he sell out MGMT at Red Rocks, he’s winning with a ton of acts you’ve never heard of.  Pretty Lights?  That’s a burgeoning seller.  And remember that husband and wife team who played with the Dead, the Godchauxs?  Their kid has a hit act that I can’t even remember the name of.  And then there’s Skrillex.  I just had to Google it to find out the spelling!

These are not wannabe acts, dunning you to pay attention, they’re making money and you’ve never even heard of them and they don’t really care!

How do you make it today?

You’ve got to be good.  And then, you’ve got to be vouched for by another act with a fanbase.  People read the blogs and the Twitter feeds.  If their favorite act likes a new act, they’ll check them out.  They’ll go to the show.  And they’ll tell everybody they know!

What has this got to do with radio and television and..?

Every year I go to this conference in Aspen.  Nonbelievers think it’s an excuse for a ski vacation.  Rather it’s a time to bat around ideas and learn what’s truly going on from the people who do it and bond with them in a way not possible anywhere else.

The dude who runs Goldstar went on to say it wasn’t so much about the discount but informing people who don’t know about the show!  Amazing concept.  That’s the number one problem, making people know there’s a show.

Not that price isn’t important.

But all this b.s. about VIP tickets and scalpers and…  Is for a dying business made up of classic rock acts on their last breath and evanescent one hit wonders propped up by a dying media.

Bands are breaking like crazy.  But since the self-referential mainstream media doesn’t read about it in sister publications, conventional wisdom is the music business is dying.  No, it’s being REBORN!

What’s hot right now is deejays.  Heard of Rusko?  Just did sell out business for AEG in Denver.

And how do these deejays get a start?  Festivals.  Where the sneezers, as Seth Godin labels the tipsters who get things going, discover them and spread the word.  For the shows with electronica acts he’s never heard of that he can’t sell Strasburg hires a guy, Sheldon, who manages to fill the auditorium…  How does he do it?  He’s got a network, he’s got relationships.  This is not your father’s music business where you bring out a shotgun and hope you hit someone.

And these new acts always play cheaply.  And their songs may not be hits on the radio, but they’re hits in the culture.

I learned more listening to twenty five people argue about the business in Aspen than I ever do going to lunch or a show in L.A.  These are the believers, these are the people who need to be in music even if the pay sucks.  They’ve got their ears to the ground, they know what’s truly going on.

Sure, there are way too many shows.

Then again, when the airlines kept losing money, they reduced the inventory and now they’re profitable. And tickets are dirt cheap.  Sure, there are add-ons and the experience sucks, but people want to fly.  Do people want to go to your show?  If not, nothing you can do will get them to go.

The Rolling Stones and the Eagles and Madonna function in a sterile dying business whose problems get trumped up so we think they’re everybody’s problems. They’re not.

The music business is being reinvented right now as dramatically as it was when the Beatles invaded and the rest of the Brits followed them.  There are no shortcuts, there’s only playing because you love to and putting yourself in the marketplace.  A zillion reviews will get you nowhere near as far as a bunch of zealots who believe you’re godhead and tell everybody they know not for pay, but because it makes them feel good inside to turn friends on to great music.

The Aspen Conference is the highlight of my year.  The light attendance made me think it was fading, on its way out, but today’s conversation was better than any we’ve had in years.  Maybe because only the diehards still come and all the poseurs are gone.

I’m so excited, I just had to tell you.