Q: What’s your best tip for other entrepreneurs?

A: It’s not about starting a business. It’s about solving problems. That’s what being an entrepreneur is. Find a problem that there’s a better way to solve. Get a vision of how it could work better, and stick with it.

Ron Shaich, Chairman of Panera Bread, in the "Wall Street Journal"

This is why all those online music startups failed, you know the ones that were going to revolutionize distribution, they didn’t know who their customer was!  It wasn’t the music listener, but the major labels and publishers.  And their problem wasn’t easy access or availability, it was revenue replacement.  Unless you can convince rights holders they’re going to make a ton of money with your online idea, it’s a nonstarter, they just won’t license it.  Doesn’t matter that you’re arguing about an inevitable future, how much easier it will be for consumers, it comes down to cold hard cash.  The labels lost it and they need it. Can you solve that problem?

Kind of like Ticketmaster.  If you can find a way to sell tickets to consumers more cheaply, great.  But your site better not work worse than Ticketmaster’s, then you’re going in the wrong direction.  This doomed Live Nation’s ticketing efforts.  The system didn’t work upon launch.  And no matter what improvements were made, public perception was that LN’s system didn’t work.  And once again, we’ve got an issue of rights.  Buildings and promoters are less worried about end consumer experience than cold cash.  They’re not sacrificing profits in order to make the consumer happy.  Without profits, they’re not in business.  And they’re greedy, just like the acts.  That’s what the Ticketmaster fees are all about, they’re hidden profit centers for the acts and promoters and venues.  They don’t have a problem with Ticketmaster, you do!

And now we know why Amazon’s music efforts are a nonstarter.  The public did not have a problem with iTunes.  And sure, Amazon may blow out music at a loss, but how do you get it into iTunes and on your iPod?  People buy from iTunes as insurance, of a hassle-free experience.  Come on, everyone hates tech trouble.  Who do you call?  Who do you e-mail?  Actually, at this point it’s clear you’re on your own.  You’ve got to do online research.  Unless you’re an Apple customer.  Then you can go to the Genius Bar.  That’s a problem Apple solved.  You buy their products and you’ve got someone who’ll help you.  Ever try to get help at Amazon?

And Sirius XM has solved the problem of endless radio commercials.  But it hasn’t solved the problem that their stations sound just like the dreaded terrestrial ones, just without ads.  That’s half a solution.  Which is why subscriptions have stalled.  Twenty million people will pay to get rid of commercials.  But in order to get everyone to pay, you’ve got to be offering a service that’s different from what’s available for free.

And speaking of free, Pandora’s successful because it solves the filter problem.  What do I listen to?  There’s a plethora of music online, where do I start?  By plugging in the name of your favorite act in Pandora.  Build a better mousetrap than Pandora, give better recommendations and you can kill the site.  Only one venture in every category succeeds online.  Barnes & Noble has no traction selling books online and Borders is barely in business, everyone just goes to Amazon.  Amazon sells books very well. They were there first and got it right, like Apple did in music.

In order for the aforementioned Live Nation to be successful, it’s got to solve the problems of acts.  Which is they want to make more money without giving the appearance of screwing their fans.  Sure, LN overpaid for years, but now they’re in trouble if they want to pay less.  Because the acts are not loyal to LN, they’re loyal to money.  In order to triumph, LN’s got to not only pay more for gigs, but prove to acts that they can upsell ticket buyers on additional merchandise.  We keep hearing about this, but it’s yet to happen.  So, right now, unless an act wants to play in the sheds, it’s open season in the concert business.  If you’re willing to pay, you can promote the act.  Because there’s just nothing special to LN.  Used to be they paid more, but with that debt…

And the problem acts have is exposure and getting paid.  Which is why the major labels are faltering.  Because the majors can only expose mainstream/Top Forty fare and they don’t want to pay more, they want to pay less for more rights.  That’s not an enticing deal.  Certainly not if you’re not making Top Forty music.  Unless the majors find a way to sell music in categories other than Top Forty, unless they provide more services for their 360 deals, they’re screwed.

And indie retail will continue to die, because most people don’t have a problem with online music.  Sorry, it’s the truth.

