Tune in today, February 15th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

You get older and you start to disconnect.

Every morning I wake up and immediately jump on my phone. I don’t leave it by the bed, at some point I turn off the ringer and plug it in in the other room, otherwise I’d never get to sleep. But when I wake up, I grab it first thing and then sit down on the throne and read the news.

Yes, the porcelain goddess. You might find that gross, but in truth I’ve always loved the bathroom. It’s private. If the door is closed, no one can come in, especially if it’s locked. Grow up in a split-level with four other people and you treasure your privacy.

And like in that old Joni Mitchell song, I’m looking at the news and it’s all bad. Putin wants to invade Ukraine because Ukraine is going to start fighting first. And he’s convinced his constituents of that fallacy. They’re gung-ho. As for America, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are fanning the flames of trucker protests in the U.S. Meanwhile, Trump takes his presidential documents to Mar-a-Lago and it seems the brouhaha of Hillary’s e-mails is forgotten. As for Ukraine, Michael Moore is telling us to stay out, as is Fox News, but those in D.C. on both sides of the fence are saying we have to defend Ukraine against the Russians.

Now if you’ve been to the area, it’s astounding how close these countries are. Like states in America. As for burying one’s head in the sand in the name of nationalism, today’s paper said that BMW was buying back 50% of its Chinese operation to ultimately own 75%. The old laws limited ownership, now Xi has loosened it up. And BMW has to operate in China, because it’s the world’s biggest market!

Having grown up in the last century it’s hard to fathom the changes. Forget the loss of kumbaya, forget the greed, forget the billionaires, hands-down the United States was the most powerful and profitable nation in the world. One thing we know for sure, if the sun hasn’t set on this paradigm yet, it soon will.

As for democracy…

So on one hand I’m drawn in. On another, I detach, because in truth I won’t live that long. The long term effects of global warming…it’s bad now, but it’s going to be really bad after I pass away.

So I’m torn between two worlds.

But it’s even worse. Everybody my age is retiring. That’s right, they saved for decades, invested that money they made oftentimes doing work they didn’t want to do and now they want to relax. Which is hard for me to fathom, I still believe I have some runway. But I’m one of the few who doesn’t want to call it quits.

Furthermore, the game has changed. There used to be clearly defined winners and losers. Now I hope your victory satisfies you, because no one else cares. So you question what your direction is, and why you do it.

And back to Putin… He’s stealing from his own country exactly why. To become even richer? I mean how much is enough? He’s my age, I think with a hundred million dollars I could do just fine, never mind a billion.

And this weekend is the Super Bowl. Which is being played in L.A.

I think the game should be banned. One day we’ll wake up and do so. A humane, caring society wouldn’t let men damage themselves this way, getting CTE, shortening their lives. But there’s too much money involved. And it’s one of the few avenues of success available to Black people. So as long as the pay remains high, you will find people to participate.

And I remember the first Super Bowl. That’s how old I am. Back when it had no gravitas, when the AFL was seen as kind of a joke, and the first two Super Bowls proved it, and then came Namath.

Now in the name of money they play football in the winter. But ironically, in L.A. this weekend, where the game is being held, it’s like summer, it’s in the eighties.

And in truth, I’ve spent most of the past two years housebound. And I’ve been in a cocoon. I talk on the phone even less than I did before, which was miniscule to begin with. I’m waiting for the time when I can turn into a butterfly. Which isn’t quite yet. Then again, like I read in that tweet, they’ve done the research at YouTube University and have decided that Covid is gone and the country needs to open.

So we got on Sunset…to the beach, just like in that Steely Dan song. And the traffic was worse than it is even on a summer day. Because it’s Saturday, because it’s Super Bowl weekend and tourists are here, everybody wants to drive up PCH, have that California experience, which in truth, you cannot get anywhere else.

And after parking I surveyed the ocean, which is glassy, and a big wave came in.

And I smiled.

Ella was making a sand castle. She’s three. When I was that age I went to the beach all the time, every day during the summer, with my mother. And I built sandcastles too, but back then the tools were made out of metal, not plastic, and I cut my hand on a rusty bucket and got my first stitches, four, in my hand, at age four.

