Even NBC can’t get our attention.

That’s why the network is rebooting “Night Court,” which was not a “Seinfeld” level show (although little is), even though it was on the legendary Thursday night schedule as part of “Must See TV.”

I might have seen a half hour of “Night Court” tops, when you add in all the time I was flipping and came across it. Then again, even in the eighties I was time-shifting and not watching commercials. I taped everything. I had this amazing NEC VCR that you programmed right on the remote, there was a little window with the prompts and results, it was easy and amazing.

Actually, I can’t tell you what’s on network television these days. I can’t even remember the last time I watched it. As for football… I’ll probably watch the Super Bowl, but I distanced myself from the game three or four years ago, maybe longer, because I just don’t want to feed this CTE-inducing gladiatorial sport.

So why am I aware of the “Night Court” reboot?

Because the paper had a story on John Larroquette, because he played the doofus heavy in “Stripes,” my favorite stupid movie.

I read a couple of lines, and Larroquette admitted he did it for the money. I mean why not? Everybody can use more money.

But does anybody need to see this show?  Certainly not me, even if it got good reviews, which it didn’t. I’ve been taught over the past two decades that nothing worth watching is on network. It’s just not edgy enough. Did you read that story in last week’s “New Yorker” about the programmer at Netflix?

“How Much Netflix Can The World Absorb? Bela Bajaria, who oversees the streaming giant’s hyper-aggressive approach to TV-making, says success is about “recognizing that people like having more.”: https://bit.ly/3Hd70Fx

It scared me, because they fired the woman who brought the high rent shows to the streaming giant and put the choices in the hands of this woman who… It’s kind of a golden gut thing, it’s hard to quantify what will work, but by time I finished this article I was not a believer. I want more highbrow stuff, otherwise Netflix is going to be the new Elon Musk and Tesla. You need people to believe. Which is another problem with their essentially dead on arrival advertiser-supported tier. Apple, the world’s most valuable company, makes their products for the elite and charges accordingly. And you may hate them, but those who buy them adore them and will defend Apple to the nth degree, even though it’s inanimate.

Sure, there might be a good show on network, but if it’s that good I can ultimately watch it on a streaming outlet sans commercials. I don’t watch commercials, period, life is too short. All the time people say “You know, like in that commercial.” But I don’t know. It’s evidence how mass has decreased in the internet era yet so many see the new world through the old lens.

The most valuable real estate in entertainment is the Netflix homepage. You see it when you log in. You can’t avoid what is proffered, even if it’s different for different people. The homepage show makes an impression. There’s no impression like this on NBC. If you don’t go to the channel, you’re usually unaware. And ever notice how HBO affixes trailers for new shows to their hits? That’s how hard it is to reach people. As for people seeing movie trailers in the theatre, like network television you must partake, and if you don’t…it’s like it doesn’t exist.

We don’t have an equivalent homepage in music. Spotify is made for the phone. I’ve got the largest iPhone available and I never ever see the promoted track/album/artist.

Radio used to be the music business’s homepage. Especially in the heyday of Top Forty radio. Many fewer than forty records were spun, and if you tuned in you were aware of them. An act could go from zero to hero nearly instantly if it had a contagious track.

But we haven’t had that spirit here…for at least a decade. I don’t care how great your track is, crossing audiences, never mind reaching your main audience, is nearly impossible.

As for reboots… None of the dinosaurs has released a new album anywhere near as good as their old, classic material. To the point where when you hear an act has a new album you laugh and don’t even bother to listen to it, in the same way I, and many others, don’t watch network television. So the reboot formula is not working.

So how do you get a project started in music?

Well, you can be featured on a hit act’s track. Rappers pioneered this, rockers have still not caught on. Rockers are doing covers albums, a formula that is now dead on arrival. Hear anybody talk about the Springsteen record recently? Of course not. It was superfluous, unnecessary. None of the tracks were in the league of the originals, never mind that the arrangements were faithful. It seemed like an exercise at best.

