You’ll love listening to Dwight’s tales of growing up in Ohio and coming to Los Angeles to make it. Dwight is quite the raconteur, and this is the longest podcast I’ve ever done. It’s like hanging with your best friend.

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/9e42b14f-5e35-47b0-82a5-492c4a31c168/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-dwight-yoakam

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/dwight-yoakam-304859482

The theatrical movie business is never going to recover. And we might need population growth to fill all those office buildings. But music? It keeps getting bigger and bigger.

The movie business killed itself. This is what happens when you put bean counters in charge. Let’s see… Marketing expenses are so high, let’s make fewer and fewer movies and promote the hell out of them. Furthermore, to get a good return on our dollar, let’s make sure the films can play in every country around the globe, let’s not localize them, like with comedy, content that does not play overseas. And let’s build franchises. Because the goal is to eliminate risk. Not only endless sequels, but comic book characters. Look at the gross!

Well, don’t. Because the true metric is attendance. And somewhere along the line entire swaths of the public stopped going to the theatre.

The baby boomers…older ones might go out of habit, but so many have checked out, because they don’t make the kind of flicks they got addicted to in the sixties and seventies. Deep thought pieces that stimulated your brain and engendered discussion. As for foreign flicks, the independents, there’s so much product it’s hard to make sense of the landscape, and movies come and go, it’s no longer religion.

And then there are the families… Turns out you can see Pixar movies on Disney +, so why wrangle your kids and spend all that money at the theatre? Furthermore, the theatre is not on demand, there are appointed times, you can’t be late, whereas you can stop and pick up Disney+ content whenever you want. The new Pixar movie, “Elemental,” is everything adult fare is not…it’s innovative, and it got some great reviews, and it’s got a 92% audience score on RottenTomatoes, and the critics score is not quite as high, it’s 76%, but the flick stiffed at the box office. “Elemental” is the lowest grossing Pixar pic in history, or close to it, depending on how you massage the figures. Then again, when Steve Jobs ran the company, Pixar movies were an event, by ramping up production Disney eradicated a lot of the magic. And like I said, you can watch them on Disney+ anyway.

Oh, you say, it was a mistake to put them on Disney+ during the pandemic. Well, if they held all this content back there wouldn’t be a Disney+, which has the thinnest content slate of any streamer other than Apple, and that’s only because Apple has no catalog, and it’s making more new stuff. And the home experience is incredible these days. With giant hi-def flat screens and surround sound… Sure, there’s a bigger picture at the theatre, but you’ve also got all those humans. Most people don’t want to hang with all those humans. There’s no policing of the movie theatre audience, getting patrons not to talk, to turn off their phones, and if you complain…expect blowback. People think it’s part of the admission price, to do whatever they want during the screening.

And then there’s the office. I get it, socialization is needed. But it turns out you can save so much time and accomplish just as much at home. All that brouhaha about innovation in the office…studies say this is untrue, that most innovation is singular, by one person, oftentimes out of the office. You don’t need to go to the office to innovate, you can take a break, take a hike, that’s when the neurons start to fire. And studies say people actually work harder at home. And it’s so much easier, there’s no commute. They’re trying to bring people back into the office, but corporations don’t have the power they used to, they’re not the only game in town, treat me right or I’ll quit. Ditto the unionization movement. You want to be on the side of the worker today, the wind has changed.

But in music?

The internet was supposed to kill music. After all, who would play if you couldn’t get paid? EVERYBODY! Turns out that everybody wants their music on Spotify. As for getting paid…

This is what the oldsters don’t understand, they’re making less on recorded music because they’re getting less mindshare. The pool used to be small. They had label deals, with advances, and marketing and promotion, and there was a limited amount of competition. But with all that competition… This is like network television, ratings have plummeted to lows incomprehensible during the last century. Because there are so many other options, never mind cable and now streaming, but YouTube and TikTok and…

So what we’ve got is a plethora of cottage industry acts. And in truth, today everybody starts out cottage industry, and after you’ve proven yourself you can make a major label deal, or not. The majors don’t want everything, just what they can blow up, and that’s only a fraction of what’s out there.

