I’m not sure AI is the bogeyman the major labels have gone on record it is. Don Was said AI will end up being a tool, just like the drum machine.

Then again, a lot of drummers are still pissed about that.

But Don told me he realized the possibilities when he heard Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” New technology enables creativity.

As for AI itself, did you read that opinion piece in yesterday’s “New York Times”?

“The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes”

Free link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/opinion/ai-tech-innovation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8U4.NJB6.z563A54Ac8q1&smid=url-share

Here’s the money quote:

“A.I. may be a mid technology with limited use cases to justify its financial and environmental costs.”

In other words, AI might not be the revolution everybody thinks it will be.

Anyway, what we do know is every technological breakthrough begins with music, it’s the canary in the coal mine for digital disruption. Because the files are small and people want the product. So it’s no surprise that the first entertainment industry AI project is one centered on music.

Now if you’ve been following this story, you give prompts to your software platform of choice, and then it renders almost instantly a product that seems very similar to the music of the act that was inputted. You get a new Beatles or Beach Boys song that may not be innovative, but it definitely sounds like the original act. And this scares everybody.

But now the acts are taking control of the technology. Which the labels refused to do in the era of Napster. Superstars are working with AI to create brand new tracks that everybody in the world will want to hear. I know, I’ve been privy to some of the recordings, they’re AMAZING! Not like that lame McCartney supervised “Now and Then.” This is not old recordings, these tracks are BRAND NEW!

Made with OpenAI’s new product, MusicGPT.

I don’t know if you’ve been following this, but Sam Altman and Elon Musk hate each other. Once Musk was invested in OpenAI, now he’s a competitor. You might have seen that Elon merged X and xAI just a few days ago. Belief is AI is a zero sum game, there will be one winner and a bunch of also-rans.

You may have read this article in today’s “Wall Street Journal”:

“I Quit Google Search for AI—and I’m Not Going Back”

Free link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/google-search-chatgpt-perplexity-gemini-6ac749d9?st=YYC6Ur&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Bottom line, Google may not survive, at least as a dominant company. It may be the new GE, or even Polaroid. I know that I rarely look beyond the AI generated answer, and this article says that Google’s AI is inferior.

Anyway, Sam Altman has been working on this music product for a long time now. He just hasn’t introduced it because of endless legal issues, fearful it will be shut down before it’s even launched. But Altman has been encouraged by Anthropic’s victory last week. Hell, I’ll quote the AI generated headline from Google:

“Anthropic scored a win this week after a U.S. court denied an injunction that Universal Music Group and other record labels had sought to prevent the artificial-intelligence company from using copyrighted lyrics to train its AI models.”

But really, that court decision is just the cherry on top. The real driver here is Trump. That’s what this whole album is about, to raise money to stand up to Trump.

So Sam was at dinner with Lucian Grainge and Irving Azoff when this idea was hatched. Lucian controls the lion’s share of the acts and Azoff and his family pulled off FireAid in nearly an instant, so…this has been happening at light speed.

Since the album needed a producer, and since Don Was has gone on record about AI as per above, it is Don Was. He didn’t produce each and every track, but he’s overseeing the project.

So it starts with the Eagles. The new song is going to feature Glenn Frey on lead vocals. It sounds kinda like “Take It Easy,” but there’s a reference to a private jet instead of a flatbed Ford.

And since Irving manages John Mayer, there’s a new Dead track, with John duetting with Jerry. It’s called “Futuristic Dead.” It’s a whopper.

And once you have two superstars involved, everybody else wants in. Scott Rodger told Irving that McCartney wanted to participate.

As for the new track… McCartney wanted to make it his own, but ultimately he decided to follow the model of “Every Little Thing,” which he wrote and John sang. Yes, John is truly coming back from the dead. There’s another track in the can, a protest number, entitled “Autocracy,” but it’s not going to be on the album. Yoko’s planning to release it on what would have been John’s 85th birthday on October 9th.

And everybody knows that you’ve got to have the youngsters too, so…

There’s Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga and…

Morgan Wallen was in, but after he walked off the set last Saturday night on SNL his track was stricken. Yes, secretly Morgan is a Democrat, WHO KNEW?

Of course Jason Alden is a Trumper, so he’s not included. But Eric Church is there, along with the Chicks, who I’m not sure are country or pop at this point.

And Jason Isbell, purely for credibility.

And negotiations were interminable, because she needed to own the master, but ultimately Taylor Swift caved and is included, she realized it was a bad look to be left out, and she notoriously endorses Democrats anyway.

But here’s the true kicker…

BOB DYLAN!

