Logan Ury is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach, and the author of the book “How To Not Die Alone.” As the Director of Relationship Science at the dating app Hinge, she leads a research team dedicated to helping people find love. After studying psychology at Harvard, Logan ran Google’s behavioral science team—the Irrational Lab. Her work has appeared in “The New York Times,” “The Atlantic,” “TIME,” “The Washington Post,” “GQ,” “Glamour,” “Vice,” and on HBO and the BBC. If you’re looking for love, or just interested in relationships, you’ll be riveted and inspired to take action. Do you know how to fill out your dating profile? Do you know your profile photo can change an empty inbox into a full one? Are you wondering whether to continue or end a relationship and how to do it? Logan is the expert, you’ll love listening to her!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/logan-ury/id1316200737?i=1000577315189

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/a9936ff0-8a23-44ec-909c-43bb4cbaf750/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-logan-ury

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/logan-ury-206105839

“Capitol Drops “Virtual Rapper” FN Meka After Backlash Over Stereotypes – The record company apologized to ‘the Black community’ for insensitivity in promoting an AI-backed artist that critics said was ‘appropriative’ and included ‘slurs infused in lyrics.'”: https://nyti.ms/3QUBLli

I can’t tell you how many times people e-mailed me this story, about this “virtual rapper.” Talk about making news… This story was EVERYWHERE!

Kinda stuns me that Capitol did no due diligence, was unaware of what they were signing, but that’s not what stuck out in this article, that was THERE WAS NO ADVANCE!

In other words, there was no there there. Capitol made no commitment, laid down no dollars, had no investment. Maybe there was a recording budget, but it sounds like this operation was self-contained, and Capitol’s only obligation was to distribute and promote.

And we all know distribution cost is de minimis. Just ask all those nobodies posting their music to streaming services each and every day. And it’s not like Capitol was going to do a run of physical product, at least not until the act actually had traction.

IN OTHER WORDS THIS WAS A PRESS STORY! And if you read the above article you wonder if the act was what was claimed. The impression was this was a robot act, created by machines. But it turns out there was a human voice and…

This has been the music business’s concern for decades. More on the creative side than the business side. The business side would LOVE virtual/robot acts, because robots don’t talk back, they don’t get hooked on drugs, they don’t call you in the middle of the night… But creators are afraid of being usurped, disrupted, by machines. But the dirty little truth today is that in a mechanized, digitized society what people are looking for most is humanity. Want to succeed with the public? Don’t comp the vocals, leave the mistakes in. It’s not only your music, it’s YOU! The more you excise your personality, the less the audience can identify with you. And to have a long career it’s got to be about you, not only the music.

I won’t say the live business is honest. But instead of reciting the b.s., like changing capacity figures to say a show was nearly sold out when in truth it was a disaster, I will say it all comes down to the money. No concert promoter would promote a deal like this. Because everybody knows you do the show and you get paid. And if you’re nobody, you start at the bottom. You build it from the ground up. There are no turntable hits live, there are no press stars, live is where the rubber meets the road. And sure, grosses can be manipulated to look good, but good luck trying to get a big guarantee next time around, promoters have long memories, they can lose a fortune on you, especially with Live Nation being a public company and acts not wanting to give money back.

So the entire recording industry lost with this story. Capitol lost credibility, but it infects other labels. If you’re not paying an advance, what are you really committing to? This signing is more like a trial balloon, let’s put out the story and see what happens, if it gets traction.

So what other record company stories are b.s? What is the label’s commitment?

It used to be different, acts trumpeted the advance. Oftentimes misunderstood by the public, a twelve million dollar deal might be for five years and five records and the label could drop you after one, after you got only a couple of million, but at least the label paid something.

Getting a record deal was the Holy Grail, you’d made it. Now acts are weary of the major labels, if for no other reason than they don’t want to give that much up, especially when so much of the revenue comes directly from digital and there are no big gatekeepers.