And new venues will always have an uphill climb, because people don’t go for the building, but the show.  The problem is getting tickets to see the desirable acts.  StubHub fixed this problem, as did the scalpers, that’s why they’re triumphing.  The acts have platinum packages, there’s talk of airplane pricing, which no one likes when flying, I don’t know why they’d like it in concert tickets, the only solution is for the act to truly control the ticket by going paperless.  But that eliminates shenanigans…  But if you’re in it for the long haul, it’s the only way to go.  Then again, if you’re a flash in the pan, your problem is how can you make as much money as possible as quickly as possible.  Don’t worry about screwing your fans, they won’t care about you two years from now anyway.

And if you’re making music…  The consumer’s problem is not that he can’t find enough beat-driven Top Forty music.  It’s that he can’t find anything new and innovative that he will pledge allegiance to.  Unless you can make this, you’re on a long hard slog.

Everybody wants to be rich.

Ever wonder why Bono joined forces with wannabe musician Roger McNamee in Elevation Partners?  Believe me, it wasn’t to shepherd the birth of the unnecessary Palm Pre, it was to get rich.  Because you just can’t make enough money in the music business anymore.

Bon Jovi had the top tour of 2010.  Gross was $108 million.  However you split that up, you’re better off being Lloyd Blankfein than Jon Bon Jovi.  You see Blankfein makes millions each and every year.  He doesn’t need a hit record, he doesn’t need to convince punters in the hinterlands to invest, he just rapes and pillages and pays off politicians until the money comes rolling in.

And everybody else wants that money too.  That’s what our whole country is about.  That’s what the major labels are about.

We’ve been hearing this carping for a decade that people won’t pay for music.  All played out before a backdrop of Napster and BitTorrent and RapidShare and…  I’ll say if we eliminated the Internet revenues would go back up.  But that’s like saying if we got rid of cars we’d have fewer people dying in transportation accidents.  Huh?  People want their automobiles and they want their Internet.  Because it puts information at their fingertips, they’re no longer at the mercy of a handful of gatekeepers, they dig down deep to find and consume exactly what they want, and generally speaking that is not the mainstream crap that the record industry and its complicit old wave media outlets want it to be.

Yes, the Top Forty crap sells more than the rest of the product.  Then again, sales are a fraction of what they once were and the Top Forty acts don’t do as well on the road, and everybody knows that the money’s on the road.  Where Bon Jovi is touring ceaselessly playing gargantuan hits from two decades ago.

Give Jon Bon Jovi credit.  He wanted it.  His uncle may have owned a recording studio, but his father was a hairdresser.  Jon didn’t have advantages, he had desire.  And this desire along with the efforts of a master producer, Bruce Fairbairn, and a master songwriter, Desmond Child, resulted in hits.  Eventually.  Because, as Ringo Starr once sang, it don’t come easy.

Now the establishment music industry wants what it once had, the profits of yore.  But it’s the newbies, the upstarts that are truly the problem.  Having been exposed to all the media hype, the fictions that used to build careers, they want to be rich and famous rock stars, and they want it to happen overnight.  And why they still call it "rock star" is beyond me.  Really, they want to be Jay-Z. They don’t even want to go on the road, that’s hard work!  They want to make records and do endorsements and star in films and buy and sell companies and rape and pillage just like Lloyd Blankfein and the nameless stars at Goldman Sachs.

But you don’t go straight from the street to the storied New York bank.  No, entry is limited to the best and the brightest, who killed themselves at Ivy League schools for this chance to get rich.  And yes, we’d have a better society if these people pursued something besides money, but you can’t doubt that they’ve paid their dues and are winners.  How about the people in music?

The songwriters and labels deserve the lion’s share of the money.  One can defend the 360 deal strategy based on the fact that the experienced oldsters do all the work.  Used to be the acts wrote and recorded their own material independently.  Those days are through in major label land, there’s too much at risk.  They need insurance.  And they don’t need you.  They can find someone else pretty who’s willing to be molded and play by the rules.  They don’t want unique.  Unless it’s fashion. Breakthrough music?  You STARVE playing that.

