Subject: IMS Business Reports

Hi Bob,

We had a delay on making the reports free, Monday was a bank holiday and then the team took the day to re-code the website section to make it free. It now is and you can direct your readers to this link for the download http://www.internationalmusicsummit.com/ibiza/business-reports

All the best.

Kind Regards,

Domenico Ruggeri
General Manager
International Music Summit

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Subject: The Richest Electronic DJs In The World 2013

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/the-richest-electronic-djs-in-the-world-2013/

Andre Bourgeois

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Re: The Daft Punk Album

Now that Spotify has a play counter on the most popular songs for each artist, you can see that Daft Punk’s new song has more streams than JT’s “Suit & Tie”. Sales are an incomplete metric for “success”.

Alex Drizos

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From: Amanda Palmer
Re: Social Media Manipulation

a few months ago a friend of mine was fired from one of the top online tech/buzz magazines. he’d been busting his ass there for a year, working long hours and cranking out incredibly well-written, deeply researched content about his interests and also turning in obligatory stories about gadgets and video games and so forth. one day they called him into the office and told him that while his writing was stellar, he wasn’t generating enough page views. they’d crunched the numbers. and he was fired on the spot.

a few weeks later, a writer for the same outlet wrote a particularly bizarre piece slamming me and my kickstarter. it was so weird and the criticism so unusually off-the-wall that i instinctively reached for the retweet button, to share it and laugh about the weirdness with my fans. right after i did, my recently-fired writer friend shot me a tweet, reminding me what we’d just learned. this article was eyeball-bait. by sharing the trash they’d written, i was keeping the trash writer in the job.

so i deleted the re-tweet.

since then, i just don’t link to the trolls or the journalists who are clearly out for a fight which brings page views….i don’t take the bait from sites who hoping that people (like me) with high-number followings will feel offended/defensive enough to spread the pain around to their own base and therefore alleviate some of the ego-pain that comes being slammed in the press (and i’ve had my fair share this year…it’s very tempting to share the outside criticism with your core audience.)

i also got into a really interesting conversation about this stuff with a journalist in new york the other night, and learned something i didn’t know.

“ad views” on sites like TMZ are considered worthless compared to ad views on an outlet like…i don’t know, new york magazine, let’s say….but NOT because people don’t click on the ads.

NOBODY EVER CLICKS ON THE ADS.

the ad placement is only about impressions and associations, and nobody wants their impression to be associated with TMZ, even if they’re happy to go there to look at plastic surgery disasters.

but when you buy online real estate to splash your new cadillac/apple gadget/name-a-product across the front of new york magazine online, you’re just…..buying a more credible spot on the planet. but nobody, ever, EVER, clicks on that cadillac ad. (that’s the theory, anyway.)

rock on bob

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Re: Rhinofy-Traffic

Dear Bob,

I really enjoyed your article on Traffic. They were one of, if not my favorite group of that period, and I agree with you, the second album was the definitive one, even though “Mr Fantasy” was great.

The combination of their great songs, and Winwood, Mason and Capadi’s vocals made the few albums they made real standouts of that period. I had already been a big fan of Winwood’s voice from the Spencer Davis group, but the combination of the three of them, and the songs they wrote, made that band unique.

As it turns out, I had the honor and the pleasure of producing “Alone Together” along with Dave. I had left what at the time seemed like a promising future at A&M records, but felt like I was in a rut with the things I was producing, and needed a change, so I went with my instincts, and joined my two close friends Bob Krasnow and Don Graham and started Blue Thumb Records. I remember very distinctly when we got a call from our friend Allen Parisier, who along with his two Partners, Sid Kaiser and the brilliant photographer Barry Feinstein, who had done most of the great album covers in that period from the George Harrison “All Things Must pass” to Janice Joplin’s “Pearl”, and of course “Alone Together” with the three-fold out cover, and the tie-dye vinyl record. They had just started a management company called “Group Three, and Dave was the first artist they signed. As it turns out, at least up to that time other than the Crusaders, Dave was the most important artist we had signed.