And the waves keep coming in, big wheel turning, the hand of God.

And it really isn’t any different than it’s always been. Like George Carlin said, save yourself, the planet will be here forever.

But George is dead. So many are dead. The biggies and those not so big. Like Ian McDonald of King Crimson, they wanted me to write about him. And I certainly know who he is, and how he ventured to Foreigner, and he was there for the first three albums, before Mutt Lange came aboard and jetted an already huge band into the stratosphere. And if McDonald had died back then…it would have been big news.

But now rockers are dying left and right. It’s their time. Their bad behavior and lack of medical attention is catching up with them. We thought they and their music were forever, it’s weird to grow old and find out that is not true.

So there are so many things I don’t own. But none of them would give me that feeling of staring out at the water, the sun on my face, just one human being on the face of the earth. That’s the only context that really matters, the rest is a competition you’re involved in until you reach an age where you can see it is a joke, no one is remembered, and you can’t take your money with you.

So it’s really about the next generation. You gain joy from seeing them experience for the very first time that which you know by heart.

And this year, reluctant to go to a party, I now realize I’m not that excited about watching the Super Bowl, that I could miss it completely and lose nothing. Even the commercials… They don’t mean what they used to.

Nothing means what it used to. But you’ve got to get old enough to realize this.

Then again, the younger generations are all about experiences. They need to document them, but once again, you get old enough and you know you’ll probably never look at those pictures again and after you die they’ll get thrown out or deleted.

And this may sound like a downer, but it’s not, not at all. I’ve been LIBERATED! It doesn’t pay to fight with the ignorant. The truth always outs. And sure, you need money to live, but you don’t really need that much, otherwise you’re just showing off, and like David Geffen posting a pic of himself on his yacht during Covid, you become a target of ridicule.

You’ve got to be happy on the inside.

And that’s quite a challenge. Because nobody’s happy all the time, nobody. You’ve got to endure the lows to appreciate the highs.

Like being inside forever and then coming to the beach.

Where the freedom we embraced in the sixties was launched. By the Beach Boys, the rest of California. Now, everyone wants to make fun of California, point to its flaws, but if they were here today they’d change their opinion.

Yes, at the end of the country, three thousand miles and three time zones from the east coast. Or, as Larry Ellison told Dr. Agus… I’ll give you the money to build a research facility, but not in New York. In New York you fail once and you’re done. In California you fail and you pick yourself up and do it again, and again. And why would you want to be in New York anyway, where you talk to bankers, isn’t it better to be on the west coast with the creative people, the thinkers?

But I’m not trying to convince you. I hope you’re happy where you are.

If I had my suit with me I’d go in the water. I’ve already gotten my feet wet. Sure, the water is cold, but it’s so hot out, it’s refreshing. It would be a shock to the system.

And that’s the kind of shock I’m looking for.

“Can the World’s Most Connected Doctor Cure Cancer? – He was physician to the late Steve Jobs, pal to Elon Musk and Howard Stern, counselor to both Trump and Biden. Now he’s founded the most cutting-edge cancer center in L.A.”: https://bit.ly/33mrZVu

Hi Bob-

I really appreciate you saying nice things about my contribution to Rolling Stone. I was happy with the piece, and I understand that they have limitations to how long it could be, but I wrote a more detailed breakdown of the issue. I wasn’t expecting RS to just print what I wrote, but putting things down in writing helps me think more cogently.  I thought you might enjoy it, so I’ll copy what I wrote in preparation below.

Best-

David Macias

Many artists are hurting these days. It’s become more difficult to earn a living as an artist. Anyone trying has my deep respect. For anyone who knows me and knows my company, Thirty Tigers, you know that our heart is squarely with the artist. We invest in artists; we work hard for artists. We try to help them navigate the industry so that they can earn the most money possible without sacrificing the quality of the effort in promoting their art, all while they maintain 100% ownership and control over their masters.

So, it pains me when I see artists and those who love them misdiagnose the source of their difficulty. Spotify is the current scapegoat for the ills of the working-class artist, despite them paying 63% of gross revenues back out to rights holders. This is in relative parity to other DSPs and slightly higher than brick and mortar retail (60%), which is understandable given that they must pay for physical space to conduct business.