But all those people who can’t get major label deals, even though they secretly want them, keep telling us they’re playing this breakthrough music.  And if we’d just sign up for their mailing lists and come to their shows, we’d get it.  Huh?  Music is something you hear, and what you’re making isn’t good enough.

Hell, some of it might be good, but is it great?

You’re probably aware of the Tiger Mother controversy.  Broken by an excerpt in the "Wall Street Journal"

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

the book’s a best seller and the debate is frantic.

But you can’t argue with the facts.  The U.S. is number one in self-esteem.  That’s what the Brookings Institution discovered. Americans believe they’re great, but unfortunately, statistically they are not.  In the results of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, the U.S. was number twenty three or four in most subjects (thirty first in math).

Doesn’t this sound like the music business?  A plethora of unskilled kids telling us they’re great, that they deserve success?

Could it be the music business is faltering because the music just isn’t good enough?

Now let me be clear, you’ve got to be great.  The Palm Pre is pretty good.  But not as good as an iPhone or an Android.  And before you start quibbling, one of the things that made the iPhone such a phenomenon was the ecosystem, the App Store, and the synching software.  Sure, the Pre would hold your music, but how in the hell were you going to get it on there, it was tedious!

So if you’ve got one hit, almost no one wants to see you live.

Justin Bieber?  That’s MySpace.  Big story for a year or two, even the mainstream press buys it, and then instant devastation.

Where are the acts that blow us away?

Certainly not the Black Eyed Peas.  That’s entertainment.  Still, will.i.am just can’t get rich enough.  Now he’s gone and made a deal with Intel.

Hell, Steve Jobs was blown out of Apple, his own company.  The iPod didn’t even come out until twenty five years after the initial Apple computers.  Where are the acts that are growing and developing into greatness?  Are we really waiting for Ke$ha to deliver her "Sgt. Pepper"?

So let’s stop the debate about piracy.  Let’s focus on the music.  And agree that whatever money comes raining down, it’s just not gonna be in the league of Lloyd Blankfein’s compensation.  That music isn’t about getting rich, but making a statement.  Doing it your way.  Having an influence.

But in order to have said influence, you’ve got to gain adherents.  Which takes a long time, see Mr. Jobs above.  And Jobs purveyed incredible products before the iPod, just like the initial albums of classic artists were oftentimes ignored.  But you don’t cry, but soldier on.

We’ve got a huge filter problem, no one knows what to listen to.  And yes, we do have a compensation problem.  But first and foremost we’ve got a music problem.  Because we’ve got a generation of entitled artists who just aren’t that good.

Oh, don’t protest.  What did they used to say, you’re either part of the problem or part of the solution?  Capitol didn’t have to close new Beatle fans.  All they had to do was expose them to the music.  People didn’t wait and see with the iPhone, based on previous Apple products and the pics and the specs, they were instantly in.  You’re music has got to be just that good.  So people want to line up to buy it.

When are we going to start this discussion?  When are we going to agree that if you make atonal music and have a bad voice you’re never going to sell millions, make millions, so you should stop complaining?

When are we going to agree that "American Idol" is about commerce, not music?  It’s very easy to sing the hits of another, it’s almost fucking impossible to write those hits.  Which is why the initial songs of so many suck, hell, they usually don’t see the light of day, but I’m constantly inundated with the e-mail of parents of fourteen year olds who want me to listen to the warblings of their prepubescent progeny made on GarageBand.  Would they let that kid work at Goldman Sachs?  Is the kid qualified to rape and pillage on Wall Street?  Then why in hell do we believe they can triumph in music?

We went to the Anne Frank house.  I was there once before, back in ’72 as Bob Seger would say, but it was different.  They had flat screens and quotes and…the diary itself.

I didn’t remember that.

It almost didn’t seem real.  The house, that is.  It’s half a century later.  I was calculating.  In ’72, it was 27 years since the war, now it’s 39 years beyond that.  A long time, in a lifetime.  Do we start to forget?

Do we believe that Jews are assimilated?  That we all get along?  That right wing extremism cannot happen again?

Not on your life.

Judaism is something you just can’t exorcise.  It’s there in your name.  The Nazis didn’t want to hear that you’d lapsed, that you were now going to church, they saw beyond that bullshit, you were sent to the camps, you had to die, for being different.  You need someone to blame your problems on.

