U.S. Album Sales Hit Historic Lows

Huh?

If you don’t know it’s about the single, you’re still listening to “Sgt. Pepper” on vinyl. Wait a minute, maybe you’re one of those people who believe the vinyl revolution is gonna conquer our society and you truly are listening to albums, albeit the National and other modern acts, on your turntable, or maybe you’re one of those people stocking up on cassettes, you’ve heard they’re making a comeback too, right?

Don’t extrapolate from your musical addiction to the entire world.

The entire world doesn’t live and breathe music, doesn’t give a whit about your so-called career and only has time for excellence, because they’re so overbooked, their online calendars look like the Rosetta Stone.

As for those people talking about streaming cannibalization, keep attacking Spotify… THAT’S NOT THE PROBLEM! YOUTUBE IS!

So I’m sitting with Daniel Ek in Stockholm. Is he worried about Jimmy Iovine and Beats?

Not really. Oh, he’s aware Jimmy’s a marketer nonpareil. But there is an issue of infrastructure, you’ve got to have it to scale, and Spotify has got the same wireless deals in many territories, and conversion rate is not fantastic. Yup, it has to be a new contract and it only lasts for a short while and if you think Beats’ deal with AT&T or Google’s deal with Verizon, both rumored heavily, are going to squash Spotify instantly, you still think that Apple is going to kill us all with a streaming service. Hell, I’d be more worried about Amazon, with its Prime. They’re going after Netflix!

What I’m saying here is music streaming comes free with the new Microsoft OS. Which may be a failure, but has still sold millions. Traction? NONEXISTENT!

Because the big streaming kahuna is YouTube. That’s where the under 25’s go for music. And this is your problem artists. You’re getting paid a pittance. You want your listeners to go to Spotify, you’re just too ignorant to say so. Kind of like the labels who wanted to kill P2P downloading while proffering no alternative.

That’s what’s great about Spotify and its ilk. They’re ahead of the marketplace. And maybe Jimmy can convince everybody they need a subscription, something Spotify is seemingly unable to do, knowing 1’s and 0’s but seemingly nothing about marketing.

But the point is don’t confuse yesterday with tomorrow. Don’t believe we’re going to grow a middle class of musicians whose names are known by everybody. No, we’re gonna have superstars and niches.

The superstars of tomorrow are gonna be much bigger than those of today. That’s the lesson of “Gangnam Style.” Online, everything is available, and if it catches fire, it can burn down the whole world.

But there won’t be twenty “Gangnam Style”s a year. Nowhere close.

As for streaming impacting album sales… Once again, if you’re going to point your finger at any service, it’s YouTube, not Spotify, et al. The views on YouTube dwarf the streams on the dedicated music streaming services.

But if you are streaming…

Ever notice on YouTube it’s never whole albums? Even Vevo, the label site, is only a track at a time. Sure, you had to buy the album to hear the track in the nineties, but that was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO! MORE!

The album is dying, despite what the aged and the Luddites and the labels that make their profits from them have to say. Because they’re a bad fit for today’s listeners. No one’s got that much time to waste. No one wants to hear that much bad music. No one wants to listen to your album ten times to get it. That’s what we did when we had no cash and could only afford one disc, play it ad infinitum, now we just play what’s phenomenal.

Yup, the album is dying and you can point your finger anywhere you want to, but you’re best off pointing it towards yourself. Robin Thicke has the song of the summer but only 175,000 people in a country of over 300 million want the album? Hey, do you think there’s something wrong here? As for the Spotify decrier Thom Yorke, it’s like Atoms For Peace never even came out. By the way, did it?

If you do something great, people are interested. They’ll listen to your album if it’s good through and through and they’re fans, but combine those two factors and you come up with a tiny number.

We’re in the midst of a revolution.

YouTube killed P2P. Spotify, et al, are providing a legal solution.

The future is here but you continue to whine that it doesn’t look like the past.

Good luck!

Avicii – Wake Me Up

Avicii and…Incubus?

Add in failed artist Aloe Blacc and you end up with a track that’s selling faster than “Blurred Lines” in the UK.

