Today you’re selling streams, not physical product, and they’re doing a piss-poor job of it.

There are two issues in today’s music business: attention and friction.

The Stones have the attention element down pretty well, but they’re flummoxed by friction, how are they going to get people to actually listen to “Foreign Tongues”?

Now the hype used to be a set-up for sales. And with physical product as an overweighted part of the chart equation, maybe the Stones can eke out a number one, before the album crashes into the troposphere. But that’s a circle jerk. You get press attention, but that press doesn’t generate many streams, just ask Paul McCartney.

But as good a job as McCartney did promoting “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” the Stones’ press campaign is of a scorched-earth variety we haven’t seen for a classic rock act since the days of Tom Petty’s last studio album, and maybe Steely Dan’s comeback 25 years ago.

You remember that comeback, wherein Donald revealed the story of “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and…

That was a quarter century ago. The Dan wen ton late night TV. You were exposed to the music. Today?

I mean an interview in the “New York Times” is key if you want to sell tickets, but streams? I don’t think it has much of an effect.

Now let me be clear, unlike a lot of old acts, the Stones are all over TikTok. However, most of the clips are interview segments. I searched earlier and found there was a live gig in London a few nights back where the Stones played…

Oldies.

Is this a good way to sell new music? I can’t see how.

Once again, it’s about streams, not sales. And the dirty little secret is the Stones sold poorly anyway. They were in your face, but albums might have gone platinum, diamond records were for others. Richard Branson signed the Stones to a rich deal at Virgin so he could sell the company, the buyers not aware of how poor their sales actually were.

So, I wouldn’t expect sales to be great this time around. In an era where sales mean so much less.

The first thing they needed was a single.

Now let me be clear, I’m not forcing you to have one, but if you want your attention campaign to ignite you must have a track that is a one listen smash. So far, I haven’t heard one on “Foreign Tongues.” Which is fine, but sans said hit, how are you going to get the masses involved? You’re not!

It’s not only the Stones, everybody faces this question, even some of the younger stars, how are you going to get people to actually listen to the music?

By using online platforms to expose them to it.

The Stones clips shouldn’t be conversations with Zane Lowe or the “Times,” they should be one or more members sitting in the studio explaining how they wrote this song, how they came up with it, how they built it. Then people would be forced to listen to the new music, assuming they cared, and many do. Talking about music, isn’t that like dancing about architecture?

Now if there is a single, a one listen smash, every clip should focus on that one track. I mean come on, you expect the audience to immediately grasp an entire album? I don’t care who you are, that’s a heavy lift. Bash me over the head with the track again and again, you’re your own radio station today.

The biggest mistake the Stones made was not going on Rick Beato’s show. Beato is not subject to the algorithm, his fans are dedicated. They tune in just for him. And Beato specializes in the music itself, how it was created. That’s the kind of information that needs to be spread if you want people to actually stream a song. Go DEEPER!

Otherwise, it’s all a wank.

I mean this could be the last time, so the fact that the Stones seem to be revealing that which they held back previously… I mean how do you hype the next album? After you’ve shot your wad?

And one thing is for sure, we know the hype campaign is not working.

Morgan Wallen or Taylor Swift drop a new album and it dominates the Spotify Top 50 immediately. But the Stones are nowhere to be found on that chart, whether it be the U.S. or the U.K.

Now if the Stones really care about this new music…

They’ll promote it for longer than this week.

Want to promote it?

Create mania.

Starting live.

Show up and open for acts. For Olivia Rodrigo. For Morgan Wallen (after all, country is the new rock and roll). Play only the new album, and if you think that will bore people, play only four songs. Once again, you should be hyping the new stuff. Such that when people shoot YouTube videos, that’s what people will see and that’s what they’ll hear!

As far as social media…

The oldsters are on Facebook and Instagram, the youngsters are on TikTok. Focus accordingly.

But in truth, it’s youngsters who keep a band alive. How do you reach them? WITH A HISTORY LESSON!

Who knows more about the blues?

The Stones should have clips tracing their new material to the Delta blues, or whatever roots they’ve got. Thread the needle, don’t exist in a vacuum. And you must focus on the MUSIC!

All the interviews online, they’re talking about Mick’s personality, whether we know the real him. About his physical condition and dancing. What has that got to do with the music? Once again, it might sell tickets, but they’re not going on the road.

Now tomorrow, the media genuflecting to the Stones, up the band’s ass, will be on to something else. That’s the way the news business works. Once again, you’ve got to promote yourself.

And the Stones should do this by appearing to be outsiders.

And stunting.

