Tune in Saturday May 13th, 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

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/41tMcR3

YouTube: https://bit.ly/42wWwce

I subscribe to this newsletter from Ashley Carman at Bloomberg. It’s entitled “Soundbite,” but mostly it’s about podcasting, which has been in flux recently. Seems that everybody with a big name who’s been given a podcast is having an extremely hard time gaining traction. Turns out being a star is not enough. It’s tougher than ever to build an audience.

But this week’s newsletter was mostly about the music business, streaming. And fraud. You can read it here:

“Why Warner Music Operates a Covert Spotify Remix Account – Artists and labels are quietly releasing multiple versions of their own songs on streaming platforms to box out the unauthorized competition”: https://bloom.bg/3MkCMSD

The headline story is interesting, how the majors have playlists of sped-up songs as a kind of subterfuge, to look cool… There’s more to it, you can read the details.

The other story is about outright fraud. Acts piggy-backing on others’ hits and getting the royalties.

I’ve got to tell you, I can’t say I’m overly moved by fraud. It is disillusioning, that so many are scamsters, that deception is rampant, but fraud has always permeated the recorded music business. That does not mean it shouldn’t be addressed, shouldn’t be stamped out, I’m just saying the issue punches above its weight because after years of turmoil in music distribution it’s been figured out, streaming has won, now it’s all about software, i.e. the music. But creating hit music is much more difficult than addressing distribution problems. Then again, if you create a hit will it become one, if it’s “in the grooves,” will it blow up?

The story about this outright fraud, linked in the above newsletter, is here:

“Music Streaming Has a $2 Billion Fraud Problem That Goes Beyond AI – With user-generated content surging on music services, bogus tracks may now account for 10% of all streams”: https://bloom.bg/3pw2889

(If this link doesn’t work, load the newsletter from the first link and click through from there and it will appear.)

The track being ripped-off in the article was “Hey Kids,” by Molina, who they said was a a Danish-Chilean singer. It was released by the label Tambourhinoceros. Household names, right? The Chilean-Danes are buzzing up the chart, thank god for the independent labels. Huh?

The track was released in 2018. In 2022 it started to get 100,000 streams a day. What was driving the action all these years later?

I DON’T KNOW!

But I was fascinated, so I clicked the embedded video of “Hey Kids” and I was stunned, from the very beginning I was hooked, IT WAS GOOD! Do you know how often I find a track that I get from the beginning, that I want to continue to listen to? ALMOST NEVER! A lot of what is successful is mediocre and pushed down our throats by the machine, which is why you can listen to these playlists of new music and your eyes will roll up into your head. HOW COULD THIS BE?

I mean I instantly knew “Hey Kids” had something. It deserved its success. But why did it take so long, and what made it finally gain traction?

Was the cut blown up by TikTok or vice versa?

So I went to Molina’s TikTok page, filled with user-generated videos: https://bit.ly/42Peg2h The song worked perfectly. Sure, it wasn’t the entire song, but the parts used worked. Furthermore, if you listen to the whole song it’s more than the excerpt, much more! How did these people know to use this song?

And supposedly people are using it on YouTube too and…

Let me be clear, “Hey Kids” is not the usual Spotify Top 50 fare. But that’s very narrow, and that’s not where barriers are broken, where envelopes are pushed. Not that “Hey Kids” is revolutionary, but if you’re listening at home, boy does it resonate.

Maybe not for you. But that’s fine.

BUT HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

P.S. “Hey Kids” has 76,224,123 streams on Spotify

P.P.S. You can sign up for Ashley Carman’s newsletter here: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/soundbite

You can’t go from mass to grass roots.

In the pre-internet era, mass was everything. Broadcast/cable TV is a pre-internet paradigm, which is why it is fading. The only thing we need to see in real time is sports, or maybe breaking news. Then again, breaking news is better online, where you can hop from site to site, to get a three-dimensional view of the situation. Why settle for the viewpoint of one outlet when you can have the benefit of many?

This is the mistake many up and coming acts make today. They think it’s about mass. But mass is instant, mass is now, mass is rarely forever.

That’s the history of instant successes, of those dependent upon hits, sans smashes…their audience withers. Whereas if you come from the grass roots…you maintain. Furthermore, there is no mass anymore. Everybody’s in their own silo. That’s the beauty of the internet, you don’t have to spend time with that which you are not interested in. Listen to the radio without pushing the button, enduring the commercials, are you kidding? And even if a boomer might do this, even watch “Succession” in real time on Sunday night, the younger generations don’t play that way. Younger people are busy, heavily scheduled, they don’t want to waste any time. Therefore they watch television when they want to, on demand, and HBO/Max and other outlets dribbling shows out week by week can’t train them otherwise. They want it all and they want it now. You’d think legacy players would have learned the lesson of Napster at this point, don’t give the public what it wants at your peril. Move forward, hopefully ahead of the audience, don’t try to hold people back.

