You really missed it. We just had a presentation from the CEO of Major League Baseball. I’d tell you what he had to say, but when his speech was over, and he was hipped to the fact that I’m a "reporter", he insisted the whole affair be off the record. My understanding is people usually say something is off the record BEFORE they speak, but hey, the only person I’ve got to write about is myself, so I’m abiding by his wishes.

It’s just that we had THE guy just after the Mitchell Report was released! That’s what Jim Lewi specializes in, getting the heavy hitters just before they blow up. Most famously Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Moore and Seth Godin. I know you’ve read the "Tipping Point", but be sure to catch up with Seth Godin every day on his blog, sethgodin.com. Click his head to read his musings. This is the guy who came up with "permission marketing", he’s the guru, you should know what he has to say.

Meanwhile, on the bus to Snowmass this morning, and it was a great powder day, we rode with the manager and agent of Corey Smith.

Do you know who Corey Smith is?

That’s just the point. Either you’re a fan or you’re out of the loop. Corey isn’t playing for the masses, he’s growing his business organically. He’s playing 260 dates a year, forty percent are selling out, and the tickets are CHEAP! They say he’s James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett combined. Alcohol and good times. His most famous numbers have never been released commercially, you’ve got to STEAL THEM! But at the gig, everybody knows every word.

Have you seen Buffett? I don’t care what you think about the guy’s music, and other than that stunting Nashville album, he hasn’t had a hit in years, but live he delivers. He sells out, everybody has a good time, they buy a ton of merch. As Letterman says about Oprah, Jimmy’s got ALL the money!

So, should you focus on a hit, or a career?

Meanwhile, they’re LOWERING the prices of Corey Smith tickets. If you buy them in advance, through MusicToday, they’re TWELVE BUCKS! They do their best not to play TicketMaster buildings. You’re usually paying fifteen bucks. No service charge. Going isn’t buying a Springsteen ticket in December for a gig in July. It can be a last minute thing. You can bring your friends along. You can even PAY FOR THEM!

This is the new music business.

All those acts that grew organically in the late sixties and seventies, the ones with the different kind of music, like Jethro Tull? They can grow again. You don’t have to sound like everybody else. Don’t play to the gatekeepers, play to your FANS!

Meanwhile, had dinner with Michael McDonald last night. Not only does he manage John Mayer and others, he’s a partner in ATO. They’re releasing the Radiohead album. Do you want to make a deal with a major, for their theoretical infrastructure, or sell to your core and make eight bucks a record? That’s the new game. Instead of selling your soul to reach everybody, concentrate on your base, growing your base, organically. There’s plenty of money in the music business today. Just stop swinging for the fences. A bunt gets you on first too.

I wish Doug Morris were here to listen to this guy. He would have learned how it really is, as opposed to how he wants it to be.

The old model is market the hell out of diminishing quality. Whereas in the Net era, you focus on quality, marketing is secondary.

Ian told a great story. He went to a teen leadership conference. There were in excess of two hundred kids there. He asked them how many had seen "Lazy Sunday". Every single kid raised his hand. Every single one. How many had seen the original broadcast, on SNL? Almost none. How many had seen "Superman", the blockbuster being hyped at the same time? Fewer than ten. Why had everybody seen "Lazy Sunday"? Because it was FUNNY!

And that tells you almost all you need to know about today’s media world. Kids are only interested in quality, and they’re going to consume it when they want to, not on your schedule.

Ian Rogers runs Yahoo Music. He used to try to play by the rules. But the rules didn’t work. The Yahoo subscription service? A couple of hundred thousand customers. Whereas Yahoo gets four hundred million surfers a month. Ian asked, do you want to monetize the couple of hundred thousand or the four hundred million? Ask yourself.

Greg Latterman said he was flipped out, that kids thought music had no value.

Ian said AU CONTRAIRE! Music has TONS of value. But the record companies always make the price too high. iMeem can’t make money at a penny a play. But he’ll make a fortune at half that price.

Who’s gonna take that deal? Marty Bandier? Doug Morris? Who’s going to venture into the new world and make it work?

Meanwhile, iMeem, now that it’s streaming music, makes you register. Stop with the roadblocks. I don’t want a page, I don’t want to be forced to be a member of your stinking club. Let ME decide if I want in.

We had a good time mixing it up about the future of the music business. Vince remarked that ten years ago, we were all complaining about not being able to get on the radio. Now, no one talks about radio, not those in the new world, not those here, not those in the business of developing acts. Radio’s for dinosaurs.

And the major labels… They’ve cut back so far they’re not in attendance.

And I’m thinking that the major labels are just going to continue to sink. Music is gonna be akin to Google. The search is free, but they make money when you click on ads. Musicians will use computer tools to create their works, which will be distributed on the Web. The way the big boys are going, the music will be free. But, the fans of QUALITY STUFF will give the acts ALL their money.

Ian’s for open standards.

The labels are for scarcity.

