This is forever. You can’t manufacture virality. Remember “Gangnam Style”? People weren’t even interested in the follow-up video. Quick, name it! (It’s entitled “Gentleman,” and if you know that you’re entitled to automatic qualification for the next hobby horse nationals. Meanwhile, “Gentleman” does have 1.6 billion views on YouTube, but that does not mean its […]

You have to sign more acts in more genres and stay with them for many years. That is the only way for the major labels to maintain market share. They just aren’t making enough bets. They’re still mired in MTV thinking. I.e. there are a handful of universal hits and you want to control them. […]

Whose idea was this? My research has not yielded the backstory, but that’s the star of the evening. It’s always about the idea more than the execution, and this one was brilliant, because it has an afterlife. Jimmy Kimmel told me it was not about the show, but creating viral moments that live online. That’s […]

I want to hear about it from someone else. If you need to tell me how big you are, send me your reviews, then you can’t be that big or great to begin with. I know, this sounds just the opposite of today’s overwhelming world with a million messages and a fight for attention, but […]