https://t.ly/5zw97

This is a wild book.

What do I know about Miranda July? That she was part of the riot grrrl scene, that she was more than a musician, a performance artist, and although exalted, she lived on the fringe of commerciality.

Which delivered a ton of credibility, then again it was not easy for me to get over the change of her name from Grossinger to July (not that I knew it had been Grossinger, I learned that from Wikipedia doing research about her after starting the book). When someone has a generic last name, nothing you’d find out in the wild, it kind of sticks in my craw. It’s such a statement.

But the bottom line is Miranda lived on my periphery. I knew who she was, kinda, but my knowledge was barely an inch deep.

And then “All Fours” got great reviews. Made the best seller list. And that interested me. Because I knew July was left of center, I knew she would produce something different, far from traditional, and that’s the kind of thing that intrigues me. Although July is only fifty, this challenge of orthodoxy, coloring outside the lines, is a value we had in the sixties, and I miss it.

Not that I would have laid down cash, I reserved “All Fours” at the library, via Libby, which I highly recommend. Did you see the Kindle is having a revival as a result of BookTok?

“How the Kindle Became a Must-Have Accessory (Again) – the e-reader has become the gadget of choice on #BookTok”

Free link: https://t.ly/KtAt0

You know I’ve got a bug up my butt about the Kindle backlash. The naysayers, the Luddites, lost in music, the CD died and streaming took over, but the oldsters who control the book business stopped the Kindle in its tracks, because reading must be done on paper, they like the feel of a physical book, and they like displaying the spine in their collection to impress guests, even though they’ll probably never pick up the book again. But just like with MP3s and streaming, the little girls understand. And women do drive the book business, and when you try to impress your set in mud beliefs upon younger generations, they often reject them, be wary of this.

So I started reading “All Fours” and it was not what all the reviews said it was about, menopause.

Now maybe if you’re a male you’re not interested in menopause. But I’ll tell you you are interested in girls, and the more insight you gain into the opposite sex the more headway you’ll make, you want to show interest, compassion, understanding.

Not that I recommend the average male pick up “All Fours,” I think many couldn’t handle it, or wouldn’t be interested.

And in truth at first I wasn’t interested either. I stopped and started multiple times.

But then the book started to pick up.

Let’s see, there’s a cross-country trip. And classification of those who do such a thing and those who don’t, Drivers and Parkers. Which one are you?

Oh, let me add that what kept me reading was when the main character said she was working all the time and missing out on life. She loved to work, she needed to get ahead, but what experiences eluded her? This is a question those trying to get somewhere ask ourselves on a regular basis, especially in this world where all the wasted time has been excised by Covid. That’s right, the drive to the doctor, that’s been eliminated, so many appointments are virtual. You have to make an effort to socialize outside work, it’s not easy to do and you’re constantly asking yourself whether you’re wasting time.

And then the book takes a left turn. It’s fantastical. Money is spent on something no one would ever lay down for. You think you’re living in a world that has no relation to reality.

But then it all starts to make sense.

And about sixty percent of the way through menopause finally starts to be mentioned.

Let me ask you, do you still feel sexy, desirable? Men and women. Do you think genetics has something to do with your loss of libido? This is investigated in “All Fours,” yet not so much clinically but in a frenzy of the individual dealing with aging and being concerned with time passing them by.

And crushes… Do you act on them?

And what is a marriage anyway?

In truth, “All Fours” tracks relatively closely to July’s life. But write what you know, right?

And it still takes a while to get into. It’s not difficult, but you just don’t know where it’s going, you’re not hooked.

And then you are.

“All Fours” has an artistic sensibility. You know, one in which money doesn’t come first. Where it’s all about asking questions and pushing boundaries.

If you’re over forty and a woman, I highly recommend “All Fours.”

Then again, if you’re hooked on nonfiction, if your books need to be set centuries ago, if questioning everything about your life doesn’t resonate, maybe it’s not for you.

And men…

“All Fours” is a cultural landmark. It’s anything but me-too. You haven’t read anything like it. But it’s not like Jennifer Egan, “All Fours” does not come from a literary tradition. It comes from…

A riot grrrl tradition. As in a rock sensibility that believes women have power and can do exactly what the men do. Furthermore, everything is up for grabs, norms, if not thrown completely out the window, need to be questioned.

“All Fours” is not the kind of literary fiction your facilitated book group will read, but it will engender tons of conversation nonetheless.

I finished it almost a week ago, but I keep thinking about it. I’m not haunted by it, and it’s not so much about the questions, but throwing off the shackles, a life in which everything is up for grabs, after all we only get one chance at life and we want to make the most of it.