So what we’ve got is an endless development pool. It’s overwhelming, yet it doesn’t have to be. But everybody who can separate the wheat from the chaff is addicted to the old model and refuses to do so. The streaming outlets need the major label product so they won’t tell you anything sucks, it’s all presented as equal, the customer is on their own, meaning you don’t discover new music on the streaming platform, that’s where you go once you’ve already heard about it. Music is broken via word of mouth, or TikTok… The streamers do a piss-poor job of breaking acts, they don’t even know how to.

And now music is everywhere. The retrograde music industry finally woke up and realized it’s not about shutting down new uses, but licensing them. This is why music is now so valuable, why catalogs are selling for a fortune. This is not a one time event. The revenue from music will continue to go up, because they keep inventing new uses for music. Just like things go better with Coca-Cola, things go better with music. And music, unlike Coke, has an unlimited number of brands, you can find anything you want. And it enhances your TikToks, your YouTube clips… It may just be pennies, but those pennies add up, just ask the publishers, this is their business model. Never mind sync licenses… There’s more visual product than ever before, and almost all of it needs music. Of all stripes. Of all costs. There’s room for the superstar and the wannabe.

So the public is music-crazy. They’re exposed to music 24/7, they can’t escape it, except maybe when they’re asleep. And all these uses pay. Get your mind off the old paradigm of selling physical product. It’s not about a short arc of sales, but an endless life of copyright, you get paid when people stream your music decades from now, assuming they do.

And most music doesn’t get streamed. It’s not only the oldsters who complain about compensation, but the youngsters too. Everybody thinks they’re being ripped-off, not realizing there’s only so much money and attention to go around. And people want stars. But a star might be a bluegrass band that can sell a thousand tickets everywhere it plays. You see there are kings (and queens!) in every genre. And those at the top can make a good living. You read all about the acts in the Spotify Top 50, but those who never enter it oftentimes make more. Today music is a long game, you pay your dues and you build your fan base and you monetize it forever. Never mind merch. And so much more.

Yes, the paradigm has changed, but the new paradigm is even better, because there are so many ways to monetize. But the competition is fierce. This is what happens when a business matures and the compensation goes up. Baseball players fifty years ago drank and could be overweight, whereas today’s seven figure athletes, sometimes eight figure per year athletes, are incredible physical specimens, they lift weights, they work out, they need to be in shape to battle the competition, but also to ensure longevity. So if you’re complaining it’s harder today… Let me tell you, the “good” old days are never coming back, never.

And with everybody having the same smartphone, possessions becoming commoditized, it’s become about the experience. Come on, why do you think food is such a thing? And so is the concert. There are different levels, there are superstars who play to hard drive, but those unknown by many playing different songs every night can sustain for decades. Come on, did you ever encounter a casual Phish fan? No, either you’re a diehard or don’t care. And the diehards might have seen a hundred shows. Believe me, that keeps Trey, et all, in dollars.

Music is everywhere. There are more stadium shows than ever, more acts that can sell stadiums, and although the bar business is rough, having been supplanted by recorded music, seemingly every burg hires acts to perform, as a cultural benefit to the locals.

But with an unclear top. And those at the top making tons of bucks while reaching fewer people… It’s hard to make sense of the world. But if you pull the lens back… There seems to be a market for everything. Morgan Wallen, a country act, is the biggest chart performer. And then there’s the Latin act Bad Bunny. Sure, hip-hop and pop seem to dominate, but there’s so much else.

And I just can’t see a downside.