A note about rates: Spotify is pilloried for the fact that they pay a lower net rate than Apple or Tidal. The reason for this lower rate is that Spotify offers something that the others don’t – an ad-supported tier that pays at a lower rate because advertising does not bring in the amount of money subscriptions do. You can choose to feel aggrieved about the lower aggregate rate (which many do), or you can choose to be happy that people that can’t afford to pay $10 a month are given a way to participate in a way that allows for some royalties to be earned (which is how I feel). People can disagree in good faith about which approach is preferable, but it’s simply not the case that Spotify is just paying less to pad their bottom line. They bring in less revenue per listener but still pay out a commensurate percentage to the other DSPs.

Between DSPs like Spotify and companies like TuneCore, music is more democratized more than ever, to the point where the DSPs upload 60,000 new songs every day. Let me repeat that. 60,000. SONGS. PER. DAY. That’s the equivalent of over 2,100,000 albums of material a year. The US global market share is 53%, so let’s peg the number of albums (including track equivalents) released in the US at 1,100,000. By comparison, in 2004, the US music industry released around 50,000 albums.

I pick that year for a reason. It was the first year that the RIAA recorded any digital revenue, and it was also a year that nearly matches the dollar amounts made by the industry in 2020.

Let’s consider what life was like for artists in 2004….

If you aspired for national or international success, you were forced to sign with a label to get the resources and advocacy that you needed to reach an audience. Those deals were most often at terms that were not favorable to the artist. Labels were absolute gatekeepers, and they wielded that advantage like a cudgel.

Today, you don’t need anyone’s permission.

If you look at the playlists on the DSPs, you will find an abundance of independent artists, unaffiliated with anyone getting their shot. Spotify has taken great steps to democratize access to the playlists, by allowing anyone to pitch their music to the people who make the decisions on what goes on their playlists.

As an example, Spotify’s New Boots playlist currently features 20 artists on it whose work is copyrighted directly to the artist with no label affiliation listed. That playlist has over 800,000 followers.

I think of Russell Dickerson, who delivered proof of concept by having his music streamed over 25 million times before he was picked up by a label (one that I am affiliated with), who has helped him chart four consecutive singles at #1. Spotify changed his life. If this was 2004, he would have likely never gotten that opportunity.

However, democratization has come at a cost. Let’s consider the math of 2004 vs. 2020. Both years saw $12.2 billion earned by the industry. If you divide that amount by 50,000 albums released, the average album in 2004 earned $244,000 in revenues. If you divide that numbers by 1,100,000 albums, the average album earned $11,090. If you apply the 80/20 rule to the 2020 numbers (a business maxim that hypothesizes that 80% of sales comes from the top 20% of money earners), you can estimate that the 880,000 least commercially successful albums earned $2.44 billion in revenue, or $2770 per album.

Democratization has been a huge boon to independent artists in that it has given more artists a chance, but not been enough to earn them a living wage. The pie is being sliced so thin, that most artists are left hungry.

A painful question must be asked at this point: Is it an artist’s right to earn a living from their art in a capitalist market? In a country where the business-failure rate is 65% over ten years, should artists be immune from their businesses failing? As much as my heart goes out to anyone who is not able to make their dream come true, I would say that that answer is no.

Financially, the low point of the music business was in 2014. The RIAA figures for the retail value of all music sold then was $6.7 billion. As streaming has become the predominant way people consume music, that number has skyrocketed to that $12.2 billion figure in the US. That is a 75% increase in revenues in six years. Anyone who argues that streaming has been harmful to the ecosystem has billions of dollars to explain away when making their case.

I attended a music business conference presentation in the early 2000s, where the RIAA presented a study where they asked people who self-identified as avid music consumers how much money they spent a year on music. The average amount was about $60 a year. Remember, we’re making as much money now as then, so we really are talking apples-to-apples. If you want to subscribe to a streaming service, you are contributing $120 a year to the till. The contribution of the average consumer has roughly doubled, so is it any surprise that industry revenues have mirrored this doubling since the advent of streaming?

