10cc is touring the U.S. this summer for the first time in decades. We discuss not only that band, we go deep into Graham’s songwriting for the Yardbirds and Hollies and…

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/graham-gouldman/id1316200737?i=1000654303520

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/5d50962c-d58d-49bb-8791-b4c3e0f5b769/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-graham-gouldman

Universal lost. We know this because no terms were announced. A deal was struck, and Lucian Grainge walked away with his tail between his legs while declaring victory.

I’m not saying Universal got nothing, but compared to what it wanted…

This was a gross miscalculation. Grainge thought TikTok was MTV, whose lifeblood was music, or Spotify, which wouldn’t even launch in America without the content of all the major label groups.

In other words, TikTok is bigger than Universal. It taught the music industry a lesson, one it did not want to learn, that will negatively affect the business for years to come.

The music industry is under the illusion that the world can’t run without it. And/or Universal is under the illusion that the world can’t run without its catalog. However this is untrue. People need food and shelter, they don’t need music. And if they do want music, they can sing, they can play, they don’t have to get it from big companies concerned with their stock price and a CEO auguring for even greater compensation.

Furthermore, Taylor Swift put a stake in Universal’s heart, undercut the entire effort, by saying that she couldn’t launch a new album without TikTok, that it was integral to her marketing efforts. Once again, Swift is not a team player, she only cares about herself and her minions, the all-adoring Swifties.

Then again, an uninformed blind eye is the name of the game these days. You can be anti-Israel, you can be pro-Palestinian, but over and over again protesters are interviewed about the underlying situation and proven to be ignorant, even at Harvard:

“Harvard’s Protesters Aren’t as Obstinate as You Might Expect”

Free link: https://t.ly/HkBkD

So what happens in the future?

Well, if your company is not solely music dependent… It’s now been proven that you have more leverage than you thought, that you can stand up to Big Music. Yes, the music industry is hated just like Big Pharma. Do you think TikTok users were enamored of Universal’s artists and music by this pullback? And the ball keeps moving. Let’s look at the cable industry. Cable systems stood up to content providers’ desire for more money, sometimes taking the channels off the platform. The content providers thought they held all the power. But now ESPN, the overcharging behemoth that goes unwatched by many who pay for it, has floundered and cable companies are reorienting themselves as internet providers. As for the rest of the channels up the dial… Does anybody even watch the aforementioned MTV? The value of its owner, Paramount+, has crashed, because there was no strategy for when cable declined. As for the consumer, angry about the escalating price of cable, they cut the cord. Used to be viewers had no option, but now they do.

Universal is losing leverage. It’s got a decreasing percentage of overall mindshare. It is no longer a controlled market, today anybody can play. Physical is a de mimimis element of the business, despite all the hoopla about vinyl, CDs are moribund and the active audience that breaks acts does not listen to controlled terrestrial radio, but the open playing field of TikTok. Anybody can get their wares on streaming services, and the production of music has never been cheaper. In addition, although it took twenty years to prove it, the bottom line is there are a lot of overlooked quality creators out there. And they’re doing it on their own. While Universal consolidates, lays off people and puts out fewer and fewer records. In an expanding market you grow, but Universal is doing just the opposite?

The game has changed and Universal is playing the same one it did in the last century. Spending a fortune to break a limited number of acts. But now Spotify tells us the hitmakers have a decreasing share of the market. And the three major label groups can’t even break a new act. It’s not like the public isn’t embracing new music, but it’s the niche acts that major labels used to sign and develop that they started to overlook in the MTV moonshot era and now have no interest in. The majors are lighting rockets trying to light up the sky with new acts and the public is ignoring most of them while it forages on earth for ground-level acts.

It’s almost like the newspapers. Turned out they were not the only place you could get the news, never mind Craigslist undermining their classifieds business. Sure, Universal has its catalog, and that will always have value, but when it comes to new music production their model is out of date.

This is Napster come to haunt the industry. Once again, Big Music did not see what was coming down the pike, and then thought it could quash it. Daniel Ek saved the labels, but Spotify needed the labels.