Stunts? It’s so easy. Forget the inane press party in London, the Stones should have worked up two numbers for the Sphere. Either appeared on a dark night or during the afternoon. After all, it’s the STONES! And the new music would be helped by the visuals.

Right now the Stones look like aged grandpas with their edges shorn off deigning to talk to us plebes for a week until they go back to their mansions. Rock, especially the Stones, is supposed to be rough and savage, to the gut, it’s something you feel more than talk about. Where is it in this hype campaign, where is something new? An AI video? Not a bad idea, but it’s not really pushing the envelope to blow our minds. And it doesn’t require repeat viewings. For that, the music must hook you immediately!

I mean if the Stones don’t care about whether anybody listens to their new music, fine. But that’s not the way they’re approaching it, this isn’t a stealth operation like the U2 EPs.

And speaking of U2, the new track “Street of Dreams” starts off quietly, but if you stick with it it revs up and becomes hooky, in a way “Beautiful Day” did back in the day. I might sound like a heretic, but they should just chop off the first thirty seconds of “Street of Dreams,” especially in an era where most people only give new material a few seconds anyway. I won’t say “Street of Dreams” breaks new ground, but after that first half a minute when the music plays out you’ll find yourself nodding your head, a fan will be satiated, will want to hear the track again. Bono is a student of the business. He knew he needed something hooky and easy, just like he did with the aforementioned comeback single, “Beautiful Day.”

So far I haven’t heard an equivalent track on “Foreign Tongues.”

Then again, I haven’t listened to the whole thing. How are the Stones gonna get me to listen to the whole thing?

Not by blabbing about their past career ad infinitum to talking heads, but by actually playing the new music and dissecting it.

I mean this is a band that was built on riffs. Couldn’t they have gone back into the studio and just written one that closed people? Wasn’t there anybody involved who could tell them they just didn’t have that one track, and if they wanted more than attention, if they wanted people to actually listen more than once, they needed it?

Focus on the music first. The story is irrelevant unless it relates to the  music itself.

You’re selling repeat listens and longevity, that’s the streaming game. Focus there first. The Stones seem to have it reversed, they want attention on the band itself for a week and then…

Exactly what?

Tune in July 11th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

The number no longer makes sense.

Forget lying to others about your age, can you lie to yourself?

It was really our grandparents who were the last generation to get old and accept it. It was a natural stage of life. As for our parents, they were flummoxed. The sixties were unfathomable, some got on the bandwagon but most stayed on the sidelines. And then everything their children augured for, believed in, became de facto. The end of the war, casual clothing, music everywhere. I don’t know when your parents started to wear jeans, but I was shocked when my dad showed up in a pair in the late seventies, prior to that, he didn’t own any.

And it’s not so much that we had a good run, but that the run is over.

As Solters calls them, the “civilians” are all retired. And those still in this business are running things, or got squeezed out. You can hire youngsters with more passion for fewer bucks.

We stopped going to the movies, now we cotton to streaming TV. After all, they don’t even make movies for us anymore. We remember the last true heyday, the seventies, which contained the birth of the blockbuster, but began truly in the late sixties with “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate,” but ended in 1979 with “Kramer vs. Kramer.” Imagine a film like that getting greenlit today! Never mind the younger generations get divorced less than us. Then again, it’s a class thing, the less wealthy and educated often don’t get married at all!

We still go to see our favorite bands live. Not like the younger generations… For them it’s a gathering, an event, the music is almost secondary, it certainly doesn’t strike their soul the way ours did. We want to remember those days.

But we don’t recall video games, and as far as tech… If our generation even knows how to do more than surf the web and text, they decry it. Social media is the devil. Why won’t those damn kids get off the lawn! And while they’re at it, get off the phone too!

But our kids played all those video games and they survived. What makes us think that Gen-Z won’t survive the smartphone?

But really, it’s the feeling that the world is passing you by.

I don’t know about you, but over the past couple of weeks, the tsunami of Trump traffic just doesn’t hit me the same way anymore. I just don’t get worked up about it as much. I know some people cheer on the Orange “Genius,” but they’re not friends of mine. Yup, I’m a college graduate, a member of the so-called “elite,” I believe in facts and truth and I laugh when someone whips out a conspiracy theory.