One of the first things I wondered about was why they came to us instead of one of the majors, though it occurred to me later that the majors probably passed because they didn’t realize how talented Dave Mason was. The minute I heard traffic’s debut album, and especially the follow up with Feelin Alright, “Crying To Be Heard, “You can All Join In”, I knew that Dave was a great songwriter; in fact probably better than Winwood, though Winwood’s voice was so great and distinctive that I think everyone was drawn to him first.

In thinking back, the making of “Alone Together” was one of the highlights of my career, and was responsible for giving me my first sense of confidence regarding my production chops.

Dave and I put our heads together, and came up with a combination of what was at that time this incredible pool of musicians in the LA area. You have to remember, the Mama’s and Papa’s had sounded the call with “California Dreamin” and talent from all over the the world had set their sites on the west coast. We picked Sunset Sound where I had been recording for about five years to record the tracks, with Bruce Botnick who had done all of the things I had produced up to that time, plus had recorded all of the “The Doors” albums among other things.

Studio 1 at Sunset was a magic room to record in. it just had that vibe, and it had a fantastic room echo chamber which made things sound so great when you heard the playback, that it inspired you to forge ahead. The players we chose, Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, along with Jim Capaldi to share the drum seat on different tracks, Leon Russell, and John Simon, (who produced “The Band” albums) to play keyboards, and Carl Radle of ” Derek and the Dominos” fame to play bass. Man, what a band! The first track we cut was “Only You Know And I Know” and I think it blew every one’s mind on how it came out. At that point Dave I believe got very excited with the result’s, and put in a call To Jim Capaldi, and asked him to fly over from England to write some material with him, and of course also play drums.

Dave was so good at coming up with musical ideas. We cut the tracks with him playing 12 string rhythm guitar, then he put all of those incredible Electric guitar parts down afterwards. Everything you hear from wa-wa to solo’s are him. What a genius! If I’m not mistaken, Dave was one of the first, if not the first of the well known band members to do a solo album, though On second thought George Harrison was doing “All Things Must Pass” around the same time. After I finished Dave’s album,(and it may have been released already) I took a trip to England with Barry Feinstein and Allen Parisier and was present at George’s home when Barry did the photo shoot for Georges album, and the night before the shoot, George played us the album, and I kept wondering why “My Sweet Lord” sounded so familiar. I realized soon enough when he was sued by the publisher of “He’s So Fine.

One last point I want to make is, it turns out because “Alone Together” took longer than we had expected, Bruce Botnick had to bow out before the mixing of the album, as he was taking Paul Rothchilds place, to produce the Doors. I was in a real fix as I couldn’t think of someone I had the same confidence in as Bruce. Then a friend of mine, the producer Joe Wissert reminded me that our close friend Al Schmitt, who had hung up his engineering shoes to get into producing everyone from Sam Cook to the Jefferson Airplane had been one of the best engineers in the late fifties and early sixties. I asked him to mix Dave’s album, and he told me he hadn’t mixed an album in at least 10 or twelve years. I said Don’t worry man, it’s like riding a bike, you never forget. Well he mixed the shit out it, and after the experience came to the conclusion that he loved recording and mixing more than producing, and went on in his career to win 19 grammy awards, more than any other engineer or mixer.

Best,

Tommy LiPuma

Don’t believe the hype. Its success had little to do with the marketing campaign. Other than it motivated core fans!

That’s the story here. Kind of like when Apple introduces a new product. Daft Punk fans, earned over two decades, track the act incessantly, and when they heard a new record was imminent, they couldn’t stop talking about it. They’re the ones who made the SNL ad and the Coachella video go viral. Otherwise, the ads were dead in the water. I.e. nobody who didn’t care before cared now, the ads didn’t wake up the masses, the fans did!

Not that every fan is happy with “Random Access Memories.” Many are angry that it’s a return to the seventies as opposed to a step forward into the electronic stratosphere.

But one thing “Random Access Memories” has that most albums do not is a hit single.

And a hit is not something that can be quantified, rather it’s something you HEAR, that makes you feel warm and excited and energized and desirous of nothing so much as playing it again. The launch pad was primed, but it was “Get Lucky” that ensured blastoff.

And now with streaming media, we live in a totally different era. The listening threshold is tiny. Used to be you had to wait to hear multiple tracks on the radio, distill public opinion, only fans bought without hearing first. But the buzz has caused immense streaming on Spotify.