If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, don’t expect it to win. Everything new and innovative comes from the outside, from independents. The majors believe they can hoover up anything successful. But now, you can go it alone. Not all do, but you can create a business without major label help, which is not even offered unless you make music that fits into a narrow paradigm, hip-hop and pop.

Also, you wonder whether the label is really on your side. So Universal’s artists were hurt when Grainge pulled their music from TikTok and that loss can never be completely recouped. Acts lost momentum. The compensation was secondary to the promotion. This is Internet 101, exposure trumps getting paid every day of the week. If you’re not in the marketplace, you’re done, because there are so many other options. I’m not saying that Universal and its artists should not get paid more by TikTok, I’m not saying I completely agree with TikTok that promotion on the service is equal to compensation, but I am saying Lucian Grainge misread the situation, saw it through an antique lens and didn’t realize the game was different this time.

So the end result is consumers, to the degree they remember, and who knows how many will, will have a bad taste in their mouth about Big Music, at a time when its image had recovered from all the fighting of technology of the past. Artists will be skeptical of their labels’ efforts. And most people just won’t care.

The name of the game is attention. Money comes after. You don’t undercut attention, never. Just ask Taylor Swift.

Netflix trailer: https://t.ly/kpQ5k

It’s creepy. And slow. And in black and white. And if this bothers you, stay away. But if in college you watched foreign films from the sixties, this will feel totally familiar.

The first thing you’ll notice is the black and white. Honestly, I thought it would be like “The Wizard of Oz,” turning into color at some relatively early point, but that proves to be untrue.

And the pacing… If you’re used to American television it will be interminable. When “x” is killed…they’d immediately cut away in America, but the camera stays on the scene, it plays out, you feel the slowness of time, which ultimately has you inside the mind of the killer and…

I had to look up the girlfriend, Marge, an antique name if there ever was one, placing the series in time, which is the early sixties. She’s attractive, but not drop-dead gorgeous, and she’s not dressed to show off her assets, but the performance is so spot on that you’re enamored of her character. Turns out she’s played by Dakota Fanning, whose name I know, but I could not pick her out of a lineup. There was a time in the seventies when I knew every actor, followed them up the ladder, watched their career blossom, back when the world of visual entertainment was comprehensible. This was before movie actors shifted to the small screen, before the small screen got bigger. When you could be comprehensive. When films were still sometimes highbrow, before they all became cartoons, lowbrow. I think Hollywood would be stunned by the size of the audience looking for something more. Generally speaking, today’s films wash over me. But I’ve been reading about “Civil War” to the point where I’m debating going to the theatre to see it, something I haven’t done in eons.

Then again, when will it be on the small screen?

As for what you lose in screen size, environment, with sixty plus inches now the TV standard at home, that’s no longer true. You don’t have to see it on the big screen, never mind share it with an audience. Yes, horror movies are great with an audience, but I always loved going to the movies in the afternoon, when oftentimes there were fewer than ten people in the theatre.

Now the great thing about movies, when done right, is you get involved, you leave the rest of your life behind, it’s a trip, you’re transported to another world. And you’ll get this same experience watching “Ripley.”

However, “Ripley” is a great advertisement for upgrading your television to OLED, the image is so sharp, you forget the power of black and white, which Peter Bogdanovich used so effectively back in the day. Do today’s kids even know who Bogdanovich was?

I may be the only person who is not completely thumbs-up on Andrew Scott’s lead performance. He’s kind of smug and at times obsequious and I didn’t always find his portrayal truthful, I can’t see a person acting exactly that way, unlike Dakota Fanning as Marge.

As for Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf. I expected him to be a perfect hunk, whereas he, like Ms. Fanning, is not drop-dead gorgeous, adding believability. The truth is very few people in life are so good-looking, and by casting them in films you separate the production from reality. Dickie is an intelligent rich kid, trying to separate himself from his family, that’s why he’s moved to Italy. Dickie is not a complete playboy, he’s not a doofus, he’s just too rich to have direction, a purpose in life. He’s not a bad guy, he’s not evil, unlike…

I retain only a few images of the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” yet I remember that Ripley was a duplicitous scoundrel, but not much more. So the series was somewhat fresh. Then again, it’s predictable. Then it’s not. The pacing can make it excruciating, just like life, which is alternately boring or moving so fast you want to slow it down.

