The Tiger Mother Craze

Everybody wants to be rich.

Ever wonder why Bono joined forces with wannabe musician Roger McNamee in Elevation Partners?  Believe me, it wasn’t to shepherd the birth of the unnecessary Palm Pre, it was to get rich.  Because you just can’t make enough money in the music business anymore.

Bon Jovi had the top tour of 2010.  Gross was $108 million.  However you split that up, you’re better off being Lloyd Blankfein than Jon Bon Jovi.  You see Blankfein makes millions each and every year.  He doesn’t need a hit record, he doesn’t need to convince punters in the hinterlands to invest, he just rapes and pillages and pays off politicians until the money comes rolling in.

And everybody else wants that money too.  That’s what our whole country is about.  That’s what the major labels are about.

We’ve been hearing this carping for a decade that people won’t pay for music.  All played out before a backdrop of Napster and BitTorrent and RapidShare and…  I’ll say if we eliminated the Internet revenues would go back up.  But that’s like saying if we got rid of cars we’d have fewer people dying in transportation accidents.  Huh?  People want their automobiles and they want their Internet.  Because it puts information at their fingertips, they’re no longer at the mercy of a handful of gatekeepers, they dig down deep to find and consume exactly what they want, and generally speaking that is not the mainstream crap that the record industry and its complicit old wave media outlets want it to be.

Yes, the Top Forty crap sells more than the rest of the product.  Then again, sales are a fraction of what they once were and the Top Forty acts don’t do as well on the road, and everybody knows that the money’s on the road.  Where Bon Jovi is touring ceaselessly playing gargantuan hits from two decades ago.

Give Jon Bon Jovi credit.  He wanted it.  His uncle may have owned a recording studio, but his father was a hairdresser.  Jon didn’t have advantages, he had desire.  And this desire along with the efforts of a master producer, Bruce Fairbairn, and a master songwriter, Desmond Child, resulted in hits.  Eventually.  Because, as Ringo Starr once sang, it don’t come easy.

Now the establishment music industry wants what it once had, the profits of yore.  But it’s the newbies, the upstarts that are truly the problem.  Having been exposed to all the media hype, the fictions that used to build careers, they want to be rich and famous rock stars, and they want it to happen overnight.  And why they still call it "rock star" is beyond me.  Really, they want to be Jay-Z. They don’t even want to go on the road, that’s hard work!  They want to make records and do endorsements and star in films and buy and sell companies and rape and pillage just like Lloyd Blankfein and the nameless stars at Goldman Sachs.

But you don’t go straight from the street to the storied New York bank.  No, entry is limited to the best and the brightest, who killed themselves at Ivy League schools for this chance to get rich.  And yes, we’d have a better society if these people pursued something besides money, but you can’t doubt that they’ve paid their dues and are winners.  How about the people in music?

The songwriters and labels deserve the lion’s share of the money.  One can defend the 360 deal strategy based on the fact that the experienced oldsters do all the work.  Used to be the acts wrote and recorded their own material independently.  Those days are through in major label land, there’s too much at risk.  They need insurance.  And they don’t need you.  They can find someone else pretty who’s willing to be molded and play by the rules.  They don’t want unique.  Unless it’s fashion. Breakthrough music?  You STARVE playing that.

But all those people who can’t get major label deals, even though they secretly want them, keep telling us they’re playing this breakthrough music.  And if we’d just sign up for their mailing lists and come to their shows, we’d get it.  Huh?  Music is something you hear, and what you’re making isn’t good enough.

Hell, some of it might be good, but is it great?

You’re probably aware of the Tiger Mother controversy.  Broken by an excerpt in the "Wall Street Journal"

the book’s a best seller and the debate is frantic.

But you can’t argue with the facts.  The U.S. is number one in self-esteem.  That’s what the Brookings Institution discovered. Americans believe they’re great, but unfortunately, statistically they are not.  In the results of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, the U.S. was number twenty three or four in most subjects (thirty first in math).

Doesn’t this sound like the music business?  A plethora of unskilled kids telling us they’re great, that they deserve success?

Could it be the music business is faltering because the music just isn’t good enough?

Now let me be clear, you’ve got to be great.  The Palm Pre is pretty good.  But not as good as an iPhone or an Android.  And before you start quibbling, one of the things that made the iPhone such a phenomenon was the ecosystem, the App Store, and the synching software.  Sure, the Pre would hold your music, but how in the hell were you going to get it on there, it was tedious!

So if you’ve got one hit, almost no one wants to see you live.

Justin Bieber?  That’s MySpace.  Big story for a year or two, even the mainstream press buys it, and then instant devastation.

Where are the acts that blow us away?

Certainly not the Black Eyed Peas.  That’s entertainment.  Still, will.i.am just can’t get rich enough.  Now he’s gone and made a deal with Intel.

Hell, Steve Jobs was blown out of Apple, his own company.  The iPod didn’t even come out until twenty five years after the initial Apple computers.  Where are the acts that are growing and developing into greatness?  Are we really waiting for Ke$ha to deliver her "Sgt. Pepper"?

So let’s stop the debate about piracy.  Let’s focus on the music.  And agree that whatever money comes raining down, it’s just not gonna be in the league of Lloyd Blankfein’s compensation.  That music isn’t about getting rich, but making a statement.  Doing it your way.  Having an influence.

But in order to have said influence, you’ve got to gain adherents.  Which takes a long time, see Mr. Jobs above.  And Jobs purveyed incredible products before the iPod, just like the initial albums of classic artists were oftentimes ignored.  But you don’t cry, but soldier on.

We’ve got a huge filter problem, no one knows what to listen to.  And yes, we do have a compensation problem.  But first and foremost we’ve got a music problem.  Because we’ve got a generation of entitled artists who just aren’t that good.

Oh, don’t protest.  What did they used to say, you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution?  Capitol didn’t have to close new Beatle fans.  All they had to do was expose them to the music.  People didn’t wait and see with the iPhone, based on previous Apple products and the pics and the specs, they were instantly in.  You’re music has got to be just that good.  So people want to line up to buy it.

When are we going to start this discussion?  When are we going to agree that if you make atonal music and have a bad voice you’re never going to sell millions, make millions, so you should stop complaining?

When are we going to agree that "American Idol" is about commerce, not music?  It’s very easy to sing the hits of another, it’s almost fucking impossible to write those hits.  Which is why the initial songs of so many suck, hell, they usually don’t see the light of day, but I’m constantly inundated with the e-mail of parents of fourteen year olds who want me to listen to the warblings of their prepubescent progeny made on GarageBand.  Would they let that kid work at Goldman Sachs?  Is the kid qualified to rape and pillage on Wall Street?  Then why in hell do we believe they can triumph in music?

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