This all started back in the nineties, when Mo Ostin left Warner Bros. The new regime would sign acts for one record, whereas Mo believed in careers. And oftentimes they only lasted one record. Investment, artist development, OUT THE WINDOW! Today’s labels specialize in blowing things up, from big to bigger, not starting from scratch, and when they say they’re starting from scratch…we get bogus stories like this.

And you wonder why the record business has a bad reputation…

I’m stunned how much ink Harry Styles is getting for his residency at Madison Square Garden.

Dennis Arfa, agent for Billy Joel, quibbles with that term, but the game remains the same, playing an extended run at a venue over a period of time. Billy can do MSG once a month, because he lives in the area, but many acts are not close to NYC, never mind their bands.

But Billy Joel is a legendary superstar. Harry Styles is a twentysomething in the heart of his career.

But all the buzz has been about fans coming to the gig, a la Las Vegas, as opposed to the record…

Yes, want publicity, GO FOR THE RECORD!

Now the truth is many arenas have a limited number of dates available, because of their sports teams. But the Forum in L.A. has none, it’s music only, so theoretically 365 days are available. Who can play the longest?

That’s another reason new arenas are being built. Because of the demand and availability. Comparing yesterday to today is apples and oranges. You see there are a lot more people, never mind a lot more acts.

I guess too many people miss the news. This was the essence of my SiriusXM show yesterday.

Let me start with the residency concept. The big story here was in the “New York Times” last week:

“Why Pop’s Biggest Stars Are Staying Put for Long Residencies – Extended runs in one venue, once associated with legacy acts, have become popular with stars including Harry Styles and BTS, lowering bills and building hype as touring costs rise.”: https://nyti.ms/3R3yU9L

This is not news to anyone in the business, then again we haven’t seen an exhaustive article about this in the business. But how many people saw this article? That’s the issue. Used to be if it was in the New York or L.A. “Times” everybody saw it. That’s not the case these days, they don’t reach those in the business. And “Billboard” has become a nearly useless consumer facing publication. You can get some inside information from HitsDailyDouble.com, albeit in many cases biased by payments, but I’m stunned how many people don’t read it, aren’t even aware of it. You see when “Hits” started 36 years ago, record companies ruled. Now they’re a sideshow. Just read about the executive movements, you won’t know who the people are and you won’t care.

And then there was an article in the “Wall Street Journal”: 

“Look Out Boomers: The Next Generation of Arena Stars Is Coming – While the Stones and Springsteen show few signs of slowing down, newer and younger artists are selling out massive venues.”: https://on.wsj.com/3AKmKwA

Once again, those in the business know all this, but to see it in one place puts the situation in context. Many of the classic acts are starting to ride into the sunset, they’re not going to be able to play live forever. And in the earlier part of this century, when files replaced CDs, it was thought that the era of the arena act was dead. That it would become a theatre business. But this has turned out to be untrue. Irrelevant of their mindshare in the country at large, there are enough fans to support today’s artists to the point where they can play arenas and sometimes stadiums. You see today’s youth have a different perspective. They didn’t live through the ladder of yore…from clubs to theatres to arenas over a number of years, never mind stadiums. Today kids want to go and they expect their act to play in a large venue nearly immediately. You see there are two tiers of acts, those that break right away and those that take years in the marketplace and maybe don’t ever make it to arenas. And the young acts have a shorter shelf life, but the demand is huge. But, once again, there is a population increase, and also more disposable income. Talk about economic challenges all you want, but if they truly existed in the concert sphere prices would come down and instead they keep going up. We are approaching a challenging time in the concert business…with the Covid demand having been fulfilled, will a potential recession hit sales? Sales dipped a few months back, but then they recovered. In any event, in a digital, virtual world, the experience of live music is unique and desirable, one you cannot get anywhere else.