Eliot Sumner is great as Freddie, I didn’t realize until just now, looking at his Wikipedia page, that he’s Sting’s son. Eliot can act. And he radiates a certain intelligence. And suffers no fools. He’s suspicious and then his suspicions are confirmed.

As for the detective, Maurizio Lombardi as Pietro Ravini… At times he seems all-knowing, at other times out in the wilderness, and the way he always fires up a cigarette… Ravini radiates control, he doesn’t care about you, just solving the crime.

And the hotel clerks… Every interaction is laden with meaning. Are they just evidencing their personality, are they suspicious, are they in cahoots with the police? Every interaction heightens your anxiety.

Maybe you don’t know creeps, maybe you don’t know sleaze. Maybe that’s what today’s elite college students are missing, having been coddled from birth. But the boomers… We’ve had contact with this type. Maybe hitchhiking, hanging at the bar with friends, people who you get a sixth sense about, want to stay away from. I lived with some guys who’d meet skiers on the hill and invite them to stay over, which I’d never do, I was always wary in the house when they were inside. Then again, the more open you are, the more opportunities you get. Whereas today everybody is suspicious, you can’t even walk to school. You’ve got to be street smart to survive, and too many kids today are kept from the street.

So watching “Ripley” is going down a rabbit hole. It’s not just another series to check off your list before you get to “Baby Reindeer” or another documentary about a subject you know all about anyway. “Ripley” stands alone, it’s got no context, it doesn’t fit in on the Netflix homepage, it’s an art film.

But a series.

Yes, in Italian films of yore they could employ this slow pacing, but that’s because not much really happened. But in ninety minutes, you can’t slow down like this, like you can in a series. This is the right pacing for the story.

“Ripley” plays just like a foreign film of the past, it sets a mood, makes you think, engenders conversation. It’s a starting point as opposed to an end point. You’ll get into it and then not want to shut it off. It’s both modern and of the past. Then again, people don’t change.

More like this please.

It was all about Post Malone.

People say they wish they were young again, not me. Maybe I wasn’t good-looking enough, maybe I didn’t have game, but when I think of all the time I spent at shows and bars alone, wishing I could connect with others, I cringe.

But now I have status. Not on Wall Street, but in the small world they call the music business. I saw Michael Chugg backstage and the night before I connected with Lana Del Rey over a favor she did for a friend of mine, I was the intermediary (yes, that sounds like a name-drop, but there’s no way to tell the story without her name).

So I feel pretty good about myself, except when I feel bad about myself. And my social anxiety has me running away from encounters as opposed to leaning into them, but the people in attendance…

They’re young, they’re not famous, so they’re flaunting what they’ve got, their bodies and their outfits, hoping they will impress others, and that’s a game I’m glad I’m past.

Now at least half of the attendees were women, I’d say more. And like that old song by the Marvelettes which the Young Rascals did a great cover of, there were short ones, tall ones, find ones, kind ones…

As well as overweight ones. And those who did poorly in the genetic lottery. No one could see their bank account, without talking to them you couldn’t perceive their personality, it was all about their look and that’s a tough game to play.

There wasn’t a lot of interaction amongst the groups, there never is. So you’re alone, until you’re together. You spend your whole life trying to find a significant other, certainly if you’re a man, women support each other, converse, whereas men will talk sports and not much more, most won’t even reveal major problems, never mind give support to others who are experiencing them.

So the people watching was nonpareil.

There are just so many people in the world. You realize it when you walk amongst the assembled multitude. This is not like a sporting event, where you go to your seat and stay there, you wander and see thousands of people and wonder what their story is, what made them come.

I spoke with four twentysomething Asian women from Pasadena who love country music.

I talked to a group of SMU graduates who told me they don’t like the Coachella people.

Yes, I sat at a picnic table eating an overpriced and substandard lobster roll which was sold to me by a woman who was the picture of “carny” and I saw an empty space and I engaged the others in conversation. Other than that, I didn’t speak to a single person out on the field all day, for hours. There were tons there, but I was alone. And I’ll be honest, for a minute there, longer, it was kind of depressing. We all need context. At least I had some backstage.