But it gets better than that. AI has brought the Band back from the dead and Bob has written a new PROTEST song! Yes, it’s been decades, but the moment is now. You’ll love it.

As for the number of tracks, it hasn’t been finalized.

At first the belief was there should be twelve, like on the albums of yore.

Then it was pointed out that the modern paradigm is to record an album of thirty or so tracks, which generate tons of money if the music is a hit. The Morgan Wallen model.

There will be more than twelve, since so many people wanted in, but…the final number has not been decided upon.

The album’s release date is July 4th. And it will be celebrated with a live concert at the Sphere, beamed across the world. But to get the full effect, you’ve got to use an Apple Vision Pro. Go to your local Apple Store and register. They’ll be giving away twenty at each location.

It’s a win-win for Tim Apple. Who’s pissed that Trump is cracking down on LGBTQ people.

So back to the money. It’s being given to Bernie Sanders and AOC. Not the usual Democratic suspects. As a matter of fact, Schumer asked for Sphere tickets and he was turned down.

People are sick and tired of the usual suspect Democrats asking for money… To do WHAT? Bernie and AOC are in motion, better to fund their campaign.

But they’re not getting all the money. A huge chunk will go to a legal defense fund. If you’re a law firm threatened by Trump, if you’re anybody threatened by Trump, this money will be available to support your case, so you don’t have to cave to Trump.

Now these are not the kind of AI tracks I referenced above, pale imitations of what once was. No, each and every artist is working with AI to create something brand new that sounds like the past, but not exactly. Some acts went back to MusicGPT twenty times, refining their cuts. These are not retreads, no way.

Eno wanted to get in, do one of his atmospheric cuts, but the brass said no. They want every track to be a hit, like on an album of the seventies or eighties.

And since Eno said no, Bono was hesitant. But when he was told that U2 can open and close the Sphere show, he was in. And yes, Larry Mullen, Jr. will be a member of the band.

I don’t want to give away any more highlights. But I will say that all these acts are pissed that no one is standing up to the Orange man. Everyone knows politics is show business for ugly people, that D.C. can’t compete with Hollywood, it’s entertainment that has eyes and ears.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the Sphere show will be streamed live on Netflix. And co-hosted by Chris Rock and Dave Chappell. They’re going to introduce the video for the new Biggie Smalls track, that is also part of the project, the clip will be aired before the concert.

This superstar AI album, which at this point is untitled, and is referred to by insiders as SAIA, is a true breakthrough. Employing technology to go back to the future.

Yes, they’re taking the best elements of the past and creating something that points to tomorrow.

Lucian already made a deal with Altman and MusicGPT, he’s allowing all of Universal’s catalog to be scraped and supposedly Sony and Warner are in too.

This is truly a great white wonder. Something inconceivable.

But it’s real.

GET READY!

Much ado about nothing. Grandstanding. A joke.

In reality the order says nothing. Other than ticket scalpers make a lot of money and they must pay taxes on their revenue.

Oh yeah, DOGE just gutted the IRS…who’s going to enforce that? Where are all the IRS engineers with time to dedicate to researching the receipts of brokers.

As for the BOTS act… It’s been on the books for years, but it’s been ineffective because there’s been no money/assets delegated for ENFORCEMENT!

And in a government where Musk is cutting willy-nilly, where is the extra manpower to focus on…TICKET SCALPING?

Let’s be clear, scalpers provide a service. If you can’t get in line online and waste hours trying to purchase what oftentimes is a bad seat, you can pay a premium after the fact to the scalper to get the ticket you want. Hell, a lot of the great tickets are not available on the on sale to boot! There are pre-sales and holdbacks and… I’ll admit the scalpers and their bots are a huge problem, but no one is forcing anybody to buy a concert ticket. And the dirty little secret is almost all of the people paying exorbitant prices for secondary market tickets were thrilled to be at the venue, THEY ENJOYED THE SHOW!

So, once again, where is the problem?

High prices for concert tickets? Well, if the acts themselves try to capture that revenue the public bitches that they’re greedy. As for paperless/tying the ticket to the purchaser…the public is against that, because they want to be able to scalp their tickets themselves!

Concert ticket pricing and availability is a problem, but nothing in Trump’s executive order is going to address this.

Price transparency? Big evil Live Nation has been arguing for this for years. It’s a game, no different from buying anything in America today. There’s the price of the car, and what you pay when you walk out the door. And there’s no addressing the breakdown of these fees… So the acts can hide behind the “face value” of the ticket and accuse Ticketmaster, which gets little of the fees, for being greedy! Talk about not having clean hands.