You know, the song of the summer (or is that “Get Lucky”?), Robin Thicke only managed to sell 175,000 copies of his new album this week. And you know about debuts…it’s down, down, down from there. Seems nobody’s a fan of the artist, only the fan. In other words, Robin Thicke is this year’s Carly Rae Jepsen. Going from obscurity to history just that fast, with a moment of mainstream pop visibility in between. Is this any way to run a business? Especially when the hit was essentially a rip-off of a Marvin Gaye track to begin with?

Now if you find an oldster who claims to love EDM, he’s got a ponytail and a seventeen year old girlfriend. Nobody hates electronic music more than baby boomers, who believe they control the media and the last time anything good happened in music was 1969.

Not that it wasn’t better back then, it truly was. But there’s a chance EDM is another spark, another British Invasion so to speak, when we heard Herman’s Hermits we could not envision Cream, hell, when we heard “For Your Love,” we could not envision Cream, but that’s what we got, along with a plethora of acts so inventive they’re still plying the boards today.

If you told me a year ago, just a few months ago, that this year’s summer EDM smash would be cowritten by a rocker from Calabasas and sung by a black guy and sound closer to the country-like songs of Queen than Skrillex, I would have laughed you out of the room.

But that’s what “Wake Me Up” is.

Not as instantly infectious as “Get Lucky,” if you give “Wake Me Up” thirty seconds, you can’t stop playing it, at all, you put it on endless repeat, forever.

The acoustic guitar intro would never indicate you’re hearing the latest work of a world famous millionaire deejay. It sounds closer to Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” than it does mindless repetitive drivel.

But at 1:11 when the song explodes with electronics, you’re not only surprised, you’re thrilled. I don’t care if you’re six or sixty nine, you can’t help but move your body, you feel the joy of life, something that only music can do so well.

And when the track quiets down again at 2:00…you think maybe we’re returning to the introspective singer/songwriter days of the seventies.

You know what a hit song is…

Not something that looks good on paper.

Not something you need to hear ten times to get.

Not something you need to be dunned into listening to.

BUT A TRACK YOU GET THE FIRST TIME THROUGH AND CAN’T STOP PLAYING!

So how come everybody in America doesn’t know “Wake Me Up”?

Because the music industry in the USA has blown its chance, it’s burned people out, selling them mediocre, me-too again and again. Whole swaths of the public have tuned out tunes. They haven’t got time for them, they’d just rather watch television.

And the solution is not apps with Samsung. It’s not wall to wall television promotion. It’s a simple formula, just do something so new and different that it’s indelible, that you eat like chocolate and you share like marijuana.

Now “Wake Me Up” is not “Get Lucky.” It’s not a stone cold, certified classic. But unlike “Blurred Lines,” it makes you want to hear more, to see what Avicii is up to. It’s the HBO effect, gain our trust and we’re open to everything you wanna do.

If you’re not throwing your arms up in the air and stomping your feet as this plays, you’re a quadriplegic.

P.S. There are no brand mentions in the lyrics, no cliches, no ho’s or rims, just an expression of the human condition, which is one in which there are more questions than answers. That’s what music used to be, a key, that opened a door…into your mind and the universe.

P.P.S. This is already a stone cold smash in a double digit number of countries. It’s America that’s lagging. Yes, the self-satisfied U.S., where we claim we’re number one but we’re reluctant to change.

P.P.P.S. Be sure to check out Aloe Blacc’s “I Need A Dollar,” almost as good as “Wake Me Up,” it never reached international consciousness, unfortunately.

“I Need A Dollar”

“Wake Me Up” and “I Need A Dollar” on Spotify

You double down in a crisis.

When the stock market tanks, you don’t pull your money out, you buy.

This was the record labels’ biggest mistake, it haunts them to this day, when Napster hit they should have started spending, getting ready for the new reality, instead they kept cutting and no one under thirty works there anymore, certainly not anybody with any ambition.

Just because newspapers are financially challenged, that does not mean there’s no more need for NEWS! And that’s the dirty little secret, despite all the opinionated bloviating online, there’s very little newsgathering going on online, certainly not when it comes to the big issues of the day…finance, politics and international developments. This is what newspapers do best.