So what can you do?

Well, you can put on an amazing live show and hope that the word spreads. The 15-20,000 in the arena are a captive audience. They watch and experience it all. If you can wow them, they’ll tell others. And you can increase your business. Or you can play a favorite album live. But there are only so many of them.

So we can’t reboot music.

And acts’ new material can’t get noticed.

That’s the problem.

We have no equivalent to the Netflix homepage, never mind much more product. TV is much more expensive to make, we’re talking about hundreds of shows, not hundreds of thousands of tracks uploaded to streaming services every week.

Also, we haven’t had an act that we could all get behind in years. Adele was the last one. The twenty first century is mostly arid. You can’t have guilty pleasures because there’s just not enough that’s pleasurable.

But the ship keeps rolling along, no one is trying to fix the underlying problem of the marketing of new music. Everybody has thrown up their hands, it’s too damn difficult. They want someone else to do it.

The music business could have one priority a week. That all streaming services got behind. Well, that might raise an antitrust issue, but couldn’t Spotify have an artist of the month, just like the burgeoning book clubs, and promote it to everybody?

A brand new act, or one without serious traction. That people could listen to and talk about. One with credibility. This is how the entire streaming paradigm began. Netflix paid more than any traditional outlet for “House of Cards” and when it was aired… You’ve got to say one thing about highbrows, they talk, they spread the word. You’ve got to reach the right influencers. And if people believe in a record, like they believe in their iPhone, they’ll talk about it all the time.

But if NBC is so hard up that it has to reboot a mediocre decades-old show… Then how hard is it for your new work to be recognized and heard?

Very hard.

Bob you are 100% right about spatial audio. I learned a lot about this during my time with the ill-fated QSound.

Not only do we only have 2 ears but they’re programmed to turn and FACE the source of sounds. It’s a primitive, autonomic survival mechanism – can’t be bypassed or tech-tricked into not working. New sounds from behind us or off to the side make us want to turn to face them.

While we can use that mechanism to create feelings of surprise or to focus attention on certain things in an environment, what we can’t do is make the limbic system stop functioning.

So these technologies that put sounds all over the place – around, behind or beside us – are like a carnival ride: fun and cool, but fundamentally so because they disturb our natural state.

Experiencing music is a visceral and very natural process. We “hear” it with our ears, brains, hearts and bodies. It is most effective when we let it wash over us and we invest our entire selves in the process. But when we are distracted, even unconsciously – when peripheral sounds put us in a state of limbic high alert – we simply cannot connect with it completely.

Add to this that a lot of the spatial trickery has to do with playing with phase which imposes a kind of diaphanous quality on some elements of mixes and what you have is a fundamentally uncomfortable way of experiencing music.

From my point of view these are cool technologies in search of a valid reason to exist beyond the commercial one. The geek in me loves playing with them – but the music lover in me finds them distracting and counter productive.

Bob Ezrin

______________________________________

You’re right about Atmos sounding terrible.
I recently finished an Atmos mix of a popular classic hard rock record from the mid 80s. The original mix wasn’t great in the first place, so a stereo remix was absolutely needed before even attempting Atmos. Having listened to dozens of Atmos records, I concluded that it’s not good for music. They all sound terrible. They sound like rough mixes with bad reverbs.
Sometimes spatial audio is the version Apple plays first, rather than the original, which is unfortunate.
Apple headphones can reproduce it to a point, and 99% of the listeners are going to be hearing these on headphones anyway.
Who do you know that has a 14 speaker Atmos set up at home?
When it was first announced and I was approached by people from Dolby and some of the labels, I was very excited. Then I realized what most of the final results sounded like and was disappointed.
Apple Music unfortunately doesn’t do anywhere near the streaming numbers of Spotify. And Spotify has yet to support the format.
When it comes to straight stereo mixes, Apple sounds far superior.