So Tucker Carlson is a creature of mass, a beneficiary of not only the imprimatur of Fox News, but its built-in audience. I know people who keep MSNBC on all day long, they’re some of the least informed people I know. If you want to know what is happening, read the papers, go online, there’s much more information. The values of the boomers are so last century. Whereas the youngsters…

So, many people don’t even know that Tucker Carlson started the “Daily Caller,” and that Kaitlan Collins worked for it. Carlson could have stayed there, been a bigger Kos, but he wanted more, and went to Fox. One can say Tucker paid his dues, but he didn’t make his bones on the internet, like Matt Drudge. Tucker is starting all over on Twitter.

Not completely, but he’s going from mass to grass roots, on demand. And to get someone to pull you up on demand…is a very hard thing to do.

It’s not only television shows that are on demand, music is too. How do you get someone to pull your song? It’s nearly impossible. Oh, you can pray that you get on a playlist, but that doesn’t build careers, no, you build careers from the ground up, person by person, grass roots. And it’s a slow process but this audience will never completely abandon you, sans some huge faux pas.

But everybody wants it instantly.

But that’s no longer the world we live in.

The other night I was at a restaurant and I proffered that only one person there would be able to mention the name of a song, one single song, from the new Taylor Swift album. But the person I pointed out, the early twentysomething across the aisle, was flummoxed. Oh, she did know that Taylor Swift had a new album, but that was all. And Taylor Swift is one of the biggest acts in the business! This is not a judgment on either Swift’s music or career, this is just an illustration of what everybody thinks is mass is not. Your goal of world dominance, a household name, babies singing your songs…that’s a fantasy.

So Tucker Carlson goes to Twitter…

Big problem, his audience is not on Twitter. Older people inured to broadcast television are not on Twitter, because if they were there would be no reason to watch news on TV! So the hurdle of getting Tucker’s audience on Twitter…is too high for most people. You have to get an account, and then follow and find Carlson. Furthermore, there is no appointment time. Which is why Howard Stern hyped his move to Sirius for nearly a year before the jump, he had to prime his audience to come with him. Carlson laid none of this groundwork. Carlson has been at the tippity-top of the traditional news business for so long that…he’s completely unfamiliar with the internet and how it works. Bill Maher self-satisfiedly puts down the internet every week, he does not know that this is a bad look, makes him appear ignorant, after all, who wants the opinion of someone who never goes where the facts are? You can live in the bubble, but if you want to opine you’ve got to leave it.

Like RFK, Jr. My inbox is full of fans. Saying he’s their candidate. I’m stunned, even RFK, Jr.s’ wife went on record that she doesn’t agree with his antivax beliefs. Furthermore, RFK, Jr. does not have a legacy of elected office, so one would think he’s not even qualified. But somehow, RFK, Jr. is polling at about 20% compared to Biden. And today I saw an ad for him in the “Wall Street Journal.” I was stunned, it was pretty convincing. RFK, Jr. is all about fighting for the little guy, public service, that resonates like Trump’s statements in 2016, only RFK, Jr. is perceived to be more credible. The truth is RFK, Jr. could give Biden a run for his money. And then where would the DNC be? They anointed Biden too early. Everybody thinks he’s too old. I was at the eye doctor yesterday, a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. He said every time he sees Biden he winces, he sees him slowing down, he’ll vote for him, but…isn’t there an alternative? 

If you don’t choose your alternative, someone else will. RFK, Jr. is building a base while every other potential Democrat is sitting on the sidelines, fearful of alienating Biden and the DNC.

If I hadn’t gotten that plethora of e-mail, I would have never been hip to the inroads RFK, Jr. is making. I’m lucky, I’m in touch with a cornucopia of citizens 24/7, I hear all the different viewpoints, whereas most in traditional media are living inside the bubble. In addition it’s a full-time job keeping up, and you can’t keep up, but if you don’t dedicate a good amount of time, you’re out of the loop.

The younger generation? The supposed short attention span people? Stop accusing them, they’re constantly grazing to get a feel, to take the temperature, that’s the modern paradigm, get on board.

Turns out people believed in Fox more than Bill O’Reilly. Than Glenn Beck. And it’s no different for Tucker. They were built by the machine. The Avett Brothers don’t need the machine. Nor do Tedeschi Trucks or Phish or Warren Haynes. Because they all made it via the grass roots. Their audience is keeping them alive. And the audience is looking for them! These acts were not pushed down fans’ throats, the fans found them, they followed them, they’re invested in them. But despite the hype, time and again it’s been proven that fans are less invested in the mass acts. Because the masses are fickle. And the true followers don’t want to be associated with the mass, so they abandon the act.