Newspapers…

There’s no reporting at the TV station. Local outlets are all talking heads, models in a contest to air that which will get ratings. Cable outlets are not much better. And they and the networks take their talking points from newspapers. The “New York Times” might be struggling when it comes to income, but in terms of influence, the paper’s never been bigger, it’s a powerhouse. Because the “Times” has boots on the ground, and none of its competitors do…except for the “Wall Street Journal” and the “Washington Post.”

That’s what Bezos is buying. An army of newsgatherers. And if you don’t think this is valuable, you don’t know the aphorism “knowledge is power.” And it is. You can learn more about the music business by sitting home and reading than going to any number of endless lunches. That’s what separates the winners from the losers…information. He who has it wins. He who controls it has more power than any banker, any manufacturing titan. Yup, while the Grahams were asleep at the wheel, figuring they had to save the family fortune, Jeff Bezos saw an opportunity.

Does tomorrow’s newspaper look like today’s?

Hell, Yahoo’s directory was eclipsed by Google’s search engine. How information is accessed always changes, especially in the digital era. But he who writes the news, he always survives, as long as he continues to evaluate and change distribution.

Paywalls are for pussies. It’s a head-scratcher why all publications are erecting them. They learned none of the lessons from the music industry. Foremost of which is your enemy is not reduced revenues, but obscurity. The key is to be the paper of record, to be available to everybody. And not everybody is concerned with everything, but when you break a story…be sure it can go viral.

In other words, if you make people buy your music to hear it, you’re never going to make it in today’s marketplace. And it’s always about the music. Thom Yorke can get everybody to pay attention to his opinion on Spotify, but he can get almost nobody to listen to Atoms For Peace. And that’s backward.

There’s a huge desire for news. By pulling back from the audience, the paywall police are doing it wrong.

How do you do it today?

You decide what to cover and then own the sphere. That’s the Apple paradigm. The iPod lesson. They OWNED portable music. Who will own the news of the future? Not TV, certainly not the “Los Angeles Times” and the other papers that have punted, who’ve closed foreign bureaus and cut staff in order to maintain margins, there’s nothing left there, no reason for people to pay attention.

So what does Bezos do with his asset?

Who knows?

But he comes from a completely different background from yesterday’s newspaper owners. He knows you invest and reap profits way down the line, when you’ve eliminated the competition. Amazon killed Borders. Its only real competition is the struggling Barnes & Noble. Like a venture capitalist, Bezos is investing today for rewards tomorrow.

Talent is available. The “New York Times” loses Nate Silver, not knowing what today’s star reporters want and need, and Bezos opens up his checkbook and gives a home to all those great writers who’d rather report than build a website and go it alone. Yes, he can make the paper attractive, as opposed to the record labels whose big selling point is they’re the last resort, if you want to get on terrestrial radio and make inroads into physical retail. That’s like saying I’m the last Smith-Corona dealer and if you want a typewriter…

Bezos is all about the future. And he comes from the school of Microsoft. The first iteration sucks, but over time the product is refined and dominates. From the joke of the first Kindle to the Fire today. Hell, Amazon killed the Nook, right?

That’s what you do, kill the competition and shine.

But Bezos also comes from the school of Apple. Wherein you don’t have to be first, but if you do it better you can arrive late and win.

So everybody says that newspapers suck, business is lousy and you can get everything you need online. And then five years from now, they say just the opposite, that he who controls the news is king.

Don’t look at today, look at TOMORROW!

I know, third-rate boogie band. And I kind of agree with you. But I can still muster some enthusiasm for “Flirtin’ With Disaster,” but that’s not what I heard on Sirius today, that was “Whiskey Man.”

Once upon a time, the rednecks didn’t listen to country, but rock and roll. Before country gave up its western roots and became rock and roll lite and the acts started singing about babies, SUVs and Christianity. Hell, the country stars of yore, who built the format, the complete genre, would get no airplay on country stations today. Used to be they kept you off the format because your music didn’t fit, now they keep you off because of your morals… Huh?

