Don’t confuse your core audience with the public at large.

If you’re happy speaking to a small cadre of folks, by all means make an album every two or three years which will speak to your tiny audience. But if you want to be ubiquitous, if you want to be rich, if you want to be known…

An album has nothing to do with it.

Most people are casual listeners who go deep on an occasional act. Do they need to go deep via an album? When every streaming service lists the most popular tracks you’ve cut? Of course not.

You’re hanging with other musicians. You grew up at the record store. You reminisce about the days of yore, spinning “After The Gold Rush” or “Thriller” incessantly. But that was back when music was scarce and the album was all you could afford. When we all tuned into the same radio stations and MTV and were banged over the head with the same stuff. To say things are different now is an understatement, in the pre-Internet era the only way I could reach you with this missive was via snail mail, which was expensive, and I couldn’t even find you.

First and foremost you’re an artist, hewing to your own vision.

But then you survive on your audience.

If anybody tells you they’re satisfied with a small audience, ignore them. They’re afraid. Of the Internet feedback, of the hate, of the rejection. That’s what comes with success, your old friends get jealous and abandon you and your initial fans reject you and you feel lonely and…

But that’s what music stardom is, that’s what you should sign up for.

So think of your career through the public’s eye. People are overloaded with information, they’ve only got time for great, and they salivate for more and more on a regular basis.

Imagine if you could only speak with your girlfriend once a year. Via twelve letters written over the course of twelve months. With no feedback in between. Would that be satisfying? OF COURSE NOT!

But you want to text all day and Skype all night.

Why should art be any different?

You want to ride right alongside your listeners. You want to be in their consciousness 24/7. Most albums don’t sustain, just look at the sales chart for edification, they enter high and go right down. But a few sustain, not because the tracks are put in album form, but people want more.

Labels want albums, it’s easier to charge a lot with the bundle.

Artists want albums, because they grew up on them and they want to emulate their heroes and make a statement.

But the album is meaningless to the listener who’s been brought up on the iPod which was just killed and replaced with flash memory in a phone. The fan wants access. Everything you think is relevant may not be. Like that inane Apple leak about a new album format. People don’t want to own, they want access.

But fans are insatiable. Connect and they want more and more. Not only the studio takes, but the alternative takes, the live takes, the covers. Don’t think of albums as a profit center so much as the glue that holds your career together. You’ll get paid by a streaming service, quite handsomely eventually. But the goal is to utilize your recordings and the bond they engender to create and execute in other arenas and platforms.

He who hews to the past is destined for the scrapheap.

Or irrelevancy.

YOU WANT A HIT

It anchors your career. There are hitmakers and everybody else. A hit just means something ubiquitous that everybody listens to, chart numbers are unnecessary. Hits can come in a flash via inspiration, but oftentimes they require a huge amount of effort and craft. Are you repeating the verses? Is the chorus singable, is there a bridge? Strive for excellence in your own chosen genre, reaching the brass ring is what it’s all about.

DON’T LISTEN TO YOUR PEERS

They don’t want you to be successful, that would mean they are losers. They want to keep you down in the hole they’re in. Follow your dream, which is individual to you.

AMBITION

Without it, you’re toast. Today’s society is all about being a member of the group. Winners in art are singular. They stand alone, they endure the slings and arrows as well as reap the adulation. If you’re not dreaming big in today’s world, you’re not dreaming at all.

PUT OLDSTER ADVICE IN PERSPECTIVE

Wisdom comes with age and experience. But don’t forget the pre and post Internet eras are as different as the pre and post telephone eras. Not everything remains the same.

CREATE CONSTANTLY

There’s no such thing as a cycle in today’s world. Art is like life. Keep making, errors are tolerated as long as you follow them up with more work of quality. Today the key is to be remembered, because almost everything is forgotten. Don’t overthink and overlabor your efforts. Raw and honest works today, and it forges a connection between you and your audience.

DON’T GET LOST MAKING A LIVING

Don’t sacrifice your art to get paid, whether it be a day job or going on the road to fulfill your financial desires. Art is about sacrifice. You live on a subsistence level until you break through or you give up.

DON’T SCORN HITMAKERS, LEARN FROM THEM

Even if you don’t want to cut a Katy Perry-type tune, your career would be enriched by an hour with Dr. Luke or Max Martin. They understand the game, they understand a hit.

WORK WITH THOSE WHO’VE HAD SUCCESS

Cred in a producer is secondary to track record. Work with someone who’s been to the mountaintop and continues to journey there. They can give you a perspective no one else can.

