Concert tickets are so expensive because of income inequality.

Yes, the Internet allows scalpers and StubHub (the same thing?) to reach a national audience, but in the old days supply exceeded demand to an even greater extent and despite the presence of scalpers, prices were never this high.

The difference is now there’s a whole class of people who can afford these high prices. Kind of like professional sports. Used to be you went to the game on a regular basis, now you go once or twice a year, when someone offers you tickets or you splurge or you sit in the cheap seats.

Corporations have luxury boxes and individuals have senate seats. They don’t really care what the price is, they just want to be inside. Furthermore, access gives them bragging rights, separating themselves from the hoi polloi. Not just anybody can be inside!

So we’ve got a dividing line. Between rich and poor. And there’s not much territory in between. Which is why everybody’s fighting to be on the right side, the wealthy side, like the artists.

It’s not so much that the Internet ruined the musician’s business model than it takes a whole hell of a lot more money to be rich in today’s world. And that’s where the artists want to be. Flying private, staying in the best hotels, leasing exotic European cars. Check the price of a NetJet share and then get back to me. The rich execs all fly private. Do you expect any self-respecting rock star to fly commercial?

Of course not, so who pays?

You do.

And American Express. Subsidizing the tour along with the rest of the Fortune 500. The hoi polloi don’t even have AmEx cards. They don’t even know what they’re missing. They never get the e-mail. They sit in their bathrobes on Saturday morning clicking to buy seats unaware that in many cases ninety percent have already been sold. Yes, the acts are about as honest as the CEOs. Exactly how much did Mitt Romney pay in taxes the last ten years? You don’t need to know that.

And the acts could get better tickets in the hands of the punters but then they’d make less. And, as we can see above, they don’t want to do this. Paperless allows true fans to go. But it’s hard to overcharge. And then there’s the fees. Which if you think all go to Ticketmaster you probably believe Obama was born in Kenya and was educated in a madrassa.

And then there’s the music itself. When I went to college, no one was planning for the future, an education was an end unto itself. You smoked dope and listened to records, which is why boomers are so music-savvy. But today people think about a career before they enter the hallowed halls. They’re overpaying, far beyond the rate of inflation, for a ticket to a better way of life. Like the acts, college students don’t want to be left behind, kind of like the administration and the coaches, who can make millions a year. No one’s gonna take a risk being a musician. No one wants to get off track. So the only people making music are the lower classes who’ll do anything for a buck. And are uneducated to boot. Show me an intellectual playing music and if you scratch the surface I guarantee you’ll find a plan B, professional school or tech development or…anything but doubling down and starving until you make it.

And when you complain about all this, no one’s listening. No one’s changing operations. Ticket prices have only gone up. Label execs need their salaries. No one’s going to admit there’s a problem, they’re too busy chasing the big money.

So all you’re left with is the records. Which are free. You can steal ’em or listen on YouTube. And the musicians bitch to high heaven. Saying you’re ripping them off. But who’s at fault here? Should you really pay in excess of ten bucks for an album you don’t want to hear in order to get the one single you do?

You can watch the game at home on TV. You can listen to the music.

But getting inside is a whole ‘nother matter. Especially sitting up close. Either you have to give up your vacation or say no.

So you go to fewer shows.

And the developing acts complain you won’t take a risk.

But at these prices, who would?

P.S. So you see what we’ve got here is a societal problem. If anything, concert tickets are the leading edge, where the rubber meets the road, but you can take this paradigm and extend it throughout society. Hell, poor people can’t afford to go to college. Meanwhile, we’re fighting amongst ourselves while those in charge are laughing behind the scenes. And since it all comes down to money, the rich have been embellished with all kinds of characteristics that are in many cases inaccurate. Rich doesn’t always mean intelligent and insightful, oftentimes it just means lucky. So, I ask you, how does it feel, to get such a raw deal? Only you can change it, because no one else cares, they don’t want to lose their place in line, they’re gonna kick and scream and refuse to fall back. America is not the land of giving, but taking. And you can’t take away that which someone already has. They’re protecting that turf, while they’re trying to take even more.

What if they toured and no one cared?

They’ve gone back to the well so many times, burned out so many markets, that to think they’re just gonna put tickets up for sale and sell out is to believe the Democrats and Republicans are gonna settle their financial disagreements by the end of the day.

They charge too much and deliver the same old thing, but without Christine McVie, it’s a cash grab and the only people who can’t see it are the rich too blind to know the tickets they’re overpaying for will not make them look good when they show up the next day and say they were in attendance.

Yup, that’s what sells the expensive ducats. Pricks who just want to say they were there. Who come late, talk through the show and leave early. Who probably weren’t even fans in the seventies.

At least the Stones had a hook. The fiftieth anniversary.

Then again, Stones sales were weak at the end of the last tour, and Fleetwood Mac has been far from an instant sellout for years.

No one cared about Lindsey Buckingham’s solo album, and although stellar, Stevie Nicks’s solo didn’t do gangbusters. The group is more than the sum of its parts. Then again, where’s Christine? It’s not that people know her, but they know her songs, which she won’t sing. As for Lindsey’s guitar pyrotechnics, the modern Fleetwood Mac audience is turned off as opposed to turned on. Like I said, the audience is not the stoners of yore, but the matrons and He-Men of the Universe of today.

But the press just parrots the story. As if people care.

They don’t.

And the fact that the band doesn’t realize this amazes me.

The Who are doing terrible numbers. Not even filling half an arena in some cases. We got it. You need the money. You’re missing half the band and we’ve seen you ad infinitum. Furthermore, Roger’s pipes are now substandard, kind of like Lindsey’s.

I’m not saying the Mac doesn’t have a right to go on the road.

But I am saying that when you put money in front of music, we get to point out the emperor has no clothes, that you’re living in the wrong decade, that you’re representative of everything that’s wrong with our country, where concerts are not life-changing events but financial affairs wherein you pay your multiple mortgages and the only people who get a good seat are the ones who employ subterfuge or overpay or both.

We thought classic rock would rule until the end. But what we find out is these greedy people end up exposing their mercenary ways and become positively creepy, turning us off.

Thank god the records are perfect. They can’t be changed.

As for new music, put out one song as good as “Rhiannon” or “Dreams” and that’ll give you a reason to tour. Just one, I dare you.

The Future Of Digital (Slide Deck)

I would tweet this…

But then almost none of you would see it.

Despite Twitter telling me I’ve got in excess of 48,000 followers, unless I break news of a tragedy, I don’t have the attention/addiction rate of my e-mail list.

So despite being wary of sending you a third e-mail today, I must. Because this slide deck encapsulates everything that’s going to happen tomorrow, which you need to know.

1. We’re going to mobile.

2. Android might be winning the population war, but most of the surfing and purchasing is being done on the iPhone.

3. Newspaper advertising revenues have plunged so fast that we’re nearing a tragedy of the proportion noted above. “The New York Times” and “Wall Street Journal” are not threatened with extinction, but every other newspaper in America is. Because they’ve lost their business model. Which was delivering eyeballs to advertisers. Newspapers are in a death spiral. Fewer readers beget less advertising begets a smaller news hole which means…people end up getting their news online.

We’ve been mobile in music long before everybody else. We had dedicated players known as iPods, we’ve been ahead of the game. Hell, we’ve even got streaming apps on mobile handsets from Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio and…

Storage is suddenly a non-factor. Most people opt for small storage mobile devices, which don’t hold their entire music collection, they rely on the cloud. Which augurs well for streaming services. Furthermore, P2P downloading is incredibly inconvenient on the small screen. In other words, if you wait long enough and ignore the hysteria you can see that people are going to pay for music, recorded music revenues will eventually go up, as long as everybody wraps his head around the concept of low access fees that increase the subscriber base generating a giant pool of money. This is how the mobile handset makers profited to begin with. By lowering prices so everybody could afford a handset and service.

The desktop is dying. If you’re in tech you must sleep with one eye open.

But if you’re in music, nothing’s really changed. It all comes down to a great song. Whether that takes you fifteen minutes or fifteen years to compose. The rest is marketing. But unlike the supermarket, you can get on the shelf for free. (You did know there were slotting fees in supermarkets, right? That suppliers paid to have their wares displayed?)

In a crazy, crowded, mixed-up, shook-up world your main weapon is quality. That’s how you cut through the b.s.

Not that everybody likes the best thing. But frequently the best is also ear-pleasing.

It might be a wilderness out there, but you’ve got access to ears.

GO FOR IT!

(And scan through this slide deck while you’re at it. Which is almost impossible to do on a mobile handset. You see our medium, music, fits on the handset quite well. But the PowerPoint presentation…not so good.)

P.S. Literally as I wrote this Mary Meeker released her year-end trends report. You can read a summary here:

Mary Meeker’s Year-End Trends Report

You can scroll down the page and click through all 88 slides of her deck yourself, but the content is not as easily digestible as that of the “Business Insider” deck.

Having said that, here are a few jaw-dropping statistics:

“In India, Mobile Traffic Surpassed Desktop Internet Usage in May, 2012”

“Mobiles + Tablets = 24% of Online Shopping on Black Friday in 2012 (vs. 6% Two Years Ago), iOS 4x greater than Android”

“29%+ of USA Adults Own Tablet/eReader, Up from 2% Less Than Three Years Ago”

EVERYBODY KNOWS

1. Most tweets go unread.

Just because you tweet, don’t expect your followers to see it. Few view their feed comprehensively. They check in and check out. Catching only bits and pieces. Even forgetting your fake and dormant followers, which are voluminous, far fewer than fifty percent of your followers see one of your tweets. Actually, I’d be stunned if 10-15% of your active followers see one of your tweets.

So, natural reaction would be to repeat your tweet. But this only pisses off those who are truly paying attention.

People use Twitter as a snapshot of what’s going on, they check in when they’ve got time to waste and when really important stuff is going on.

Tweet, but don’t expect it to pay dividends. It’s a gift to your loyal fanbase, which is a far cry from your total fanbase.

As for driving your follower count up… Shy of buying or begging for followers, you can’t. Something else has to drive adoption.

Twitter is just like everything else online. A minor piece of the puzzle. I know it’s overwhelming, trying to get traction. But have sympathy for the public, which is bombarded with more information than it’s got time to pay attention to. And when you sneak into their feed, through subterfuge or sheer attack, you only piss people off. People trust their friends. And they’re constantly checking the momentum online, what’s trending, they don’t want to be left out of the discussion. You can’t create mo by inundating people who don’t care with junk.

2. Unsolicited e-mail is ignored.

It makes you feel good to send a link to your music, or god forbid attach an MP3. Everybody who gets this e-mail instantly deletes it. If anything, it works against you.

So you send a bunch of e-mails from a list you acquired and expect something to happen. It won’t.

3. Creating an app is a waste of time.

It’s kind of like CDs. When they were rare, when manufacturing couldn’t keep up with demand, you could sell anything on disc. Back in ’82-84. But then AOL spammed the world with discs and devalued CDs and it became about what was on them more than the format.

The app gold rush is over. An app is a service. If people are going online constantly for updates, maybe an app is worth developing. But don’t view it as a profit center.

Of course, there will be new, successful apps in the future. But their financial success will be like winning Powerball. If you like those odds, go for it. Otherwise, keep practicing your music.

4. You can’t get a good seat at fair value.

It’s just that simple.

Blame the acts, blame Ticketmaster, blame promoters, blame StubHub and the scalpers, but don’t blame the public.

5. The sound of MP3s suck.

People just don’t care. They don’t want to sacrifice portability. A higher res format will not succeed by telling people what they’ve got is bad, but by creating something so incredible people flock to it.

6. The success of EDM is about the scene.

Once upon a time this was the same with rock music. Going to the show was like going to a party. Now it’s like going to a prison that you have to pay to escape from.

7. The bankers don’t create anything.

Instead of whining about higher taxes, they should work on transparency, showing their worth, their help in building new businesses. But you can’t illustrate that which does not exist.

8. Most Android owners use few apps.

The phone is free, the knowledge is not. They can check their e-mail, text and possibly shoot photos, but beyond that, they’re clueless.

9. Record companies rip off acts.

Their plan is to just sign up the ignorant and rape them. Not a long term strategy.

WHAT EVERYBODY SHOULD KNOW

1. The American Dream is dead.

Your odds of going from poor to rich are worse than in most European nations, including German, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.

2. You can’t make any money in music.

Your odds of getting rich are infinitesimal. Like winning the aforementioned Powerball. If you’re in it for the wealth, give up, there are easier ways to get rich.

You can use music as a springboard to other opportunities, you can gain notoriety and try to profit on that, then again, most reality TV stars are poor.

3. Radio is about advertising.

Expecting music radio to come back is expecting today’s kids to carry Partridge Family lunch boxes to school. Music is an on demand item. The only thing missing is the filter/recommendation engine. Which is not an algorithm. To use the parlance of the techies, radio is too inefficient.

4. Streaming is the future.

We live in an on demand world. Bitching about today’s payouts is like complaining your phone bill is too high because you were charged by the hour on AOL.

5. Songs are king.

Write a great one. Then you’ll get traction.

6. Success is not instant

Look at Rod Stewart. He auditioned for Joe Meek in 1961. He didn’t break through until 1971.

7. Disinformation is the American way.

Every group has a full time lobbyist trying to protect its turf. From the Koch Brothers to the record labels. In other words, never believe a single thing the RIAA says. It’s a lobbying organization for the labels, that’s it. It’s like paying your mother to say good things about you.

8. Practice makes perfect.

With so much stimulation at hand, few want to be outsiders, alone in their bedroom honing their chops. Everybody wants to be famous. Music has become about marketing as opposed to talent, and the public can tell the difference.

9. First week sales are irrelevant.

They get you mainstream press, which people might nod at and then instantly forget.

Quick, tell me, what was the number one movie the second week of September? Even better, what was the number one SoundScan album the third week of August?

It’s not about individual triumphs, it’s about an accumulation of mindshare.

10. Albums have shorter shelf lives than singles.

I know, it’s counterintuitive. Call it the paradox of choice. You’ll check out a track, you can ignore a complete album, it takes up too much time. Forget all the b.s. from the musos about albums. People want more music from those they are fans of. But most people are not hard core fans. Your job is to make them so. Not by appearing in “People,” but by constantly being in their mind. Which is difficult if you’ve got zero traction. But once you hit the tipping point, a steady stream of new stuff, i.e. singles, will pay more dividends for your career than an album. Don’t be beholden to old formats. Do you refuse to use your DVR and love commercials?

11. Executives make more money than acts.

Why? They didn’t even start the company!

Music executives are chasing the Forbes 400, they should be playing to the acts. Then again, like the rest of the CEOs at public companies, they’re interested in instant results and quick payouts, the future is irrelevant to them, they won’t be there.

THE SILVER LINING

1. The history of recorded music is at your fingertips, for free.

If you don’t think this is good for listeners/fans, you don’t have ears.

2. If something is good, it can be spread by the alternative network known as the Internet, which is word of mouth on steroids.

3. Even oldsters are tech savvy. They too can participate in word of mouth. It’s just about getting them started. Oftentimes, at NPR. Which you might call radio, but I call a hipster club.

4. It’s cheap to make recordings and distribution is free.

Yup, record in GarageBand and put it up on YouTube. The fact that anybody can do this means there’s more need for a filter.

5. You no longer have to tolerate crap.

Used to be you had to wait for your song to come on the radio or MTV. No longer.

6. You can have a direct connection with your favorites online.

If an act is not doing this, it’s operating with one hand behind its back. People want to know everything about you. Fire your publicist, pitching bland information in mainstream publications no one is reading, and go straight to your fans in an unvarnished fashion.

7. Innovation is constant.

We see this in tech, one breakthrough after another. The only reason we haven’t seen this in music is too many are chasing the major label/radio paradigm. However, that’s where too many of the few riches in this business presently reside. Music would be better if you could earn more money making and performing it. But if you want this to happen, don’t get angry with fans for stealing, get angry at an economy which gives untold riches to those who create nothing, like the bankers, or are overpaid, like the CEOs. Once upon a time, musicians were rich and beholden to nobody. Now they’re clowns in the circus kissing the butt of the elephants crapping on them.