Ticket prices? Believe me, they wouldn’t be high if people didn’t want to pay. Scalpers? Bots? They’re all a result of demand. Sure, there are some problems here that need to be addressed, but not making enough money is not one of them. And it’s hard to get sympathy from the government. Now let’s see… The business is raining down cash and you want us to spend time and money enacting and enforcing legislation to undercut the law of supply and demand?

People want music, do you know how much else they don’t want?

Sure, superstars draw attention. I’m not saying a new Beatles or the equivalent wouldn’t juice the business even more, but the culture is not ready for that. Because to be iconic and believed in you have to leave money on the table and say no, and that’s just not today’s culture. Everybody wants everything, especially in a world with an elite tier living a lifestyle the rest of us don’t. You might read about the compensation of artists, but they’re low compared to the CEOs, who get paid astronomical sums year-in and year-out.

But the content of the content… Turns out music is so strong that it can survive even on mediocre content. Everybody talks about streaming television, people may not talk about music the same way, but maybe music has become like food, air and water. A necessity. You wouldn’t think of signing off the streaming music service. As for those who do, who complain? They’re going unheard, just like the oldsters who complained their cheese was moved twenty-odd years ago. You see twenty plus years have passed. The boomers are in their seventies, young people never knew a different world from today. Where you own little but pay for everything on demand. That’s what Netflix is, that’s what Spotify is, they call that access, and you don’t want to forgo it, you NEED IT!

And then Netflix clamps down on subscription sharing and what happens? The freeloaders pony up. They can’t live without Netflix. The product is just that hot.

But music is more visceral. And there’s the live component. And when done right it embodies the personality, the identity, of the maker. And you can go to the show and see these acts in the flesh. There’s a human component absent from any film, any TV show.

Are tweaks needed? Compensation rates, getting paid for recordings on terrestrial radio… Sure, but anybody who says the music business is upside down and in the sh*tter has their head up their a**.

Kick back and listen to the music.

It’s morning not only in America, but the whole damn world.

IT’S GLORIOUS!

“How Fox News (Yes, Fox News) Managed to Beat ‘The Tonight Show – Greg Gutfeld has installed his brand of insult conservatism as the institutional voice for the next generation of Fox News viewer. And it’s catching on.”: https://tinyurl.com/4z294r57

“‘Fallon? That guy fawns more than a herd of deer. And I heard Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah ran off to be obscure together.'”

Now that’s funny.

I remember when Marc Maron built his podcast into a monolith and was rewarded with a sitcom and nobody watched. The paradigm had changed and he didn’t know it. Maron actually got more visibility with a role on the Netflix show “GLOW.” Why is it that the oldsters and the Democrats are stuck in the past?

I was talking about Pee-wee Herman today. Remember he had that incident in the porn theatre and it killed his career? Wouldn’t today. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be hurt by it, at least not initially, but he wouldn’t be disqualified. Yes, he might not host a children’s show, but there would be plenty of opportunities. But Pee-wee felt shamed, and disappeared.

Did Sarah Palin feel shamed when her unmarried teenage daughter Bristol showed up at the Republican convention pregnant? Palin didn’t seem to blink an eye. Previously, this would have been a no-no, a no-go, but Palin just doubled-down. And when the election was lost, not only did she go for the bucks, but Bristol did too. You see they knew more about the modern media landscape than those who’d been in it for decades. You strike now, when you’re hot, you sell out, you take all the cash, because odds are you won’t be around in a few years, no one will care.

Kind of like “Jersey Shore.” The people on the initial “Survivor” thought they were really famous. By time “Jersey Shore” came around reality TV was a lark, hijinks for some fun, then you retreated to obscurity in Poughkeepsie.

Actually, that’s what kept MTV alive, at least for decades. It was ahead of the game. It was MTV which opened its awards show with Pee-wee after his faux pas. MTV canceled not only shows, but veejays. Sure, old people pooh-poohed, cried, went to the media, but it turned out the channel was right, it knew who its audience was, young people, it didn’t want to age and become irrelevant. Of course MTV ultimately did, because it did not have an internet strategy. Ditto with “Rolling Stone.” Just because you triumphed in the past doesn’t mean you’ll win in the future. You might even get a ride of multiple decades, but eventually everything changes, everything, and if you want to survive, you have to change too.