So how then can artists make enough money to survive? There are options for a patronage model like Patreon that can operate outside the revenue models of pre-recorded music. Though I am suspicious of the lasting value of NFTs, some artists are earning money creating singular goods that can be made available to fans. Though on the horizon, potential applications of direct funding through web3 applications may give artists an opportunity to monetize their creations more directly.

What I do not want to see happen is that artists misattribute the source of their problem and undermine the DSPs that have played a huge role in the democratization of independent music.

Is Spotify perfect? Far from it. I won’t touch the Joe Rogan issue. That’s a matter of conscience for artists and their advocates. Do I wish that Spotify were not joining other DSPs in appealing the Copyright Royalty Board’s ruling that pays the publishers and songwriters 15% of revenues? Absolutely. When artists I work with have walked into their NYC offices, as often as not, I hear about the opulence of their offices and the perks that are made available to their employees on full display. On a gut level, the artists correlate these with their lower royalty rate (explained above) as compared to other DSPs. Spotify, I tell you these things as your friend. Sometimes you don’t do yourselves any favors.

Vilification is easy. I’ve heard that it’s not the people, it’s the system that is broken. To that, I counter that any system that has increased parity and overall revenues is not a broken system. There is just way, way, WAY more music available, and though the pie is growing, it’s unable to feed everyone. Artists need to understand the reality of the situation and be clear eyed about what battles they need to be fighting. My contention is that dismantling the existing system without a replacement will harm independent artists.

My heart is with all of you, and I wish you all the best.

____________________________________

Amen to you and to David for this one.  This debate has really gotten under my skin.  I am an agent and across about 20 acts, and while I don’t participate in any of the recorded revenues, they have become life changing for the artists over the past five years and especially through the pandemic.  This is mostly due to Spotify.  The other key is that I mostly work with independent artists – meaning they own all or parts of their catalogues.  Napkin math, but out of 20 clients, 4 or 5 of them have major label deals or deal with big indies where they do not own/control masters.  The rest have distro only deals (with companies like Thirty Tigers, whom I love, or AWAL), or deals with fair and artist friendly indies (like Dualtone, whom I love) where they might have a mid-term (7 year) license but still retaining masters ownership.  Most of my artists are also taking small or no advances, so that they are seeing cash flow in many cases from dollar one.

My acts that own pieces or all of their catalogue, and have between 1.5mm-4mm monthly Spotify listeners, are making anywhere from $20k to $100k PER MONTH from Spotify revenues.  4mm monthly listeners is significant and means that the artist has a real following, but this is nowhere near the top of the heap and what you might consider “mainstream” names like Drake who has 53mm monthlys.  My smaller acts who have between 200k-500k monthly listeners, are still making $1k-$5k per month from Spotify.  When they own their catalogue – again, a key differentiator in who gets paid.  These are artists you have most likely not heard of, but who ARE making a livable wage between these recorded revenues, shows, merch, etc.

So for everyone weighing in and unsubscribing from Spotify to say “fuck the man,” all you’re doing is fucking the little guy.  Spotify in my mind is an EXTREMELY artist friendly company.  As the pie gets smaller, these revenues go down for all artists, and the ones who are hurt most are the small ones at the bottom of the totem pole.  Neil made his point and I commend him for it, and it made a (small) difference, but Spotify is not the problem, quite the opposite.  We are living in a golden era of recorded revenues!

Keith Levy

____________________________________

Brilliant. I’ve been saying similar things for a long time but less eloquently.

 

The popular narrative is unfair to the streamers and is misdirected anger. The streamers are paying more than 50% of their gross revenue to rights owners, and in the US radio is paying what – under 3%? Concerts are paying what – fractions of what the rest of the world pays for performing rights at a concert. The most unfair royalty issue in streaming is the disparity between master and publishing. No excuse. Unsustainable. Let’s see a popular uprising over those issues.

 

A million streams sounds like a lot so people are flummoxed that the dollars aren’t commensurate with that mental image. However, the number of radio spins necessary to equal a million impressions is, for argument’s sake, say 10 (100,000 listeners X 10 spins). OK let’s say it’s 20. Or 100. If you only had 100 spins on radio, you wouldn’t say you were successful.