Jay Ruston

______________________________________

The key point for immersive (binaural) music on headphones, is that it sounds different to LR stereo.  Any consumer can immediately hear it, and it has a wow factor.
Of course it’s not really about music or fidelity, but about presenting an experience.  But unlike Hi-res the punters can hear the difference straight away.  This is certainly Apple’s belief, and why it might take off.

 

Kind Regards

 

Crispin Herrod-Taylor

Managing Director, Crookwood

______________________________________

You sound like me before I actually heard Atmos. Have you heard it – on speakers?

From my perspective in regards to Dolby Atmos/Immersive mixing, I’ve heard many comments both for, and against the format. The two groups of professionals affected by the revolution begun a few years back when Universal began stealthily mixing hundreds of records in Atmos, shape their opinions by and large on how this tech/format switch affects them personally. We can all understand this.

Will this format survive public scrutiny/interest?  Immersive Audio – Dolby Atmos (Apple calls it “Spatial Audio”) and Sony 360R – have yet to register in the consciousness of the general public in a big way, but the same could be said of many technological revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades only 18 months after early adopters discover them. (Apple declared its support of the Dolby Atmos format in June 2021, sparking an industry-wide stampede to mix in this format).

The main players in this shift (consumer electronics manufacturers, pro audio manufacturers, record labels, streaming platforms, etc.) are playing the long game, and because of the software’s unique ability to simultaneously create and stream binaural and speaker versions of a mix, this immersive revolution has a tremendous chance of sticking around.

The obvious reason for this is that consumers do not have to rush out to make an equipment change to listen. We can listen to immersive mixes as we normally would in headphones – ALL manner of headphones now – and this is significant because industry surveys have stated that 80% of streamed music is consumed over headphones. And car systems are beginning to arrive…over the speakers we listen to most.

The LONG GAME: Next time a person moves house, or revamps their system to the latest technology, those audio and video systems will no doubt be Atmos/Immersive capable systems – that’s the long game, and the industry is well prepared to wait for the format to mature. Consumers can stand by!

All my best,

Brian Malouf

Brian Malouf

Producer | Mixer

Associate Professor of Practice

USC Thornton School of Music

______________________________________

Hi Bob,

I wanted to point out a few things regarding immersive (spatial) audio.

You’re correct in that it’s been tried multiple times, and by any commercial standard has failed. A bit of history – Quad was mainly an experiment, a proof of concept if you will. 5.1 and 7.1 surround (90’s) died due to a number of factors, primarily needing 6 (or 8) loudspeakers with the space to properly place them, and the format war fought out in the industry between DSD and DVD-Audio (later Blu Ray Disc) as the carrier and format of choice. In the Beta vs VHS war, VHS won out despite being an inferior format. In the DSD/DVD-A war, everyone lost out and they all died (BluRay is still around as a niche format). Ambisonics has largely been the domain of academics and universities, but has gained growing acceptance in the game audio industry and has also seen a lot of development lately.

There are a few key factors today that suggest current immersive formats (Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio and possibly Auro-3D being the prime candidates) might have a better chance of succeeding this time around. First is as you note – consumers no longer need a boatload of speakers carefully placed around their listening room (although there are still those individuals with enough space and money to do so, it isn’t required), as research has improved the ability to virtualize a listening room and deliver that experience convincingly over headphones or earbuds. It’s gotten a lot better in only the last few years, and will only improve as time goes on. Many companies are also actively doing research to improve their algorithms and personalize them to each individual listener (both Sony and Dolby offer to take a picture of your pinnae – the outside part of your ears, and head to create a more personalized HRTF, the calculations used to simulate the space as it would sound to you). Second is that we appear to be moving towards a more spatial experience in other areas – gaming and cinema being two prime examples, people are much more accustomed to it and come to expect it more and more. Third is that we have a real battle on our hands in the industry, mainly between Dolby and Sony who are both vying to be the defacto standard across the board, so both are pumping money into marketing, R&D, creating new content and repurposing old (to varying degrees of success as you rightly point out), and with full support of multiple streaming platforms – Apple music, Tidal, Amazon, Deezer. Some of these will play the spatial version by default, unless you tell it not to. The user base is there.