So David Letterman created today’s late night paradigm. And it continues to be repeated, forty years later.

First, why does the host need to sit behind a desk? That predated Dave, but come on, really? And the suits? The goal today is not to wear a suit, that’s the ethos of the techies, and these pretenders are all dressed up?

Actually, the desk started earlier, but the content…

Dave put on a comedy show. Whereas the talk shows that preceded it certainly had some comedy, but they were also informational. Today every guest is pre-screened for a funny story, it appears rehearsed. If you want reality, if you want to be touched, don’t go to late night television, and don’t go to popular music either, they no longer specialize in that.

I don’t want to talk about the politics of Gutfeld, that’s no excuse.

But I will say he’s been paying his dues for decades. And adjusting his act all the while. Putting in those hours, the legendary 10,000. Takes a long time to be good, for everybody. Oh, you can get lucky out of the box but most of those people don’t sustain.

So Gutfeld’s late night show is not like the networks’ late night shows. I know, because I hear it on SiriusXM. Sure, I get paid by them, but I ain’t never listening to terrestrial radio, my goal is to never listen to or watch a commercial, NEVER! My time is too valuable. And of course there are ads on “Gutfeld!,” but I then flip the channel. But my point here is I’m listening to a TV show. I almost never watch MSNBC or CNN, but I listen to them. Maybe that’s the paradigm for these late night hosts. Sure, they’re creating content for YouTube, but maybe it’s something closer to podcasts, long instead of short. It stuns me what a fan base Scott Galloway is building. He’s hip, he’s a rock star. He’s not on TV all the time, then again, his core audience never watches TV, and they think Galloway’s appearance on the flat screen is a victory, like seeing a rock act on TV in the sixties.

Galloway’s humorous bro act gets thin, but ultimately what Scott is selling is intelligence and analysis, very important in an era where even your next door neighbor plays the market. I’m much more interested in the market than what’s on late night talk shows. The market is more than entertainment. And we all know money changes everything.

But no one on late night has sold credibility, they’re all pranksters.

And “Gutfeld!” may be one of the biggest.

You see “Gutfeld” realizes first and foremost it’s entertainment, that’s what brings viewers in. Put the viewer first, not the advertiser, the advertiser comes second, ratings are everything. You don’t know what you’ll get with “Gutfeld!,” and there’s this air of irreverence. There’s no serious irreverence on late night TV, at least not since Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.” And irreverence was a key element of the left wing sixties. Can you say “Abbie Hoffman”?

But the left is so worried about offending someone that it lives inside a box. Left wing creators are hamstrung, they’re going to offend somebody, they shy away. Best to go by your own inner tuning fork and suffer the consequences. Controversy is good. And the truth is oftentimes it’s a vocal minority that has a problem with you.

Sure, there are certain things that are unsayable…racist, antisemitic. But that leaves a lot of territory.

Hell, if you’re on TikTok, and you should be, you know that one of the biggest stars is George Carlin, he pops up all the time. Alan King doesn’t. Robert Klein doesn’t. The other comedians are dated and fading in the rearview mirror. But Carlin was taking an independent stance and calling them as he was seeing them. I mean Carlin’s routine about not voting…vote if it makes you feel good, but the owners of this country won’t relinquish any power…and in order to believe in the American dream you’ve got to be asleep… See, I remember what George said, and I don’t remember much of what was said yesterday, anywhere.

You first and foremost must have an identity. And know you’re playing to a core, if you’re trying to appeal to everybody you’ve immediately lost the plot.

So everything we knew about late night network talk shows… An aged audience that doesn’t move the needle. Remember when a late night musical appearance meant something? Maybe you don’t, that’s how long it’s been!