Best,

 

Michael McCarty

____________________________________

Agree with David. Side note, he has been on the front end of supporting streaming for at least a decade long before any of us could read the tea leaves.

We have been having a similar conversation in our office this week.

Should Spotify pay songwriters and artists more $? Yes. Should they stop spread of misinformation if they can? Yes. Is any tech company morally pure? No.

 

Amazon has had their own scandals and worker’s conditions questioned consistently…Apple had the same in China…and we all remember Batterygate…on the vaccine issue the biggest spreader of all misinformation is Facebook but there isn’t a mass musician’s exodus to abandon the platform (along w Instagram which it owns). All commercial entities have things to own and we should all hold them accountable but we are ignoring the good that Spotify does for artists.

 

The first question from all of our management partners after “What playlists did we get?” is “Can you help setup our tour presale w Spotify?”. Spotify has helped sell hundreds of thousands of tickets (probably more I don’t have an official stat) and put money in the hands of artists and creators through their pre-sale activations. The streaming rates for songwriters and artists need to come up but it’s more nuanced than that when evaluating the whole ball of wax.

 

We have benefited greatly from the Spotify Fans First merch activations around exclusive products generating six figures of revenue for our artists.

 

Spotify has developed tech to directly benefit artists…putting up the donation capability during COVID and enabling selling merch directly from Artist pages.

 

When comparing the big 4 (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Youtube) no other tech company gives as much access to the fan data and ability to reach directly to fans through Spotify for Artists and through ad programs like Marquee. The comparison and chatter with Bandcamp/Patreon is a different conversation I believe as those platforms are more D2C built.

Out of home support, billboards in Times Square, Spotify Sessions developing content for Artists that they own…the list goes on.

Are there things wrong with Spotify…absolutely, as has been well documented (they just paid 300M+ to be a sponsor of premier league soccer team instead of increasing pay for artists and songwriters!). But we need to focus on the duality a bit here.

We work with several bands that literally were able to quit their day jobs to do music full time because of this service. That fact doesn’t let them off the hook for Rogan and everything else but the Spotify bashing doesn’t address how their innovation has shepherded us into a new music business economy that for most labels and artists on those labels is working.

They are our #1 revenue driver, it’s not even close.

Because of our partnership deals with our acts those dollars flow through and we win together. It’s not us vs. them and that shouldn’t be the tone of the Spotify conversation either.

Paul Roper

Dualtone

____________________________________

I love how most discussions about Spotify never even bring up the biggest problem. David is correct in his assessment that the label earns approx $4000 – $5000 per million streams. In the Thirty Tigers model the artist gets the lions share of that. Very equitable.

The songwriter portion of the 4 to 5 k is ridiculous. It’s approx $200. Let us remember that many of the greatest songs ever written were not written by the artist. The professional songwriter has a storied history via Tin Pan Alley, Motown and Music Row as a major contributor to the music we know and love. Are we willing to let thousands of amazing songwriters wither up and die and be left with songs that are less than the best they can be?

Here’s a hypothetical for you that might make this easier to understand. “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson was written by Glen Ballard and Siedah Garrett. The album it was on sold a ton of records for which the writers received mechanical royalties for at a rate of approx 9 cents per copy. Let’s use 10 million as our number. Maybe they both had co-pub deals so they probably made 3 to 4 cents per album sold. That’s $300, 000 TO $400, 000 EACH. Those royalties ( mechanical ) have in fact gone the way of the horse and buggy. No one buys anything any more. I’m sure they did fine on terrestrial radio performance royalties for the single.

Fast forward to the streaming era…No album sales of note. Reduced radio play. Now let’s do the Spotify numbers. Total guess but I’m thinking in this era a record like that would get somewhere around 200 million streams. Michael Jackson had a more conventional deal than the Thirty Tigers model. His label would get $5000 per million streams. He would get via his artist deal some of that money. Let’s do the math. $5000 x 200 million ( the lower figure ) = 1 trillion dollars. The writers would split somewhere between $40, 000 and $50, 000. So… label gets one trillion, artist maybe 1 million, writers $40,000 to $50,000. Do you think that’s fair? Do you realize how much other revenue a great song generates for the label and the artist. The labels colluded with Spotify to set the system up so they would both make a ton of money during the streaming era. I am so glad I came up in an era where I was able to write songs for artists other than myself and be rewarded monetarily when something good happened with them.