So you’re correct in that people only have 2 ears, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed yourself, despite having only 2 ears, you have no problem hearing sounds all around you, above you, below you, etc. Not just in front of you between where a left and right speaker would be ;-). We can recreate that same perceptual experience in headphones. The better the HRTF measurement, the more accurate the result. Or if you prefer, and you have the space and money, you can buy a bunch of speakers and set up the same experience in your home. It isn’t nearly as mobile or convenient though, and we all know convenience trumps everything else!

As you pointed out, not all of these reissues or new productions benefit from or are improved by being done in immersive. I would argue that the same thing applied back when CDs were new and labels were scrambling to release content, often from the vinyl eq’d masters, rather than going back and doing a proper CD version (ideally with the artist and producer involved). Same thing happened with some of the 5.1 surround material that was released in the 90’s and 2000’s. However, there was also some amazing material released, both remixes and new content, that blew everyone’s mind and really served to spotlight the strengths of the new format (3 of my favorites that were redone in 5.1 are Beck “Sea Changes”, Beatles “Love”, and The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”). I would say the same of Atmos and 360RA, some of the content can sound gimmicky, or just doesn’t really need or benefit from the additional space, but there are releases that are completely riveting experiences as well (check out Fantastic Negrito’s “Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?”, Alicia Key’s “Alicia” , Stewart Copeland & Ricky Kej “Divine Tides” or Jane Ira Bloom “Picturing the Invisible – Focus 1” all recent or current Grammy nominees/winners).

Yes, it’s still a niche and a tiny market compared to the overall music market. But it appears to be growing, and there does seem to be a market for it (last I checked Mercedes-Benz has 3% of the automobile market, they seem to do just fine).

Finally and more importantly, it affords artists and creators a much larger, expansive pallet on which to create, play, experiment, stretch and explore in order to bring new experiences to fans which would be impossible in stereo. My experience working with artists is that new ideas, new technology and new formats all tend to be welcomed as additional opportunities to get into a creative space and explore what happens. So far, it seem that is exactly what’s happening in immersive audio, with more to come. More music can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Hope you’re staying dry in all this rain!

Best regards,

Thor Legvold
—
Sonovo A/S
Immersive + Surround Mastering & Production
Stavanger, Norway + Los Angeles, California

______________________________________

God you are so wrong about Atmos. Yeah we have ‘’two ears.” Put those two ears surrounded by speakers in front, back, center and above and put on Tom Petty’s ‘’Wildflowers” or The Beatles ‘’White Album” or ‘’Abbey Road’’ or ‘’Aqualung” in Atmos and tell me you are not blown away. That you are not ‘’immersed’’ in the sound like never before. It is an unbelievable experience. Not to mention what movies and shows in Atmos can do. BIG DIFFERENCE.

Yes there are crap atmos mixes for streaming music, mostly perpetrated by Warner Music. But the good ones done by Ryan Ulyate and Giles and Steve Wilson etc are unbelievable.

Please stop pontificating about what you obviously know nothing about nor have experienced correctly. It is an insult to professionals who are changing the way we listen to music. And man is it cool.

Sure you won’t print this because I’m not name dropping some celebrity or record biz exec you slobber over, and I don’t really care and rarely if ever do I respond or post anywhere, but this kinda pissed me off. There is enough misinformation out there as it is. On every level. Don’t contribute to it.

Thanks

Jim Cortez

https://amzn.to/3Xl8d3u

Have you ever felt alone, ignored, or that you consistently got the short end of the stick through no fault of your own?

Then the first half of this book is going to freak you out.