And why is it that Fox can reinvent itself but the rest of the competition cannot? Kinda like Netflix dropping all the episodes at once. Don’t talk to me about money and ratings, this is what the AUDIENCE wants. And the key is to keep them coming, subscribing, for years to come. Now that I have to pay for Apple TV+ I don’t. Because I can’t watch shows week to week. People tell me about shows, I check and they’re not done, and I don’t go. And then who cares. But I’d pay if I could watch complete shows all at once. Who is standing up for me?

Very few. At their peril.

Gutfeld has tapped into his audience. He knows who they are and what they want. Fox nurtured him and now he’s got the ten o’clock slot.

Oh, don’t tell me about Tucker Carlson, whose second Twitter video said the Ukrainians blew up the dam themselves. Meanwhile, the real news, forget the commentators, came out:

“Why the Evidence Suggests Russia Blew Up the Kakhovka Dam – A dam in Ukraine was designed to withstand almost any attack imaginable — from the outside. The evidence suggests Russia blew it up from within.”: https://tinyurl.com/3b7z6k4e

Don’t roll your eyes, don’t tell me about the “New York Times,” bottom line is the “Times” doesn’t care about you. But Fox News cares about the “Times.” The “Times” does the research nobody else does. Better than some bloviating commentator.

The “Times” knows who its audience is. Then again, when it plays to its audience even I wince. Like that story over the weekend about the writer switching from a smartphone to a flip-phone. There are people living in tents too, but the majority don’t. Stop this retro-tech stuff, makes you look out of touch.

But the bottom line is if you want to be popular today, you have to have an edge, an identity, and you have to stick to it. And you have to stop apologizing. And you have to take risks.

Kelly Clarkson put out a new album. The difference is it’s about…her divorce? I’d be more interested in a covers album reworking songs a la Joe Cocker. Or a hip-hop album. I mean WHO CARES?

A music industry sans clothes. Doing the same thing it has done for years. Play it up the middle. If you had an outside sound in the sixties and early seventies they were bending over backwards to sign you to a deal, because you never knew, and the audience was interested in new and different stuff. I’ll let you in on something, the audience is still interested in new and different stuff, but the major labels won’t sign you unless you prove your success first in an approved vertical.

And you wonder why music gets no respect.

SNL used to be hip, offended people, was an inside joke. But that was the seventies, and that’s almost fifty years ago and they’re still using the same damn format, I mean really?

And with “Gutfeld!” we learn once again that the thing people care about most, pay attention to, is the news. Stop telling us about brain-dead Americans, it’s now the American pastime, following the news, most especially politics. I don’t want to see skits, I want to see something that wrestles with the real issues.

Happens to me all the time. I’m hanging with a famous musician, a powerful promoter, and what do they want to talk about? POLITICS!

But we can’t say that, all we can say is the music is as good as it ever was.

Hogwash.

If you read this screed and talk about the viewpoints Gutfeld is espousing, you’ve missed the point. Gutfeld is playing to the believers, throwing it right down the middle, hard. Where are the Democrats throwing it right down the middle, with truth wrapped up in laughs?

Few and far between.

And last time I checked, the Republicans’ are eating the Democrats’ lunch. Disproportionate to their population. The minority is ruling because the Republicans have stirred up their constituents. The Democrats? Oh, they got rid of abortion, there’s nothing we can do, you’ve got to vote, we’re counting on you to vote. The same vote that George Carlin said was worthless?

Count most people out.

They don’t bother to vote because they don’t think it makes a difference. And this is not their fault, but that of the parties and candidates. But the candidates are so phony no one can believe in them. Now that Hillary Clinton has given up elective office she can speak some truth, she does, whereas when she was running she said her favorite book was the Bible. Did ANYBODY believe that?

No.

And you’ve got the problem right there.

People have to believe you believe. And are not beholden to the man. That you’re on their side and willing to take risks.