When I lecture these days at Berklee school of music or Belmont in Nashville I tell young writers who are looking to go into songwriting as a profession, if you’re not the artist, you are looking at a huge uphill climb when it comes to paying your bills. What is the result of this syndrome? The world loses out on great music that won’t ever be written if we don’t change the model. There are artists that are quite capable of writing great songs for themselves. There are just as many that have no talent in that area and should leave that piece of the puzzle to those of us who can do it well.

In closing, here’s a few songs that would have never been written if there were no outside songwriters. “ You’ve Got A Friend “ I Can’t Make You Love Me” “My Girl”  “Up On The Roof” The entire Great American Songbook, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, and Richard Rodgers, among others. Thanks for taking the time to read this and maybe look at it from another point of view.

Respectfully,

Steve Seskin

____________________________________

Thanks for publishing this Bob.  David’s one of my dearest friends, and one of not only the best business minds in the biz, but human beings.  He built a revolutionary model and an alternative offering to individuals that wanted to pursue being an artist back when all that really existed before was the major label system.

I’ve seen him build Thirty Tigers from one man in a guest bedroom to the powerhouse that it is, and along the way his heart has been one of service and empowering artists.  Through the success, both in the growth of Thirty Tigers as well as many of the acts that they have broken, many of whom went to him after everyone else said “no” in town, he has not changed one bit.  His mission is and has always been on the art, but he has always had a balanced approach to how he looks at the macro economics of it all.

His message is true.  It should and needs to be heard.  It also comes from a good place.  I’m sure the complainers will shit on it, undeservedly so.  We should celebrate more having an opportunity, that’s all we’re given or should want is a shot, not everyone wins the game unfortunately but playing it sure can be a fulfilling ride.

Gino Genaro

CDA Entertainment

____________________________________

A few back I worked David on the board of the Americana Music Association and found him to be the most insightful guy on the board. I also found him to have integrity and honesty. Artists they took on tended to never question their decision.

Bob Benckert

The Alternate Root

____________________________________

I’ve had a few minor business dealings with David Macias over the years. Each time he was gracious, honest, and forthright. This was an awesome piece. It’s impossible to get it right every time, but Thirty Tigers has a helluva batting average. Kudos to Macias and the company he keeps.

Matthew Sterling

____________________________________

What a great guy!

I first encountered Mr Macias maybe 20 years ago when he was managing Rich Robinson’s project called Hookah Brown.  Total straight shooter and hustled his butt off!

I was a young promoter / club booker, huge Crowes fan, and was completely star struck by Rich, too afraid to ask for a t-shirt and David must have read my mind because out of the blue he asked me my size and presented me with a shirt.  Just a little thing like that makes memories.

While I haven’t made much contact since, it’s been very cool to watch him grow from afar and he’s got one helluvah respectable artist roster!

Good on him for laying it out there.  You’re correct, almost no one will see it, including me, so glad you shot it out to us!

Rock on Bob!

Dan Millen

____________________________________

I appreciate the clarification on artist pay. I never researched it but had caught an earful from a frustrated musician. I am teaching college students these days and they all live in different realities. it’s wild. i asked who would be watching the super bowl this weekend, only 5 or 6 out of almost 30 kids. yes, it’s an uninspiring matchup (bengals rams ho hum) but still. they share the same tech platforms but not the same content, beliefs or worldviews. it is truly challenging.

Colleen Kenny LaRocque

____________________________________

Bob, the Cros says “Streaming stole my record money.”  Oh yeah? WHAT record money? The New Yorker, having no clue about music (they’re great in other areas) just ran a lengthy piece trashing Spotify.  I sent them a terse rebuttal, which they won’t print.  I’m annoyed at this shit.  The enterprisimg Daniel Ek could be somewhere else altogether, but instead he pulled the entire record industry up out of the craphole it had dug itself into, and now just look at the results benefitting consumers and creators alike.  Fuck Rogan, and fuck supposed music fans who’d rather line up with the last gasp of hippiedom than appreciate the most beneficial development since the debut of the 45.

