The one and only.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/richard-thompson/id1316200737?i=1000671654137

 

 

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/22dab886-9681-4c9f-b13e-9e147b0e70ad/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-richard-thompson

 

JD Vance is very intelligent, but he’s unlikable.

Whereas Tim Walz is smart, he might not have as high an IQ as Vance, but he’s definitely likable.

This is what the Democrats didn’t understand in 2000 and 2004. And 2016, while we’re at it. Their candidates were skilled, but not very likable. I’m still not exactly sure who Al Gore is. The college roommate of Tommy Lee Jones, whooping it up and testing limits, or the buttoned-up son of a career pol?

And John Kerry… Educated war hero or the husband of a very rich widow?

As for Hillary Clinton, I know exactly who she is. I don’t like that she can be duplicitous, triangulating to the point where you know she doesn’t believe what she is saying, but Hillary was and still is incredibly skilled, incredibly experienced, and could probably tie JD Vance in knots intellectually.

But people didn’t like Hillary. People don’t even like the Hillary type. The elite educated person who thinks they’re better than you are.

This played in the day of JFK, when government was all about the best and the brightest, but with Reagan ushering in income inequality, with the passing of NAFTA, America got divided into winners and losers, and most of the winners were given every advantage and it’s hard for the losers to still believe in the American Dream.

Politics is not business. Could JD Vance be good at business? Possibly. But in politics? He barely won his Senate seat, this guy is smarmy, I don’t believe he believes half of what he said tonight. This is a guy like Don King, who starts off in one corner of the ring and ends up in the other, when his fighter is beaten by the challenger.

So what does tonight’s debate have to do with next month’s election?

NOTHING!

The best article you can read about the election is by Ronald Brownstein in “The Atlantic,” it comes as part of your Apple News+ subscription, but if you’re cheap or a Windows person you’re allowed some access to “The Atlantic” before the paywall kicks in, so unless you’ve used up your quota, you can read this article:

“The Undecided Voters Are Not Who You Think They Are – For most, the big decision is about whether to vote at all.”

https://t.ly/n6234

Bottom line?

There are no undecideds. It’s a fiction propagated by big media and the self-styled political pundits online in order to sell advertising, make money and boost their image.

To tell you the truth, I don’t know anybody who is still following the presidential race.

Oh, that’s a bit dramatic. But no one e-mails, no one texts, no one calls about the election anymore. Literally, zippo. Ever since the debate.

But there are gotchas in the news on a regular basis.

You have the out of touch Bret Stephens still needing to be convinced to vote for Kamala Harris. He needs more information, more policy. The best response to Stephens was by Stephanie Ruhle on Bill Maher’s show. This is what she said to Stephens:

“‘For the last two weeks, I’ve been going on and on, like, I can’t figure out where … informed undecided voters are,’ Ruhle said. ‘Like, who’s the person who has a list on their refrigerator of, like, “Well, she said this, and he said …” I’m, like, who is this person? And then I open the New York Times three days ago and it’s you.'”

https://t.ly/H6IZC

Bingo. And the video went viral.

You’ve got to laugh at the opiners. They think they matter, but they’ve lost touch with the public.

I don’t care whether Tim Walz was at the protest in Tiananmen Square and it’s interesting to me that JD Vance was against Trump before he was for him, but I don’t think these revelations are swaying a single voter.

Like tonight’s debate. Which had an element of kumbaya. This is the debate we’ve been hoping for for years. Although by the end it was akin to high school.

We agree on most things. Walz acknowledged this. But some of Trump’s statements are so wackadoodle…

It’s about Trump.

Now in the old days, the Republican party was run by business people, fat cats. The Republican candidates were the ones you couldn’t really get a bead on, who were smiling, but you knew beneath it all they were really just for themselves and their fat cat brethren. Lower taxes and little regulation! So business can prosper. Talk about a bill of goods for the middle class. None of the benefits trickled down to them, and business started to take over politics.

Donald Trump tapped into the discontent of those without a voice, who got screwed.

Oh, don’t tell me about the upper middle class white nationalists. There are not enough of them to win. But the lower classes, who’ve suffered these past few decades, they were all in on Trump. Was there racism? Sure, but these people were sick and tired of being told what to do by the educated rich. Don’t you remember Trump claiming that he loves the uneducated?