So Tucker Carlson is starting all over. Not at the bottom, but close to it.

And Tucker made the classic mistake of someone who’s been fired, believing they must get back in the game instantly. This almost always leads to mistakes. Your mind is not clear, you’ve got to assess the landscape. That’s what Barry Diller did before he built his ragtag internet empire that made him a billionaire. Tucker should have licked his wounds and done research, gotten a feel for the world today. Come on, who else has made it broadcasting on Twitter? NO ONE! So Tucker needs to invent the paradigm along the way! YouTube, people subscribe. TikTok is where the eyeballs are. Twitter? Evanescent short messages. Not the place for Tucker.

And even if he cross-posts on YouTube, you’ve got to get people to pull it. Which is why TikTok is such a success, because of the algorithm, it feeds you the product.

And to see all the bloviators reporting on and endorsing Tucker’s Twitter move… Illustrates to me that they’ve got no idea what is going on in the social media sphere. Because if they did…

But they’re too busy doing their jobs.

Meanwhile, the ratings for Fox News are anemic anyway. Network ratings are in the toilet. Cable news? It’s a joke! People hear about Tucker, but do they actually watch his show? Almost none do. So if he goes to Twitter…these none-fans might check him out, if even that, but odds are they’re not going to become hard core fans and check every post.

Look at the highly-hyped acts. BTS. There are no casual fans. Just addicted fans and people who don’t care, won’t pay attention and won’t listen. There’s enough money for BTS to get rich, never mind those behind the act, but the money is coming from a very small percentage of the public, unlike in the old days when there was limited product and if radio in the sixties or MTV in the eighties played you you were known by everyone.

This is the world Tucker is living in. And he’s got fewer fans than BTS. And BTS is EVERYWHERE! Sure, on television one place might be enough, but especially if you don’t have a strong online presence, you’ve got to be everywhere today. Unless you’re starting from the ground up, grass roots, because then people will pull your content and tell others about it and you will continue to grow. But this process is slower than ever before. Chances are the major label doesn’t even sign your kind of music. And it can’t do much for you. And if it does succeed in pushing you down people’s throats, it alienates them. Come on, think of all the acts you’re sick of and you’ve never even heard their music. But the endless hype is turning your stomach!

So you can go from grass roots to mass. It’s just that it takes longer than ever before and mass success does not look like it used to. It might be very lucrative, but your overall mindshare will be less, because of the endless options, the difficulty of getting people to pay attention.

All we’ve got is time. You’re looking for our attention. You’ve got to earn it. And it’s very difficult to do and grow a significant audience. Everybody is looking for shortcuts, but they usually come at a cost. And if you’re a product of the machine, you live and die by the machine. Fox is the machine, it excised Tucker Carlson.

Tucker’s been sent to the minor leagues. But it works the other way around, you start in the minor leagues and then graduate to the big leagues! Essentially no one makes it if they go in reverse. Oh, they can always find a team to play ball for, but they’re not going to be seen by many nor make much money and most…just give up.

I don’t expect Tucker Carlson to give up, but if he was smart, he’d look for another mass job. And grow from there. To build it from the ground up, to start all over again, is just too hard, it’s a fool’s errand.

Come on, how many faded acts propelled by the machine into superstars came back independently to the same level, even close?

I can’t think of a single one.

I rest my case.

“Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral”: https://amzn.to/41zXBPb

This is not the book I thought it would be.

And I don’t advise you read it. I don’t see why anybody would read it. I thought it would be an insight into virality, how something spreads in today’s marketplace. Instead, it’s a history of virality, from Nick Denton and Gawker to the Huffington Post to BuzzFeed. Who’s interested in that?

This is why writing books is so messed up. Everybody involved is so myopic and stupid. This is not household names, this is people mostly from Silicon Alley, the New York City answer to Silicon Valley. And unless you’re one of them, you’ll have no interest. And if you are one of them, you know everything already, why would you need to read it in a book?

Ben Smith worked for Politico, then BuzzFeed and the “New York Times” and now he runs the newsletter/events company Semafor. Reading this book I can only feel worse about him. He’s a detailer of facts, not a deep thinker. He’s addicted to Twitter. This is not someone who moves mountains, he is a cog in the machine. And he admits he missed it, that everybody from Jonah Peretti to the rest of the tech titans missed it. Because ultimately virality didn’t pay.