The three major labels are not releasing enough product.

You’ll find this interesting:

“Netflix, Amazon Lead With 53% of Original Streaming Title Orders in First Quarter of 2024, Study Finds – The growth comes from increased investment in international territories, according to Ampere Analysis”: https://t.ly/GKdEC

Production at Netflix and Amazon is dramatically up, meanwhile, their competitors are hardly making anything at all. Look at the graph.

How are you supposed to win if you do not play?

The majors are operating on a dead paradigm. The same one that killed the movie studios. Make less product and have it theoretically appeal to everybody while marketing the hell out of it.

Meanwhile, the niches are triumphing.

In movies you’ve got moonshots. A lot of sequels. Despite the hosannas over this past weekend’s grosses, with the success of the latest Minions and Pixar movies, the road does not go on forever, at some point the public burns out on what you’ve been purveying, then you’re screwed.

Netflix gets bigger and its competitors keep falling further behind. If this were the labels, they’d rest on their laurels, but Netflix is doubling-down. It is not worried so much about this quarter’s profit, but profit down the line.

Now Lucian Grainge bought market share when Universal purchased EMI. But that was about history, that was about catalog, that was not about the future.

And that’s what the labels rely on, catalog, it’s nearly free money.

But they are hemorrhaging market share in the new music world. They’ve streamlined the operation, there is very little investment, today it’s about growth, not quarterly Wall Street numbers.

We live in an era of niches. And when it comes to new product, you must release a ton of it, because you never know what will resonate with the public.

There’s less and less of a reason to sign with a major label. It’s not interesting in building from the bottom, only from the top. It doesn’t want small projects, just like the movie studios. And look where that led them, their lunch was eaten by Netflix.

Now is the time for the majors to staff up, to release more product, to prepare for the future. Now it’s more like the sixties and the seventies, never mind eighties.

Both movies and music were warped by the blockbuster mentality. It started with “Jaws” and “Star Wars” in movies, and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and a bunch of diamond certifications in music thereafter.

But those days are through. As is MTV, which powered the success of so much of that product. Hell, Paramount Global was just sold at the equivalent of a fire sale price. Why? Because the business didn’t invest in the future, there was no vision, only maintenance. If you don’t have a plan for the future, you’re going to be eclipsed.

What exactly is the plan for the major labels?

More records in more genres. Period. That’s how you prepare for the future.

The labels have a misconception that they can hoover up any act that is successful in the independent sphere. But the price is too high. Acts no longer want to give up that action. It might be worth it if you’ve got a Spotify Top 50 hit, but most acts today fall outside that construct. Radio doesn’t help them and TV has become irrelevant. What is the label going to do for its money? It looks like a bad deal. And it’s only going to get worse. We’re at the tipping point now.

The labels believe we live in a pop world. But that would be ignoring the jet fuel of this business, the left field, the different, the alternative, which burgeoned in the late sixties and seventies on FM. Never in the history of the music business has it been less about hits, NEVER!

But the labels are still focusing on the hit business. Still locked into release schedules.

All bets are off today. It’s all about innovation, risk. Gaining traction with the public is a difficult, nearly impossible task. Which is why you must play more often, which is why Netflix and Amazon are making so much product.

The barriers to entry in the live business are substantial. Good luck competing with AEG or Live Nation. But Universal, Sony and Warner? Piece of cake. Of course they’ve got a financial advantage, the revenue thrown off from their catalogs, but concomitantly the cost of production and the barrier to entry has never been lower.

The labels don’t want to start something, they want to finish it. They don’t want to nurture from scratch, they want to glom on to the project. The first thing they’ll ask you is about your socials, isn’t it their job to build your career?

You have to build it, or buy those who build it. This is what happens in tech. Microsoft lost a step because it wasn’t innovative, it purchased its OS and then built upon it. It wasn’t until recently that the company has recovered.

As for Amazon… It’s well-documented that the company is driven by AWS, Amazon Web Services, and that has nothing to do with retail.

Apple buys less and believes in innovation. Will the juggernaut continue as Steve Jobs retreats further and further into the rearview mirror?

Music is the most nimble of art forms. But it’s become the most complacent, the most stable seen through the lens of the major label. Do we need another pop star, another rapper? Now is the time klezmer music can break through. And its audience might be limited, but when you combine it with folk, bluegrass, electronica and the rest of the niches you have a monolith. And one leg supports the edifice when another fails.

