The best thing I saw was a demonstration of Steve Stewart’s Songhub: https://songhub.co Yes, the manager of Stone Temple Pilots has solved some of the biggest issues in royalties, data and creation by starting from the bottom up, with the songwriters as opposed to the publishers, who embrace change at about the speed of the labels, which is not fast.

Songhub allows songwriters to collaborate. And it stores your files. And you put the split right into the software. This has been necessary, but no one outside the business has done it because they didn’t see the big bucks, Songhub is something that only someone from the inside could create. A home run. Check it out.

As for the attendees…

There’s a blue chip assortment of speakers. Really, I’m impressed. But the audience hasn’t changed much. Wannabes trying to get ahead.

Rock and roll rule #1… THERE ARE NO RULES! If you’re looking for someone to tell you how to do it, you’re already lost. You can go to a conference to learn the landscape, the basics, but the household names invented their jobs, they’d be successful at whatever they did. Music business college is a rip-off. It’ll teach you how to be a middle manager, until you lose your job. Never ever forget that to succeed in the music business you have to attach yourself to talent. Unless you’re attached to talent you’re going to get squeezed out, or not rise high.

As for the talent, with so much in the landscape, do we need you? Would you be sitting at home dreaming up a new search engine? Then why do you think people are clamoring for your me-too music, which has no basic utility.

First, create it. If there’s no reaction, forget it. Don’t blame the audience. Change or be broke.

Second, once you have traction, don’t look for someone to grow you, GROW YOURSELF! If you do so, you’ll be inundated with people who want to work with you. The labels no longer build anything from scratch. So unless you have a CV, a history, fans…no one will be interested anyway. It no longer matters how good your music is, but whether people react to it. Let me put it a better way, you can create something great and nothing can happen. Nada. If you build it, they will not come. Not only do you have to light the fire, you have to tend it, add logs to keep it burning, have it glow so much that you get people’s attention. Don’t look to the Beatles or Taylor Swift for a pathway, those avenues are closed off. The Beatles hit in the sixties and Swift broke when country radio was still strong and she crossed over to Top Forty TEN YEARS AGO, when that format, when terrestrial radio still mattered. The active audience doesn’t listen to terrestrial radio at all, forget the disinformation campaign from the industry.

Think about where you go online. And if you don’t go anywhere…the joke is on you. If you’re not fluent in YouTube and Instagram and TikTok you’re not going to make it. Consider them the record stores of yore, of the FIFTIES! Yes, when you could go into a booth and spin a record and decide whether you wanted to buy it. SINGLE records. You need that one track that catches people instantly, if you don’t have it, don’t expect any traction until you do.

And if you have expertise in the business, that does not make you a good artist. We’re short on revolutionary artists, not revolutionary businessmen. It all comes from the art. We’re one superstar away from the entire landscape changing. Focus there.

And I ain’t gonna give you false hope. Ed Bicknell talked about Dire Straits doing 240 dates a year. You have no idea how punishing that is unless you’ve done it. To make it in music requires all your money, time and effort, period. If you don’t want it more than anything, if you’re not willing to roll the dice on yourself, if you’re not willing to forgo the perks of adulthood, stop and GET OUT!

Ed interviewed Bill Silva. And got Bill to talk about the financial ups and downs of his concert promotion career. Entrepreneurs walk a fine line between bankruptcy and success. And it’s more about relationships than how smart or rich you are.

Last night at the awards show Kingfish played, and immediately everyone in the audience was nodding their head along to the music. Instantly. Kingfish set a groove, and the people fell into it. I’d like to tell you the song was as good as the playing, but the playing…

It was basic. No synths, no hard drives. No different from half a century ago, from the bluesmen before that. Kingfish is in a long tradition of blues players who lit up the world until the plot was lost and hair bands dashed for cash and hip-hop took over.

Kingfish’s blues is made for a live performance. Because it is live. Kingfish squeezes out the notes and grimaces and you feel it.

As for the Pursuit of Happiness celebrating Jake Gold’s induction into the Hall of Fame… That too was revelatory. This was the noise that addicted us, and it was a noise. From the garage, from the basement. Todd Rundgren cleaned up the sound for wax, but live…it reminded me of Cheap Trick, noisy and to the point. Funny how the roots of rock and roll are right in our face.

And today it’s all about the software. If you’re arguing about distribution and/or payments, you’d better be a superstar, otherwise I don’t want to hear it. Your focus is wrong. There’s not enough money on the recording side if you get a de minimis number of streams, and there’s never going to be. Music is so far advanced, it’s light years beyond TV, we’ve figured it out, all the music in one place for a low price. The pipes are there, all they need is software, i.e. the music.

You don’t only have to feel the music, you’ve got to have something to say, you’ve got to have influences. And although music itself is important, so are movies and books and the internet…to be a great artist you must be fluent in the CULTURE! Which no one under fifteen is. I don’t want to hear that you’ve been doing it since you were five. God, those people are all over social media, and they’re quite good, but they have nothing to SAY!

And nothing has really changed. The audience needs entertainment, is hungry for entertainment. Your job is to create something as good as “Baby Reindeer,” a hit around the world, done by a newbie. I don’t care whether you like it or hate it, you can discuss “Baby Reindeer,” have an opinion on it. We’re looking for the same thing in music, but you’re not providing it.

Or to quote Don Henley…

Let’s just say we haven’t that spirit here since 1999. Never have so many had so little to say.

I’m trying to scare you, jolt you alive, be the antidote to your friends and family. I want to be the army drill sergeant in a world where no one making music is fit for the army, they’re that different, that outside the mainstream.

We want truth, honesty. We want a beacon. We want to go down a new road. Can you take us there?

Then we’ll be right alongside you.