Clinton couldn’t tap into this. Biden was a bit better, and was boosted by Trump hatred. But rust never sleeps and Trump is back, meanwhile, the Democratic party turned into the Republicans, everything was done behind closed doors, we were told Biden was ready to serve into his middle eighties. We don’t even want many people to drive at that age, if they’re even alive!

And I can’t tell you who Kamala is either. But I know Tim Walz. I’ve had this guy as a teacher. What you see is what you get. And in a world where this has been absent so long, this is appealing.

Ever try teaching? Forget what you know, especially today it’s about keeping order in the classroom, it’s a skill, that most don’t have. But Walz does.

As for those who said Josh Shapiro should have been the vice presidential candidate… I heard him on James Carville and Al Hunt’s podcast. Shapiro is whip-smart. You believe he believes what he is saying, unlike JD Vance. But Shapiro is much closer to Vance than Walz, as in he is highly intelligent and very articulate.

Walz seemed to stumble at times. No, let me say that he FROZE at times. Threw me way off guard at the beginning. Were we in for another Biden debate? And then I was convinced it was a matter of being overprepared. He was so stuffed with facts, so concerned with getting it right, that he had a hard time being folksy, being natural.

But as the debate wore on, he continued to have those frozen moments. I guess that’s just him and I hadn’t seen him enough previously. But this mannerism does not mean I won’t vote for him.

Tim Walz is a man of the people.

JD Vance…WENT TO YALE LAW SCHOOL!

As did Hillary Clinton. And Vance is much closer, much more similar to Hillary than Trump.

So, I could delineate the issues…

Vance started off pretty good, irrelevant of the veracity of his statements, but then it became a constant hammering of energy and immigrants, he shoehorned these issues into every answer, and everything isn’t about energy and immigrants.

Walz was more straightforward and honest. And the more you watched, the more appealing he became.

As for the truth, the vaunted fact-checking CBS QR code? I guess Paramount Global’s lack of cash has trickled all the way down to their news service, because CBS didn’t have enough bandwidth for people to see the page! How in the hell can you be this unprepared? You’re a news organization? This is laughable. I refreshed and refreshed, it never loaded. Hell, you could have contracted with AWS and been ready, but NO… And if CBS gets it so wrong on this, how trustworthy is it on the big issues?

So for a while there the debate was good entertainment. And then it slowed down and got boring and it was hard to stay off your phone, multitasking.

Donald Trump is an anomaly. His strategy is to try and win in the swing states and if not, challenge a Harris/Walz victory via the legal system. I mean JD… He lost all credibility when he wouldn’t admit Trump lost the 2020 election. I mean really? You went to Yale, you worked in banking and you’re buying the canard that Biden didn’t win? You could see he didn’t believe it just watching him, but this is a litmus test for Trumpers, and he couldn’t cross the boss.

So Trump screwed up. He should have nominated someone folksy, to cut through his high strung, silver spoon ravings.

Vance adds nothing to the ticket. If anything, he convinces you that the whole Trump enterprise is a Trojan Horse affair. Everybody telling Donald what he wants to hear, but no one with any power believing it.

If you’re the smartest person in the room, think twice about going into politics. Because that’s not what’s needed. Being warm, likable, being able to relate is a skill, one which many business titans don’t have. Can you say “ELON MUSK”?

You can get away with it in business, not all the time, but if you put up the numbers and/or have voting control…

But Steve Jobs excoriated his employees on a regular basis. All in pursuit of excellence, which was often achieved, but people were not lining up to go for a drink with him, furthermore Jobs didn’t want to go for a drink with THEM!

Walz’s closing statement was amazing. Upbeat and optimistic about a coming together, a great antidote to the Trump train.

But, once again, stop paying attention and vote. You know who you’re going to vote for. Encourage your friends to vote. The ones who never have or only sometimes do. That’s what’s going to make the difference.

The news for another thirty-odd days?

It’s just a sideshow. A bad blockbuster being pushed by a studio that people don’t want.

This debate had additional gravitas because Trump won’t get in a room with Harris again. And it was not a cartoon, like most VP debates. It was more edifying than the Trump/Harris debate.

But in truth, that’s who it comes down to, either Trump or Harris, the VP candidates really don’t make a difference.

You know who you’re going to vote for.

Do so.

Re: Breaking Records

Hey Bob,

I completely agree.