Paul Lanning

____________________________________

I want to shake David Macias’ hand and buy him a drink. Fuck it…two drinks.

Hugo Burnham

“Rise”: https://amzn.to/3uKX5kO

She’s not the person I thought she was.

Not that I had a huge desire to read this book. I just reserved it at the library and when another book I was reading lost my attention I decided to skim “Rise,” but I got hooked.

Lindsey’s image… Beautiful untouchable champion. Smiling and fabulous everywhere. When she’s not complaining. No one can deny her skiing skills, but despite all the media, no one has ever pierced the surface of Vonn until now. She had to do it. Because the media is too busy promoting fables and only you know what is going on inside your head.

She’s a loner who has trouble making friends. She only feels comfortable on the hill. Skiing is everything. It adds structure to her life. And when things are not going well, she sinks, into depression.

Goals… That’s the first thing I got out of this book, you can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where it is. We all need goals. Assuming you want to achieve excellence. Maybe the excellence you’re pursuing is private. Or maybe you’re more of a looker than a doer. But in truth, to achieve greatness you’ve got to have a goal.

Lindsey’s was to be in the Olympics. She had that revelation when she was nine years old and encountered Picabo Street.

Now when one gets older, one often laughs at our younger year role models. We can now see three dimensions, oftentimes they’re not that admirable. But when you’re younger, these icons have incredible effect on you, especially if you’re a loner who doesn’t really fit in, who isn’t cool.

Julia Mancuso is cool. Lindsey is always being compared to her, and always negatively. Lindsey herself tries to compete with Julia by stuffing kleenex in her bikini top, which comes out in the hot tub and exposes her and mortifies her. No matter what Lindsey does, she is not an insider, she is not cool. And all the coaches warm up to Julia. That’s Lindsey’s inspiration, surreptitiously hearing her coaches say they’re going to put Julia in the 2002 Olympics and not her. And Lindsey turns it on, makes the team and has the best results and then…nothing. Back to regular life, back to being the underdog to Mancuso. Lindsey thought the Olympics would be transformational, but they’re just another race. And then her career goes up and down and she’s thinking of giving up.

That’s what happens to many who achieve their goal. When they reach it and it is not satisfying, they can no longer do it anymore. Like rock stars. Oftentimes nonverbal outsiders who believe if they have hit records their lives will work. And then they do reach the pinnacle and then nothing changes and they can never do it again, they just can’t find the motivation.

But Lindsey has her father.

Would it be better if we all had parents supportive of our dreams? And enough money to achieve them? Yes. But you can always change your life, you don’t live with your parents forever, and not all achievements are when you’re young. As a matter of fact, those who win when they’re young oftentimes have trouble coping with the long life thereafter. Not only athletes, but TV stars.

Her father pushes her. Says it’s not time yet. And arranges for Lindsey to spend the summer with a legendary Polish trainer in Monaco for the summer (her sponsor, Rossignol, helped out with the cost).

Lindsey had no idea what hard work was.

Most people don’t. Lindsey thought she was training hard, but she wasn’t even close. She now learned what she had to do and it paid off.

Most people have no context. Either they play in a minor league or not at all. But if you get a chance to go to the top… It separates the men from the boys. I remember my sophomore year in college, on the Middlebury Ski Team, doing the bleachers. We started off in September doing four sets. Hopping up on one foot, then the other and then both was one set. Never mind that it was hard, I didn’t feel myself the rest of the day, even longer. And dreaded having to do five sets the following week. So I decided to quit. There was no way I’d be a starting racer anyway. But I was on the phone with my mother and told her and she bad-vibed me. So I stayed with it. Just before the snow fell we were doing SIXTEEN sets. Unfathomable back in September, but I did it.

Like running up the Middlebury Snow Bowl. As hard as that was the first time, the second time we ran to the top, then ran halfway down and back to the top again. Huh? I mean just when you’re proud you made it, ready to relax, you’re back in the grinder.

