"The 30 Richest DJs in the World"

Don’t e-mail me and tell me it’s inaccurate. That’s missing the point.

The bottom line is the public knows record labels rip off artists, that you can be on "American Idol" and be nearly broke. Musicians are people to be made fun of, derided, deejays are to be embraced. For now anyway.

Deejays do it for themselves. If they’ve got a label at all, it’s a minor element of their business. Which is playing live gigs. At extraordinary prices. Flying on private jets from job to job.

That’s all real.

And people want a piece of that.

Which is why so many people now spin records. It’s pure economics.

Fed by commercials like this, from:

Afrojack

Armin van Burren

Who wouldn’t want that lifestyle?

I’ll quibble with the after-effects of these sell-out commercials.

And make you laugh with this ancient David Guetta clip:

david guetta – loreal partyproof

But the deejays have power and money. All the things rock stars say they’ve got but so rarely possess. Traditional rock stars will whore themselves out to anybody with a buck, they’re tools of the man. Who’d want to believe in that?

But an entrepreneur…

Deejays are no different from software coders, app-writers… They’re the new heroes.

We’ll see for how long, but right now the audience is embracing them, they got the message. The Internet doesn’t only allow you to steal music, it allows you to study up and learn the truth, that the traditional music business is run by old men making all the money. If you don’t think most people are aware of this and want no part of it, you’ve got no Internet connection.

1. Justin Bieber

Musical acts have had vanity labels for eternity, whether it be Sinatra with Reprise, the Beatles with Apple, even the Youngbloods with Raccoon. But the difference is those entities functioned within the usual system. They didn’t translate to the mainstream because said musical artists did not have a direct connection with the public.

2. Twitter

Fans are literally hanging on every word. Which is why your feed really needs to be written by you, why it can’t be ghost-composed. Because it’s less about information than connection. Your fans are now your best friends. You’re not above them, but with them. Justin Bieber controls an army. Just like the Internet giants organized and got the public to stop SOPA, entertainers with huge social media followings can draw attention and create hits.

But this power must be used wisely.

Then again, one can gauge reaction and act accordingly.

3. The Track

It’s a hit. The soaring keyboard figure in the chorus is infectious.

What’s wrong with the non-Top Forty music business is it’s de-emphasized hooks. Hell, listen to the Beatles, they were the masters of hooks! They didn’t stray from this formula until everybody was on board. But today, musicians want fans to rally around their non-hooky productions. You almost can’t stop listening to "Call Me Maybe". But it’s almost impossible not to tune out everything else, despite the protestations and ministrations of the sad-sack, chip on the shoulder wannabes.

4. It Started Out As A Folk Song

A great song can be produced in many ways. One can argue "Call Me Maybe" isn’t great, but it’s certainly serviceable.

5. Nothing’s Overnight

Bieber tweeted about the track at the end of last year. But it was only when the big boys, Scooter Braun and Interscope, got behind the track, had it featured on "Ellen", that it truly gained traction.

6. Spreading The Word

Radio and TV made "Call Me Maybe" gigantic. But that doesn’t mean Bieber’s fans didn’t keep it alive in the interim.

7. Ubiquity

Despite those paying attention, there are tens of millions of people who still haven’t heard "Call Me Maybe" and never will. This is unlike the sixties/seventies or the eighties/nineties eras, the original Top Forty and MTV heydays. Back then, everyone was paying attention. Today, Carly Rae Jepsen is bigger than most everybody in the pool, but she’s not as big as she once might have been.

8. Career

No one listening to Carly Rae Jepsen thinks she’s forever. This is just a trifle. Once upon a time, music was about careers. But the Top Forty audience has been burned too many times. You’re only as good as your last hit. So, unless Carly Rae Jepsen delivers many more, she’ll fade into obscurity.

9. The Lyrics

Over the last few decades, women have gained power in the dating world. It’s de rigueur to be aggressive and ask a boy out. The embodiment of this concept in the lyrics, the fact that the female protagonist is taking a chance, appeals to girls and is also embraced by boys, who too often are shy and inhibited.

The lyrics are a great change from the I’m rolling on huge rims and am gonna kick you to the curb of hip-hop and the platitudes of rock.

10. YouTube

108,285,437 plays and counting. The images are secondary to the ability to hear the song on demand. YouTube is the new radio, especially amongst the financially-challenged younger generation. Used to be you had to save your pennies and/or nag your parents to buy the single, which required a drive to the store to boot. Now you just fire up your computer and watch. As a result, everybody "owns" the song, revenue might be down, but songs are nearer and dearer to one’s heart than ever before.

