I’ve got to write fast because I’m going to dinner with Goldberg.  At Matsuhisa.  He owns the place.  And the Belly Up.

What naysayers don’t get about the Aspen conference is it IS about the skiing!  It’s about the time you spend on the lift bonding with people, hearing their stories.  Like today at Snowmass, in the wind and the snow, Strasburg was giving me an in-depth take on HeadCount.  Which even got Jay-Z to do PSAs.  I’m into it because there’s gonna be an election in 2012, and it’s gonna affect all of our futures, and I want my constituency, the music fans, to have a say in it.

Goldberg used to lease airplanes.  His learning curve at the Belly Up has been steep.  He found out that people either want to see name talent, or nobodies.  Either charge a lot for acts people want to see or book developing acts cheaply and let everybody in for free.  Last night he had Bret Michaels.  He figured Bret owed him, since he was on "Celebrity Apprentice" with his younger brother, the wrestler.

It all comes down to acts people want to see.  As for prices…  When I say a lot at the Belly Up, I mean a price where Goldberg can make money and keep the doors open.  If you’re doing this to get rich, you’re on the wrong path.  It’s just too hard.  You’ve got to love the music, you’ve got to like to take risks, you’ve got to be willing to burn the candle on both ends not for cash, but because you’re passionate about music, and shows.

Back to MGMT.  Turns out I fucked up Kates’ quote.  He really said it’s not about a master plan and it’s not about MONEY! Only old school people think they need a bankroll.  The music is enough if it’s really damn good.  People will spread the word.

And who exactly are these people, the "friend" who tells everybody about the act/show?  Jamie Loeb wants to know who they are and I do too.  It’s this network of influencers that truly runs our business, not the people at radio stations or MTV.

Speaking of MTV, MGMT thinks that’s a station with reality shows.  Lewi’s kids don’t realize MTV EVER played music! Things change.

Like Ticketmaster.

Do you know Ticketmaster has an app?  And you can share the fact you bought a ticket to a show with your friends on Facebook?  If Michael Rapino didn’t have such a bunker mentality, he’d hire a PR guy and let people know.  You’ve got to tell your story, especially when you’re one of the most hated entities on earth.

Ticketmaster prices are all-in on Live Nation shows they control.  Ticketmaster prints seat maps (which you can see on the app!), it’s old school acts and promoters who abhor these and won’t play.  And it’s these old school people who are holding the business back.  Paperless ticketing?  We need it!  You can kill StubHub overnight.  Why not?  Because the acts want to scalp their own tickets.  The oldsters are afraid of reality.  Or, as Jack Nicholson so famously said, they can’t handle the truth.

The truth is we’ve got a business with no clear price points selling whored out acts trying to get as much cash as possible from a burning building.

But that’s not everybody.

The new acts insist ticket prices be low.  They communicate with their fans.  They solve problems.  If you don’t have an outlet, whether it be Twitter/Facebook or a message board, where a fan can complain and be heard and have his problem taken care of immediately, you’re living in the past.  Live Nation/Ticketmaster does a great job of doing this.  Nathan Hubbard constantly puts out fires.  Michael Rapino calls customers.  But they don’t tell anybody!  This would be like a drug company recalling tainted merchandise and not taking out newspaper ads, not hiring a PR team to put out accurate information and control the story.  Today you’ve got to tell your own story, otherwise other people do and they get it wrong!

And you tell it primarily online.

There was a lot of discussion today about buying tickets.  How the secondary market comes up in Google before the legit sites.  But you can’t compete with this Mafia the same way you can’t compete with P2P pirates.  You’ve got to build a better mousetrap.  Make sure everybody’s got the Ticketmaster app.  Make sure you need the credit card you bought the tickets with to get into the show.  Is it a hassle?  OF COURSE!  But fans love it.  How come Metallica can do it right and almost no one else can!

I learned about TV advertising.  Bill Young can make great spots, even make apps or splash pages, but they never get current material.  They need to make James Taylor ads with pictures from when he still had hair?

Still, whatever we just discussed in the free-for-all in the meeting room pales in comparison to the conversations I had on the mountain today.  How often do you get ten minutes one on one with no interruptions with a business colleague?  Shit, you even meet new people!

But that’s our Aspen secret.

And you can’t really know it until you’ve experienced it.

I’ve got to run to Matsuhisa!

P.S. I met Michael Goldberg on a lift.  Ruthie’s, in fact.  We were skiing in a group and we were paired up at random.