Not that you’d know that. The news story is how Songkick flubbed the sale by revealing buyers’ info. Songkick says nothing of consequence was revealed. But the public flips out over data breaches. Rightfully so. All of which means it’s hard to do big things on a big scale. And despite so many flaws in Ticketmaster’s system, with legacy spaghetti code impairing the introduction of both remedies and new features, ultimately it works. And that’s important.

Ticketmaster, the company you love to hate. Even at this late date. Not knowing that the enterprise is a front for the greed of the acts, that it’s paid to take the heat. But it’s like finally finding out your favorite baseball player uses steroids, or that Lance Armstrong was on dope, you don’t want to believe it.

Not that I don’t give credit to Songkick. It deserves praise for not only breaking the hegemony, but making sure Adele tickets did not get into the hands of brokers. As MusicAlly put it:

“Last night, Music Ally visited three of the most prominent secondary ticketing sites – Seatwave, GetMeIn and StubHub – to count how many tickets were available for the three artists’ UK tours (a fourth, Viagogo, does not show total ticket numbers for gigs, so we didn’t include it). Coldplay’s six UK dates had 17,631 tickets available across the three secondary sites; Rihanna’s six UK gigs had 9,290 tickets available; and Adele’s 12-concert run had 649 tickets for secondary sale. Or to put it another way, the average number of secondary tickets per Coldplay gig was 2,939, compared to 1,548 for Rihanna and just 54 for Adele.

Even with caveats – Adele is playing arenas while Coldplay and Rihanna are playing stadiums, and StubHub surprisingly had no Adele tickets available at all – those figures are startling.”

Needless to say, there are tickets available on resale sites now. But not many. So Adele succeeded in her mission, but don’t forget she employed paperless the last time around.

But before we move on to the interests and culpability of the acts, let’s get back to Songkick, the site that lists concerts and is trying to move into ticketing. The problem is in most cases they can’t get significant inventory. Because the only profit in most gigs is in the ticketing. As far as the revenue for sales, everything before the fees? That all goes to the act.

Welcome to the 2015 concert business. Which is why so many promoters are moving into festivals, it’s a much better way to make money, with much better margins. In both cases you take risks, the downsides are horrifying, but the upside in festivals is so much greater.

So if the only profit is in the tickets themselves, in the fees, why should the promoter share them? Why should they forgo the fees?

And there you have the major battle. That’s why the big ticketing companies are entrenched. Live Nation looks like a concert company, but really it’s a ticketing company.

How did we get here?

Well, there are two sides. The ticketing companies paid the buildings for exclusive contracts. And then the acts, worried about promoters ripping them off, insisted on large guarantees. And the fees are outside the acts’ percentage deals, there is no “commission.” However, none of this is written in stone, everything’s negotiable. So you have superstars getting kicked back ticketing fees and…

The fees. They all don’t go to Ticketmaster. Sure, Ticketmaster takes some. But there’s a cut for the building, and then the promoter…this is often the promoter’s only profit, as stated above.

Meanwhile, you can’t get a good ticket.

How can this be?

Well, we have the insanity of pre-sales. Wherein the act gets paid for sales windows. AmEx, Citi, fan clubs… By time the ad runs in the paper there may be fewer than a thousand arena seats left. So, good luck getting a decent seat if you don’t have the right credit card or know somebody. The fiction about sitting in your underwear on Saturday morning clicking to buy… That means you’re just completely out of the loop.

Then you have the issue of the price of the ticket itself. Generally speaking, they’re way underpriced for superstars, who don’t want to appear greedy. So these stars get pissed and sell tickets to brokers directly, as do promoters, to get a taste of the upside.

But enough history, enough shenanigans. How do we fix this? How do we get the seats to the customers at the listed price?

YOU’VE GOT TO WANT TO!

Despite all the lip service, acts are wary. Because they remember the Miley Cyrus paperless fiasco. She goes on tour and moms can’t get tickets for their kids and attorneys general start rattling their sabers and the next time Miley goes out she sells paperless tickets and finds out demand’s just not that strong. That’s right, the brokers help create the frenzy. While they’re asking stratospheric prices for tickets often you can still buy primary seats at face value. Miley didn’t sell out, her image and career took a hit, and ever since…people have been afraid of paperless.