______________

CONCLUSION

Music has become a business of sour grapes. Everybody complaining. Whether it be the oldsters bitching about "Napster" or the wannabes saying they just can’t get traction, just can’t break through.

Well, first and foremost you’ve got to pay your dues. Carly Rae Jepsen is not wet behind the ears, she’s twenty six years old, she was on "Canadian Idol" in 2007, it takes just that long not only to get in the public eye, but find your voice, and by that I mean more than your ability to sing! Many can sing, few are artists.

Top Forty is professional. Lowest common denominator professional, but imagine if those in other genres paid attention to its game and used some of its clues. Now, more than ever, it’s hard to gain someone’s attention. So you’ve got to make it easy for them. By hooking them almost immediately.

Carly Rae Jepsen has achieved this. She’s become an Internet meme. Covered on YouTube and embraced in a Jimmy Fallon production. But one meme is replaced by another, never forget that.

CONCLUSION 2

I want to EMPHASIZE that the key here is the track itself. Everything else is secondary. This is a hit song. Yes, it was lucky to be embraced by Bieber and promoted by Interscope, but you’ve got to be in the game long enough to get lucky, having driven down many blind alleys beforehand.

If you’re too smug to see the charm in "Call Me Maybe", I feel sorry for you. Yes, it’s far from groundbreaking, but it just sticks in your brain, it makes you feel good, you want to hear it again and again.

That’s a hit.

"Call Me Maybe"

P.S. There are 155 versions of "Call Me Maybe" on Spotify.

1. Word Of Mouth

The media was there last.

This is akin to the seventies, when your favorite band finally hit and then everybody went back and bought the catalog and you could take a victory lap. Only in this case, as a result of the changes in the media landscape, it took more like twenty years.

Electronic music was closed out of the old gatekeeper game. Believing not enough people were interested, they stifled it.

The Internet broke EDM. You could hear it, see it and talk about it. On some level, it’s no different from the Arab Spring. It was about communication. Unfettered by the machine. We keep hearing from the disinformation committee known as the RIAA/major labels that the Internet has been bad for music. EDM proves them wrong. EDM burgeoned because of the Internet!

2. The Scene/Culture

There was culture at Woodstock, at the Fillmore, but there’s no culture at the Jiffy Lube/Verizon/Car Wreck Amphitheatre. It’s only about commerce. The Top Forty is skin deep, the EDM scene goes to your core. It’s not about getting up close, getting the right ticket, it’s about inclusion as opposed to exclusion. Which is the mantra of the generation embracing it.

3. The Music

We’re at the advent. It’s kind of like the Beatles being on Ed Sullivan and everybody going out and buying a guitar. Except that now everybody’s making music at home and utilizing SoundCloud. We couldn’t foresee "Sgt. Pepper" in 1964 and we should be optimistic as to where electronic music is going as opposed to dismissing it.

4. Killing It

This is the number one problem facing EDM today. Its embrace by the mainstream in a dash for cash, which will hollow out the scene so fast you’ll think the boy bands were forever.

It all comes down to the deejays. The deejays are in control of their culture, just like traditional musical artists. Can the deejays say no? First and foremost to the money?

We’ve had a short term mentality in the music business ever since 1981, the beginning of MTV. Let’s overexpose it, get every last dollar and then leave its carcass behind.

And once something breaks through today, it’s like the MTV of yore, except instead of having to sit in front of the tube waiting for your video, you can go online and dig deeper and deeper, feeding your habit.

In other words, EDM has to disconnect from traditional business to survive.

The deejays have to say no to major media. They have to say no to endorsements. They have to say no to everybody who wants to get between the music and their fans.

I know, I know, this is contrary to the so-called American way, where you utilize your fame to overexpose and become profitable, a paradigm Paris Hilton defined and Kim Kardashian refined. And they both got rich, but they’re both despised.

That’s not what an artist wants. An artists wants fans, who love them, forever.

5. Radio Crossover

That helped put the music into every nook and cranny. The collaborations that ended up on Top Forty radio. This is both good and bad. It’s good, because why not have the music exposed. It’s bad, because it muddies the waters and risks overexposure.

6. The Music

That’s what will grant the scene longevity. Dance clubs come and go. But great music remains.

7. Bloviating About It

It doesn’t matter what I say, never mind the mainstream media. Electronic music arrived fully-formed, with its own stars, promoters and infrastructure. Now the traditional forces want in. Used to be they were necessary, because of their power, money and influence. Now you can grow these at home.