COWRITE

Do it to learn, not to write a hit song. Those Nashville cats are the best in the business. Their songs might be saccharine or predictable, but they know the system. Once again, it’s all about learning.

DON’T CATEGORIZE YOURSELF

They rap in country songs. Avicii put country in EDM. Feel free to incorporate your fandom into your work.

THE WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY IS SMALL

You can only be the critics’ darling for a brief period. People will only check you out once or twice, then they’re done. Strike when the iron is hot.

CHANCES

People will listen to two new substandard works and then abandon you.

BODY OF WORK

It exists on Spotify. If you connect with a track, people will go deeper.

ALBUMS

Forget them. Unless you’re making a concept one, a statement. They don’t fit with today’s world. You drop one every other year when nothing in the news lasts longer than a week, in most cases barely a day? If you have a stiff album, it’ll take years to recover. Better to keep in the public eye by continuing to produce. You want to create a body of work, but it doesn’t have to be in album form, after all, the term “album” initially denoted a cardboard container for 78s.

YOU’RE ONLY YOUNG ONCE

You get worn down with age, you know too much. Test the limits. Follow your exuberance. Live and create to the limit.

SCREW THE SYSTEM

Unless you’re creating Top Forty hits, feel free to stand up to the powers that be. Too many businessmen, label people, agents and managers, are stuck in the old system. You can be dragged down by them, or stand up to them. This doesn’t mean you’ve got license to be a jerk, but standing your artistic ground is an asset. But it’s got to feel right to you, don’t be afraid to change or take input because you abhor criticism and believe everything you do is phenomenal, no one’s got that great a track record.

It’s overpriced.
It doesn’t do anything.
It’s a me-too product.
I don’t need it.
I don’t want it.

Sound familiar?

That’s exactly what we heard about the iPod back in 2001. And that went on to change music forever! You overpaid, the price came down, you replaced your original, you owned multiple iterations and you never played your CDs again.

I find the Apple Watch backlash hysterical. It’s as if we’ve got to repeat the movie endlessly, unlike in “Groundhog Day” never learning our lesson. Meanwhile, the press echoes our concerns and truth doesn’t out.

Bottom line, wearables are here to stay. I go nowhere without my Fitbit, soon I’ll replace it with an Apple Watch.

There goes my Rolex! Yup, the concept of wristwatch as jewelry is about to go out the window, that is if the only thing the watch does is tell time. Switzerland should be very afraid. Because youngsters have rejected it, high-priced timepieces cater to the elder classes, young people find them unnecessary.

But young people need to know the time. And for this they remove their mobile devices from their pockets in excess of a hundred times a day. You mean you don’t want to eliminate this behavior?

And they’re not only looking for the time. They want to read their messages, whether they be e-mail, texts, iMessages or… How convenient would it be to have all that information just a glance away?

Furthermore, applications unknown are on the horizon. What made the iPhone so great were the apps. As will be the case with the Apple Watch. It’s gonna do stuff you can’t contemplate.

Because you’re not a techie, you can’t see the future.

But you do want to be a member of the group.

So am I guaranteeing the Apple Watch will be a success? No, although I think it will be. I find it especially interesting that it only works with the iPhone for now, this is what boosted Apple to begin with, the ecosystem, sure you could eventually buy your MP3s from Amazon but why would you when iTunes featured seamless integration. Once again, Apple is going for a monopoly, and if that word scares you you haven’t read Peter Thiel’s recent screed, you probably have no idea who Peter Thiel even is.

So it comes with the ability to monitor your health, and to read and respond to your messages. The Apple Watch will do so much more, just wait and see.

So ignore the blowback. Ignore the press ginning up an uneducated story. Wearable devices are the next front in computing.

Oh, that’s right, you didn’t need a computer either. Until everybody was on AOL and you wanted to play.

It’s always about the killer app. Hardware is just a gateway to software. And it’s the integration of the two that ends up winning. Which is how Apple got to its vaunted position to begin with.

Sure, Samsung and Motorola can make watches. But they’re ugly and hard to use. The Apple Watch improves upon them the same way the iPod improved upon the Rio and the NOMAD. You don’t always have to create to break the model, sometimes redefining is just fine.

So who cares if Android ultimately competes. Who cares if Luddites don’t see a need. Who cares if you can buy a digital wristwatch for much less.

You should care that you live in an era where educated people are harnessing technology to make your life easier. Sure, they’re getting rich along the way, but you’re the one who’s paying them.

Because you need to have it. The same way you needed that Beatles album. You don’t want to be left out, you want to be a member of the club. And before long, you can’t live without it.