The goal here is so empty. Jonah Peretti wants virality for the traffic, for the advertising, for the money, it’s just that simple. And Nick Denton before him. If it bleeds, it leads. There are no limits to what is posted. But then Facebook will change its algorithm and philosophy and…BuzzFeed will have a meeting with Facebook to plead its case, to get featured as much as it used to. So? I mean at least in the music business there’s music involved, art. This is a pure money play. For almost all of them. All those scumbags who are spamming your inbox 24/7, this is the same damn thing, only these guys, and they’re almost all guys, don’t live in Russia and are findable. Disillusions you when it comes to business. Money is everything? This is what the best and brightest care about?

And all those headlines you see about sales on Amazon and elsewhere, they’re all over BuzzFeed and other sites. I mean I always scratch my head, because the discounts are so low, 10% off, whoopee! Well, since virality pays so poorly, because advertisers pay less for traffic, these sites have resorted to affiliate fees to make their money. They hope you’ll click through and buy and then they can get their pennies from Amazon. It’s kind of a scam.

Smith starts the BuzzFeed news operation. But mostly it’s amplifying what is already out there, or posting something that more traditional outlets are afraid to, like the Steele dossier.

So then Smith goes to the “New York Times”…

That’s the big story in the book, how the “Times” is the ultimate winner and all these sites based on advertising failed. The “Times” charged for news, they went to a subscription model and made beaucoup profits, are no longer totally dependent on a fading advertising market. And the “Times” even diversified, into cooking and puzzle apps and…you pay for all of them.

So if you’ve been following the news, you know that BuzzFeed just killed its news division. But is that in this book? Of course not, because the ancient publishing industry needs lead time, to print all these dead tree tomes. Oh, you can update the digital version instantly, but the physical books? They’re out of date from the moment they’re printed. The web is about living and breathing stories. “Traffic” is about a story set in amber, the rearview mirror, it’d be like writing about Napster today, then again, Napster is a hell of a lot more interesting and led to a bigger upheaval than these bros trying to tweak brain dead stories for virality.

So Smith ended up at the “Times” himself. In the old David Carr role.

But Carr was a reporter, and he didn’t see the “Times” as a waystation on the journey to hoped riches, being a reporter was enough.

And Smith’s “Times” stories were good, mostly about what his contacts were into, and then he quit and started Semafor.

So how is Semafor gonna make it? EVENTS!

God, there are not enough people to go to all of the events proffered.

The red hot Pivot crew, Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, held a conference in Florida and…they lost money.

I mean if you can’t get in for free to these confabs, you’re the sucker. Mostly it’s wannabes, believing they’re going to get to hang with the names, which doesn’t happen. You do get to meet like-minded people on the way up, but…

These things have a shelf life.

Like Summit at Sea, happening imminently, next week in fact.

Well, a couple of weeks past they said registration was gonna close. But now I keep getting e-mails that it’s open. Turns out not enough people want to go. It’s expensive, and what are the dividends? If you’re charging a high price either the entertainment has to be really damn good or the networking has to be worth it, and it almost never is. Furthermore, you can’t do it all, you can’t stay up all night partying and then go to hear the names speak. You’ve got to choose. And the best and the brightest don’t go to the speeches at all. Just like the rest of the world, it’s a two class system, them and us. And believe me, they don’t want to give the great unwashed access, their time is too valuable. The smart ones will be nice if you buttonhole them, but for a very brief moment. It’s not their job to lift you up, to get you a gig, that’s your job, and that’s really damn hard.

So does anybody care about the details of people trying to game the system to make bread via a paradigm that’s already history? Do you think you can sell a book about last year’s Little League season?

And this guy took all of this time to write this book? All those hours? Sure, he got an advance, but it won’t sell, and to earn back the advance there’s got to be good word of mouth. And sure, all the inside people Ben Smith knows will blurb for their friend, it’s an inside job, but you’ve got to interest those outside and believe me, no one else cares.

Now a blog about what exactly is happening today? That’d be great. But Smith isn’t selling distance, perspective, Semafor is all news, what is happening now. What it all means? Well, if you’re at dinner with Smith I’m sure the first thing he’ll mention is the money, then the collegiality, making a difference, moving the culture? That’s way down the line, not to mention the target keeps moving.

The facts, they’re easily garnered. Just Google a news event, there are zillions of hits, even from publications in India! But someone who can make sense of it all? Where is the perspective on AI? Mostly it’s just hysteria, to the point where the hoi polloi are talking about it and they’ve got no clue. Where’s the seer drilling down into the weeds, making it clear, revealing the thoughts of those involved while having no skin in the game? That’s hard to find, because everybody is trying to make a buck.

So if you’re a scam artist, maybe you should check out “Traffic.” Otherwise, FORGET IT!