You and I yearn for the visionaries, the Ahmets, Clives, Jerrys, Berrys, Herbs, Ricks, and Jimmys.  These were the noble chiefs who knew talent and took chances. Your label was deemed successful because you signed great acts like Led Zeppelin, The Carpenters, The Police, The Jackson 5, Aretha Franklin, etc., not because you reorganized, trimmed some fat, and saved money.

Puh. Wall Street is right!

As a market develops and expands, the visionaries thrive and change the world. As a market contracts, the bean counters take over and celebrate profitability as they fall down the increasingly sterile, vapid staircase.

Lucian Grange is no more “internet savvy” than my Great Dane, Bravo.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great businessman and a great leader, but how in the hell can ANYONE pulling the levers in this music industry of ours be mistaken for “internet savvy” when it’s the last industry on the planet Earth that still doesn’t know who their customer is?

Let that sink in…

All tickets are sold online now; by definition, this is ecommerce! 2023 was heralded as the biggest year yet for worldwide ticket sales.  So, how are ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Amazon 1,000 times more digitally sophisticated than platforms like Ticketweb?

I’ve been working with artists and promoters in the digital marketing space since 2019.  The first three shows we promoted used three different online ticket outlets.  When I spoke with support at each outlet, asking where to put the Pixel (different term for a “cookie” aka digital sales and traffic tracking code), they asked, “What’s a pixel?”.  These ticket outlets aren’t Silicon Valley startups, they’re digitally ignorant music industry people trying to sell tickets online.

Today, Ticketweb is one of the most advanced because they’ll let you inject a pixel ID number, but no proper code, so we don’t get data on who was shopping, who abandoned their cart, and who purchased.

We can’t retarget the specific accounts to get them add tickets to the cart

We can’t send consumers that abandoned a cart a message getting them to purchase those tickets.

We can’t inject Hotjar code to see where people are getting stuck on the purchase page so we can change the sales copy.

We can’t inject attribution code to eliminate blind spots on platforms like Facebook Ads and determine which ads are working and which are not.

We can’t use the data to teach the algorithms to better identify who the artist’s potential fans are!

The venues are worse with good ol’ Ethel who’s worked the ticket counter since 1942 in charge of the online ticket platform.

They get away with it because the artists and the industry aren’t asking, but this kindergarten level approach to digital marketing would be mocked in true ecommerce.

What happens when you go to Amazon to shop for a product but choose not to purchase? That product follows you around and you see it on every website, your gmail, your Facebook, etc.

Can you imagine this kind of power marketing artists?

The Lucian Grange’s of our industry approach digital promotion by spending $50k-$100k and if a song doesn’t go viral in 2 weeks, it’s a failure and they pull it. The same approach to a radio single would be ridiculous, right? “The singles been out for 2 weeks, but it’s not a smash yet…let’s pull it!”

The fundamentals of marketing, reach & frequency, are still the fundamentals, and the fundamentals still work. The strategies and tactics must change on a digital platform because it’s consumed differently.

Streaming is still the same ol’ way of doing business through a distributor but on a digital platform. I’ll remind everyone that the only value a distributor brings to a business deal is they have a relationship with the end-user that the creator of the product or service either can’t have, like it was with physical product and record stores (although Columbia had one hell of an email list back in the day with their direct to fan mail marketing, didn’t they?) orchoose not to have, like it is now.

There’s nothing internet savvy about the music business.

Hollywood eventually figured it out. The studios and the networks began their own streaming services, eliminating the distribution middleman, and DECOMMODITIZING their products. You got young kids, you got Disney. Period. Your 5-old daughter doesn’t give a flying F**K about your politics.

Hollywood has your name, your email address, your credit card, and your data!

Bob, I haven’t had a live cable hookup in my home in the last 10 years, consequently that’s the last time I saw a tampon commercial; they know I’m not a buyer and they’re not spending one penny marketing to me!  However, any label trying to break an artist on radio today is purposefully paying a fortune to put their artist in front of people they know don’t like him/her or aren’t ready to come into the market yet…I digress.

But a supposed “internet-savvy” music business?  Puh-lease.

You’re absolutely right, Bob, the market retooled 30 years ago (do you even remember the name of your local travel agent anymore?). The music industry is still stuck in 1969 but with cool new digital toys.

All is not lost though, Bob. Reach & frequency still apply, and miracles still happen when a compelling artist is regularly introduced to millions of people. Only now, we can tell who likes them!

Sadly, the retooling won’t happen until the bottom drops out of radio, because that’s all this industry wants to know about.

