Not A Hit In America
“Miss You”
James Hersey
Hang in there, through the one minute mark. Before that the song is good, but it doesn’t grab you. But then the electronic sounds go wild, your mind is set free and you feel good all over, the way you do when you’re alone in the middle of a field, feeling how great it is to be alive and needing no one to confirm this sensation.
Hersey is from Vienna, Austria, and the truth is there’s been almost no radio play anywhere, but despite that, as of this writing “Miss You” has got 46,273,109 streams on Spotify. An official video went up on YouTube on October 20, 2016, but it only has 438,793 views, could it be that despite all the carping by the international recording organizations YouTube is already in the rearview mirror? Could it be that YouTube is just for the casual fan, of a young age, and that the true music zealots are on Spotify?
As for the Spotify/Apple Music debate, I refer you to the following article that details how Apple Music’s adoption rate trails Spotify’s:
“Why Apple Has a Steep Hill to Climb in the Streaming Music Business”
Now I don’t see this fitting in on Top Forty radio, and that’s the problem, ever since MTV we’ve had a Top Forty mind-set. It’s just that Top Forty has gotten narrower and narrower. The huge stream rate of “Miss You” illustrates the public is hungry for something beyond the fare being delivered to them over the airwaves.
We have an international business, a veritable global village, it’s astounding that tracks stop at national borders. You’d think if something worked one place it would work elsewhere, after all we’ve got the same phones, the same clothes…
Spotify is breaking records, via its playlists. But we still need further curation, of gems like this.
Put this on at your holiday party and watch heads turn. It’s subtle, but it works. The more you play it, the more you play it.
And for those without Spotify subscriptions (which I can’t understand, since they’re free, although I have sympathy if you live in one of the few markets where the service has not launched, and once again, I have no ownership interest in Spotify, get paid in no way, it’s just that it’s a dream come true, it killed piracy, it put all the music in one place for one low price and it allows us to share it, as I’m doing here) this is the YouTube link:
“Lost On You”
LP
This has 30,721,426 plays on Spotify. But unlike “Miss You,” it’s had a ton of radio action, of course, outside the United States. It came out over a year ago, November 20, 2015 to be exact, and has already reached number one in fourteen countries, but in the U.S…crickets.
It doesn’t sound anything like what’s presently on U.S. Top Forty radio, and that’s a good thing, its magic! Remember in the heyday of Top Forty, back in the sixties, when it was just the best of the best and it all sounded different? This is more akin to “Winchester Cathedral” than anything by the Weeknd, not that LP comes from a foreign country, she’s written for everyone from Rihanna to Joe Walsh, but most people still don’t know her, showing how hard it is to get traction these days.
There’s a disconnect between the makers and the consumers, and the middlemen are at fault, they’re so far up each others asses, thinking that only certain stuff will work, that they don’t give elixirs like this a chance. Remember when they’d play a record and it would light up the phones? Well, radio’s done doing that job, it’s not like we’re all paying attention to the same stations, but if people only heard “Lost On You,” it would be embraced.
YouTube links:
(with 58,240,705 views, the reverse of the situation with “Miss You” above, who knows!)
And you might be interested in this live take (with 30,118,262 views and it’s stiff in America?):
Actually, this live take is a career-defining moment, it’s just that the tastemakers did not get the memo, used to be a performance like this on Letterman minted stars overnight, but that was before late night became a cesspool of hijinks and feel good moments as opposed to evidencing any authenticity. Usually the live take pales in comparison to the studio version, but this is the same, yet different, be sure to hang in there ’til 3:39 when LP starts to wail, you’ll immediately forget the TV competition shows and your vision of what talent is will be re-centered. (And this video was posted on January 12, 2016, almost a year ago…)
“Shine”
Mondo Cozmo
Ironically, this reminds me of Collective Soul’s “Shine,” not because it’s a rip-off, but because it’s ANTHEMIC!
You’ve got to hang in there, until he hits the chorus.
“Shine” has been in the marketplace since September 16, 2016, and it’s no better now than it was then, but buzz is beginning, sometimes when nothing happens it’s not because you got it wrong, but because most people haven’t heard it.
“Shine” only has 968,864 streams on Spotify. But it’s just one push away from getting traction. And that push will not be on alternative radio stations, which have played it a bit, those are backwaters that don’t matter, tracks are broken on Spotify, statistics say so, just ask BuzzAngle.
What kind of ridiculous world do we live in where you have to start a song in some minor format to prove to Top Forty that it’s worthy? That’s like trying to convince grandparents to like it before you can feed it to babies, like seeing if it sells at a local shop in Peoria before you can put it in Wal-Mart in the metropolis, boy do we have a screwed-up system.
I’m not saying that “Shine” is an instant hit, but I am saying that most people who might like it aren’t hearing it.
(Meanwhile, Mondo Cozmo just dropped a new track “Higher,” last Friday, proving that you can’t wait for everybody to catch up, you’ve got to keep on producing, feeding the muse, testing limits, satiating those who are paying attention, the old stuff is hiding in plain sight for the johnny-come-latelies, “Higher” is more electronic but it’s definitely the same guy, it chugs along, you listen to these two cuts and you become a fan, and isn’t that what we’re trying to do, get people to stick to acts, and the easiest way to do this is to be unique, to write the stuff yourself, or with your own little group, as opposed to the song doctors du jour, whose music all sounds similar and whose efforts don’t rub off on acts, they’re just one stiff single away from disappearing, but Mondo Cozmo…it doesn’t sound like everything else, it’s got rough edges that hook you, that intrigue you, that make you eager to hear more as the sounds satiate you along the way…)
YouTube links:
