2010. It scared the crap out of the acts.

Let’s be clear, promoters give the lion’s share of the money to the acts. Used to be the acts took it and said SAYONARA, but when nobody showed up…the money wasn’t enough.

Wanna get fired?

Be a manager who has his act playing to empty seats. Nothing will kill your rep quicker than an empty house. It’s the people in attendance, your hard core fans, who are spreading the word. If they look around the house and suddenly it’s empty…they stop talking about you.

This is the exact same problem facing Apple. It was its hard core evangelists who spread the word. But now even the hard core is worried Larry Ellison is right. We’ve seen the company without Steve Jobs before. And what is Tim Cook telling us? TRUST US! What, to have more hits? Do you think Carly Rae Jepsen is gonna have more hits? As for the classic rockers, there’s not a Top Forty station that’ll play their new music, which in most cases is bad anyway.

So in 2010, fans decide not to show. Primarily because concert tickets were too damn expensive. You want how much to sit in the way back?

This isn’t the seventies anymore. Where fans were thrilled just to be inside, who’d sit with their backs to the wall in the upper deck, happy. If you can sell the upper deck at Staples Center, you’re the biggest star on the planet. No one wants to sit there, above the three layers of luxury boxes. Unless the seats are so damn cheap.

Scaling.

That’s the first thing the acts caved on. Sure, you can charge a ton for up close and personal. But as you go back, prices have to drop. Doesn’t matter how famous you are, what you did in the past, otherwise it’s better to sit home and watch it on TV. Furthermore, with all the add-ins, it’s rarely cheap at all back there. Which is why you’ve seen more all-in pricing in the back.

As for pricing in general?

It came down.

Because it’s not about this year, but next. If you take all the money now and then no one comes back, how you gonna pay your mortgage, how you gonna afford private school for the kiddies?

Not that there are no longer guarantees. Sometimes sky high. But the deal is different. Everything’s in the pot. All income. Platinum, sponsorship…

Furthermore, the acts provide tools. Content that can be used to sell tickets. Video clips that can be pushed out to mobile phones, to aid conversion.

Yes, acts are working on it, because this is how they make their living, not from record sales.

Furthermore, the fan is doing what the promoter was unable to achieve. Yes, while acts were pitting promoter against promoter, driving up costs, suddenly the fans said NO MAS! They were sick of being screwed. It wasn’t a good deal any longer.

Suddenly, promoters and acts are on the same page.

They’re all about selling tickets.

P.S. It’s no longer about more. That was the job of the agent, GET ME MORE! Now it’s about smart.

P.P.S. If Apple releases a cheap iPhone on September 10, the company has another chance. Otherwise, it’s BlackBerry. You wanna know why? Because of what happened with the PC wars. It was all about software. Apple was saved in computerland by the Internet, where it was all about the browser, where the platform became unimportant. But if iPhone market share continues to shrink, appwriters will stop creating content for the iPhone, or will do so much later, driving people to Android. Yes, Apple has all the profits in smartphones today, but if you believe that guarantees profits tomorrow, you believe an act that overcharged and played to an empty hall has a long, profitable career in front of itself.

“Larry Ellison slams Google, hints Apple is doomed without Steve Jobs”

“character: strength and originality in a person’s nature”
—New Oxford American English Dictionary

It’s what you do when you lose.

Everybody’s got a plan. But what happens when it goes haywire, when you hit roadblocks? Do you fold your tent or find another way, like water.

Water. Blocked one way, it will find another. And it doesn’t care if you’re awake or asleep, if the temperature rises or falls, it moves constantly. Like life.

That’s what school is about. The separation of winners and losers.

I feel sorry for the underclass, going to the half-baked public schools where there’s no money for a better path, never mind parents and teachers behind the scenes, pushing their students forward.

Yes, it’s not about crying you didn’t get 2400 on your SATs, but what you do when you don’t get these results.

Don’t worry about the winners, those who do achieve this number and go to Harvard or Yale. They’ll fail. They won’t make partner at the law firm, the hedge fund they’re working for will close down, everybody meets adversity in their life, but what you do about it is the essence of your character. Sure, cry in your beer, complain to your buddies, and then pick yourself up and go at it again, it’s the only way to win. And if you’re not attempting to win in this world, you’re gonna lose, it’s guaranteed.

This is not an economy with guaranteed jobs. Hell, you’re lucky if you can get food stamps. The safety net is eroding and it wasn’t that good to begin with. You’ve got to be ingenious, you’ve got to find a way to keep moving forward.

And don’t attack a problem the same way once again. If someone doesn’t like your demo, don’t send it along with a pizza. Ignore that person and make something happen on your own. Are you capable of that? Because that’s what it takes.

What Irving Azoff has that you don’t is he sees two steps ahead. Whatever he tells you he’s going to do…that’s already history, or just a stepping stone in the next project. That’s why he’s a winner. As for all you decrying his methods and personality…what did Don Henley say, “He may be Satan, but he’s our Satan.”?