Johnny Dwinell

Daredevil Production, LLC

1604 8th Ave. S.

Suite 340

Nashville, TN 37203

You have to hate Ticketmaster. It’s the law of us vs. them. If you question this orthodoxy, you’re a pariah. Truth be damned.

But the truth is there is no way underpriced concert tickets will end up in the hands of hard core fans. It’s literally impossible. Speak to the titans of the industry and they’ll tell you. People with decades of experience. So the question becomes how to address this problem.

At the end of this e-mail I’m going to print an e-mail that links to a CNN article about Coldplay playing India. The band kept prices low, so fans could attend, but resellers got the tickets and are now selling them for $11,000.

Now not only is Coldplay not getting the uplift, most fans can’t afford to go!

I’m also going to print the letter of someone who is contemplating buying extra Oasis tickets to resell himself.

I hear all this b.s. about only allowing ticket owners to be able to resell them at face value, but there are umpteen ways for scalpers to get around this.

It’s a cat and mouse game, trying to eradicate the secondary market. So far, no one has been able to accomplish this completely.

And, once again, if you tie up the tickets with the fans as opposed to the secondary market, the public doesn’t like this either. Because people want to believe if they’re willing to pay the freight, however expensive it might be, they can get a ticket at the last minute.

Michael Rapino, Jay Marciano, Irving Azoff, Coran Capshaw…they do this all day every day, with multiple acts. These are the questions they’re confronted with.

What both Live Nation and AEG have decided is it’s best to adjust prices on the fly, if they are underpriced. They watch the on sale and raise prices accordingly. Their goal is to capture fair market value before the scalpers do. Because if the scalpers see that the tickets are underpriced it’s a field day, they’re going to buy even more.

Now most bands are not constantly on the road. Most managers don’t represent bands that are constantly on the road. Which is why acts and managers can be out of the loop regarding modern touring conditions. Things change just that fast. You toured, took a year off, and now are going back on the road.

I’ve spoken with lawyers who try to set managers straight. They’ve been making these tour deals day in and day out and know the market conditions, but these managers are operating on old information, on gut feeling, and their beliefs are out of date.

Ticketmaster is imperfect. We can debate all day long whether Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s concert promotion division should be broken up. But one thing is for sure, even if there is a division it will not lower ticket prices. It’s not Ticketmaster setting prices that keeps them high, it’s fan demand!

Sure, there are fees. I’m not going to delineate them for the umpteenth time. I’m just going to say most of the money from these fees does not end up in the pockets of Ticketmaster and without fees there can be no show, because the acts take almost all of the face value of the ticket.

Once again, do not listen to club owners and developing acts.

Do you know how hard it is to keep a club in business? That’s why so many of them went out of business! So many were kept alive by record companies, purchasing tickets and drinks for showcases. That money has dried up completely. So, a club has to make it on the shows it’s got. And it’s great they can sell out on Saturday night, but what about the other six days of the week? And no one is obligated to play a club. There’s no guarantee you’ll get talent. And margins are thin and…

And developing acts. This is the world you’re living in. You can’t really make big money until you can go clean and can play bigger buildings. This is the way it works in essentially every sphere.

Let’s talk baseball. The major leagues pay extremely well. The minor leagues, the farm clubs, pay horrifically. Even though it’s a revolving door. You’re the same player in each, playing the same game, but until you’re called up to the majors, you’re making bupkes. Ditto those who can’t get re-signed by a major. They play for almost nothing trying to put up good numbers in order to get back into the majors for the big payday.

And you can’t listen to most agents and managers, because they’re posturing. They want more of this money for their acts. Which is one reason the fees were established in the first place, to keep a pot of money out of the pot that the acts can commission. And agents and managers are always trying to get more of this money. This engenders a whole ‘nother slew of shenanigans. Fake fees or fake upcharges the promoter instills in order to make a profit. Yes, the promoter can make a profit while telling the act it has not. The act got paid its guarantee, but the promoter doesn’t want the show to go into overages.

I could go deeper but you don’t want me to. This is a professional business. With history. Not easily understood unless you’re in it.

Let’s go one step further, in the old days it was more about percentages than guarantees, the acts and promoters were sharing the risk. Now it has flipped. An act can have a bad gig and make no money. So the act wants a big guarantee, and the promoter is on the hook for it, even if the show stiffs. And if you’re capable of selling tickets, the margin for the promoter, the upside, is tiny, predicated on a near sell out, if not a total sell out, and if you don’t sell these tickets, if you sell 15,000 in an 18,000 seat arena, the promoter might take a bath.