Just like disadvantaged Americans pin their problems on immigrants.  Because to look to yourself is to accept blame.  And that just cannot be done.

Everybody hates the Jews.  If you don’t know this, you’re not one.  My father used to tell me about anti-Semitism, and I’d pooh-pooh his tales, saying we were living in different times.  But that’s wrong, it’s right beneath the surface.  We’re different.  We’ve got hooked noses.  We’ve got horns.  We’ve got all the money.  We’re the problem.  We’ve got to go.

Never again.  That’s why they say we must study the Holocaust, so it can’t be repeated.  And for a long time I thought those days were through, now I know they’re not.  Because ethnic cleansing goes on in Eastern Europe and Africa and in America political parties say those on the other side must die.

Lock and load baby.  We need the guns so we can fight the government.  Huh?  Where’s civilization?

Being at the Anne Frank house made me think not only about how we took all our diversions for granted, even sunlight and play, but how we dedicated so much time to entertainment and sports, believing they’re a religion when our true religion could be responsible for our deaths. What’s important here?

Eight people lived in darkness for years, only to ultimately perish.  Otto Frank survived, but his family did not.  He took ads in papers trying to find them.  My mother’s Russian uncle did this, that’s how he found his relatives in the United States, through the Jewish paper, but Otto just ended up with confirmation of his family’s decimation.

There was this other video, of Anne’s childhood friend.  Who saw her in the concentration camp.  She said Anne had given up all hope.  They tell us to keep on trying, to keep our chin up, but that doesn’t always work.

Anne wanted to be a journalist, she wanted to be a famous writer.  Childhood hopes and dreams don’t always die, the best of us pursue them to fruition.  As did Anne, only she didn’t know this.

The gold Star of David from the clothing, that all Jews had to wear.  Anne’s handwritten diary…

Some things are almost too real to be true.

Like man’s hatred of his fellow man.

I like street food.  Sure, it’s fun to lounge in a high-end restaurant, savoring the victuals, but who’s got the time?  Just think, you can buy a morsel of mouthwatering food right on the street and go on your merry way, barely missing a beat, and it’s cheap!

But not everything’s mouthwatering.  How do you choose?

I finished a master class at the Conservatory.  No, Mr. Mustard did not kill anybody with a dagger, it’s a music school behind the Oosterpoort, where most of the meetings took place.  I spoke to managers, for the government.  Outside the United States every country has its hands in the arts.  I believe in letting the commercial world decide who’s rewarded, then again, the Netherlands sees the benefit in exporting its culture.

And I learned some interesting stuff.  Like Angus Young lives in the Netherlands, he’s married to a Dutch woman.  Don’t forget, the Netherlands is where the heavyweights go to stash their cash.  People like the Rolling Stones and U2.  Technically, I think it’s the Dutch Antilles, but you can be rich in the Netherlands, top tax rate is now only thirty two percent.  And no one bitches about paying taxes.  Because of what you get back.  I spoke with these dudes from Denmark, there the tax rate is fifty percent and there’s a twenty five percent tax on purchases…but the quality of life is oh-so-high.  And everybody’s equal.  A far cry from our American society where the gap is so wide that no entertainer can bridge it.  Look at it this way, Bon Jovi made $108 million on the road last year, they were number one.  And if you split the money into four equal shares, which Bon Jovi doesn’t, not every player gets the same amount, you end up with net…not equal to $20 million a band member.  Bankers make this each and every year!  Which might be why rockers are whored out to corporations.  If you really want to take a stand, don’t sell out, be yourself, make it about art first…but then you might end up poor, and that wasn’t the dream.

Anyway, when I exited the Conservatory I had about ninety minutes to kill, so I walked to the center of town where I was confronted with the decision whether to climb the Martini Tower.  On one hand it was like Everest, it was there, on the other hand the sky was gray and about to spit rain and what was there to see anyway?

I prayed that the tickets were really expensive so I could rationalize not climbing.  But when it turned out it only cost three euros, how could I say no?

Have you seen "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame"?  It could have been filmed at the Martini Tower.