But not Adele, BECAUSE SHE KNOWS SHE’S GONNA SELL OUT!

How many acts can guarantee this? Certainly Taylor Swift. But you’d be surprised how few guaranteed sellouts there are. And there’s more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to recapture the income going to brokers.

You can use platinum, VIP Nation. Sell the best seats for what they’re worth. Directly to those who want to buy them. This has worked extremely well, usually there’s a bonus or two attached, a laminate, a backstage tour, a meeting with the band, but that’s all just window dressing, these tickets are being sold for what they’re truly worth.

The Stones employ flex-pricing. Instead of charging low prices and having the brokers scoop up all the tickets, they start high and lower the price depending upon customer adoption. The longer you wait, the better price you might get. Assuming a plethora of people don’t want to pay a high price and eradicate all the inventory long before the gig plays.

And then there’s selective paperless. Paperless for just some of the house, the best seats.

Meanwhile, the building holds back seats for season ticket holders and…

I don’t want to educate you on all the ins and outs of ticketing, of the concert business. But the truth is it’s sophisticated, and with such thin margins, you’re either winning or you’re out. Everybody inside knows everything. Everybody outside knows nothing. This is not a technology issue, this is an INFRASTRUCTURE issue, as in how business has continually been done.

The acts don’t trust the promoters and the acts have short shelf lives but it’s the act’s name on the ticket…and now you’re aware of some of the competing interests involved, the thoughts that go through the artist’s head. Price tickets too high and not only do you not sell out, but you’re seen as greedy. Charge a low price and your fans complain they can’t get good seats, if at all, and you’re pissed that all that revenue goes to the brokers/resellers.

And that’s a business. Don’t buy extra tickets with the idea you’re going to sell them yourself. That’s just displaying your ignorance. Many shows aren’t really sold out, extra dates are added. A broker can sell only half of his inventory at an inflated price and doesn’t care if the rest of his tickets go unused.

And there you have it.

The best way to move forward is to charge what the tickets are worth. That’s what the Stones do, if you want to pay, you can get in.

Or in the alternative employ paperless or the Adele/Songkick paradigm. But then you run the risk that demand is not as strong as you believe it is.

But the truth is fewer and fewer members of the public are pissed off about all this. They’re not worried about on sale dates, the fact that shows go up a year in advance, they just wait until they’re ready to buy and…purchase their tickets from a broker, whether it be an individual agent or a corporation like StubHub. Hell, the resellers’ tickets are listed on Ticketmaster right beside the primary inventory.

People want the illusion of freedom. The ability to buy what they want at a low price and resell it with no loss. But try buying a hot tech product on launch day. And try selling it for full price a year later, even months later. The concert business is no different, it’s just that the inventory is evanescent. Once the date plays, pfft…there’s no asset left.

So I applaud Adele for her efforts here. Good work.

But it’s not gonna change the business, no way. Not now. It’s a good first step. But if most acts were truly concerned about their customers they’d follow Kid Rock’s example and charge twenty bucks a ticket. But despite Rock going out at this price twice, despite a ton of publicity, no one has.

Change can happen.

But people have to want it.

And it turns out most acts don’t want it that bad.

YOU’RE NEVER BORED

There’s always stimulation at your fingertips, whether it be Netflix streaming on demand or books delivered wirelessly to your tablet. We always wondered what it was like living in the pre-TV era, never mind the 1800s, when there were vast stretches of emptiness in your day. Now we marvel at the last half of the twentieth century, when we thought we were so up to date and so busy, not knowing what the internet would bring.

SCARCITY IS HISTORY

Music was the leader. Now it’s information. Used to be if you were into a subject you just couldn’t get enough, whether it was a mainstream topic or something purely niche. Now you can go deep into your niche for hours every day. Instead of wanting more, you’re not sure when to stop, when you’re sacrificing your life for your passion. Do you need to know everything? Can you know everything? And then you go to a party and realize you know nothing.