This is the new model:

1. A long hard slog of a career. Instant is for pussies. True musicians are lifers.

2. Energization of the fan base. Gatekeepers have never had so little power. And I say good riddance. Because unlike fans, gatekeepers are not loyal. Program directors can find a zillion reasons not to air your follow-up single. But a hard core fan will always check it out.

3. Excellence is key! Not only is the single fantastic, the rest of “Random Access Memories” is highly listenable.

BUT WAIT BOB! YOU SAID THE ALBUM WAS DEAD!

It is.

But there are exceptions to every rule.

Exception number one… Excellence eviscerates all rules. If you’re fantastic, you need no social media presence, you don’t have to do anything but release your music.

Exception number two, a sub-set of number one…”Random Access Memories” is playable through and through. And that’s a rarity today. Oh, the hard core fan base might play your album, but the hoi polloi will not, which is why your career is stuck. In the Internet era, we only have time for great. So if you can deliver this, and I can’t think of another album in 2013 that has, go ahead and make your album. Otherwise, continue to woodshed and be in the public eye.

Yes, that hearkens back to Exception Number One also… Justin Timberlake went on a scorched earth publicity campaign to sell his album. The label had to force the single up the chart. It all worked, but isn’t it interesting that Daft Punk required no Grammy appearance, no hosting of SNL, no endless hype to break their album.

Then again, Daft Punk sold three hundred thousand-odd albums and Justin Timberlake three times as many.

But this is a good thing. It allows room for growth.

Yes, there’s time for the uninformed to get on the gravy train. In a world where everybody’s overwhelmed, many are immune to hype, they’re busy with other things, they come to the party later. And that’s fine. That’s even better. Continued slow growth keeps you in the public consciousness.

Also, one can argue that “Random Access Memories” is a streaming phenomenon. That sales are on an old metric.

One thing’s for sure, “Random Access Memories” is the album of the year. The one everybody’s talking about. With almost no backlash. It’s closer to “Rumours” than it is to “The 20/20 Experience.”

Meanwhile, you should check it out:

GIVE LIFE BACK TO MUSIC

Taking their cue from the Rolling Stones, who perfected this paradigm, Daft Punk knows you’ve got to start your LP with a killer cut. “Give Life Back To Music” grabs you instantly, and that’s necessary in the Internet era. And you’ll love Nile Rodgers’s guitar.

DOIN’ IT RIGHT

The surprise cut! The one that got little buzz, as opposed to the ones with Giorgio Moroder and Paul Williams, “Doin’ It Right” is a classic album track, the one that won’t get airplay, but becomes your favorite. It puts a smile on your face, especially when the untreated vocals begin.

CONTACT

By all rights, this should be awful. With a vocal by Eugene Cernan, the last astronaut to stand on the moon. But I LOVE this! And you will too!

And, of course, there’s “Get Lucky”…

“Random Access Memories” is the first album in eons I don’t want to take off, that I don’t want to abandon to listen to something else. It’s the album that shouldn’t have been made. An expensive project in an era when everybody bitches they can’t afford to cut endlessly in the big room. A seventies album in the twenty first century.

I’d like to say many more “Random Access Memories” will follow. But I know this is untrue. Because no one wants to put in the time, the focus today is on the trappings instead of the music, people believe if everybody knows your name, you’re home free.

BUT IT DON’T REALLY HAPPEN THAT WAY AT ALL!

Music still rules.

LISTEN!

P.S. Want to know what it was like in the seventies, listen to “Random Access Memories.”

P.P.S. This is just the beginning. Next comes the tour. Wherein Daft Punk will be bigger than both the Stones and U2. Just you wait and see!

The Daft Punk Album – Spotify

1. I’m in a fog. Man was not made to fly across eight time zones. I never quite caught up while I was there, and although flying east to west is so much easier on the body, yesterday all I did was sleep. They say it’s one day of recovery for every time zone. I certainly hope not!