I pass through the gate and I’m confronted with the narrowest of brick staircases.  Which looked like it hadn’t been maintained since construction, centuries ago.  I’m thinking the tower’s gonna collapse upon me, then again, what are the odds it’s gonna happen today?  But then I get concerned I’m gonna get claustrophobia and freak out or pass out and like Humpty Dumpty fall all the way to the bottom.  It could happen, the stairway is just that steep.  And circular.  This better not be the same way down.

But it is.  What’s the etiquette when patrons are descending?  If I’ve got nothing to hold on to…

Oh, I forgot to tell you, as I’m winding up and up I’m holding on to a rope.  There’s no railing.  This ain’t the stinkin’ United States.  Hell, in the U.S. the tower would have long ago been condemned, replaced by a parking lot or a fast food restaurant encased in a miniature rendition of the edifice.

You see in America, we’ve got trust.  Someone’s looking out for us.  But who’s looking out for me in the Netherlands?

And the rope…  It’s wet.  Because it’s always raining here.  It’s like I can feel 17th century precipitation oozing from the hemp.  When was the last time they replaced this thing?  And I’m getting dizzy…

I’ll turn around.

But then I’ll be afraid of claustrophobic walkways forever more, unable to traverse them, so I soldier on.  Up and up and up…

And I get to a landing.  Where they’ve got giant bells.  And I’m walking on WOOD!  Can’t they lay some concrete?  Wood rots, I could fall right through!

And I keep going up until I finally reach the top.  Where I can’t find my way out.  Eventually I find some shutters and emerge into the vastness. I’d like to tell you the view was spectacular, but I was feeling so damn good about my accomplishment it didn’t matter.

And I’d like to tell you the descent was easy.  But I learned that when someone was coming up you had to let go of the rope, it was only fair. And that Dutchmen must have been munchkins centuries ago, because I’m almost always about to bump my head.  And it makes no sense, because one surprising thing about Dutch people is how TALL they are.

I felt racist, I thought it was only me.  Then I was talking to Matt from CMJ, and he’s 6’2", and he said he had trouble seeing over heads at gigs, that he heard someone complain that they couldn’t reach the urinals.  So now I’ve got confirmation.  We think the U.S. is the master race, that we’re the tallest because we’ve got the best food, but you’ll forget all this when you come to the Netherlands.  And Matt said Groningen is the tallest of the tall.  A tall tale?  I don’t know.

And now I needed sustenance.  And what they’ve got on the plaza are all these trailers, manned by people in white coats.  In America, street food…you’ve got to overlook the grunge.  But here, all the purveyors and their rolling establishments were spic-and-span.

But I wanted something healthy, and Viennese Frites wouldn’t do the trick.  So I kept wandering until I found a stand selling nuts.  Yes, I’ll buy some trail mix.  Then I realized this vendor was selling pet food.

But when I turned around, they were selling chocolate "Wafels".  You know those cookies, the really soft ones that snap so easily, with one waffle-imprinted wafer on either side and cream in the middle?  It was like that.  But big and round and real waffle and chocolate in the middle.  Pure heaven.  A ten.  Warm to boot.

But I needed protein.  But I was afraid of too many of the meats.  Especially since there were no lines to buy them.

But I noticed a crowd at the fish trailer.  Run by a family.  I knew it was a family, because they called the older woman "Mum".  I stood there long enough until I figured it out.  They’d fry fish for you right on the spot.

Well, that’s not too healthy, but they’ve got shrimp.

But I can’t read the menu.

But even this kid spoke English.  Makes you feel inadequate that you don’t know their language…

And I paid three euros and got him to fry up some shrimp, meanwhile everybody else is consuming these giant slabs of fish, I mean whole fish, served on brown cardboard plates.  And then my shrimp came.  And they were good, but what put it over the top was the sauces.  There were multiple varieties, and they were better than anything you’d get at a roadside stand in the States.

So now I’m feeling proud of myself, having figured out how to get fed, so I go to the cleanest, longest trailer around, the bakery trailer. Confronted with too many choices I ended up with this kind of blueberry muffin, which they rolled in sugar, which promptly blew all over me and my jacket, but I was smiling, I felt like a real Dutchman.

The Martini Tower