And Michael Rapino… He was unafraid to go up against Michael Cohl, Live Nation’s biggest shareholder. Fear is not acceptable at this level.

And yes, everybody’s friends, just like Kevin Spacey feeds the protesters, if you can’t get along with your enemies, you’re going to have a very short shelf life.

But they don’t teach character in school. It’s something you get from your parents, it’s something you gain from experience. If you’re making up tales to explain your losses and disappointment you’re missing the point. It doesn’t matter if you got screwed, how it went down, you lost and now it’s your job to win.

And winning rarely comports with societal standards, Howard Stern doesn’t win awards, but he make more money than the rest of the deejays. And do you want the bragging rights of a SoundScan number one or a long career? Frequently, they’re not the same thing.

If you’re concerned about appearances, if you think the clock ever runs out, you’ve got no idea how the game works.

Character is built by adversity. It teaches you there’s more than one way to skin a cat. And that just because you go hungry today, that does not mean you will starve tomorrow.

As for the acts… You don’t want to meet them. Because they know these lessons better than anyone. Because it’s almost impossible to make it. Talent? It’s plentiful, dime a dozen. But the perseverance in the face of astounding odds, that’s a different skill.

So many acts’ histories are riddled with duplicity. They fire the manager who got them there, but the only way they can move forward is by upgrading. Sorry, but it’s the act’s one and only career, it must be done.

You’ve got to stand up for your rights. You’ve got to give to get.

Your goal is to get into the game and stay there.

Kevin Spacey knows that. At least his character in “House Of Cards” does. If I get one more e-mail, read one more report of a celebrity bitching about negative comments on Twitter and the general hate on the Web, I’m gonna laugh. It goes with the territory. It means people are paying attention. Get over it.

And sometimes you are wrong. Spacey’s character is mocked by Bill Maher, correctly.

But Spacey neither complains nor fights. He knows it’s just momentary chatter. That if you don’t make mistakes you’re not playing. That there’s always another day.

A Save-the-World Field Trip for Millionaire Tech Moguls

And you wonder why no one wants to work in the music industry.

I want you to click on the above link. Yes, take the time. That’s the dirty little secret of the web, nobody ever clicks through, no one wants to waste another moment of their precious life digging deeper into what you think is important, we’re all curators of our own lives and if we let you take control of the joystick we’re gonna end up far from where we want to be.

Okay, are you there?

Just like the words say in the above left-hand corner, “Hover over photo for names”.

These are the people running the world.

Jay Z, selling out to Samsung? Doug Morris, in a holy war with Universal? They’re pipsqueaks on the road to nowhere, driving their Yugos as those truly in control blast by in their Teslas or their private jets.

This article is all bout charity:water. Which is a good mission. And too much time is spent saying they chartered a private jet. And to tell you the truth, the article is essentially unreadable. And misses the point. It’s not about charity, it’s about power.

I know some of these people. Mostly by accident. They found me, since I cover their beat, or I met with them at the Soho House and they introduced me to their brethren.

And the one thing I’ve got to tell you is not a single one of them has a boss. Not one! Not only do they do what they want to, they make it up along the way.

These are rock stars. Not those phony, over-marketed airbrushed people you see featured in media. Hell, most people have no idea who the folks in this photo are. And that’s just the way they like it. Because fame comes with scrutiny, it deflects the mission.

And the mission is to change the world.

Do you think the contestants on “X Factor” are changing the world? Hell, even Simon Cowell, he of the many millions and impregnated girlfriend, isn’t changing the world. These are the disrupters. Who believe nothing is sacred and fly around the world in private jets achieving their goals.

Oh, don’t focus on the trappings. They don’t. They don’t have the time, because they’re working too hard. One of the people in this photo flies private so he can get an audience with those who are otherwise unreachable. They tell him they’re going here or there and he offers up his plane, says he’s going that way, so he can get one on one time with the rich and powerful. Most of whom you don’t know the name of. That’s the difference between tech and entertainment. Entertainment is all about me, filling the hole of inadequacy by letting others know how much better you are than them. Tech too is about me, but it’s mostly revenge. Against everybody who never took you seriously, who picked on you in high school, who wouldn’t give you a date.

Interestingly, musical artists could be just as powerful as the tech elite. Even more so. If they only took up the reins. Instead, they’re playing to gatekeepers. But Uber doesn’t ask permission before it enters a market, it just goes there. And all Jay Z got for his deal with Samsung was some publicity and a wad of cash. Publicity fades, faster than ever these days, and the amount of cash involved is chump change to Samsung.

Once upon a time, the people in this photo wanted to work in the music business. Because that’s where you wrote your own rules, where you could do it your way and make millions. Back when the labels weren’t owned by conglomerates and concert promoters were independent. It was a giant casino game, driven by lanky men and women who could not be told what to do. Who thrived on sex and drugs and alcohol and told us all about their exploits. We wanted to be them. They sang about freedom, it was the ultimate goal. Now the ultimate goal is to work for someone else who tells you what to do so you can get paid and go on vacation and flaunt your wealth. Huh?