But it was different in the late sixties and seventies. Country records rarely had any presence north of the Mason-Dixon line, but southern rock bands dominated the airwaves, to the point where we got imitation acts, like Molly Hatchet, third generation stuff that was easily dismissible, except for the hits.

Now if you want to draw an oblique parallel, southern rock and EDM are related. They’re both about going to the gig and getting completely messed up, the music is just an additive to the fuel you’ve imbibed, ecstasy at the electronic show, beer at the southern rock gig. The idea was to let loose, something they talk about but no longer do in country anymore. It’s all controlled and contrived. But if you watch that Skynyrd movie, you can feel the band teetering on the edge, not only with lifestyle, but music, back when rock stars were kings, not shills for the corporation.

And that’s what the rednecks and the northerners had in common. This sound. It brought us together. Because it could not be denied. And it was always played by southerners. First, the Allman Brothers. Then Lynyrd Skynyrd. Then the Outlaws and Molly Hatchet.

And the guys in Hatchet were too fat and unattractive to appear on the covers of their albums in photographs, but this was back before MTV, when how you looked was not paramount, but how you played.

And unlike today’s second-rate poseurs, the guys in Hatchet could play. And guided by Tom Werman, with a background in economic rock as opposed to southern noodling, at times Hatchet locked on and made music that today is still just as energizing, it makes you want to call somebody up and hit the bars, with this music blasting out of the convertible on the way to getting smashed.

“Whiskey Man”

It’s the energy. From an era where you spoke with your music. Today it’s all about the interview, the tweet, the personality, whereas back then these guys were high school losers who got laid via their tunes, they knew how to rev it up, it’s hard to sit still listening to “Whiskey Man.” Yes, Skynyrd’s “Whiskey Rock-A-Roller” is superior, but I’ve already established that Hatchet was a me-too, second-rate act, but as Tom Petty so eloquently sang, even the losers get lucky sometimes.

“Whiskey Man” is pure boogie, it sounds like it’s straight off a Foghat record, and that’s a good thing! And when the whole thing breaks down at 1:50 and you hear the bass and then the guitars start to twin and wail, you feel the power of seventies rock, which could be quite calculated, but never lost its power.

If you believe music started with the Ramones, you’ll hate this. But if you knew music before then, if you’re open to a bit more, if you’re not narrow in your tastes, you’ll have a hard time denying your affection for “Whiskey Man.”

“Dreams I’ll Never See”

From Hatchet’s debut. And you could call it a cheap shot, covering a classic Allman Brothers song. But the real story is most people still don’t know the Allmans’ debut, which featured the original, they started with “Idlewild South” at best. Furthermore, the Hatchet take is different. It’s faster. Just like Gregg Allman slowed down “Midnight Rider” for his solo debut, Hatchet ratcheted up “Dreams”…and it totally works. Instead of being plaintive, it’s active. In the Allmans’ take, the dude’s just waking up, whereas in Hatchet’s take he’s conscious, he’s already walking around, he’s facing the new day instead of being lost in the haze of yesterday. If you’ve never heard this, you’ll like this. Sacrilegious back then, good now.

“Flirtin’ With Disaster”

The piece-de-resistance. Overplayed to death back then, we boomers know it by heart and get a nostalgic thrill every time we hear it today.

Once again, it’s the energy, and the dynamics, the way the song accelerates and goes up a step, but…

I’m travelin’ down that lonesome road
Feel like I’m draggin’ a heavy load
Yet I’ve tried to turn my head away
Feel ’bout the same most every day
You know what I’m talkin’ about man?

WE DID!

That’s the difference between yesterday and today. Today the artists constantly reinforce they’re better than us, whereas back then they were a reflection of us, their music encapsulated our experience, that’s why we were drawn to them, that’s why we wanted to go to the show, to be with like-minded, alienated people and connect with the band that was speaking our truth.

And after these three, you’re on your own. If you bought the albums, you probably know more, if you want to explore, be my guest, but I’m done. I only need these three, that I heard incessantly on the radio back when we were addicted, when it was our best friend.

Rhinofy-Molly Hatchet

Previous Rhinofy playlists