Did me, in the middle of the night, or morning, however you label 4-7 AM. I was doing the final stage of my colonoscopy prep and…

I’d wasted too much of the day before on TikTok and Instagram and surfing the web and it became unfulfilling so I decided to go deep during this three hour window.

You see they’ve changed the prep. Well, you can go old school and drink that vile liquid, but now they’ve got pills. But you’ve got to wake up seven hours before the procedure and take the rest of the pills over 45 minutes and then spend two and a quarter hours thereafter drinking fluid accordingly.

Ergo my middle of the night hejira.

As for the colonoscopy… I can’t reckon how these people do the same thing day in and day out. Oh, it pays spectacularly well, and the doctor has a piece of the establishment, but… Well, maybe the doctors also do something else, but I talked to the nurses, this is their gig, the same thing, every day.

I had “mini polyps.” Literally the doctor’s words. Not to worry.

But I don’t expect any prostate problems, my numbers are low and barely change You see we all get something, you’ll realize this as you age. None of us get out of here alive, but if you want to live longer you’re going to have to address all kinds of things, like the Big C, one of my struggles. As for those men afraid to go for a colonoscopy… You’re too macho? With the pills it’s really no big deal. You need to get one.

So I reserved “Demon Copperhead” from the library, even though I couldn’t get into any Barbara Kingsolver book previously. And Felice started it before me and talked about the language. You see it’s written in the style of someone…let’s just say he doesn’t have a full education. Didn’t bother me so much, but I did note it. And I was reading a few pages a night, the book never called out to me. I wondered if I was going to finish it.

And then there was that three hours in the middle of the night, that hooked me.

It was a bizarre book at a bizarre time. I don’t mind staying up until 4 AM, I don’t mind getting up in the middle of the night to go on a trip. But to get up and stay home in the quiet house while it’s dark out…it disorients you.

So what we’ve got here is a story set in western Virginia. Poor people. You know, the Oxycontin belt. And Demon is like too many in America, not nurtured but on his own and then fully on his own.

But I don’t want to reveal too much. As I’ve said before, I read for plot, and that’s what eventually hooked me. To the point where I spent seven hours straight finishing the book yesterday, I just couldn’t put it down, I couldn’t stop.

But if you buy “Demon Copperhead”…

It’s not that it’s hard to read, but the first forty percent or so didn’t call out to me, and that’s what I’m looking for first and foremost, a book I not only want to read, but need to read.

And then…

There are big themes in this book, but it’s not typical literary fiction, caught up in each sentence, so dense it’s unreadable.

And the book ultimately does make you think about some of these issues, interesting to get the perspective of those with a different background.

And one could say it’s the underbelly of the country, those who are sick of being talked down to and voted for Trump. And that’s there, but ultimately “Demon Copperhead” is the story of life, and death.

Where did I read just recently, the key to happiness is relationships?

Which brings me to Bonnie Raitt. I know that’s quite a segue, but I’ve been thinking about this song off “Home Plate” for days now, “Pleasin’ Each Other,” written by Little Feat and now Doobie Brothers keyboardist Bill Payne and his first wife Fran Tate.

“You don’t care about money

You don’t care about time

And our love keeps rolling, rolling along”

Wow have things changed since the seventies. Money was not as important then. Then again, life wasn’t so hard. The financial equation in relationships, at least at first, was not key. You were just looking for the right fit, someone who got you.

And that’s what everybody is looking for in “Demon Copperhead.” Everyone is just living their life. Then again, the lack of opportunity causes the younger generation to turn to drugs and…

I usually only recommend books that are slam dunks, that will grab you from the very first page, and that was not my experience with “Demon Copperhead.” But there came a point…

And I think you’ll get there too.

It is a commitment, 556 pages, but you’ll ultimately want the book to be longer.

You could download it right now and make a dent in it during the holiday before the world starts back up on Tuesday.

