My inbox is full of people saying I need to respect Bruce Springsteen, he’s an icon who is making an effort. Is anybody else doing this?
Yes, Billy Bragg, who has always been on this tip:
“City of Heroes”
But you’ve probably never heard the Billy Bragg song, because he’s not as famous as the Boss.
And many people may never hear either track, and that’s my point.
Listeners at home don’t think music is a professional business, they believe since they listen to music and go to concerts, they’re experts and could do the job of those in the industry.
DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO GET A RECORD HEARD?
The major labels, which gross billions, can’t break a new act. And these records are created over months, with multiple writers and mixers, they’re massaged to be hits, yet they still don’t connect.
Because they’re just not good enough. Maybe good, but not great. And today you’ve got to be great, and this pisses off bands and punters who bloviate all over the internet just like they do about high-priced tickets and their fees.
My inbox is also full of people bitching about the price of tickets to Harry Styles’s shows. Thank god he’s doing thirty in New York, or the odds of you seeing him would be close to nil. But still, people bitch. They can’t understand the basic economics. The ticket prices are high because that’s the value of the ticket, that’s what people will pay. Hit musicians are luxury goods, like Louis Vuitton and Birkin bags and…if you look at these items, examine them closely, and then look at the prices, it doesn’t add up. No way it cost anywhere near the price to make the item. But people are lining up to buy them, because the goods are good, and they want to signify their status. Is this any different from a show? You only go to see the great acts, and then you dine out on the story for at least a week…you tell the story of the show to all your friends, your coworkers, you were THERE! Most everybody else was not. Because there just weren’t enough tickets to go around.
There are not enough luxury goods to go around. It’s not a perfect analogy, but companies like Rolex limit goods in order to drive up the price! But concert tickets are inherently limited, because it’s human beings, there are only 365 days in a year, they can only play so many shows. To the point where people are lining up to pay to see avatars of ABBA, that’s how much people love the music.
So the dirty little secret is if the act doesn’t charge what the market will bear, the scalpers will…they’ll hoover up all the tickets and sell them at a high price, which people will pay, and the act will get none of this uplift.
As for the fees, without them there’s no show.
You can talk until you’re blue in the face and people can’t understand these concepts. They even have ridiculous hearings in D.C., politicians who can’t fix the nation grandstanding about a problem that doesn’t exist. We don’t see hearings about the prices of BMWs… They should come down! I’m a fan, I deserve one for 20k! LOL!
And some of these acts are so hot, with so much unfulfilled demand, that there are tribute acts doing boffo at the b.o. performing their songs. That’s how big the demand is.
And this demand is only created by hit songs. And very few acts have hit songs and so much demand that they can sell out arenas everywhere. As a matter of fact, even the vaunted Boss doesn’t go clean everywhere. Tickets go on sale, fans bitch about the prices, the coastal press picks up on this, but if if you want a ticket somewhere between New York and Los Angeles, oftentimes you can get one, even on the day of the show.
You want to go hear Bruce perform “Jungleland” and “Born to Run.” Would people be lining up to see him if the shows consisted only of music from his last couple of albums? OF COURSE NOT! That’s not what people want, they want the HITS!
So you’ve got to start with a hit. Everybody in the business knows that the demand is created by the music. Doesn’t matter how good the stage show is, who is playing on the record, when you drop the needle, do people freak out, are they touched in such a special way that they have to get out of their pajamas and run to the all night record store to buy what they just heard on the radio…that’s how Ahmet Ertegun described a hit.
Today we live in a world where music is at your fingertips, but the irony is there’s so much of it that it’s even harder to get noticed.
But the paradigm remains. Did you listen to “Streets of Minneapolis” ten times straight, as I’ve done with many hit records?
Forget that… Did you play it for your friends, your mother, and did they demand to hear it again?
That’s a hit, and that’s what you need to succeed in today’s uncontrolled marketplace where everything is available all the time, the history of recorded music.
Let me see… Do I want to listen to my cousin’s band ,which he keeps dunning me about, or Led Zeppelin? Every new band is now competing with Led Zeppelin.