That’s the modern paradigm.

But the set in their ways oldsters refuse to own it, employ it. They’d rather just depend on what an out of touch, old wave mainstream media says. Only so many stories can fit in a newspaper, even a digital one. To be informed you have to canvass many sites, and most people do.

Come on, can we live in the twenty first century?

It appears not.

Except for a select few.

And they’re winning.

I just got off the phone with Ahmed Nimale, CEO and Co-Founder of KYD Labs. Know him? I doubt it. And neither did I, until I hosted a panel about ticketing at Canadian Music Week.

Ticketing. It’s a game few understand, and few want to understand. And ultimately this panel wasn’t about solving the ticketing problems everybody is concerned with, i.e. the fees, availability, prices, bots…but independent ticketing companies trying to build a business.

I’ve lived through this, for decades. Anybody who gains real traction is ultimately sold to one of the big kahunas, akin to how if you compete with Amazon and are any good, they buy you. It’s just not that interesting to me, because we don’t live in a vacuum. I remember meeting the majordomo of Songkick, back in the early days, I asked him how he was gong to make money. It was simple, he told me he was going to sell tickets. SELL TICKETS? Yes, the platform was a way to reach new customers and they could sell tickets. And how much would they pay Ticketmaster, et al, for these tickets? NOTHING! These outlets would be glad to work with Songkick, because of its ability to reach potential customers. This was a complete misunderstanding of the business, all the money is in selling the tickets, these companies are not just going to cough up inventory. And they didn’t.

What you’ve got is techies who see a problem and don’t understand the business. Like all those music distribution sites that launched back at the turn of the century. They just could not fathom that they needed licenses from the rights holders, on the rights holders’ terms. Didn’t matter how good the idea was, the question was how good was it for the company? Was it going to undercut its traditional business, was it going to generate revenue, was there going to be a large enough guarantee? Eventually the problem was solved by Daniel Ek, years after the problem arose, and despite all the complaints about Ek and Spotify, he dedicated untold time and money in making it happen. He might fly private now, but he didn’t back then. That’s what people don’t understand, one person can make a difference, change the world, but not in a vacuum. Ek realized he needed licenses to make it work, that was the hardest part, the tech was much easier.

So what I ended up doing on this CMW panel was asking about the specific companies, drilling down into the specifics. How much money was raised, how much spent. Those are the important details when starting a business, an idea is just the kernel, you need to make it pop. And you’ve got to be able to answer all these questions, And I don’t want to hear that your company is bootstrapped, because you don’t have enough money to make a difference, even if you may be able to make a small profit. I want someone dynamic, alive, who can answer all the questions.

And that was Ahmed Nimale. A man with experience in ticketing. He was impressive, and in reviewing my panel with others, I mentioned him, pointed him out.

And then he wanted to talk.

I never want to talk. Because you want to sell and I’m not buying. But I found this guy impressive, so I ended up with a free moment today and I decided to call, weeks after he first asked me to.

And he talked about TikTok marketing. THAT I’m interested in.

Did you catch that article the other day how they can’t prove the deleterious effects of TikTok?

“Everyone Says Social Media Is Bad for Teens. Proving It Is Another Thing. – Parents, scientists and the surgeon general are worried. But there isn’t even a shared definition of what social media is.”: https://tinyurl.com/2p9af9b8

It’s just like they used to say about rock and roll, the little girls understand. And the oldsters do not.

So Ahmed told me he had TikTok ticket marketing down.

So I asked him to tell me the story.

Well, he’d gone through a huge number of influencers, and found ones with reach that were in the proper wheelhouse. And he asked them how much they’d charge to create a clip, and in this example, the girls said $200. This is what he got:

https://tinyurl.com/4ynfzrxx

For his $200, Ahmed got in excess of 10,000 impressions.

And then he went to TikTok and bought ads, to put on these clips.