The days of scarcity are done. DRM is done. If you’re not thinking how to enable your fans, get them to spread the word on great music, you’re probably sitting in an ivory tower pissed that people aren’t paying twenty bucks a CD. You’re on your way to extinction. You need to go out, you need to spend money in order to survive. The labels have cut back so far, everybody in the business has cut back so far, that they’ve surrendered the future to newbies. If you were here, you would have learned this. But, don’t worry, just watch. As the new world emerges and you’re sidelined.

P.S. Ian said his seventeen year old comes home and never watches TV, she goes STRAIGHT TO THE COMPUTER! Shit, the writers are right. That’s where all the money’s gonna be. Must See TV? Thursday night? It’s gonna be WHENEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE! If you want to watch it at all.

When I was a teenager, my sister rushed home and got on the phone. The goal was to have your own line. Sure, a kid wants a cell for texting, but when you get home now, your house is silent. Your kid is on the computer. Everybody under twenty knows this, how come the oldsters don’t?

They’re selling Hall & Oates’ Christmas album at the pharmacy.

What do they say, all politics are local?  It still comes down to who you know.  John Oates lives in Aspen.  Therefore he gets special treatment.  You know the proprietor, he does a solid for you.  And since there were only three CDs on the counter, the other two unrecognizable Christmas discs, I’m sure Hall & Oates are selling a bunch.  Christmas albums are impulse items.  They’ll be the last CDs to evaporate.  Hell, you don’t want to download Santa…  (Then again, I downloaded "Let It Snow"…)

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Vince couldn’t stop raving about Zeppelin at dinner.

You’ve got to know Vince, every company he works for is the shit.  You should have heard him talk about Best Buy when he worked for their label!  Hell, their label might be gone, but Best Buy IS the shit.  At least compared to other big box electronics retailers.  I wouldn’t go to Circuit City.  Dingy.  Best Buy is bright, and even though they sell white goods, they’ve got seemingly all the TVs, and reasonable prices.  And how fucked up is it that a flat panel is more desirable than a stereo system?  God, in the seventies we had multi-thousand dollar stereos and went WITHOUT TVs.  We needed to get closer to the sound.  We needed to hear what the instruments sounded like.  We needed to FEEL the music.  You can’t feel the music on what passes for a stereo today, no wonder everybody’s listening on their iPod.

Meanwhile, I thought Vince was bragging about his iPhone, which I won’t buy, because of AT&T, which once again got horrific ratings in "Consumer Reports", but it turned out to it was an iPod Touch.  Which contained not only all his music, but pictures…of his baby, of his time in London…

You see Vince works for Getty Images.  And, unlike the record sphere, business is BOOMING!  It’s about licensing everybody for a little and aggregating the results.  Hell, Getty licensed Perez Hilton.  Others sue, they made a deal.

Vince will tell you anything, but he wouldn’t tell me about Getty’s moves in music (other than their involvement in Zeppelin’s O2 show).  Said he was under a nondisclosure agreement.  They bought Pump Audio…  This is a company that’s expanding, this is a company to watch.

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All the agents are talking shit about LiveNation.  Why are they moving their buyers around?  Some of the people are good, but they’re unfamiliar with business conditions in their new domains, and they don’t seem to know the developing acts.  And do they have to close the sheds because no one can fill them anymore?

Rap on the sheds was most buildings were ugly, bad experiences that people didn’t want to go to.  But the real issue seems to be they just can’t be filled, not without papering the house.  So, what’s LiveNation’s play now?

Promoters need to break acts.  You can’t count on record companies.  But too many promoters are used to selling tickets to what the labels built.

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The secondary market.  How about that organization in the U.K. wanting a piece of the secondary market?  What kind of bullshit is that?  Doesn’t the first sale doctrine apply, at least in the U.S?

Either raise the prices to market value, or figure out a way to get the tickets in the hands of the fans.  Hell, they did it for Zeppelin, you can do it for other acts.

But the most fascinating thing is the belief that the secondary market is indomitable, that it’s changed the business forever.  Did you see the pictures from the Spice Girls gig in Vegas?  The building was HALF FULL!  The story’s all over the Web.  Wait a minute here, didn’t the promoter talk about a very quick sell-out?

So punters are buying tickets to re-sell.  And they’re getting stuck.  It’s the dot com/day trader scenario all over again.  Superstar tickets will be scalped.  But it appears you can get a ticket to ANYTHING these days, so why pay the inflated price on the secondary market?  Hell, just go to the show and pick up the tickets for next to nothing!  If the promoter himself doesn’t paper the show…

Once again, the demand comes from the music.  And most acts fly under the radar these days.  No wonder LiveNation’s stock has tanked.  What NEXT?  Fuck signing Madonna, they’re going to have to BUILD NEW ACTS IN ORDER TO SURVIVE!

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Eventful

Had dinner with Holly, their marketing person (along with a bunch of agents, managers and even G. Scott, who runs the delicious Ryman and Peter Tempkins, who sells insurance for all these gigs).

Something is going on here.  You see they allow fans to build demand for gigs.  And then bands tour where people want to see them.  Better yet, they get sponsors to hold contests, where surfers create demand on a company’s site, and a tour is created based on what markets get the most hits.