Or maybe not…

“Sir Lucian Grainge: Musi Needs a New Streaming Payout Model… And We’re Working On It”: https://bit.ly/3iJw91m

The model changed.

Used to be the major labels controlled distribution and exploitation. It was essentially a closed ecosystem. You needed major distribution or you couldn’t get paid, even if the retailer sold your records. And the majors had their hands deep into the marketing world. They made the artists.

That paradigm no longer applies.

As for Lucian Grainge’s letter to his troops…

Got to give Lucian credit, he’s an incredible executive, who incentivizes his troops, who does not run his operation on fear. And he’s been handsomely rewarded for his work, especially the nine-digit payout after Universal went public.

Most of Lucian’s letter is barely more than boilerplate, delineating Universal’s accomplishments and talking about…spatial audio and streaming payouts.

As for spatial audio, you can deliver it but will people come? Most of the remixes are awful, as for new music, in Atmos from scratch… Last time I checked, people only had two ears. As for an immersive experience, quad failed, never mind the nonstarting digital tape formats, why should today be any different?

Well, no extra equipment is needed to hear it. Well, not exactly, but I don’t want to get into Bluetooth tech, never mind digital audio converters, but Apple can deliver Atmos seamlessly. Do we want this?

Forget that many people can’t hear it and don’t want it, do you really think indie artists are going to pay for these mixes? And indie is burgeoning, a lot of the majors’ market share is as a result of distribution of indie labels.

As for streaming payouts…

There’s a classic expression in the music business…it’s not about the money, IT’S ABOUT THE MONEY!

Sure, Lucian cares about his artists. But not as much as he cares about satisfying his shareholders and lining his own pockets. It’s human nature. I’ve yet to find a corporate guy this rich, and they’re all guys in the music business, who puts himself behind the artists and the company. First and foremost, they didn’t start the company, they’ve got no inherent loyalty, this is not Chris Blackwell with Island or Herb & Jerry with A&M, and second the artists are independent contractors who leave their product, and at best get advances and royalties, never mind that there’s a huge stream of revenue from product that was signed by others and delivers revenue decades later. It’s essentially free money to the labels.

As for artist royalties…

Yes, the labels are now paying artists who are upside down, but most of them don’t have many streams to begin with. And the royalty rates of yore are piss-poor, the label takes the lion’s share of the money. And they’re not giving up any share of their pie today unless the artist has incredible leverage, which is rare. 

So, the label makes you a star… When in truth, today the act makes itself a star. TikTok rules, and so far the labels haven’t been able to game it. Talk to anybody who actually works at a label, they’re completely flummoxed. Radio means less than ever before. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, the audience is in control, and uncontrollable. And the majors did not foresee this, did not prepare for this and have no answer for this.

Meanwhile, you can get paid almost all of the money from a streaming service by using an indie distributor who takes a small fee.

So who needs a major label? VERY FEW ACTS!

And very few acts are signed to the major label.

And Lucian Grainge is trying to do an end run around distribution. That’s what this streaming payout bit is all about. He wants the detritus removed from streaming services, so his artists dominate. Just like labels controlled all the space in record stores… If you can’t buy it, if you can’t stream it, it’s like it doesn’t exist.

So those 100,000 tracks a day… He wants them gone, deplatformed, even though most of them barely get streamed anyway.

But this is going against the tide. On YouTube, Instagram and TikTok anybody can play. Now they’re going to restrict uploading to music streaming services? As bad an image as Spotify has, unjustified, in the artist community, the wannabes would go berserk if they couldn’t get on. Limitation is not the future, welcome to 2023.

As for gaming the system…

Fraud exists.

Now let me see… The labels didn’t pay on promotional records. They take packaging deductions when there is no packaging.

And from time immemorial there was shrinkage, not only outright theft, but retailers who didn’t pay their bills or went bankrupt or completely out of business.

