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It’s a cultural phenomenon. And it wasn’t built by the press, but word of mouth. And it was dropped all at once, it wasn’t about marketing, maintaining subscriptions over months, the work stood alone. And it wasn’t a trifle, like “Ted Lasso.” “Baby Reindeer” fits no preordained slot. But it’s the biggest thing in media today. Bigger than Taylor Swift. Bigger than any record. Bigger than any movie. And you’ve got to see it.

That’s why I watched, word of mouth. I follow the new streaming releases, I was aware it came out, but I wasn’t titillated to the point I needed to see it. But then my inbox… I started hearing from people I never hear from, testifying. And the quality of the e-mails was different, not just this is good, watch it. To the point where I had to partake.

Now the image of this series is contrary to its content. What I mean is many believe it is grisly, and they don’t watch horror movies. But that’s not what it is. Yes, “Baby Reindeer” is intense. But what makes it so interesting is it’s more than a stalker series, it’s about the interior life of a Scot trying to make it as a comedian and failing. And his ups and downs along the way.

Donny has compassion for Martha. We live in a world where compassion is absent from the winners in the world, as Steely Dan would put it. We’re told to be like Elon or Diddy, blaze our path to billions and forget about collateral damage. The goal is to be above the law as opposed to being a part of society. Actually, despite making their money from society, these titans want nothing to do with the great unwashed masses. They live behind gates, fly private and vacation on islands most people have never heard of, when they’re not cruising on yachts. They compete with each other in a contest of accumulation that has no real value, that no one really cares about, and then they die. He who passes with the most money and toys does not win, believe me. As a matter of fact, the richer you are the fewer friends you’ve got. You might have sycophants, yes-people on the payroll, but friends? You’re too suspicious to have friends. But the rank and file?

Donny has a dream. Is it achievable?

My inbox is filled with believers. Yes, they believe they can make it in music via sheer will. If they want it enough, if they believe in themselves enough, they can break through. They DESERVE to break through! But this isn’t how life works. This is naive. And ultimately Donny realizes this.

Now when you enter the competition, when you get into the arena of major league of entertainment, you’ll be confronted with hustlers, liars and those who will take advantage of you. Generally speaking, trust no one other than yourself. If you don’t have portfolio and someone takes an interest in you, beware, they want something from you. But oftentimes you’re blinded by the access and supposed opportunity, and you succumb. After all, your buddies back in the hinterlands wouldn’t believe it, here you are in Tinseltown, making it, only you won’t, almost nobody does.

Meanwhile, you’re falling behind financially. Donny works in a bar. He’s going nowhere fast. You can’t be working on Wall Street and simultaneously try to make it in entertainment, entertainment takes all your efforts, and that usually isn’t enough.

So it all begins with compassion. Donny feels sorry for Martha. But the thing about life is a certain portion of the population is positively insane, and you don’t know exactly who is.

And despite influencers parading their lives all over social media, in truth most people are closeted, not only sexually, but personally. You’ve got to hang with a guy for months, usually years for them to feel comfortable enough to reveal their inner truth. They’re afraid of being judged.

Now what makes “Baby Reindeer” so riveting, so interesting, is it’s a true story. Once again, the stalking is just the come-on, Donny’s interior life, his choices, his shame, his worry about being found out are the essence. But you won’t know this unless you see it.

So I’m watching “Baby Reindeer” and asking myself if this is “Tiger King,” you know, the docuseries we all watched at the beginning of lockdown that most people pooh-pooh today. But lockdown is in the rearview mirror, and the days are getting longer, it’s warming up, “Baby Reindeer” is not just a trifle for winter viewing. “Baby Reindeer” would be successful no matter what time of the year it was released.

This is what we’re looking for. Something visceral, something real. In a world where big media believes we want cartoons. Where we’re fed a constant diet of entertainment fluff about people we don’t know about or don’t care about. Feel good if you get ink, but it’s got very little influence. How many people who are not Swifties checked out her new album? I’d posit very few. Whereas media would have you believe everyone in America is salivating over ‘The Tortured Poets Department.”

Press doesn’t matter anymore in an America that is hyped-out. So you hired people who got you into a publication that most people don’t read anyway. We’re subjected to your punim all over the internet, we’re angered by the onslaught as opposed to enticed. We’re looking for something new and different, something that pushes the envelope, that pierces the veil. We don’t want to hear about the shenanigans of celebrities, we want something meatier, that makes us reflect upon ourselves, that makes us feel part of overall society.

Think about this. The only universal thing we’ve got is politics, Trump and Gaza, and many are burned out on them to boot. But along comes a TV series, in a world where media still believes movies in theatres is the highest art form, despite the words of Jerry Seinfeld, and it penetrates the national psyche, to the point where so many people are talking about it you’ve got to check it out too.

We’re looking for something so personal that it becomes universal. The actions and questions of Donny? We have those too. Do we chuck the dream? Do we employ sharp elbows? Do we question our sexuality?

If someone came up with “Baby Reindeer” out of thin air, no one would believe it. Truth is stranger than fiction. And that’s what makes “Baby Reindeer” so intriguing. You keep self-checking, thinking something is ridiculous, just an obtuse plot point, and then you realize it truly happened.

And Donny is worried about his image at the bar, but the question is can you cast aside your image and be the real you?

Most people never can. But that’s the goal.

If you haven’t seen “Baby Reindeer” watch it. First and foremost to be part of the discussion. In truth, we all want to be a member of the group, we wall want commonality, something which is extremely rare these days. But “Baby Reindeer” has provided it.

It’s always the left field and different that we’re interested in, that brings us together.

That’s the power of art. Something which has been capitulated in music and movies today, playing to a market.

“Baby Reindeer” doesn’t play to a market. It’s sui generis, you’ve never seen anything exactly like it.

And either you know what I mean…

Or you haven’t seen it yet.

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.