Greetings from Toronto!

I’m glad to be here.

Literally.

I’m flying in the back of the plane with the flotsam and jetsam, especially the guy wearing the suit coat with the name tag still sewn on the sleeve, and the aircraft banks to the left.  Just a little too suddenly for my taste.  Then again, as if to avoid something.  And we’re bouncing around, but it’s been a bouncy flight and suddenly we’re below the clouds, I can almost reach out and touch the snow-covered buildings and just as the rear wheels hit the tarmac and I’m about to turn on my BlackBerry and breathe a sigh of relief the engines roar, the nose of the plane points to the sky and we go back up again?

WTF?

And I’m sitting there, contemplating this, waiting for an explanation, which, when it comes, is not confidence-inspiring.  The pilot says sometimes things just don’t feel right.  Well yeah, but I’m not landing an airplane with 100+ people inside, you’ve got a responsibility to get me down!  And if the snow’s so bad, it’s probably bad in Ottawa too and where the hell else are we going to land, never mind get to Toronto from there?

And we’re bouncing around in the sky, and you can’t see a damn thing and finally the pilot comes back on to tell us he’s gonna give it another shot, that they’ve switched runways. What, is it wind shear?  What was wrong with the first runway?

And it takes longer than the proffered five minutes but we do eventually touch ground and stay there, except for some slippin’ and ‘a slidin’ when the commander lays on the brakes…

Your anxiety dissipates quickly and hours later you’ve forgotten the ordeal but during the experience you always wonder, especially now that they fly these planes with so little fuel to save weight and money.

We ended up at a sushi bar whereupon Vince extolled the benefits of Getty Images and the chef asked Jake if he could get him tickets for the UFC.

No, that’s not a new band inspired by U2, that’s the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the tightest ticket in town, this chef was willing to drop $500 a ducat, he just wanted to be inside.

And then we ensconced ourselves on the couch in the lobby of the Royal York Hotel.  Where if you wait long enough, the whole world walks by and you learn a few things.

The first to come by was Jeff Price of Tunecore.

Most fascinating was the scams.  The people who use the service to put up tracks they do not own.  Like Taylor Swift and the Beatles.  And Jeff told us about this DJ scam pulled on iTunes.  The performers put up the tracks and bought their own music via stolen credit cards, 750k worth.  Scotland Yard got involved in that one, but if you’re operating online you’ve got to be your own policeman, you’ve got to have security measures in place, it’s a headache.

We heard the story of Jeff’s previous enterprise, spinART Records.

It went bankrupt.

Not immediately, but…

And part of the reason it went down is that its major-label distributor tanked and they got only seventy cents on the dollar.

And the lesson of all this is it’s almost impossible to make money in music.  Certainly on a sustained basis.  Consider it a privilege to work in entertainment, not a right.  Respect those with careers both on stage and off because to be able to maintain is almost impossible. There are always new bands and nobody really needs any of them.  So if you’re getting tattooed to look cool…hold off on the ink.  Then again, Nikki Sixx did a keynote and was surrounded by adoring fans.  Inside I laughed at his get-up, with the tousled hair that probably took him an hour to perfect and the expensive downscale threads…  But it’s working for him, he’s still getting paid.  And is doing syndicated radio.  That’s how lame radio is.  It’s all about stars spinning records as opposed to pros doing it right.  I loved Bill Maher’s comment about Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosting the Oscars.  Like anybody can be funny. Like anybody can read the cue cards and get a laugh.  No, comedy is a profession, you need a pro!

Gladwell in action.

And Tunecore is getting into publishing.

And then Ralph Simon came by.

Ralph used to be Clive Calder’s partner.  I’ll let Ralph tell you how that ended.  But now Ralph’s a king in the mobile space.  He told us that the head of Vodafone doesn’t give a shit about music.  But he also told us about a conversation with Troy Carter about breaking GaGa around the world.  Ralph said to get her to sing in Hindi.  Troy said to wait a sec.  He picked up his phone and got off and said yes, she’d do it.  That was Stefanie, she made an instant decision.

You’ve got to act fast, instantly.

Then again, GaGa has yet to record her big tracks in foreign languages.

But if she ever does, Ralph is wired in Asia and Africa.  He can get her exposed in India.

That’s where the action is, in the developing nations.

But unfortunately, most of the excitement is in tech.  That’s what everybody wants to talk about, music occupies the back seat.

So I moderated a panel on ticketing earlier today.  Bottom line?  There’s a lot of money in it, with a lot of players, the venues, the ticketing company, the promoter, the act…  And all people complain about is they just can’t get a good seat.

The chap from StubHub went on to say only 800 LCD Soundsystem tickets were available on the service, when supposedly 15,000 went on sale?

Even the acts don’t know where the tickets go anymore.

And I’m doing a keynote at 5.

And I’m out of here tomorrow.

But once again CMW  has proven a nexus of thinkers, people telling their stories sans the attitude south of the border.

I love it.