WE HEAR FROM MORE PEOPLE AND WE HEAR FROM THEM CONSTANTLY

Remember when the internet was going to eradicate personal contact? When we were all going to be lonely automatons sitting in front of a screen? Well, we hear from seemingly everybody we ever knew in our lives on a regular basis. Whether it be text/iMessage or e-mail or FaceTime/Skype or Facebook… We were lonely too long, and now we’re not.

EVERYBODY IS A STAR, AT LEAST IN THEIR OWN MIND

Used to be you needed to be anointed by a gatekeeper, a record label, radio station or TV outlet. Now you just need to decide you’re someone worth knowing about and begin posting all over the internet. The messages keep getting shorter. We went from blogs to Instagram, but people have a desire to be known, accepted and admired. The ceiling is incredibly low, the odds of breaking through your friend circle are tiny, but people keep trying.

A ZILLION CHANNELS AND THERE’S TOO MUCH ON

Remember when Bruce Springsteen claimed there were 57 channels and nothing on? Now there are unlimited channels, I keep hearing about cable outlets I didn’t even know existed, like ION, and we’ve got whole networks that live online, like Crackle. If you can’t find something to watch, you don’t have eyes.

FAMOUS AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE

With minimal communication avenues, very few people made it through the sieve, and when they did everybody knew their name, and usually their work. Now even youngsters don’t know who the people are in “People.”

FAME IS A GAME

Played best by the Kardashians. Who realize it’s not about content, but persistence. If you need to be famous, ply your trade each and every day. He who deigns to participate occasionally is destined for obscurity. Make music constantly. Communicate constantly. If you only do one thing, however great or important or outrageous, it will be forgotten by the next day, or soon thereafter.

THE GREAT MIGRATION

We’re loyal to each other, not the platform. We go where everybody goes. So we can leave not only AOL behind, but MySpace. Twitter’s already in the rearview mirror. Gaining an audience and keeping it is nearly impossible for a platform, unless it keeps evolving. Facebook bought Instagram and WhatsApp. Yahoo floundered and just added content to the same old paradigm and failed. This is not the old days, when you got a radio or TV license and you could just print money, seemingly eternally. Now, despite so many internet plays losing money in the advent, the key is to make money quickly, because odds are your time will soon be done, it’s the way of the web/world.

ARTISTIC CHANCES ARE OUT THE WINDOW

With so much online, with the difficulty of breaking through the clutter, those in charge of the purse strings don’t want to take risks, they want it safe. Which is why movies are high concept drivel made to play to young people around the world and why music is the same too. But what we know is all art is a fad, to be replaced with something new. But distribution is forever. So, unless there is a new distribution platform, the goal of the outsider is to get the ear of he or she who controls distribution to get them to take a chance when the tables turn.

ACCESS, NOT OWNERSHIP

Read yesterday’s “Wall Street Journal” about the future of automobiles:

Could Self-Driving Cars Spell the End of Ownership?

You’re gonna rent ’em, on demand. A pickup for a move and a Mercedes for a date. And they’re gonna show up without drivers, today’s Uber is just a way station. There is a need for keepsakes, people want to own souvenirs, but that’s what assets have become. This will cause a great leavening of society, when the rich realize their possessions are meaningless, everybody else can get the same experience on a whim. Assuming you can afford it. Income inequality is the issue of our day. And the more the rich keep flaunting their lifestyles, the more people see them online, the sharper the dividing line becomes. Either we fix this problem or America fades. Don’t take my word for it, look at history, the greater the inequality the worse the economy, because it’s the average person who buys the products and keeps the company alive. If you don’t feel inadequate and frustrated seeing how others live online, you’re not surfing. If the rich were smart they’d hide their lifestyles, but they’re looking for adulation and acceptance, its the human condition.

MORE INFORMATION, GREATER IGNORANCE

Most people don’t know late round investors get protected against losses when the company goes public and they don’t know you have a better chance of upward mobility in Europe. The irony is the more information we have, the more ignorant people become. And they’re susceptible to scams and misinformation, because they don’t want to believe things are as bad as they seem…they want to believe there’s an out.