And then there was that story in the L.A. “Times”: 

“After Astroworld catastrophe and Drakeo’s stabbing, Live Nation faces mounting questions over concert safety”: https://lat.ms/3KppWRt

No one is talking about this, it’s got no legs. If for no other reason it’s got no juice. Live Nation’s PR person fielded the questions as opposed to Michael Rapino. Rapino quotes travel, those of the PR person do not. This is the Springsteen issue… If you’re a celebrity, if you have a profile, don’t enter the fray without knowing anything you say will be repeated around the world and will never disappear. Whereas if you say nothing…people’s memories are short, if they even know the story to begin with.

And there is one gotcha in the L.A. “Times” article:

“CSC job listings for event staff show that typical pay is under $20 an hour, and its own advertising for job openings has told candidates, ‘Why pay upwards of $100 for a ticket when you can experience the event with the CSC family and be compensated for it?'”

How well can a security person do their job if they’re incentivized to see the show as part of the gig?

CSC is Contemporary Services Corp. I.e. a security company. Yes, security for these big events is OUTSOURCED!

This is what killed GE, this is what is still killing America, this is what is hurting so many workers, that are shadow employees, even in tech. They do all the work for the well-known company, but they’re paid by an intermediary, and they don’t get the same pay and benefits. You can be working for Google, but paid by a third party.

So, the buck stops with Live Nation, but they are not the hands-on party.

And you must watch the Woodstock ’99 documentary on Netflix to see the character and quality of these third party security people, it’s not much better today, but the reason I mention it is a member of the audience offers a big buck for the security person’s t-shirt and he sells it to him! He got money in his pocket, and the person with the shirt now has access and other powers. It’s akin to a backstage pass.

Security is a huge issue. Something we should all be discussing. But this exhaustive article in the L.A. “Times” had no reach, no impact. Even the L.A. “Times” is its own private backwater. To reach everybody is impossible. We have a zillion verticals, and oftentimes those who need to be reached are on TikTok, where the mainstream media has no presence or impact.

But getting back to the residency…

It can be a badge of honor. Akin to a Grammy, but better. How many nights did you play at the arena, do you hold the record? And was every gig sold out?

You see fans will flock to the residency not just to see the act, but to be part of an event, to say they were there! It’s one thing to say you saw the act at your local arena, it’s quite another to say you were at show 16 at the residency. This is part of fandom, you want to own the act and the experience! As far as flying or driving to the arena…you go on vacation, don’t you?

Sure, there is a business touring the country, but it will never get cheaper. You don’t have to pay for hotels if you stay in one place, never mind all those trucks. And it doesn’t have to be in Las Vegas, in Vegas music is secondary to gambling and having a good time. But at the Forum, IT’S MUSIC ONLY! Adding gravitas.

Don’t expect change overnight, but there will be an evolution.

God, most of Billy Joel’s ink in the past decade has been about his residency, without it there would have been a lot of less press and maybe fewer ticket sales not only at Madison Square Garden but elsewhere.

And it’s not like Harry Styles’s record just came out. It was released on May 20th, but now he’s on the cover of “Rolling Stone”…which no one reads anymore, because it’s behind a paywall, but quotes are pulled by other news media and it makes a good tweet…and now there’s another article in the “New York Times” reviewing the show: 

“The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to New York – The first two nights of a 15-concert run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.”: https://nyti.ms/3Tb3Q9k

It doesn’t stop! The Harry train keeps rolling. And, once again, Harry’s fans are not reading this story, but advertisers and film producers are, they see the impact Harry has. Harry Styles might be the biggest superstar in music today, along with Bad Bunny, but the aged think it’s Beyoncé. Now they know otherwise. And as far as Beyoncé goes, not being on the road hurts her purchase on society at large, there was the buzz around the release of the album, now what? The experts here are the Kardashians. They’re online and in the news every damn day. Did you see that Apple has even got Kim Kardashian earbuds? And they’re sold out, but Apple has full page ads and the bottom line is people still think the Kardashians are a sideshow, but if you’re involved with Apple…that’s the top of the heap, that’s the Holy Grail!

There’s a lot going on. But no one media outlet has a hold on it, never mind having little reach and almost no legs. In a world where you can reach everybody instantly, they’re reaching ever fewer and what’s here today is gone tomorrow.