Not that the punters know any of this. They just know that concert ticket prices are high and they want to be inside the building.

But they are not the only force involved. There’s the building itself, and its costs. And Ticketmaster’s costs. And the band’s costs, never mind the commissions to agents, managers, attorneys and accountants. This is not the Little Rascals putting on a show, this is complicated, a world where a percentage point here or there can make all the difference.

You may not want to believe this, but there’s so much you don’t want to believe. But music hits you in an emotional way, so you’re concerned about the price of concert tickets.

There is a way to solve this problem, charge what the tickets are worth. Why is it only in music that tickets should be underpriced, why should high ticket prices reflect negatively on an act if that’s what the public is willing to pay?

As for waiting online hours to buy tickets… There are multiple causes. An act wanting to put multiple shows on sale all at once to create mania so the shows will sell out. But even more, the secondary market, the scalpers, the bots. And in many cases the use of bots is illegal. But this is another thing the public doesn’t understand. A law doesn’t mean anything without enforcement. As for going to court… A lawyer will tell you not to bother if the defendant is judgment proof. And even if you win in court, good luck collecting the money. Hell, look what is happening with Alex Jones! The judgment is clear, getting the money is taking years, and still hasn’t really happened.

I hate to go all Jack Nicholson on you, but most people can’t handle the truth. But that does not make it any less true.

Shoot the messenger all you want, but it’s not going to change reality.

_____________

From: James Spencer

Re: Oasis Won’t Use Dynamic Pricing In The U.S.

I saw the Apple/Zane Lowe Coldplay interview..The guys were beaming with pride about being able to keep ticket prices reasonable..I got the “warm fuzzies”..Who WOULDN’T?

Then, this morning, THIS..

“Coldplay tickets for $11,000? Uproar in India after tickets sold out in minutes and resold for outrageously high prices”

https://t.ly/2empg

_____________

From: Jason Orr

Re: Oasis Won’t Use Dynmic Pricing In The U.S.

I loved Oasis.  I mean, loved.   I’d carry around my anti-skip discman with my headphones singing their dumb songs like Digsy’s Dinner or Girl with A Dirty Shirt all day long.  My purple Oasis shirt with their orange logo shirt was so stained and faded from wearing all the time.  It was gross.  I think I had a moppy hair cut to boot.  I was a total dweeb.

I remember going to see them one time in Duquesne University basketball gym in the 90s.  I got the tickets as a Christmas gift from my grandmother (God rest her soul, what a woman).  I’ll tell you tho, guaranteed she didn’t scalp those tickets. She probably drove her Oldsmobile into the mall a few days after they were released, parked and went in to Camelot or Sam Goody, and bought those hard tickets in person.  I remember that I couldn’t even get anyone to go with me.  I begged my best friend and he finally relented, persuaded by a free ticket and assurance that I’d never tell anyone he went.  (He had a rep to keep up, ya know, his Metallica, Megadeth and Pantera fandoms were well known.)  That show was one of my favorites tho.  Small venue.  Probably only die hards there.  Loud as hell and raw sounding.  Oasis in peak form. Thank you grandma.

Today, when I got the email for the Oasis pre-sale or lottery access or whatever it is, I immediately signed up.  Then, I turned to my “make a quick buck” colleague and said, ‘ya know what might be a better opportunity than those Travis Scott sneakers you were trying to get last week? Oasis tickets if they don’t do that dynamic pricing like they did in the U.K.   Six shows over here.  Only one in the U.S. on the east coast.’ He only feigned interest.

Lo and behold, your email comes thru and I had to laugh.  First time I had heard they weren’t doing dynamic.  But then I started thinking about what you said… are they even going to sell out?  Do I even know anyone now that would go with me?

And on the other hand, if they sell out in seconds and I somehow get them, would I even go if I could scalp them for two grand each or whatever they are going for across the pond? Would I be selling out, or wallet first, as you said?  They haven’t been in my Spotify top 100 songs of the year in the last decade.  Sure, the show would be a trip down memory lane I never thought I’d get.  Hell it could be new memories! But I saw them plenty in the heyday.  Will it even be the same?

I guess the question we’ll get answered soon is, what’s it actually worth to be here now?