Once again, at Stagecoach it’s all about the headliners. They had a drone shot of the crowd in front of the Mane Stage on the screen and it was overwhelming, huge.

And the country headliners have broader support than the pop headliners, despite getting less publicity and respect. And although the absolute headliner was Miranda Lambert, the performance by Post Malone on the Mane Stage right before was the hit of the night.

Now if you’re a baby boomer, you can’t get over the face tattoos. And the thing about tattoos is once you get one or two, many cover their bodies with more. It’s not only his face that Post has inked.

And he seemed to come from nowhere, and had success in the hip-hop world, and I didn’t give him much respect until I saw a YouTube video of him playing some Hendrix material. First, he could really play. Second, the group’s performance gelled, it was a good facsimile of Jimi, with the forceful energy of “Are You Experienced.”

And Post got a ton of press, he was everywhere. But then he was living in Utah and despite the hype, his last two albums haven’t had anywhere near the amount of commercial success of the hits before them.

But the guy didn’t fade away. That’s the strange thing about the new era, for all the one hit wonders who can’t sell a ticket and disappear, there are others who have anemic recording careers who continue to do good live business and sustain in the marketplace.

And now, suddenly, Post Malone is everywhere. He’s on the Taylor Swift single and he’s at Stagecoach doing a “Country Covers” set.

Now my knowledge of country is an inch deep and not even two inches wide so if you play classics, I don’t know them. And I didn’t know almost any of the songs Post Malone played tonight, you can check the set list and see how you do here: https://t.ly/N-p6m

But the performance was so engaging that it didn’t matter. There was the energy of the band. And Post’s personality and delivery. He related like a friend without pandering. There was no “Hello Cleveland!,” but quieter conversation, in many cases with a humble character, other than when he was praising the special guests, Dwight Yoakam, Brad Paisley and Sara Evans. He praised them like a fan, it was not perfunctory, there was emotion.

The whole set had emotion. And I’m standing there thinking this guy has got a career, he’s never going to be broke down and busted, apply for a straight job and not get it because of his face tattoos.

And Post looked scraggly, he had an untrimmed beard, was wearing regular clothes, it was akin to the rock stars of fifty years ago as opposed to the spandex of the eighties and the sparkles seen on stages at Stagecoach.

In other words, Post Malone has a strange charisma, he’s likable, he’s a star.

Today all the press is about the recording industry. Sure, there are stories about Taylor Swift’s grosses, but most of the conversation is about Spotify Top 50 hits, what AI will do to the business, there’s a lot of doom and gloom.

But not in the live business. Yes, it’s hard to sustain yourself on the road, but I’d wager more acts than ever are doing so. It’s hard to build an audience. Think about it, you’re starting from zero and the goal is for people to notice you and pay you money? That’s a heavy lift.

But in the live business there’s big money. Headline in the desert and you could be paid eight figures. And ever since Beyoncé, one special show can pay endless dividends, boosting your career. And when you see someone live a bond is created that can never be achieved with a recording. And the promoters…are keeping you alive.

So in the end it’s a matter of whether you can sell tickets and whether you can deliver on stage, whether you’re a PERFORMER or not.

Performance is a skill. I saw Miranda Lambert back in 2010 in a club. Believe me, she delivers a far superior show today. And you can learn how to perform, but some people are naturals.

Like Post Malone.

So you can graze and catch the undercard at Stagecoach, but really it’s about the big names. It’s less about discovery than a victory lap.

And when these stars take the Mane Stage there are so many people there that you can feel the energy, it’s palpable, you’re thrilled to be there, to be included, that feeling is why you pay to go. When the act is on stage and the music surrounds you and you see them on the big screen…there’s a lot of technology involved, but the essence is humanity.

So the reason you live life is the surprises, the unknowns. If you walk out the front door you never know what will happen. And my mood completely changed when I encountered Post Malone’s performance tonight. Didn’t matter whether you were short or tall, good-looking or less attractive, even what you were wearing, it was about a bond between your brain and what was on stage, and if it worked…you can’t get that hit anywhere else.

What we’re selling is music. But it’s more than that. We’re selling life, dreams. When done right a performance is unforgettable. The only thing better is sex. We search for these peak moments. And Post Malone surprised me and delivered one tonight.