As for pricing… Manufacturers hate to give this up. When you see an album suddenly go up the chart… Oftentimes there was a deal at the iTunes Store, blowing it out for almost nothing, and since sales are inanely weighted more than streams in the insane Luminate chart, the record goes up, especially after the acts incentivize their brain dead fans to buy, oftentimes product they already own!

So bad actors, short tracks… They’re always gonna exist, you’re still getting spam in your inbox decades after e-mail flourished.

Change the model, I don’t care. Do it on listening time, even pay based on what the consumer actually listens to, it’s not going to make a big difference.

As for Spotify, et al, coughing up more dough…

Streaming is terrible business, it doesn’t scale, costs rise in tandem to income, and margins are piss-poor to begin with, which is why you see Spotify in podcasts and books and still swimming in red ink.

In other words, you can’t squeeze blood from a stone. And the English government looked into this and what did it find? The problem lies with the labels and the crappy deals they give artists, not with the streaming companies. Got a bit of ink, but the ignorant who believe streaming is the devil didn’t spread the word, so you may not know this.

However…

It’s all irrelevant.

WHAT?

For over half a century all the revenue was in recordings. And the same brain dead press fed information from the the labels and the RIAA still parrots this falsehood. But the internet has wrought change.

First, a number one hit on the chart reaches fewer people than ever before. You can be a rabid fan going to a show every night and never cross paths with a hitmaker. Believe me, there is money in streaming hits. But, the percentage of market share of hits is actually going down, because it’s harder than ever to break a record.

It’s really about all the other acts in the business, the old ones who’ve graduated from major label deals, and the new ones not doing enough business to gain major label interest. Never mind this is not the nineteen seventies, major labels don’t sign a broad swath of product, they sign less and in fewer genres than ever before. Which means you might be a musician making a living and not only are you not signed to a major, streaming revenue is a small percentage of your income. And Ticketmaster is now the enemy, not Spotify…

Does the public hate Spotify? No, the public LOVES streaming.

They’re bitching about Ticketmaster because they can’t get a ticket. Demand is so great that they’re locked out. They DESERVE a ticket, the same way artists with few streams believe they DESERVE to get paid a ton by Spotify. As for the major label deals of yore, signing a ton with big advances, they’re gone just like coal mining and soon gasoline automobiles, adapt or die.

So the dirty little secret is unlike in record deals, the act gets almost all of the money in live. Which is why the Ticketmaster fees exist to begin with, to generate revenue so the promoter can survive. Promoter margins are a small fraction of those of Universal. As for losing money on developing acts… Promoters can also lose money on hit acts, whose demand suddenly evaporates.

So if you’re an artist…

The dream is no longer to get a major label record deal.

If you’re a rapper, or a TikTok star, and you go viral and can hold up the label for a ton of money, more power to you. But that’s a very thin slice of the pie.

Make any music you want to. Distribution is essentially free, literally on YouTube and other streaming platforms. The challenge isn’t distribution, but how to get people to actually listen to your music and want to continue to do so and spread the word, show up at your gig and buy merchandise and…

There are more ways to monetize than ever before. But first you need an audience, and that’s the hardest thing to achieve. This is what the major labels used to deliver, more important than any cash advance, but now the major labels can’t do this anymore! Records don’t start on radio, radio comes last, at least terrestrial radio. As for television appearances, the only shows that move the needle are SNL and “CBS Sunday Morning.” Go on another show and you can tell your friends, but it’s not going to impact your streams, almost no one will see you!

Just like television is evolving from cable to streaming, the same thing is happening in music, and there’s so much product in streaming that no show is seen as much as “M.A.S.H.,” or even “Game of Thrones.” You may be addicted to Sunday night shows dribbled out by HBO, but the younger generation is not, it’s all about bingeing. And Warner Bros. Discovery has killed development and production and is actually removing shows from HBO Max in order to pay fewer fees. In truth, most hit product cannot be foreseen, which is why Netflix and major labels put out a plethora. You can’t restrict the pipeline. And, once again, the consumer is in control.

