With a stripped down staff, the new "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" will now publish online, and rather than being an amalgam of local and national news, it will focus on the City of Coffee with laser-like focus.

The newspapers may have followed the music business in being blind-sided by the Web, but it appears Hearst has a better plan for survival than the major labels.

In other words, trying to be all things to all people, when your audience has the ability to extract just what it wants online, is a poor strategy.  Banking on homogenous acts promoted by radio and TV is a recipe for extinction, not survival.  Rather than lowest common denominator, you’re better off serving niches exactly what they want.  If you were to run a record label, you’d be better off with an indie act, an underground rap act and a hard core metal act than the blend of performers with "mass appeal" major labels now sign.

The major labels have not died yet because of their catalogs.  That’s what’s bringing in the revenue, along with their publishing companies.  When will some bean-counter look at the costs involved with new music production, take a scalpel and excise this from the company?  You’re spending all this money and these are the returns?

Furthermore, there’s the obvious question whether you need a major label at all.  Seth Godin’s got an interesting post about this today:

Where have all the agents gone?

Does the major label add any value?

It used to, when having relationships with gatekeepers at radio and retail were key.  But today, the music of most acts will never get played on terrestrial radio.  As for retail?  You can make a deal with TuneCore and get paid no problem.  In order to survive, all labels must deliver more than manufacturing and shipping, must do more than just issue press releases.  A label should provide more degrees of service, but this requires infrastructure, which the label has cut in order to reduce costs.  If you want a piece of my merch and my live business, you’d better help sell my merch and get me gigs. But the majors don’t do this.  So, despite their rhetoric, they’re heading towards oblivion.  Sure, they’ve got some acts so blind they’ll make this 360 deal, just like there were full page advertisers in both the "Rocky Mountain News" and the "Post-Intelligencer" before they folded.  But most acts want more specialized service, and they don’t want to give up so much to get so little in return.  The same way an advertiser would rather pay Google for those who click on their AdWords than spray their message far and wide for a high price to people, most of whom don’t care.  The old "Post-Intelligencer", the printed edition, charged the equivalent of $200 to reach a thousand users, the same reach online is $10.  And you wonder why advertisers are migrating to the Web?

And what killed newspapers?  Craigslist.  Now classifieds are free.  Just like music.  Most acts are thrilled if someone will listen to their music.  They’ll give it away for free hoping to make fans.  How is the label supposed to compete with this? Especially when these give-it-away acts see no need for the label?

And when it’s all said and done, we’re not going to have a bunch of ubiquitous acts, just a ton of journeymen, who are supported by their silo of fans.  Sure, if I want to go to Seattle, I might check out the "Post-Intelligencer" site.  Otherwise, I’m ignoring it.  Just like I’m ignoring Lady GaGa and all those other records in the Hot 100.  Sure, there’s a chart, but most people are not paying attention.  They don’t have to.  They’ve been set free by the Web.  And to think that they’re going to come back and buy a very few acts, that are promoted by the usual suspects, is to live in fantasyland.  Top Forty radio is a niche.  And not a very attractive one, populated by evanescent acts concocted by svengalis.  People want something more visceral, something that they can hold on to and spend a life with.  Hit single acts are like stories in a newspaper.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  Who wants yesterday’s news?

So I’m reading today’s "Wall Street Journal" about the fakokta situation with Michael Jackson scalping his own tickets at the 02

AEG Accuses Ticket Agent Of Scalping Jackson Show

and I’m wondering, is this story ever going to make it to the general public?

Not all news is equal.  If the economy weren’t in turmoil, if Bernie Madoff didn’t plead guilty and go to jail last week, maybe the mainstream news outlets would have picked up on the "Wall Street Journal"’s story about major acts scalping their own tickets.  But it appears that the story’s got no traction.  I was fearful it was going to fade.

And then along comes Trent Reznor.

The "Seattle Post-Intelligencer" went Web today.  Although it’s a shadow of the old printed paper.  It will be focused more on local news, with a much smaller staff.  Last week, the "Washington Post" announced it was folding its stand-alone Business section, commercial news would now be featured in the main, first section.  In other words, traditional media is dying in front of our very eyes.  If you’re hiring a PR person to get the story in the paper, you  might as well be paying for billboards on the space shuttle.  Your target audience isn’t going to see the story!

And it’s funny to watch the writers and publishers scrambling.  Saying newspapers must not die and that people must pay and if not the public, the government.  I read an interesting aphorism the other day, "journalism must survive, not newspapers".  Does journalism need to be done by crusty old guys paid by a fat cat publisher?  Absolutely not.  There’s more meat, more truth in Trent Reznor’s explanation of ticket scalping than there’s been in any mainstream story.  Maybe because he’s at the center, he truly understands!  He’s not reporting, he’s LIVING this story!

But what I find fascinating is that maybe two people e-mailed me last week’s "Wall Street Journal" story on scalping, and a dozen have already forwarded me Trent’s explanation.  Now you get the news from the act itself!  Each band’s Website is its own little news source.  It’s not about servicing other outlets, but training your fans to come back to your site, by providing constant updates, by providing community.

You can read Trent’s piece here:

TR thoughts on ticket re-sellers / scalping

But the essence is this:

"The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this."