The FTC proposing regulations? Isn’t this what Trump and the Republicans want to get rid of? Don’t they want to simplify all processes?

As for a report… That ain’t never going to pass the DOGE smell test. Isn’t this what they’re getting rid of, soft costs? You’re going to spend all that money creating a report? And it does cost money. And usually nothing happens thereafter. This is antithetical to the DOGE and Trump ethos!

But Trump owes Kid Rock a solid. And this was as much as he could deliver.

Rock has a long history of trying to rein in the abuses in the ticketing world. I applaud him for that. But this executive order is a joke.

Too many people are making too much money off of concert tickets for there to be any change. And the government doesn’t have enough money and manpower to solve this problem, because how big of a problem is it? Very tiny.

We’ve got ignorant fans who believe they’re entitled to sit in the front row for twenty bucks. Since they listened to the music, a seat should be guaranteed!

Forget the law of supply and demand. This is kind of like the inane advocates of a penny a stream at Spotify. Did they learn any math? Spotify doesn’t take in enough revenue to pay every artist a penny per stream, nowhere even close, the company would be bankrupt nearly instantly.

But it feels good to beat up on Spotify. It feels good to beat up on Ticketmaster. People can’t handle the truth.

And all this executive order does is obfuscate. It makes people believe something is being done when in reality…

It’s the same as it ever was.

You need a direct relationship with your audience.

Let me give you an example. In the last century and the beginning of this one, if you were on terrestrial radio, if you were on MTV, you were part of a community.

That paradigm is kaput.

There’s a conception that if you just get enough publicity, if you just break through into this world or that, you’ll be golden.

But that is untrue.

I’ll give you an example. Taylor Swift. She’s in her own business, her own vertical, she competes with NO ONE! It’s not buying a ticket for a Swift show or someone else, either you want to go see Swift or you don’t.

That’s at the top. But what I’m really concerned with here is the bottom.

People are looking for an express train. They want to get on it and journey to greatness. But that train does not exist. Nowhere. A late night TV appearance is meaningless unless it’s on SNL. And the SNL brand has been fifty years in the making, acts come and go, but SNL remains, it’s bigger than any act on the show. Used to be people tuned in SNL to see a specific act. Now they watch SNL and then view an act. Because this is not the only place you can see your favorites…they’re everywhere, assuming you’re looking!

Let’s take the movie business as an example. Which is cratering, off 11% so far this year. Its problem is it is reinventing the wheel with every film. No one is a fan of the movie theatre itself. Sure, there are some exceptions, but the defining factor of whether you go to the flicks is whether you want to see that particular movie.

Used to be you found out about movies Thursday night, mostly on NBC, with a bombardment of advertising. Now, the target audience doesn’t even watch network television. And everybody hates ads, they’re easily avoidable.

People are fans of Netflix and the product comes and goes. Netflix gets you with its monthly fee.

How do you get your audience hooked?

Oh, you can try a moonshot. Getting a big story in the paper, on some TV news show, even ginning up a fakokta story for the gossip columns. But it’s one and done, you need a continuous story.

When you have a direct relationship you cannot let it lie fallow. You must constantly feed it, or people will go elsewhere. Forget the brands of yore that made it in a prior era, the dinosaurs of rock and metal. They can get away without new music, announcing a big tour every year or two. But if you’re a new act, having developed in the last couple of decades, you not only need new music, you need YouTube clips, you’ve got to burnish the relationship with your audience, which will probably grow slowly, if at all. You milk the audience you have, you don’t fantasize about an audience you’d have had in the last century.

This is the fallacy of the bitching about streaming payments. Acts don’t realize their status. They think since they’re professional, everybody should be listening to them. But they’re not. Only a very few are. At least there are many more ways to monetize than there were in the last century.

You must adjust. You must realize that the public is overloaded. The internet may have burgeoned, but people’s brains have not. They can only handle so much. How do you penetrate them?

The tsunami of news is overwhelming. Just check out Apple News+, and everybody competing for attention has a clickbait headline.

If you’re a student of the game you know more than the average person, but even you don’t know everything. Used to be the music business was comprehensible, but if you know every act today you’re lying.

So you need to change your focus. You must build upon what you have.

Hell, don’t even bother to follow the top-line news. Does it really affect you if Spotify makes a new deal with Universal? It really doesn’t affect you if Ticketmaster signs up a new account. But rather than focus on your own career, it’s easier to follow the business, and too often people complain about it. YOU’RE IN YOUR OWN BUSINESS! Take care of your home and then everything will turn out all right.