The deejays are rich enough, they don’t need the label’s money.

The gigs are so successful, the promoters have profit.

And the media can’t spread the word to anybody but outsiders, old farts who don’t matter anyway. EDM lives on the Internet.

8. A Fad

Are the Yankees a fad? How about the Lakers?

We have been mistreating the music, paying it no respect for decades. This is a chance for change. New people beget new systems.

9. Fans first

So far, this has been the case. But in the traditional concert promotion sphere, this is anything but true. From the artists on down, it’s all about ripping fans off, like the subterfuge of ticket fees. Never mind the overpriced concessions.

10. Music Should Be Free

You can charge, but only for high quality and singles. It’s truly about the show, how can you get people to go?

1. Why do the slowest drivers drive in the fast lane?

I was rushing to UCLA hospital…

Now that sounds like I was in a crisis. But that is untrue. I was going for a routine scan, they’re checking my kidney stones, of which I’ve got a plethora… And you never know how long it’s gonna take, because they’re doing construction on the freeway. And on this particular day, today, I gauged it wrong, traffic was heavier than usual, and when I finally got on the 405 I was confronted with the question…fast lane or slow?

Felice has taught me the slow lane is oftentimes the fastest. You know, the one to the right. But because of said construction, traffic tends to be backed up at Sunset, and I was going all the way to Wilshire, so I decided to get in the fast lane. What a mistake!

First and foremost I’m behind an old Dodge van, so I can’t see a damn thing. But then everybody around me starts to speed up, and I’m confronted with that age old question, should I change lanes?

Finally I did.

And after doing this I noticed a huge gap in front of said Dodge. The driver wasn’t on the phone, he was just taking his sweet time. And it wasn’t an issue of acceleration/power, he maintained about a ten car gap between himself and the driver in front…

We live in a lawless country. In so many states, California included, it’s illegal to drive with a cell phone to your ear. But I see it all the time. Especially in the expensive cars driven by the people who believe they’re immune, that the laws don’t apply to them. Hell, why should they? They just pay off the politicians to go free and easy, and there aren’t enough cops to stop them.

And I know the days of three freeway lanes, slow, medium and fast, are behind us. Hell, there are already five lanes on the 405 and they’re adding a sixth, but didn’t these people learn in driver’s ed that slower traffic stays to the right?

2. Toilet paper rolls…

Actually, yesterday’s doctor, another routine check-up, at the House Ear Clinic, an appointment that’s almost impossible to get, you’ve got to make it months in advance, Steven Tyler called me Monday to go hear the new Aerosmith album and I said no, because I wouldn’t be able to hear the next morning for the test and I didn’t want to reschedule and wait until fall to see the doctor again, told me a great aphorism he heard from a friend in Tennessee…

"Life is like a roll of toilet paper, when you get to the end, it goes really fast!"

Ain’t that the truth. The doctor was remarking that it didn’t seem like a year since he’d seen me last, which is the same thing Felice said when I left the house.

And speaking of toilet paper, at UCLA this morning I went to the john and I noticed… The toilet paper had a tiny core.

Let me try to explain this…

Ever notice that toilet paper rolls have this huge, inch and a half or two (I’ve never measured it…) hole in the middle? Why? Is it an issue of leverage/torque, are they fearful we won’t be able to pull out the initial sheets?

Or is it just a scam. Manufacturers wanting us to believe we’re getting more than we are.

But at the hospital, the hole in the middle was positively tiny. The paper went right down to the middle.

This is a breakthrough we need at home.

3. Foreign language

I don’t hear that well. So when the people giving me the tests don’t speak the language that well, it spooks me.

Yesterday, the woman was Spanish. I don’t mean Latina, from Mexico, I mean she grew up overseas. And she’s giving me the hearing test and I can’t understand her. And when I try to tell her this, she can’t understand what I’m saying! And I want to make sure the test is right, and it’s a subjective one, unlike the ultrasound today…

And today, the woman was from Korea. And she was telling me to do things that seemed impossible… "Hold your breath and stick out your stomach…" Huh? Don’t we usually hold our breath and HOLD IN our stomachs? Was it an issue of communication? Was it a language barrier or…

And do you get a bad result if you don’t hold your breath during an ultrasound? Do I have to be uptight about this, or can I be cavalier? Does a powerful person talk on the cell phone during an ultrasound?

These are the questions that went through my mind today.