Lindsey’s father said the family were not quitters. Even later in her career, when she’d had a bunch of injuries, her father pushed her to stay with it. To the point when Lindsey truly wanted to retire, her body having given out, no one on her team believed it, she was the one who constantly battled back from injuries. And she wanted to beat Stenmark’s record, right?

Well, wanting it is not enough. Hard work doesn’t mean you’ll always achieve your dream. But you can come close.

And the dedication.

Lindsey didn’t go to her junior prom. She didn’t go to any school dances. She had to punt sleepovers. So much of what normal kids do she didn’t do at all.

And she gets caught in an educational vortex and never finishes high school. Eventually gets her GED, but no one is looking out for her. There’s all this money, all these coaches, but you’re on your own so much. In Park City living alone as a teenager? Especially someone as isolated as Lindsey.

So she falls into a relationship with Thomas Vonn and ends up marrying him and excises whatever friends she does have and then a few years later, when she grows up, she realizes it’s wrong and she’s got to get divorced. Lindsey says breakups are harder than any training or racing.

And you think she’s on the circuit, living it up as a bon viivant. But she didn’t party, she immediately started thinking about the next race. And then there’s the time she’s finished in St. Moritz, gets a bunch of Red Bull and drives six hours to her place in Austria. Alone. Pretty glamorous, right?

Meanwhile, with success comes the hate. People saying her advantage is her looks, that she wouldn’t get the publicity if she wasn’t beautiful. Constantly complaining about perceived advantages in racing she doesn’t have. You think by winning you’ll be accepted, but just the opposite is true!

And then she retires. And every book has to end on a high note. She meets Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary and decides she wants to be a venture capitalist and…

These things are harder than they look. If you can do ONE thing at a world class level in life you’re lucky. But Lindsey is all hunky-dory…I’d like to check in with her in a few years.

But therapy is helping her get through.

She’s pissed she doesn’t get the respect of men. But the men are too weak to seek help. She’s stunned when she finds out she’s depressed, she expected the doctor to say she was okay. And she’s been taking the pills and been in talk therapy off and on forever.

And you think winning fixes all your problems.

So it turns out Lindsey Vonn is an imperfect person. You don’t read “Rise” and want to go on a date with her, but you do start thinking about your own choices and dedication.

And the truth is almost all of the big wheels in individual sports and the arts are loners who have a hard time fitting in. They may want to, but they don’t have the skills. So they fake it, or beg off from social situations. And in truth, nobody in the world really cares about you, you’re fodder for the machine, there’s always somebody there to replace you, so you’ve got to fix your own problems. But first you have to acknowledge they exist.

So do I recommend “Rise” to everybody?

Well, not really. If you’re not a skier, you might not fully enjoy it.

But this is not a typical play by play sports autobiography. Not I did this and then that and aren’t I great. If you know Lindsey’s career, you also know how much is left out. Like her father not speaking to her after she marries Vonn. How Vonn sabotages her equipment in Aspen after she breaks up with him.

“Rise” is not a blow by blow, but a focus on the experience, the mind, what it takes, the challenges and the motivations.

And in truth, you can’t learn how to act, what to do from a book. Because everybody is different, you’re not the writer. But if you are an individual on their own path, seeing it, but feeling alone in the quest, I highly recommend “Rise.”

The coterie of people who make it to the top is very very small. And the average person has no idea what it takes to get there. NO IDEA! Even Lindsey herself, she thought she was training hard until she spent that summer in Monaco. And the sacrifice. And if someone’s boasting about how hard they’re working, how great they are, don’t believe them. Because the true world-beaters are internalized.

So you see Lindsey Vonn on TV, in the gossip online. And you may end up hating her, who does she think she is, beautiful, living the life of Riley. But after reading “Rise” you wouldn’t want her life, no way. In a tunnel of skiing for decades, one-minded in your pursuit, only to come out the other side with no education and not enough social skills.

Every life is hard. That’s the truth.

But if for whatever reason you dream big, have airy goals, you should read “Rise” to see what it takes. You truly have no idea.