As for battery life… Let me see, my old Nokia lasted weeks and my smartphones just make it through the day. Am I really that worried that I’ve got to plug my watch in every night?

Pull back the lens. We’re at the advent of a whole new paradigm. One in which all our information is just a glance away and we’re monitoring our systems 24/7. Yup, your car’s computer will tell you not only your mileage, but how far you can go until empty. Don’t you want to know the same thing about your body?

You will. And so much more.

“U2’s Manager Responds to Backlash: If You Don’t Like This Gift, Delete It”

Speaking of tone deaf scumbags…

The spam problem is all over the news, I have to delete hundreds of messages a day, but when U2 does it it’s legitimate.

Ugh.

It’s almost like they don’t live in the real world, like they think their crap doesn’t stink, like since their intentions are good, we can’t question their actions.

Ever think of the consequences?

Meanwhile, they’re spinning plates at warp speed. They get “Rolling Stone” to write about old U2 music climbing the iTunes charts and then trumpet this b.s. all over the Internet. Give me the volume, not the chart number. If you think being on the sales chart counts today, you probably don’t have a Spotify account, never mind children addicted to YouTube.

But there you have America in a nutshell. If I just say something long enough and loud enough I win.

Used to be our favorite acts were part of the solution, not part of the problem, but that was back before they were all emulating Silicon Valley titans and their main goal was to get enough money to get away from their fans.

Meanwhile, at least Apple got the message:

“Apple Lets You Preserve Your Musical Taste With A U2 Album Removal Tool”

Make a mistake and correct it, don’t double down and say it’s the user’s fault.

Then again, tech is about improvement, tweaking while you go along, U2 is about making a full-length album in an era where no one has time to listen and trumpeting they’re getting paid, as if they didn’t have a rich deal with Live Nation and weren’t rolling in dough.

Come on, is that the big issue here? That no one will pay for art?

The truth is they are, via both YouTube and Spotify and its clones. And with the Internet distribution is cheaper and there are more ways to reach people and monetize. Because in every revolution something is gained and something is lost, but what’s gained is more important. Like my ability to speak back to the machine.

And don’t tell me you love U2, I could give a flying… Every band has fans. But does that give us them the right to demand our attention, to invade our devices? When Obama speaks is it illegal to tune out, does he push his words to our devices, HELL NO!

But I want to thank Oseary and U2. Because the result of their stunt will be that no one will ever do it again. Yup, it took an act this big for the public to raise its head and complain in unison that we don’t like push, that we want to pull the content we want when we want it and it’s the responsibility of distributors to heed our wishes.

So we’ve got power, rejoice in that.

And know that the issue is bigger than U2.

But it’s representative of the music business at large. Which has doubled down on its old paradigm, turning up the hype machine to a level so high most of us laugh. Every week they trumpet something new and desirable that we’ve got no problem living without. We don’t care about U2, we don’t care about Tom Petty, and we don’t want to hear their new music.

Most of us, that is.

And these ancient acts can’t get over the fact that the game has changed, that they used to have most people’s attention and now they don’t. It’s like they’re lost in the eighties and refuse to remove their blinders.

So either live in your niche or create something the rest of us want to pull from obscurity, that we want to luxuriate in and tell everybody about.

But viral is too hard for these people. Stunt videos no longer work. Buckling down and putting it all into the music is a challenge, especially when your lawyer is calling about your real estate or you want to buy an NFL team.

So now we’re in a game of who can shout the loudest. My inbox will fill up with naysayers, believers in U2. Bono’s team will keep the spin machine humming.

But they’re no match against the army of millions. Yes, the public that truly runs this world. Once distribution is flattened, once everybody can play, it’s truly a race not to the bottom, but of quality. And Guy Oseary and U2 just don’t get it.

Make a track that speaks for itself. Cut YouTube covers. Hell, I’ve gotten more e-mail about Miley Cyrus covering Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” than I have about U2’s new music.

Come down off your throne and interact with us.

It’s a whole new ball game.

And it requires a hell of a lot of work. There are no shortcuts. And too many old people just want to cry in their beer and lament the game has changed.

The game certainly has. And someday someone will harness this Internet and deliver something that speaks to everybody and means something.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to give props to Madonna. She needs a hit. So she’s working with Avicii and Diplo and the rest of those who understand the modern game.

To live outside the law you must be honest. U2 forgot this mantra. They want to straddle the fence, live on both sides. But either you sell your soul for a hit or you do it your way.

Then again, McDonald’s is floundering, because they thought burgers were for everyone, recession and trend-proof, just like Coca-Cola. But today’s young consumers have rejected both, just like they’ve done with U2’s new music.