2. The old town of Ibiza, which is the epicenter of the island, which was in walking distance from my hotel, is dominated by an old castle, a citadel, upon a promontory, called Dalt Vila. For two nights, the IMS negotiated to have shows there, to kick off the season, yup, that’s what it is, a four month season, from Memorial Day through September, when it’s warm and the locals work seven days a week, garnering enough cash to make it through the winter. Some hibernate in the off season, some travel. That’s one thing the English have down, as well as so many Europeans, they’ve got passports and they use them! My driver plans to spend the winter in South America, backpacking.

You learn so much traveling, it gives you perspective. But it’s good to be back in the good ‘ol USA where we’ve got regulations! If I hear one more right wing nut excoriate regulations I’m gonna ship them to a foreign country and show them what it’s like. Not only do buildings collapse in Asia, but in the rest of the world railings can be flimsy, there can be no lights, never mind friction strips, upon steps, and you realize you’re one false move away from being handicapped. Yup, that’s what happens when you’ve got no regulations, some people pay…with their health, with their lives…it could be you! Furthermore, in America you’ve got confidence. I got on a rickety ski lift in South America and I was wondering…was this thing gonna break? In the U.S. there are inspections, standards, the odds of flaws are low. Kind of like when I went snorkeling in the Caribbean and almost drowned… Nobody was looking out for me, the concessionaires had no responsibility!

Anyway, on Friday night we climbed to the top of Dalt Vila for this concert, which ended early, so the locals wouldn’t be disturbed. Early? That’s midnight!

And the lights are pulsing and the crowd is moving in time and I’m standing on stage with Sven Vath, who’s telling me his story.

He’s got twenty employees in Frankfurt. He’s got a record company, an agency…

And he’s got forty employees in Ibiza.

And I ask him, doesn’t he want to shift from Monday night, when he has his residency in Ibiza?

No, he LOVES Monday night! Because that allows him to do three or four festivals every weekend!

And how does he do this?

BY PRIVATE JET!

Word is getting out, but most people in America are unaware of the vast sums of money made by deejays. They report to nobody other than themselves. They don’t need the Fortune 500 to make their numbers, they’re doing quite well, without depending upon recorded music.

And then Sven excused himself, he had to hit the decks.

Yes, Sven is old school…he uses two Technics 1200s and a mixer. And the crowd was enraptured.

Sven Vath picking vinyl

Ibiza from Dalt Vila

3. And what I want to do right now, is get you all on a jet and take you to the Lio.

It’s a club. Owned by Pacha. Which seems beamed right out of the thirties. Or maybe “I Love Lucy”…you remember Ricky’s club!

Now this wasn’t the lumpy people of Pacha… This was European royalty. Or Russians. Or somebody so rich they didn’t care about the prices, which are far from low. That’s what happens when you visit Europe, you see income inequality in action. The Russians can outspend anybody!

Anyway, the Lio has food…it was the best meal I ate on the island.

There was stuffed lobster.

And veal tartare.

And black cod miso that gave Matsuhisa a run for its money.

But while we were eating, there was a stage show. Every five or ten minutes another act would emerge. Performing acrobatic feats, singing, dancing…it was like Cirque du Soleil but without the bogus self-importance. It was sheer entertainment…as you drank and ate and laughed and danced… It was everything you think Vegas once was, alive, today. Check it out:

lio ibiza

4. Our tour guide Friday night was Massimo, who was born in Syria, lived in the U.S. and now runs the Pacha magazine. I got a complete explanation of the antics in his homeland. He said the war was all about religion. Ensuring the “wrong people” don’t gain power.

And the straw that stirred the drink was Eddie Dean, who owns Pacha in New York. Hanging with Eddie is a blast, because he’s talkative, upbeat…he makes the night come alive.

Which it did. As we sat facing the stage, with our backs to the water and…

Take a look:

Ibiza tonight. From the insane Lio restaurant.

5. I flew home on Air Berlin, so I could take two flights instead of three. They served something that looked like worms which turned out to be northern shrimp, so I ate those, I was hungry. But nothing was gonna get me to partake of the triangle of gelatin with meat suspended inside… Want great food on the airplane? Fly to Asia!

6. I asked Sven when he slept… AT THE END OF THE MONTH!

Yes, you need a vacation to recover from your vacation in Ibiza.