And the funny thing about being over seventy is you stop correcting people. You realize it’s not worth it. You can send them the report that the government quashed, about the benefits of the Covid vaccine, but this is how people feel powerful, with their own ideas and viewpoints, they’re sick of everybody getting rich and being powerful other than themselves. I mean there are many costs of the plethora of billionaires. Sure, everybody would like to be rich, but they know that most of these guys, and almost all of them are guys, pay few taxes, think their sh*t doesn’t stink and…

That’s another thing about getting older, you no longer have any heroes. You’ve realized everybody is human. I guess when someone my age starts testifying about believing in certain musicians… You mean the one with the plastic surgery, who hasn’t had a hit in eons? I mean give Bob Dylan credit, he’s doing it his way. But giving him hosannas for his shows is literally the Emperor’s New Clothes.

But those are fighting words. Because Boomers have so little to believe in that that which they do they’ll defend to their death, their icons can’t be questioned.

So yes, some Boomers wear blinders and are delusional, and this is hard for me to handle.

They’re still trying to impress. How could they not know no one cares what kind of car you drive, where you went on vacation? You reach seventy and society is no longer fluid, it’s set. If you’ve got a bunch of bucks, feel free to spend them, but don’t tell me that makes you better than me.

But the rat race, society, you reach seventy and you feel strangely estranged. There are those alta kachers who won’t give up their jobs in D.C. Are they that delusional, do they think that’s what their life is about, their title? I mean they’re not accomplishing much. No one is as hollow at the core as a politician.

But there’s so much info coming down the pike. Is the feeling of being overwhelmed the nature of life in the twenty first century or is this a particular side effect of being old? I mean you used to be able to be comprehensive, see all of the movies, know the hit records, now that seems impossible, and you wonder why you’d want to anyway. Meanwhile, the media are like that Who song, meet the new hype, same as the old hype. We literally can’t be fooled again. If something is truly great and it sustains, we’ll find out about it, we don’t need to be teased and foaming at the mouth in anticipation.

So some of us are self-satisfied, some in a good way. They own their own home, they’ve got grandchildren, they’re living day by day.

While they’re not going to the doctor.

And then there are others who just can’t let go of the mores. Is this a function of being a Baby Boomer, or is it just a consequence of getting old?

And no one will admit all this. Everybody thinks they’re as hip and up to date as ever. But unlike when they were young, they pooh-pooh the new rather than embrace it.

And the younger generations want us to move on down the line and we refuse to. We won’t leave politics, and not only that, we’ll denigrate those with youth, they just haven’t lived long enough to understand! Isn’t that what they told us, isn’t that why we got the voting age lowered to eighteen? I mean if you’re old enough to go to war, you’re old enough to vote.

And the whole world changed and we’re frustrated when people don’t know it or acknowledge it. We couldn’t beat the North Vietnamese and now we see how Ukraine is standing up to Russia with drone warfare and the machine is busy telling everybody that we’re the biggest and baddest while we’re running out of ammunition, having spent so much cash to build Patriot missiles to blow drones out of the sky in the Middle East.

And we didn’t exactly declare victory when we left Vietnam, but there’s no way to portray the fracas in Iran as anything but a loss. And as bad as we perceive the religious government in Iran to be, so many did come out this past week to mourn their lost leader.

Begging the question what we know.

Never mind the shifting image of the United States.

Back in the seventies, when we all went to Europe on cheap flights and used our Eurail passes, we had to defend our nation, the locals wanted to chide us for Vietnam. I don’t even hear about college students doing that today, and how many Americans even have passports? We’ve been sold a bill of goods, that America is the tippity top in every vertical, when this is patently untrue.

Socialism is pretty damn good in Scandinavia. Free college? Our national hero St. Reagan changed the California college system from nearly free to expensive. Then again, California is now in the doghouse, a national punching bag. What can you do but throw your hands in the air?

So you can try and go on like it’s the same as it ever was, or you can own your age and get freaked out and try to adjust, even though no one ever talks about this.

Yup, you can get riled up about the issues of the day, from Meta to AI to…they’re endless.

Or you can see that your time on the planet is limited and take an alternative path.

But there’s no context. We used to all be in it together, of one mind, leaning on each other. Now we’re all in our own private Idaho not admitting that we feel lost and don’t know what to do.

And believe me, we know so much of what we see going on is B.S. But we used to care, we used to believe in change, now we see it all as cyclical, we’ll vote, but don’t ask us to believe.

After all, the game is rigged. That’s one thing we’ve all learned. But we’re trying to pull the wool over the eyes of younger generations who know this. Telling them to let us continue to rule, that we know what is going on.

But the truth is we’ve lost the passion.

We just don’t want our power usurped.

Legendary agent Marsha Vlasic represents Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Iggy Pop and more!

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marsha-vlasic/id1316200737?i=1000776100872

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/8376c26c-9f7c-4a2c-92e5-b3b01114b6f5/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-marsha-vlasic