And what did we learn from tech?

YOU’VE GOT TO GIVE TO GET!

All these platform/services start off free, to gain audience, market share. They know if they get enough eyeballs, there are plenty of ways to monetize. But somehow in music acts think they should make a living from square one? And most tech platforms don’t succeed, and neither do most acts.

As for bad live deals when you’re starting out… The whole world runs on leverage, but somehow music is immune? I don’t think so.

So, you’re in charge of your own business, you’re in control. If you rail at the distribution systems, the joke is on you. They’re tools, and so many of them are free. Use them to gain an audience. And if you don’t, well so many new businesses fail, music is the same way.

Now if you gain an audience, if you’re generating revenue, your inbox will be flooded with offers. On good terms, since you’ve got what they want, you’ve achieved the hardest thing. If the major label offers you almost all the money and you get your masters back, maybe do the deal. As for pushing your career further… Unless you make hip-hop or pop, the fee you pay isn’t worth it, the major label can’t deliver.

The world keeps getting bigger in music, not smaller. Universal wants it smaller, it wants control, because without control, its leverage lessens.

Yes, the reason the major labels have such clout with streamers is because of their catalogs, every platform needs all the music to function. If it were like tech, and only the new survived, where there was no demand for the old, it would be different, but it’s not.

As for record companies going into the streaming business. Who’d want to? The margins are terrible and they’re all spewing red ink anyway.

No, the majors just want to squeeze the streamers for a bigger percentage of the pie. And knowing that the streamers can barely survive on 30%, they know that the money has to come from elsewhere…the indies, the bad actors, the left field. Come on, did you predict TikTok? Then how are you going to predict the new musical trend? Furthermore, we haven’t had a new trend in decades, we used to get one every few years, with grunge replacing hair bands and… That’s the conundrum of the internet, everything moves faster and slower. Fast if you’re in the channel with traction, slow if you’re building traction.

So if you’re a Universal artist I’d be more concerned with the royalty rate from the record company than from the streaming company. And I’m going to lay it out clearly, if your tracks don’t get streamed, you don’t get paid! It’s basic math, and it’s never going to change.

We’ve yet to see anybody harness the power of the internet into a new music company model. Maybe when the boomers retire. But in truth, it’s risky and there’s not enough money in it. Carolco, the most successful independent movie company, went bankrupt, because it had no catalog. The catalog is keeping the majors alive, without it…the whole model does not work.

So hate on Spotify, hate on Ticketmaster, cheer on Lucian Grainge…

But the joke is on you.

Look in the mirror, that’s your record company. All those influencers, they built it themselves, but it’s different in music? I don’t think so.

The scale has tipped. Recorded music is just a fraction of most artists’ revenue today, and that isn’t going to change. But there are so many other ways to make money, and in a world where we all have the same smartphones, the money is in unique experiences, and that’s what a concert delivers. Hell, if you’re an old hit band or a young hit act go on the road and play the same hits every night. But if you’re starting from scratch, every show should be different. You should release a plethora of product, you should have a relationship with your fans. Don’t be aloof, mystery is history. Everyone is accessible online, you can tweet Elon Musk or Mark Cuban and they’ll respond, but you’re too good to interact? I don’t think so.

Look at tomorrow, not yesterday. You have the tools at your disposal. You can create and distribute and market nearly for free. Why are you complaining? The majors have a hard time marketing, but it should be easy for you? The best marketers are the online stars, the influencers, study them as opposed to the major labels.

And don’t look for a hand to help you.

Trust nobody in entertainment, they’re all out for themselves. If you’re generating revenue, they’re your best friend, if you’re not…

And you only get one shot.

But the good thing is unlike in the past you can make mistakes and move on like they never happened. People don’t remember school shootings, never mind your stiff record or misstep.

It’s a changed world. Own it.