Are you in business with Eventful?  You should be.  They’ll even share sponsorship money, even though you’re dying to be involved and would do it for free.

The labels came to them.  They created the service, bands started using it and word spread.  This is the modern era.  Create something great enough, and the people will come looking for YOU!

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Pali Research

Rich Greenfield is at it again, speaking truth to a business that functions like an ostrich.

End of year CD sales are tracking DOWN 22% compared to LAST year’s holiday season.

There were FIFTEEN albums that sold in excess of 100,000 the first week of December last year.  This year there were EIGHT!  And this trend has held for the last couple of weeks, approximately a fifty percent drop-off.  Furthermore, four of the eight selling in excess of 100,000 WEREN’T ON A MAJOR LABEL!

Sales have tanked even worse in the past few weeks than they have the rest of the year.  Including digital, they’re off in the mid-teens!

Do people not want the music?  Did everybody get an iPod and start STEALING the music?  Is it impossible to create demand?  Are things so bad that people only care about the acts of yore, like the Eagles and Garth Brooks?

Up until ten days ago, there was NO snow, Felice and I had to cancel our T’Giving week trip to Vail. But then it started dumping and four to six feet fell and it’s SPECTACULAR!

Wish you were here. Speaking of which, David Gilmour told me Pink Floyd wasn’t going to reform. To prove the point that the Zeppelin thing has stuck with me. The reviews have been good, then again, anybody who goes is gonna say it’s great, just like when you ask someone on the lift whether they like their new skis they say AWESOME!

To iterate my point, if it’s a one-off, I’m cool. If it’s the prelude to a tour… God, whatever happened to debate, whatever happened to a search for excellence. Is our society only about the money? Does someone who stands outside the crowd get no recognition, no traction? These are the issues facing not only the music world, but all entertainment spheres. Hell, the country itself. What did Ari Fleischer say after 9/11…people need to watch what they say?

Speaking of watching what you say…did you see the permanancers at MTV went on strike? God, when the twentysomethings start rebelling against MTV, you know there’s a problem. Remember when MTV was like a record company, everybody wanted to work there, everybody wanted to get close? Would this have happened if Freston was still in charge? Who legendarily took care of his people? Fuck, they’ve got to get the Viacom stock up. If people are fucked in the process, who cares.

At least the people are fucking the record companies at this point. After years of being screwed. The label heads and some of the acts just can’t understand it. How much is an album worth? Not what you say it is…

Still, I’m fascinated by the iMeem thing. So, you can stream every song? But why isn’t it a most favored nations thing, why should Universal get more? And what about indies, indies get fucked?

So, we barely made it here. No one shouted out that they were gay, like on the "Almost Famous" plane, but it was pretty frightening. Because there was no VISIBILITY! We danced into the darkness and then the pilot pulled back up. It’s a weird feeling, the wheels go back into their husks, you’re suddenly flying again. The pilot said he’d give it one more go before we went back to Denver. I’m absolutely astounded we made it. We dive-bombed in, not being able to see a thing, and then…there we were, right above the runway.

So we’re gonna hang for a few days here and bond. Agents, managers, promoters…but no record label people, and no LiveNationites either. The labels’ budgets are so tight they’ve got no one to work their 360 degree deals. As for LiveNation, they can’t even order office supplies. That’s the rumor anyway, and perception is everything in the music business.

Perception is that Led Zeppelin killed. That everybody wants to see them. I’ve got no problem with that. I’m just waiting for the next Led Zeppelin. Hell, they can be blues-influenced. They can jump off from Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. Although hopefully they’ll pay the writers of the songs…

Meanwhile, maybe the days of superstars like Madonna are done. Hell, it looks like she killed LiveNation. The company’s stock dropped by half once they signed her, the analysts didn’t buy it. And look what the analysts have done to Warner Music… And to think she was the linchpin, the cog in their cash-out plan. Sign Madonna, a few others and sell the whole mess to ignorant pricks on Wall Street. How did they wake up? Richard Branson signed the Stones and sold Virgin to EMI…why is it not working now?

Because the guys on Wall Street are smarter.

Are the guys in the music business smarter? What do they know? Are they the stewards of greatness, or is greatness history and needs to be redefined.

I’ll be discussing all of the foregoing on the chairlift. Too bad you won’t be there. I’d like to experience your passion. I’d like to hear what you’re into. And we all love the classics, but can we find some damn new acts that we can turn people on to that they’re elated by? Something you get with one hit?

Just before we got on the plane to Aspen, Frank Riley said he wanted to be in London for that five seconds, just after Zeppelin took the stage, before they started to play. Remember that rush? Used to be an everyday occurrence. Now it’s a rare resource, which is why we’re glomming on to Zeppelin, reliving our glory days. Hell, we used to believe in the RADIO! We needed to tune in, to find out what was going on. God, I’m starting to feel like John Lennon, who sang that all he could believe in was Yoko and him.

There was a collective consciousness then. It’s gone now. Guess all I can believe in is Felice, Felice and me. And the war isn’t over.

Over and out.