Not the band, THE ALBUM!

Then again, it was the band.

The cognoscenti tell you it’s all about the first, with “Dear Mr. Fantasy” and those songs other people covered, like “Heaven Is In Your Mind” and “Coloured Rain.” But I’ve always maintained the follow-up was the definitive statement. Then again, “John Barleycorn” was quite a comeback.

Yes, the band broke up and then got back together, when musicians followed their muse, back before recording was free and you could do your side project and play to the disinterested at will.

And despite being seen as Steve Winwood’s band, “Traffic”‘s breakout star is Dave Mason, who promptly went on to record one of the greatest solo debuts of all time and has spent the rest of his life trying to follow it up.

“Alone Together” is brilliant. But we first realized how great Dave Mason was with Traffic’s opening cut, “You Can All Join In.”

Listen on headphones, be ready to be jetted back to when stereo effects were all the rage. The lead vocal is entirely in the right channel. Throughout the song. And on headphones you can hear all the asides, the extras, the joy of singing, of playing music. Yup, now it’s about perfection, and so much has been lost. “You Can All Join In” is a quintessential album opener, it hooks you. If I get another e-mail from somebody telling me to spend more time with an album, to play it ten times through, I’m gonna tear whatever hair I have left from the top of my head. No, that’s not the audience’s job. It’s your job to make music so enticing people want to, NEED TO, hear it ad infinitum before it even finishes. “You Can All Join In” fits the bill.

The other Dave Mason gem is…the original version of “Feelin’ Alright.”

Imagine “Feelin’ Alright” not being famous, just an album cut, that you discovered and loved, way before Joe Cocker shot it into the stratosphere and “The Wonder Years” and radio play made it an indelible classic rock/baby boomer hit. Oh, we knew it was magic back then, we didn’t need to have it recut. It’s the way Dave sings… World weary, it’s the opposite of the “American Idol” ethos. Instead of overselling it, batting you over the head with it, it’s like you’ve entered Mason’s lair and he’s telling you the story…

And, of course, you’ve got Chris Wood’s sax… And never underestimate Steve Winwood’s piano accents… It’s what you don’t play that makes what you do play so memorable, so infectious.

The original is so relaxed, so personal you feel like you know the players even if you’ve never met them.

And let’s go for the Mason trifecta, with “Cryin’ To Be Heard,” my favorite cut on the album for so long. It’s the dynamics. Or maybe my whole damn life I’ve been crying to be heard.

It’s the way Mason sings… Once upon a time the musicians made the records for themselves, which made the results so human we all needed to hear them.

Wood and Winwood shine again. Listen to that harpsichord!

And let’s now switch the focus to the best song on the album, Winwood’s “40,000 Headmen.”

You’ve got to see it live. It’s the way the whole band hesitates, just before he looks behind and sees the 40,000 headmen. Whew!

And as great as Mason’s vocals are, Winwood positively blows him away here. It’s like a journeyman infielder being eclipsed by a superstar.

But wait, there’s more!

If you want to know what ’68 was truly like, listen to “Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring.” Back then, music was primary, it existed outside mainstream culture, it was just for us, laying back on our new beanbag chairs, amidst the smoke and the drink, lazing on a sunny afternoon. “Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring” sounds more like San Francisco than the bands who lived there!

And, of course, there’s “No Time To Live.” The intro sounds like it was cut in Morocco. And Winwood’s vocal is so heartfelt, so real, you’re stunned into submission…that’s the power of music.

And yes, Capaldi, the drummer, the cowriter, sings “Vagabond Virgin.” And “Means To An End” finishes the album with the same upbeat feel as the opener, “You Can All Join In.” But the second song on the record is the indelible PEARLY QUEEN!

I bought a sequined suit from a pearly queen
And she could drink more wine than I’d ever seen
She had some gypsy blood flowing through her feet
And when the time was right she said that I would meet
My destiny

What is my destiny?

I wasn’t sure back then, but it was albums like “Traffic” that steered me in my ultimate direction. You just wanted to get inside them. You had to go to the gig to see the band. You had to go every tour to hear the album cuts, back when there were no singles and every track was worth hearing.

Rhinofy-Traffic

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