In the old days, you either had to listen to the radio or buy it to hear it. It was a controlled market. No store, even Tower, stocked all the music, you could only buy what was available. As for the radio…it played very few records, and getting on a station was so powerful that every label had a complete team of promotion people, the head of which might made have made a million dollars, doing their best to get stations to play songs. Because if the station did, you had a start, that you could build upon. Stations have mass audiences and…
As heavy a lift as this was in the pre-internet days, it’s ten times harder today.
All day long people e-mail me their favorites, songs I just have to hear. How many are worth hearing? Almost none! I’m not arguing with the listener’s enjoyment, fine…the question is whether everybody else, the masses, are going to hear it and enjoy it.
That’s the big time music business, the masses. It’s not the high school auditorium, even your local club. Are millions going to hear the song and want to hear it again and again?
In today’s overcrowded marketplace it’s a nearly impossible achievement.
As for the Boss…
Leave all your emotions out. Bruce sold all his rights to Sony, the hundreds of millions of dollars involved was very well publicized. Is that what we revere Bruce for?
But even worse…
Someone sent me this clip…
“Dove Body Confident Sport (2025) | Born to Run by H.E.R.”
You sell your rights to the man, and the man has to get his money back. Just like people are angry that Tim Apple keeps kissing Trump’s butt, they can see that Bruce sold out here. Not that it completely undercuts the man and his music, but it does put a dent in his image.
Want a great protest song for today? Don Henley’s 1989 hit “The End of the Innocence.” The Eagles sell out everywhere, they’re performing 56 shows at the Sphere.
Think about that… There are approximately 18,000 seats available at the Sphere. The Eagles are going to play to approximately 1,008,000 people. Sure, some people will go more than once, but that’s incredible demand, and it’s based on the hits, which the Eagles play!
But this ain’t Olivia Newton-John. The Eagles wrote all their hits, except for a few by or with friends, they’re straight from the performers’ hearts into yours, unfiltered. And the band has never ever sold out. No advertisements, no sponsors, no “Hotel California” movie… And this MATTERS!
Don Henley is not warm and fuzzy, but you know he’s true to himself. And that’s part of the magic.
Furthermore, he’s so far from everyman…
But you HATE the Eagles. You love bands Eagles fans have never even heard of. Kudos. But you’re missing the point, it’s all about DEMAND! And that demand is created by HITS!
So how much demand has “Streets of Minneapolis” created, huh? Sure, everybody e-mailed you about it yesterday, but how many are going to e-mail you about it next week? Are you going to be listening to “Streets of Minneapolis” a month from now, a year from now? No. Of course some people will quibble with me, because that’s their role in life. But the bottom line is very simple, “Streets of Minneapolis” is not a hit. It’s a press story that will not move the needle.
We don’t need protest songs, we need HIT protest songs. Which means you’ve got to write a hit about a very specific subject, which is so difficult, but…
Most people agreed with me, that “Streets of Minneapolis” is substandard, just not good enough. But is this how far we’ve come, that we run on emotions instead of facts? Of course it’s great that Bruce weighed in, but that does not mean the song is a hit. Then again, Bruce hasn’t written a hit for decades. Sure, the landscape has changed, but very few aged acts can reach the brass ring once again. Can I say that you go to see Bruce as a nostalgia play? To remember when? Not only when you heard the records, but you were thin with hair?
Makes me crazy when people want to deny reality. Money talks, as the Kinks sang. Which is why Tim Cook keeps kissing Trump’s rear end.
So to make a difference, you’ve got to create a song that rains down money. Like the Weeknd or Lady Gaga or… You need hundreds of millions of streams. That’s the world we live in, how can you make your way into the Spotify Top 50? Because that’s the major leagues. Sure, there are minor leagues in clubs and theatres, but the big time, the acts who can sell more tickets than are available…
God, I can never stop quoting Jack Nicholson in that movie…
You can’t handle the truth, not too many people can. But the truth is obvious and always outs. ICE murdered Pretti. Pardon the pun, but in the parlance of music, it was a hit. A sound heard ’round the world that changed the world. Not every Republican has blinked, but many have. They had to excise Bovino and bring in Homan and…
If you want to have power, if you want to impact the world, you have to start with the facts, the truth, however uncomfortable that might be.
Otherwise you can sit at home spewing your opinions all day long but they won’t make a difference.
This is a game of power. Which starts with gaining the attention of the public. That’s the job.
And everybody in the music business knows it.
But people on the street, they just can’t accept it.
Start there.