Which is why the mainstream media is only part of your plan. Why the record is only part of your plan. Live, the fan can feel the connection, once again it’s a unique experience, capitalize on that. Harry Styles has.

Hyundai was a joke. The maker of the cheapest cars with the oldest technology. The only thing that you could buy that was worse was a Yugo.

But Yugo tanked, and Hyundai and its sister company Kia improved and then thrived over the ensuing thirty years they have played in the American market. And not only has Hyundai expanded into luxury, with its Genesis line, most analysts consider the Ioniq 5 and its sister Kia, the EV6, to be the only reasonably priced challengers to Tesla in the American market.

And then comes BYD:

“BYD, Tesla’s Chinese Rival, Is Coming Into Its Own – China’s top electric-vehicle maker has emerged as a formidable force—one that could soon be felt globally”: https://on.wsj.com/3R5PIfO

But Bob, you say, GM and Ford are moving into electric vehicles!

And I’ll respond with the tiny recalled Chevy Bolt, a statement car as opposed to a usable automobile. As for Ford’s triumphs with the Mustang and F-150 Lightning… I’ll tell you they’re essentially conversions, gas cars made electric, as opposed to clean slate vehicles like those of Tesla and BYD.

But we don’t need no stinkin’ electric cars in America. Drill, baby drill. And why combat climate change, even if it exists, because look at how China pollutes!

But this is an old story, the truth is China is addressing climate change more directly than the U.S. these days, that’s the essence of electric vehicle penetration in the country, China wants to clean up its air.

You see as Americans lobby for a return to the past, the Chinese are moving directly to the future, in many cases eating our lunch.

We don’t need no stinkin’ foreigners here, keep ’em out. Everyone thinks of migrants at the southern border, but this also includes technologists, who are now staying home in not only China, but India, so innovation is coming out of those countries now as opposed to the U.S. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot.

The belief is all innovation comes from America, especially in social media. Our hero/enemy is Mark Zuckerberg, who superseded MySpace to build a colossus with Facebook.

Now give Zuck credit, he saw the penetration of WhatsApp in the rest of the world and purchased it when most Congresspeople had no idea what it was, never mind blow a whistle.

And Zuck ended up buying Instagram, but innovation petered out and…

Twitter was a revolution. Pooh-poohed to this day, it’s where the news is batted around and built. You may not be on Twitter, but all the people who create the news you consume are.

And then Twitter became a hotbed of discussion over free speech. Forget that it’s a private company and can do what it wants, the concept was that free speech could eclipse truth.

And then America’s tech hero Elon Musk, the heir to Steve Jobs for those who did not live through the Jobs era, the bros who Jobs could never relate to, said he was going to purchase the whole thing and turn it into the free-for-all it was supposed to be.

But that ended up being a sideshow.

And today’s show in America is the whistleblower, talking about Twitter’s security lapses. And the whole issue becomes whether Musk will be forced to buy the company or not.

But the truth is America is one big security lapse. Twenty years after 9/11 and our infrastructure still goes unprotected. Our water supply, our electric grid.

As for the corporations, whether they be traditional, brick and mortar, or online, or even banks, security breaches are a regular occurrence, kind of like school shootings. You get an e-mail telling you to change your password and life goes on.

So Zuckerberg wakes up and realizes there’s nothing left to buy and he comes up with his meta concept, the virtual world. Something which is not brand new, and has never scaled previously. Meanwhile, China comes up with Musical.ly which turns into TikTok.

America had an early competitor, Vine, but it was allowed to wither under the ownership of Twitter and was eventually killed while Musical.ly was seen as kids’ stuff. Young kids’ stuff. After all, the money, the gravitas, was in the full-length song marketed by the music industry.

And then Musical.ly was purchased by ByteDance, and the product evolved into TikTok and now not only is TikTok the primary social medium, it’s where young people go to shop and just like with Twitter, to this day, oldsters, those who think they know better, decry TikTok, see it as a sewer populated by the young and ignorant not realizing the joke is on them.