This is what happened in the ski business. If you own multiple ski resorts around the world, you can still succeed if weather is bad in one area. The successes make up for the losses. But you’ve got to prepare for this game. You’ve got to have vision.

There’s no vision in the major label world.

Don’t confuse consumption with reach.

In other words, today’s metrics, which are really yesterday’s metrics, don’t give an accurate picture of what is happening in the landscape, they don’t indicate how big an act is, rather how many times one person listened to one song.

Think about that. In the pre-internet days of scarcity it was all about getting on a platform with reach. Radio was number one for music. How many people were actually listening to a radio station when your record was played? And if it was played in the middle of the night, the so-called “lunar rotation,” you might be able to use that number to manipulate the chart but it didn’t indicate you had any real listeners. In other words, how many people were listening to the number one station in the middle of the night?

And then there was television. Too expensive for record companies to advertise. But the Fortune 500 and more… This is how they reached the most people. Their commercials were blasted to many, how many truly cared, how many bought the product?

But commercials didn’t pay dividends, i.e. direct cash. Whereas radio did and still does. Spin it and there are performing royalties paid on the song. And outside the U.S., there’s a payment on the recording as well.

But today? The broad to many? That paradigm is out the window, now it’s all direct to one.

Think about that… Seen any banner ads recently? Like me you probably have an ad-blocker installed on your browser. The truth is banner ads have been proven to be ineffective. In a one to one world, the one to many is easily ignored, just like people started skipping commercials on broadcast TV, whether it be via flipping the channels or recording on a VCR or a digital device.

Broadcast and basic cable TV still have ads and still reach people, but their audiences have shrunk to the point where they reach very few of the target audience. In other words, if you want to reach the under twenty age group, spending on network TV ads is like burning money, because that demo doesn’t consume that way.

Ditto radio.

We live in a disinformation age. Everyone’s a winner, everyone has gigantic impact, nothing dies, everything lives on, like terrestrial radio.

When you find the person under twenty five still listening to terrestrial music radio let me know, because I haven’t found them yet. And I ask this demo whenever I encounter them.

Meanwhile, this is the number one way traditional record labels promote records. Think about that. I mean there is a radio business, but its reach is so insignificant as to not be a focus of the younger purveyors. They want to make it on TikTok, where the audience is.

In other words, big f*cking deal you’re number one at terrestrial radio. Especially if it’s in some niche format. Can you sell any tickets? Probably not, because very few people are listening to the music!

But let’s not punch a hole in the balloon, the industries, both record and broadcasting, don’t like it! They live in an ancient bubble, in denial, just like Biden. They cherry-pick their statistics, because the real ones are scary.

Like the Spotify Top 50. That’s about consumption. Pure and simple. Whether someone listened or not. If you’re a fan and are not listening, it doesn’t make any difference. And, of course, it’s not only Spotify, but Apple, Amazon and YouTube and…

In order to make money, people have to consume.

But that’s not the only way to make money today. Even though oldsters and wannabes can’t stop bitching how the game is rigged against them. I ask you, in what other world do you get paid if people don’t consume?

So, we’re told the Spotify Top 50 is the main metric. Yes, there’s a manipulated Luminate chart, factoring in vinyl and even downloads, but unless they’re boasting of some success, everybody at the record company looks to Spotify, because not only does it have the most market share, that’s where active listeners are. In other words, you might get paid more per stream on Apple, but that just means fewer people are listening.

But math was rarely a musician’s strong suit.

So in the old days you broadcasted widely in order to get people to buy the music. Broadcasting was the number one way most people consumed. But that’s no longer the case. Most people pick and choose what they want to listen to. Spotify tells us that. And active users barely employ playlists. Playlists are today’s equivalent of Muzak, background music, but since occasionally a playlisted track/act breaks out, we get all this focus on playlisting when it’s worth very little.

But assuming your music is listened to…

That could be the same cadre of people streaming 24/7.

Let me put it another way. Phish plays arenas, goes on tour and sells out consistently. How big is Phish? TINY! That’s not a put-down, just perspective. The band has no reach, it’s got a hard core supporting them, and that’s just fine, but don’t let the grosses misinform you.

Having said that, you can be in the Spotify Top 50 and not be able to sell out a club. You’re hot in a narrow world. That’s right, the Spotify Top 50 is niche. Think about that. The number one way people consume the most music is a gnat on the ass of the music world.