THE RICH GET RICHER AND THE POOR GET POORER

With everything available, we gravitate to very few. And you may disagree with the picks, but you’re swimming against the tide. The twenty first century is about dominance. You own your sphere online, a superstar ballplayer makes eight figures a year. If you’re not reaching for the brass ring, you’re being left behind. We only have room for a few good men and women. Scratch that, a few GREAT men and women.

Music is turning into baseball. There’s no sense of history.

For all the fealty paid to classic rock, the truth is the past gets very little ink, even though it can dominate listening. And if you’re not the Beatles or Pink Floyd you may get neither, no attention and no streams.

And that’s just plain sad.

Last week Cynthia Robinson died and the only place it got notice was in the newspaper. You’d think the music press would be singing hosannas, paying tribute to a female rock star who paved the way, not a singer but an instrumentalist, even though she can be heard yelling ALL THE SQUARES GO HOME in the midst of “Dance To The Music,” a call to action in three minutes featuring this exclamation by Ms. Robinson that contained the essence of the us versus them sixties. You were either hip or you weren’t. You were either clued in or you weren’t. You either grew your hair long or you didn’t.

And for all the deserved attention paid to Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, they’d be the first to point to their roots, the bluesmen of the Mississippi Delta. And African-Americans did not disappear from the music scene, and one of their greatest exponents was one Sylvester Stewart, better known as Sly Stone, who married rock and blues and soul into a delectable concoction under the moniker Sly & the Family Stone that was undeniable.

It started with “Dance To The Music.”

And then Sly had a run of hit singles far outpacing that of Bieber and the wannabes, everybody knew the group’s tracks, black and white, we were all in it together, led by this guy who started off as a deejay and then produced the whitest of groups, the haunting Beau Brummels.

It might have started with “Dance To The Music,” but the apotheosis was “Stand!,” the spring ’69 LP that is never mentioned as one of the best albums ever but contains four classics that make up for the thirteen minute “Sex Machine,” assuming you need justification of Sly working it out at length. Hell, I’ll wager more sex was had to that funky number than the music of all the British Invasion bands combined. Well, maybe not. But unlike so much of the sixties stuff from the Limeys, “Sex Machine” still sounds fresh today.

And I’d be lying if I said I got it, even though it was hiding in plain sight.

Oh, I got the singles. Come on, how many times do you have to hear “Dance To The Music,” once? Tell that to all the wankers with bad voices and no changes who tell you to play their hour plus LPs over and over to get it. Sly grabbed you by the throat and didn’t let go, “Dance To The Music” exploded out of the car speaker.

And then came “Everyday People,” which was all about bringing us together as opposed to pushing us apart. It was the opposite of the blowhard lyrics about partying, rims and ho’s in today’s tracks.

I am no better and neither are you
We are the same, whatever we do

Ain’t that the truth. And “My own beliefs are in my song.” Maybe because Sly wrote it, and it was an era where what you said/sang was much more important than who you dated or how much money you made.

And on the flip side of “Everyday People” was the positively explosive “Sing A Simple Song,” with exhortations by Cynthia.

And then, in the middle of the summer of ’69, came the delectable treat known as “Hot Fun In The Summertime,” a song that put a smile on your face every time you heard it. Song of the summer? Make me puke, today’s construct is a joke, it’s purely about popularity. But Sly and his troupe encapsulated June to September in two and a half minutes, to the point where it still rings true today. Will we say the same about “Call Me Maybe” forty years from now? Two?

And speaking of funky, the next big hit was “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Which went all the way to number one, even though it sounded nothing like the poppy stuff dominating the airwaves at that time. From back when musicians were revolutionaries, making an individual statement as opposed to just following trends.

And when it looked like Sly was done, when he was becoming known for drugs more than music, he dropped a track so soulful it cut you to the bone. “Family Affair” is chilling, despite in some ways being so warm.

And then there was the last hurrah, 1973’s “If You Want Me To Stay.” And the drums might have been played by Andy Newmark and the bass by Rustee Allen but Cynthia Robinson persevered on trumpet, along with Jerry Martini and newbie Pat Rizzo on saxophones. Cynthia was a lifer, she counted, she was an integral part of the group.