Now in this case, the end result was a wash, as much as he put in for ads is what he got back in ticket sales.

He said for $100, TikTok delivered 10,000 impressions. But it could be more, because the clip itself might go viral. There might end up being 100,000 impressions.

And then Ahmed told me he purchased a site. Well, a name. Well, a TikTokker. Ahmed combed the music influencers, found one with reach who needed money to blow himself up, paid the influencer a five figure sum and put him on salary.

So, to put a clip promoting shows on this site, that he owns, costs Ahmed nothing. But in one day, ONE DAY, a clip posted yesterday got 98,000 views. And Ahmed finds ads on this site deliver a return of 3x.

So…

The hardest thing to do today is get noticed. The “Wall Street Journal” has a story today about Taylor Swift possibly doing a billion dollars on her tour. No one really knows, because she’s not releasing grosses, she’s waiting for it to be over, wanting the publicity of a large number. That’s Taylor. But what’s also true about Taylor is never has someone this big reached so few.

The only analogous tour to Swift’s “Eras” is the Rolling Stones’ 1972 U.S. tour. There was the same amount of publicity. But in that case, everybody under thirty knew Stones songs, everybody had heard “Satisfaction,” and more. So youth culture was apoplectic, talk about the impossibility of getting a ticket.

And today there are acts that sell boatloads of tickets, but their music is unknown to most.

“Morgan Wallen Enters Adele Territory With 14th Week at No. 1- The country singer’s latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” has now notched more weeks atop the Billboard chart than any album in more than a decade.”: https://tinyurl.com/mrx7epfw

Since Adele?? That album “21” with “Rolling in the Deep”? Never mind “Rumour Has It” and “Set Fire to the Rain”? Man, you couldn’t escape Adele back then, everybody had heard an Adele song. But has everybody heard a Morgan Wallen song? NO WAY!

And Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night” just spent its twelfth week at #1 on the Hot 100. Twelve weeks is amazing, but even more amazing is how many people don’t know the track. Imagine this in the eighties, Whitney Houston had a bunch of tracks you couldn’t escape, never mind so many others. That paradigm is gone.

But the publicity isn’t.

Never mind the myopia.

You see what they tell us is omnipresent and reaches everybody does not. From “Succession” to “Eras”… The news is skewed. And in truth the impact of this is more serious in straight news as opposed to music, but…

The hardest thing to do is to reach people. And Ahmed Nimale has figured out a way.

He says it takes six touchpoints to get someone to buy. He focuses on TikTok and Instagram. And he’s built the technology to be able to track it all, where someone saw the info and what ad they used to buy tickets.

In other words, what works.

I asked Ahmed if anybody else was doing what he was.

And when I pushed him he said maybe a couple of people, but his advantage was nailing tracking and attribution. He’d made a science of it, he’d cracked the code.

Seems to me that Ahmed is on the bleeding edge.

Then again, I don’t talk to everybody.

Then again, everybody is so full of shi*t. They say they can do it and can’t. Sometimes they’ve never even tried, they’re just looking for the cash, then they’ll figure it out. Bluster is king.

Now Ahmed is using this marketing to aid the entities using his ticketing platform. And he says he can employ the same strategy/technology to sell other things, merch, etc.

But I’m not that interested in these independent ticketing companies. Because it’s an inherently limited market, all the big venues are sewn up. And the dirty little secret is the contracts almost never expire. The venue signed up for five years, but has spent the money/needs money in three. Sure, the ticketing company will give them more money, in exchange for more years.

But the marketing…

The active ticket buyer, the youth, and not only the youth, are on TikTok, which mainstream media abhors, which gets pissed on constantly. I won’t sell TikTok, but I will say that that’s where everybody is, and they don’t care what you think.

But TikTok is a black hole, run by algorithm, and everybody sees different stuff, making it look too opaque to tackle.

But Ahmed says he’s figured out a way.

Pretty interesting to me.