But don’t go too far in the other direction. With nearly a hundred categories, winning a Grammy means almost nothing either. Not even at the top of the heap, the big awards anymore. There used to a bump, sales, but that’s history. The audience is too sophisticated, they already know the hits. As for those in categories way down the list… They get a Grammy even though in many cases they’re lucky if a few thousand people even listened to their music. That’s right, Grammys today are the equivalent of giving every kid a sports trophy. They’re neither indicative of talent nor achievement.

But that’s the way our whole music world has gone.

We keep being told the acts in the Spotify Top 50 are superstars. But most people, MOST PEOPLE, have never even heard these tracks. Think about that, in the old days of terrestrial radio you winced when you heard the same song you hated over and over again, but there were no options, there were very few stations that played the kind of music you liked.

But today?

You have a cornucopia of options.

But the music industry has been fighting this ever since Napster.

You can’t break out the single from the album. Remember that fight? You don’t go against what the people want, they didn’t want the dreck that surrounded the hit.

The consumer is in control today.

And you need an audience, that consumes your music, but that does not mean you have any reach.

Another way performers used to gain reach was being the opening act for a headliner who sold a great number of tickets. This worked in the sixties, into the seventies when the opening acts were chosen to align with the music of the star, but those days are through. Now, oftentimes it’s just about getting an act to play cheaply. And people don’t even arrive for the opening act, they don’t want anything they don’t want, and they’ve been burned too many times.

In other words, it’s hard to break through these days.

Which puts a further focus on the music itself. But still, if no one hears it, it doesn’t matter how good it may be.

First and foremost there should be no restrictions on your music, absolutely none. Don’t complain about streaming sites… Your music must be absolutely everywhere, so if someone gets a hankering, they can find it with almost no friction. You want to make it easy.

But how do you gain reach?

First and foremost you motivate your fans. Everything is bottom up instead of top down these days. Stop swinging for the fences, gain a hard core fan base and if they can’t spread the word…you won’t spread. One thing about the aforementioned Phish fans, they inundate my inbox, Phishheads e-mail me constantly. The problem is when most people check out Phish’s music…they don’t become fans. Which is fine, Phish does very well, but don’t equate their success with REACH!

So how many people are really listening to Taylor Swift. Or Morgan Wallen. Or even the Weeknd.

Fewer than ever before in history. When it comes to hit acts. They might have big footprints, but their territory is defined, their reach is nowhere near as great as the consumption statistics imply, especially considering that avid Swift and Phish fans stream the music ad infinitum. One person could stream a band all day long. That’s very different from a thousand people streaming a song once, that’s reach.

Presently there is no chart that quantifies reach.

Advertising agencies specialize in this. Ratings companies. But we don’t have that for music, all we’ve got is radio ratings, which mean less than ever before.

But you need to get out of the bubble and gain perspective, see the context. If you can sell out your high school auditorium, kudos. But can you sell out any other high school auditorium? But unlike in the old days, you can record cheaply and put your music online. However, there’s so much online that yours won’t stand out unless people pull it.

In other words, casual listens only work on social media. That’s where the target audience discovers new music. How do you beat the system? No one has been able to figure this out. And even if you serve a video to many, that doesn’t mean they won’t skip over it.

That’s the truth, that’s reality, but they keep telling us the Spotify Top 50 is the be all and end all. But it’s not. It’s one metric, of consumption. And it is not known by the public if it’s avid fans, like those of K-pop, or casual fans, i.e. many listening fewer times.

Once again, you want to be everywhere. But also you must step up to bat constantly. Put out new music, have new campaigns. Don’t overthink it, just do. People don’t remember the failures anymore, there are too many, get back in the game.

This is the exact opposite of the old world where an album came out every three or four years, with singles dribbled out over that interim.

If you’re not a label/act, if you’re on the outside, there is no metric that tells us about music reach. We don’t know how big you are or not. The oldsters will cite the old metrics, but they’re outdated, they’re useless.

What we’ve got is the blind, the industry, leading those who don’t care. It’s a veritable circle jerk I tell you. The industry keeps trumpeting figures but we just don’t know how big these acts are anymore. And there’s mindshare and consumption. You may know about an act in the Spotify Top 50, but do you want to listen to it?

It was easy in the eighties. All you had to do was get your video on MTV.

But it’s never been harder in the modern recording era to reach people.

And rather than admit it, we’ve got a whole industry denying it.

The world is gonna flip I tell you, it can’t go on like this forever, a limited number of acts pushed down the throat of a public that doesn’t care. All that publicity works against you. It alienates even those who might have been casually interested.

In other words, mania means little, the music means more. And more music is consumed by more people than ever before.

But how many people really?

We have no idea.

Tune in Saturday July 6th 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