But right smack dab in the middle of the band’s career was the aforementioned “Stand!”

I knew the title track, it got airplay, it was the kind of thing you leaned in closer to hear, back when every track of all time was not at your fingertips, when you waited for your favorites to emanate from the radio. We all need support and inspiration, and that’s what “Stand!” provides.

But I did not know the rest of the album.

But I did know this girl, who was alive with a twinkle in her eye, we talked in the library, occasionally on the phone, and in one of our conversations she revealed her favorite group was Sly & the Family Stone. Take that Jimmy Iovine, who thinks women need to be led to music, hell, they can lead us boys to it just fine.

And being the religious reader of the Sunday “New York Times” Arts & Leisure section that I was I noticed the band was coming to Madison Square Garden, I called her, did she want to go?

I think she wanted to see the band more than she wanted to see me, but in any event she said yes, and we ended up with tickets on the floor, back before all the ducats disappeared in pre-sales, when Regular Joes still had a fighting chance.

And this was back before Sly fell off the deep end, before he appeared late, if he deigned to appear at all. This was February 1970, before he got married on stage at the same venue. This was before the “Woodstock” movie…

The festival is still mentioned, but the impact of the flick is rarely talked about. Despite being the biggest rock festival of all time, few were actually there. But the movie played everywhere. And one of the highlights was when Sly and his band of merry-makers played I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER!

You’ve got no idea what it was like. Back when production was absent, with no backdrop nor lasers, when the music was enough and it wasn’t on hard drive, but played by the assembled multitude.

Boom laka-laka-laka, boom laka-laka-laka

We were standing on the seats, back when they still had those, and we were thrusting our arms in the air, being taken higher, it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.

But despite all the hits, few knew, I was suddenly a member of a secret society, I was instantly converted, inducted into the church, the religion had been waiting for my conversion, but I was unaware.

But soon everybody knew. That’s the power of the moving image, when it captures lightning in a bottle. Coolness and talent and…

Black women always worked. They had to put food on the table. They were not like white women staying at home playing mom while their hubbies went out to bring home the bacon. But when you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose. Which is why the biggest breakthroughs always come from the underclass, the underappreciated, who take chances and show us. Where are all the sisters testifying to the trailblazing of Cynthia Robinson? I don’t hear any. They’re myopically focused on white women from New York City, they’re really more about themselves than others, they just want to be stars, they want all the spoils, they don’t know how to be a cog in the machine, a brick in the edifice, an integral element of the production without which the whole thing collapses.

Sly Stone may be dazed and confused, burned out, but his legacy lives on. You only have to hear any of the foregoing tracks once and you get them.

That’s the power of music.

That’s the power of talent.

And Cynthia Robinson was THERE!

Cynthia Robinson – Spotify link

Nate Silver told me Donald Trump can’t win.

You remember Brother Nate, who called the last election which Mitt Romney thought he was gonna win and Karl Rove couldn’t believe he lost. Silver got it exactly right in the “New York Times,” which unlike a winning sports team didn’t give him what he wanted, so Silver decamped to ESPN, where he’s been marginalized.

But he’s still right.

It’s weird to see the old guard bumping up against the new, the baby boomers and aged Gen-X’ers being flummoxed by the digitally-savvy youngsters. MP3s were not embraced by oldsters until the iTunes Store. Hell, Adele just sold a boatload of CDs to the aged, and you’ve got an oldster-controlled media which believes what they say matters, when the truth is the data doesn’t lie,

Oh yes it does, you say! Numbers can be manipulated to say whatever you want them too, you can’t trust polls!

Which is why Silver aggregates them, and we can argue with interpretation, but raw data counts. And what the data says is Donald Trump has high unfavorables. He might have 20+% of the Republican electorate today, but when the losers drop out are their followers going to decamp to Trump? Not according to the data. Which also tells us this far out the polls are nearly meaningless.

So you can ignore the Trump show. It’s gonna get canceled.

But you’ve got the aged media reporting on what he says like it counts, which it doesn’t. Why does the sideshow always become the main show in America?