Oh, they’ll get uptight about the Chinese ownership of data, but understanding what the platform represents…IMPOSSIBLE!

We live in a land of Luddites. As far as their plan for making America great again, it seems to be focused on making the rural dominant and halting progress to ensure that America continues to lose not only status in the world, but power, with innovation not supported, certainly not with government money. That’s the number one bitch on the “Wall Street Journal” editorial and opinion pages, the government supporting electric automobiles. But without the government, we wouldn’t even have this internet I’m using to communicate with you.

We’re so caught up in the penumbra in the United States, that we’re missing the main point. All these social issues, bathroom access, gay marriage, they’re just sideshows ginned up by monied interests who want no change so they can continue to rape and pillage and reign. That’s the number one goal of the corporation in America, to sustain. Innovate? Hopefully they can kill competition to avoid it. Look at Amazon, if you come up with a new idea they haven’t they compete and kill you or buy you.

As for innovation…

This electric car thing is just like photography, with a lot more zeros and cultural, financial and environmental impact. It’s going to flip seemingly overnight. Buzz has already started, you don’t want to buy a new gasoline powered car because when electric reaches critical mass it’ll be worth nothing. All this blowback about the lack of charging stations… You don’t hold back the future because its evolution is bumpy.

Let’s be clear, China is an authoritarian state. Therefore decisions can be made and implemented quickly. Whereas America is something akin to democracy.

Now one party is leaning towards autocracy, but once again its goal is not a great leap forward, but a theoretical leap back. Putting its finger in the dike of progress, which happens elsewhere and then the dam breaks and America is overwhelmed by the flood.

We used to have national goals, like putting a man on the moon.

Now all we’ve got is gotcha. That’s what the news is. This or that person was caught in flagrante delicto.

Most Americans have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world. Forget having a driver’s license to vote, every American needs a passport. And a national program taking every American citizen to a foreign country, so their horizons are widened, discussion is fomented, and a path forward can be created. Instead, we’re arguing about teaching race in school, removing books from libraries. All that does is create an ever more ignorant populace, which those in power like, know-nothings are easier to control.

In truth, we’re in the equivalent of a space race with China. Never mind the Asian nation buying up natural resources to make electric automobiles while Americans debate their utility. We’re debating the present with no vision into the future. And if anybody wants to push the nation forward they’re a crank. Yes, it happens on the left too.

We need a national reset. Instead of patting ourselves on the back, telling ourselves how great we are, we must realize that our self-professed title as the greatest country in the world is in jeopardy, if not already history. I don’t want to hear about everybody wanting to immigrate here… Sure, America is still great in some aspects but we need to stop trumpeting those and see what we’re missing, what we need to achieve!

This is what leaders are supposed to do.

And the tired old man in the White House can’t, because he’s not digitally native.

As for his opponent…he doesn’t even appear smart enough to understand the concepts, never mind take appropriate action. He’d rather share state secrets with our enemies, become friends with dictators while the countries run under democracies run circles around them. Can you say North Korea and South Korea, can you say Russia and Western Europe?

We are at a critical point in American history. We cannot survive without the rest of the world. The pandemic taught us this. Furthermore, we cannot bring all manufacturing back to the States, it does not make economic sense. No, what we need to do is strengthen ourselves, create new bargaining chips. And for the past few decades that’s always been intellectual property, whether it be entertainment or technology. Not only is the biggest social media company the Chinese TikTok, but the biggest musical act is Bad Bunny, who sings in Spanish!

That’s why we can’t make our country smaller, but bigger. We need to look outside our boundaries, see the advancements of others, the changes. We can’t be so nationalistic that we close the doors, that’s economic death, never mind cultural decline.

But we want to debate whether Elon Musk, a myopic bro, should be forced to buy Twitter.

Our entire nation has a security issue. And it’s not only e-mail addresses and passwords, it’s raw economics. We’re fighting over social issues while China is eating our lunch.

We need to wake up, get our priorities straight and take action.

NOW!