As for the people in this photo, they couldn’t work in the music industry. They wouldn’t be let in.

Oh, Troy Carter manages Lady Gaga, but he’s invested in more tech companies than you can list. And Nathan Hubbard may run Ticketmaster, but he got an MBA at Stanford and if you think Ticketmaster is all about music, you’ve never heard of sports.

Music is a self-satisfied club run by baby boomers who are trying to eke out personal cash, even though they’re oftentimes working for a public corporation. It’s truly about me and there’s very little giving back. Whereas the charity:water folks already have enough money, their goal is to mess with the system. Remember messing with the system? Whether it be Abbie Hoffman or Country Joe or the Jefferson Airplane or the Chicago 7/8, that’s what smart young people did back then.

Instead, you do covers of hits on YouTube, even though these hits have the lasting power of a stick of gum. And then you spam everybody telling them to pay attention, ironically utilizing the services the charity:water people established. And then you complain that you can’t get paid. That it’s Daniel Ek’s fault.

And before him it was Shawn Fanning. And then it was the fans and it was everybody but yourself. Ever think that you might be the problem?

Yes, music has more power than the money or thoughts of any of the tech elite. But it only works when it’s independent, when it says something, when it becomes indispensable to the listener as opposed to radio fodder.

And it hasn’t been that way for a very long time.

Power.

That’s what the artists used to have. That’s what they’re leaving on the table. It’s as if Napster was started by the Fortune 500, in order to divert artists from their true calling, delineating the human condition and wielding the sheer numbers of their audience to exact change.

In other words, if you don’t think kids stopped the war in Vietnam, if you don’t think they were aided in this process by musicians, then you’re purchasing the right wing canard that the sixties never happened.

I know, I know, I’m late to this series.

But that’s the Internet age. Wherein everything is thrown against the wall and very little sticks but that which does lasts forever.

In other words, if you’re all about the first week SoundScan numbers, the initial blitz of publicity, then you’re missing the point. Completely. You’re focusing on the here and now, and in the connected era, we’re only concerned with that which lasts.

My favorite part is when the twenty five year veteran congressman walks from the education bill he fathered because he just can’t handle the process. That’s the story of America, everybody wants the riches but nobody’s willing to do the work, the heavy lifting, that which makes you sweat and grunt when nobody’s paying attention. Yes, if you can’t get YouTube clicks for it, nobody wants to do it. But those winning tomorrow are building their resumes off the radar screen today, because nobody pays attention to you when you’re on the way up, only when you’ve hit the top of the totem pole.

Sure, money is power. But if you pursue it and it only…you end up with your bank or your corporation or your daddy’s business, paying lobbyists to ensure your future, when the real power lies with those who put up roadblocks in your way.

In other words, you can learn a lot about the game by watching “House Of Cards.” Just like Mike Ovitz educated his troops with Sun Tzu’s “Art Of War.” If you don’t study the game, you can never win. But Ovitz made a mistake, he tried to be bigger than he was, someone he was not groomed to be. Ovitz was an operator who specialized in extracting spoils from the manufacturers of entertainment. Put him in as number two on the other side of the aisle and not only does he fail, he’s forgotten. Because it’s not what’s in front of you that will kill you, but what’s behind. While you’re playing to your “fans,” everybody you screwed on the way up is out to get you, it’s the way of the game.

And “House Of Cards” is no “Sopranos.” It’s one-dimensional. It’s about the story of power, not nuance. Sure, there’s some evidence of the human condition, but really it’s a cold, hard look at the sausage factory. Almost too scary to watch. You think you want to screw Robin Wright, because you’ve seen her visage on TV, but she’s a cold-hearted bitch.

In the show that is. She’s a great actress. She can play vulnerable in “Forrest Gump” and heartless here.

But the truth is if you want to succeed you’ve got to be manipulative.

Unless you’re an artist. An artist floats above the fray. His manager and agent can make deals, but the artist must be above it. Because once you owe, you’re part of the game. And if it’s about winning and losing, you’re missing the point.

It’s about surviving.

That’s the difference between those who still have jobs in the music business and those who’ve been cast aside.

It’s a skill.

And it emanates from power.

And you think you know the game because you read the trade magazines.

You’ve got no idea.

P.S. Buzz. Don’t be afraid to shoot your wad all at once if what you’re proffering is a 10. There are almost no 10’s around.

P.P.S. As Kevin Spacey said, Netflix killed P2P with “House Of Cards.” With all of it available instantly, why bother to steal when Netflix is so damn cheap to begin with and if you really need to beat the system you can borrow a friend’s password.

P.P.P.S. We’re seeing a change in the nature of storytelling. Used to be TV series were strung over such a long period of time that it was hard to maintain continuity, and two hour movies were king. Now movies have sacrificed story for explosions and these new extended dramas are king. People are hungry for story. He who delivers it wins. That’s the power of entertainment.