Not that Mr. Silver always comes down on the side of the Democrats, data is neutral, Silver said the Republicans were gonna clean up in 2014 and they did.

If anything, Silver’s predictive abilities are scary. The deflate us. They illustrate what we thought was exciting is not, that what we thought was up for grabs is not. And people like Silver can actually eviscerate hope and make it so people don’t vote.

But you shouldn’t argue with the data.

That’s the war in the music business right now. The youngsters cannot understand why they cannot get an honest accounting. Since everything’s sold and streamed online, shouldn’t the numbers be easily discernible, quickly, shouldn’t royalty splits be locked in stone? Of course not, because the record company model is based on theft, from the artist. There you have it.

But this won’t be forever. Because systems are getting too good. And young people won’t stand for it!

Remember when records were number one for eons?

That was back before SoundScan, when the charts were manipulated, when Tommy Noonan was the most powerful person in the record business. You’ve never heard of him, but no one seems to know the people who truly count.

Like Nate Silver.

His predictions should be on the front page of every newspaper.

But then what would the bloviators on 24 hour news channels have to say?

But the truth is that’s a dying paradigm. TV news ratings are already anemic. News is an on demand item. The only question is where are you going to get it?

Right now we’ve got chaos, with too many sources, but what we’re gonna see is consolidation. Just like there were six major labels and now there are three. Lucian Grainge is way more powerful than Walter Yetnikoff or Mo Ostin ever were, never mind Clive Davis. Clive Davis did a good job of creating his myth, but the data said he wasn’t making much money, which is why he was blown out at Arista.

It always comes down to the numbers.

But now there are more of them. And we’ve got better interpreters.

You see these are teachable skills. Statistics is known as one of the hardest subjects in college, to be avoided at all costs, but those who take it and build upon it end up ruling the universe. That’s what Facebook is based upon, data. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg cares where you went on vacation, what you ate for dinner? No, he just wants to be able to slice and dice this data ever so finely so he can sell it to advertisers. Zuckerberg is selling efficiency. Targeting consumers directly. And the more outlets he owns, the more Facebook and Instagram, et al, can’t be ignored.

Meanwhile, the hoi polloi are fixated on nitwit entertainers, whether they be Justin Bieber or Donald Trump. Bieber’s got power but he’s not exercising it for good, because he’s a know-nothing, and Trump is smarter but is pretty powerless himself. It’s artists who touch hearts and change minds. He or she who wrote that song that saved you from committing suicide…they’re the ones you’re gonna listen to. But today they’re not saying anything.

Which is why the techies are the new heroes. Because when emotion is fake, you fall back upon facts. And if you don’t believe in facts, if you can’t recognize the power of data, you’re doomed to be whipsawed by a culture wherein self-evident truths are more important than spin.

Nate Silver made a bad career move. He gave up his pulpit and sold his entire enterprise to ESPN. He thought he was gaining freedom, but really he was building his own prison. In a world where it’s nearly impossible to reach everybody, where most people can’t sing two Taylor Swift songs, why would you abdicate your perch overseeing the land? Why would you marginalize yourself?

And why would the “New York Times” let him go? It was the established players who wouldn’t let him write about sports, his passion, they pushed him out the door, to the detriment of both Silver and the paper. Nobody won.

And personalities count. The “Times” has new data reporters but they’re faceless and untrustworthy. It takes years to win people over.

And Silver has faceless writers on 538 who’ve earned no trust either.

But he’s free to do what he wants in obscurity.

But you’re free to inform yourself, you’re free to look at the world dispassionately and navigate it to your advantage.

Pay attention to the numbers. Interpreted by people who know the game and can make sense of them.

I used to be very afraid of Donald Trump.

Then I read Nate Silver.

Who hasn’t been wrong yet.

Are you gonna bet against Pixar?

Then don’t discount Nate Silver.

The world is run by a small coterie of people who truly know and understand the game.

Be one of them.

“Donald Trump Is The Nickelback Of GOP Candidates”

“Dear Media, Stop Freaking Out About Donald Trump’s Polls”