In other words, the selling side doesn’t want to reveal truth to the buying side.  Acts are fearful of the stain on their reputations and therefore lie to their fans, ultimately risking backlash.  We need an ability for true fans to get good seats at good prices.  Trent addresses this.  However, his is an inherently inefficient model.  Nothing prevents the scalper from doing a ticket exchange inside the building, buying cheap seats for customers and upgrading them to expensive ones once they’re inside.  But at least we could put ALL the tickets up for sale, except for maybe the 10% going to dedicated fan club members.  If people truly thought they had a chance for good seats, they’d be less pissed when they found out that they’ve got to pay a fortune for them.  Arguably, this would incentivize people to see the band on the way up, when tickets were cheap, the buildings were small and you could be up close and personal.  People understand you pay more for what’s desirable.  They just want some truth in the marketplace.

We’re moving to dynamic pricing, it’s just a matter of when.

As for the stain on Ticketmaster…  It’s now becoming a stain on the concert industry.  Hell, the entire music industry functions in a back room, gangster-style.  But now we live in an era of sunlight.  Unless you live on a desert island, alone, your every move is catalogued online.  So you’d better be honest.

Irrelevant of how many tickets Trent sells, he’s got a hard core audience that reads his every word and then spreads the information.  Trent Reznor is now the one breaking this story.  That’s the power of one act in the Internet age.

Look, I’m about as burned out on this as you are, but if you’re interested in watching the entire debate, you can view it here:

At this point, having been exposed to more of Gene’s antics via stories and links from my subscribers, I now know the way Gene behaved was no different than he does in any other public forum.

For further background, please listen to Mr. Simmons’ interview with Terry Gross of NPR, which can be accessed here:

Terry Gross interview with Gene Simmons

Also, if you want a laugh, be sure to check out Lisa Lampanelli’s roasting of Gene here:

Lisa Lampanelli Roasts Gene Simmons!

Turns out that Mr. Simmons generates as much animosity as love.  You’d think a platinum-selling band would garner more kudos, but the degree of hatred towards KISS is staggering, a great deal of it based on Mr. Simmons’ personality.

But we live in such a vast world that the haters can coexist with the lovers, and never the twain shall meet.  In other words, KISS can function privately in its own backwater and the rest of us can ignore the band.

That’s how the music business is today.  It’s narrowcasting.  The key is to gain someone’s attention and to try to grow from there, fan by fan until you can support yourself playing music and give up your day job.  As for broadcasting, spreading the word far and wide?  That concept started breaking down with the advent of cable TV and its 500 channels and has now been all but decimated by the Internet.  Train-wrecks are ubiquitous, everybody knows about the latest school shooting.  But shy of that, everything’s got a limited audience.  And train-wrecks have a very short shelf life.  In other words Gene, a band you sign could have sex on stage tomorrow and it might be big on the Net for 24 hours, but if anybody even remembered the act’s name a year later, they certainly wouldn’t recall the music.

You can try and generate instant heat and instant sales.  There is a business there.  But if that paradigm were so damn good, the major labels would be prospering instead of dying.  We’re in the era of artist development.  You’ve got to develop your craft and your audience.  Musicians and fans are bonded, for the long haul.  It’s not clear where they’re going, it’s an exciting journey.  Pre-fab is becoming marginalized.

So if you tell me you’re going to sign a band, change its name, its players, its hairstyles and its music and then ram the result down the throat of the public, I’m gonna tell you very few people are going to care and that you’d better not invest much money, because limited dollars will come in return, and you’d better get out quick, because the act is going to burn out almost instantly.

Build slowly.  From the core out.  Breaking a band today is more of a whispering campaign than banging the public over the head with a blunt instrument.  You lead with your music.  Sure, networking/managerial/Internet tools are important, but it all comes down to the music.  You can click online and hear it instantly.  Is it any good?

The public decides.  Gatekeepers?  Physical retail is just about dead and radio has been marginalized.  It’s a direct connection between musician and listener.  You’d better be good, baby.

You can watch the closing statements here:

You’re on your own re the audio quality, I had nothing to do with the making of this recording.

On another note, I did a bit of research regarding sales in big box stores.  And my experts told me that KISS would have a difficult time making a big box deal.  Big box deals are all about foot traffic.  They’re not so much about selling the CD of the act involved, but getting people into the store, where they’ll buy other stuff and experience the retailer firsthand.

The Eagles worked for Wal-Mart because there hadn’t been a complete album of new material in decades.  The price and band visibility were icing on the cake.

Same deal with AC/DC, which blew out a ton of CDs at Wal-Mart.

But don’t forget the Bryan Adams album was a stiff.

And then we’ve got the curious case of Axl Rose and Best Buy.  An incredible sales disappointment.  Even though the band had been away for eons and had never had a failure.

KISS has had a string of less than successful albums in the marketplace.  Unlike AC/DC, they have not been absent from the boards for the better part of a decade, they’ve been touring their asses off.  What is the demand for new KISS material?  Limited.

Maybe Gene can make a deal with Kragen Auto Parts.  Or some other outlet that does not normally sell CDs.  But the conventional big box CD retailers have become extremely picky.  And the door is closing every day.  With CD floorspace and demand evaporating, just like Circuit City. Could be that KISS is just too late to enter this marketplace and play this game.

Hell, I’d say Gene would be better off hooking up with Bob Ezrin and writing only ONE track, that he could whore out to ESPN and a bunch of other outlets.  One killer cut that could drive up his grosses and goose demand for further material.  It’s a whole new era, the shifting sands of time have about swallowed the old music business model.  Which makes me wonder why Gene is playing the old game.

But that’s where we started.