But you want someone to make it easier. Everybody wants it easier. But the paradigm of today is harder, because there’s so much in the pipeline. You’re competing against TikTok, YouTube, video games…you must be more interesting to a certain sliver of the public than these outlets. You must be more interesting than the hits of the past, because they’re easily accessible.

The lift is heavier than ever before. You can declare yourself a musician, but establishing a career is nearly impossible.

So, there are scapegoats. Spotify, Live Nation…

Those are just vessels. They are tools that you employ.

But you must have enough success to take advantage of them.

Have I discouraged you yet?

Good. I’m the antidote to all those websites taking your money and telling you they’ll help you have success.

Making music for a living is harder and slower than it’s ever been before. Even the major labels can’t establish hit acts, and they’re trying to do this 24/7.

You must be innovative. You must be focused.

And you must dedicate an incredible amount of time to the process.

Does this sound boring?

Then music is not for you. Go to college and follow a path. Music is the great unknown. Sure, people need it, but they don’t need YOU! 

How do they convince them they need YOU?

You must be unique. Maybe your music, maybe your stage show, maybe your online personality, MAYBE ALL OF THEM!

There are very few stars, everything is cottage industry these days.

But the upside is anybody and everybody can play.

But not everybody can succeed.

But the internet allows you to get your music out there and play by your rules.

But people would rather have a defined path.

There is no defined path. That was blown up years ago.

We are living in the wilderness.

But people are foraging. How do you hook them and keep them? 

That’s your job. Go micro, not macro. That’s the route to success and survival.

“Tune Out the Noise”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T98825bzcKw

I’m intrigued by finance, but I’m not interested in it.

Meaning I want to know how it works, but I don’t want to spend any mental energy in investing.

I don’t want to become a day trader, which is a fool’s errand. I don’t want to buy and sell stocks because I’m not a professional, and it’s a professional market. Furthermore, today everyone knows you should just put your money in index funds.

These are the guys who did the research proving this is the right way to invest.

Now I read about this documentary in the “Wall Street Journal.”

“A Billionaire and an Oscar Winner Have Made a Hit Movie. It’s About Investing – The new documentary from Errol Morris makes index funds and passive investing thrilling”

Free link: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/investing-david-booth-errol-morris-documentary-4dd7ff80?st=tuJdM1&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Not that you have to read the article. But I do recommend you watch the first half of this movie.

Documentaries are all the rage, but too often they’re about topics I experienced live, or nooks and crannies featuring crazy people. “Tune Out the Noise” is educational, without being didactic, without beating you over the head.

What we’ve got here is nobodies who find their way to the University of Chicago for disparate reasons. These are not today’s finance bros, wearing tailored suits who are in it only for the money and the attendant lifestyle. No, what we have here are ACADEMICS!

Can you imagine being so intrigued by finance that you want to teach it? Mostly these are oddballs who don’t fit in who find their way to this educational institution…

I know, I know, everybody’s down on universities and college education today. However, at the bleeding edge of any enterprise is the intelligent, trying to figure out the unknown. And that’s thrilling. We’re all excited by the new. But most of us are playing it safe, never all-in, especially in enterprises that appear difficult and don’t rain down money.

But David Booth decided to employ all this academic research to prove a point and make a ton of money. Which is why the University of Chicago’s business school is now named “Booth” (well, he donated $300 million for the privilege).

It’s exciting to see people driven by the data, the science, the theories, as opposed to the modern paradigm of working your way back from the money. How do I get rich? That’s where most people start.

This is history. And that’s where documentaries shine. Errol Morris makes finance come alive.

Until somewhere in the middle of this flick where the focus ends up being on small cap companies and multi-dimensions and conceptually you get it, but something is lost in the process.

But before that…

You’ll be riveted. Because Morris is a professional documentarian, and he knows how to make a subject interesting.

Of course if you’re a newbie, if you’re wet behind the ears, if you truly think you can beat the market yourself…your eyes will be opened. The math says otherwise! That’s the genius of these people… They collected the data and analyzed it, instead of just talking out of their rear ends.

And then there’s the concept of the theory. The data is meaningless unless you’re using it to prove or disprove… This is the kind of stuff you learned in junior high school that rarely comes up in your everyday life, but it’s the essence of progress.

You should put your money in an index fund. Sure, round out your portfolio with bonds, maybe real estate, don’t go all-in on the index. But if you’re going to own equities, this is the way to go. This movie proves it.

As to which index fund you should own with which philosophy… This is where the film gets hazy.

But until that point, you’ll be focused and edified. Even those in the industry may not know a lot of these historical details.

And did I mention that the movie is FREE?!

Yup, just click the YouTube link above.

You’ll be intrigued.