Have you seen this video?

“We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral”: https://bit.ly/3Q8HZhk

Unfortunately it conflates monthly listeners with streams, and the difference is important. The bottom line is if you want to make money it’s the total number of streams, not the total number of monthly listeners. Each listener is unique, but the same listener can listen to a song one time, which is really only 30 seconds, or two hundred times.

I could go deeper, but in truth no one really cares, they just want to make it, get that big record company check, what they’re actually doing, the quality of the material… IRRELEVANT!

Now if you’re sophisticated, you really won’t learn anything in this video. It promises a lot, but ultimately it’s all known, assuming you’re in the game. However very few are in the game, and if you’re not you should check it out. But it costs 22 minutes. Which is an eternity in internet time. But it’s snazzily produced by Vox. But when you get to the end of it you’ll have a completely skewed vision of the music business. You’ll think it’s all about hatching TikTok stars, because all of the ink is on streaming payouts as opposed to overall income, and if you truly want to make bank in music you’ve got to have a career, and a viral video is only the first stepping stone, far from the cherry on top. In other words, you may have multiple millions of views on TikTok, but will anybody buy a ticket to see you play? Even more important, will they buy another ticket after they’ve seen you once and the novelty factor has worn off?

News comes from the bottom-up.

And this is sometimes scary.

If you’re paying attention to the story behind the story of Depp/Heard, you know it was not driven by mainstream media, but online influencers. Who did it for the bread. And the bread was in being pro-Depp, so all these sold-out video makers skewed their productions that way. And they didn’t only post once a day, but many times a day. They became mini-fan clubs. And the purveyors got momentary attention, will it sustain? Probably not. And just because you have one viral video online, that does not mean you can replicate the success, especially on TikTok, whose algorithm allows nobodies to score.

And one of the big questions proffered in this video is whether to take the record company bucks or go independent.

The truth is TikTok stars are almost never going to have any more success, so take the check. They’re doing the math of recoupment, of low royalty rates… Just take the check and try to give up as few rights for as little time as possible.

Of course there are exceptions, but if there weren’t there wouldn’t be any rules!

Bottom line, punters said that the internet would allow the square pegs that didn’t fit into round holes to flourish. In other words, there was tons of unsigned talent overlooked by the major labels and it would come out of the woodwork and…

It didn’t happen. Turns out the labels were doing a very good job of finding who deserved amplification of their musical efforts.

Which brings us back to the point that almost all of the viral TikTok hits are not about music, but COMMERCE! As are most of the Spotify Top 50 tracks, so they have that in common, which is contributing to the second class status of new music.

So, if you’re sitting at home, you’ve got the tools, seemingly everybody does, you can play the music industry game. Doesn’t require much musical talent, and the penumbra is important, i.e. how you look and how you move. Not that innovation is absent. This is something the TikTok creators have that the denizens of the Spotify Top 50 do not. Knowing that the music is not enough to sell them, they come up with wacky ideas to garner eyeballs. Train-wreck value. Innovation is key in popular music, but homogenization has creeped into the halls of the major labels. Don’t make it hard, make it easy. Just sell that which sounds like everything else that is successful. Don’t try and swim upstream, don’t try and do something new. Which means the mainstream is boring and the excitement is on TikTok so the labels are going there to find talent. It’s just that on TikTok the music is secondary, they’re selling video, stupid pet tricks. You can try to capture lightning in a bottle, but lightning disappears almost instantly.

Rather than develop acts which might sustain, the labels hoover up these nascent TikTok acts before they’re fully grown. And the truth is almost none of them will grow fully.

As for cover songs, do it right and you can blow up the original, but we already knew those were hits!

As for acts breaking in more traditional ways, via live performance and full recordings, the labels are tapped into that too, but here’s where you don’t want to take the check, if it’s even offered, which usually it is not. Because if you have an ongoing enterprise you don’t want that million dollars, you’ll be hobbling your future. You can monetize all day long sans cross-collateralization. And the truth is your fans spread the word, not traditional publicity. The major label can do little for you unless you make music in either hip-hop, pop or country. That’s right, the majors are ceding most of the music business. Not most of the RECORDED music business, but that percentage continues to decline. If you’re debating streaming remuneration you’re missing the point. Thank god everybody can hear all your music, unlike in the old days, it’s up to you to make it pay. The recordings are just the STARTING POINT!

So, TikTok is the new radio.

But terrestrial radio has been moribund for more than decade. The labels are chasing trends as opposed to birthing new ones. They’ve stripped those departments from their company, it costs too much money to find real talent and develop it, best to just skim the cream off the top of what rears its head online.

In other words, the labels are making beaucoup bucks while they’re killing their business. Thank god they have those gold-plated catalogs, because otherwise their numbers would look terrible.

So what this means is you’ve got to decide which side you’re on. Are you a stunt player, someone looking to get lucky, or a dedicated musician? Hell, a million dollars isn’t even that much anymore, and it’s the only time you’ll get paid. These viral hits have no legs, they’re not “American Pie,” paying dividends for decades thereafter.

But everybody believes the system is rigged against them and the game is too hard.

Welcome to the world. It’s not only record companies that have sacrificed costly research and development to keep their shareholders happy.

In other words, you’re on your own. You must build it yourself. Your VC fund is your parents. And/or your fans. It’s positively cottage industry. You just need enough money to make music and go on the road. Nothing more, you’re not entitled to make a living.

So it comes down to you.

And sure, you must find a way to nexus with potential fans. But you can’t let this nexus supersede the core elements, like the music itself and your ability to play. The goal is to get to the point where you don’t need any of the shenanigans, where the music sells itself, draws customers. But that’s a long, slow, hard process.

So you need to be aware of the TikTok game, you should know the entire landscape. But TikTok is the land of amateurs, on a lark. Or those with more business-savvy than musical talent.

There are no short cuts.

And nobody wants to hear this.

But you know if you have to continue.

And if you’re making no progress, don’t blame it on everybody else. First, are you in the game? If you never release your music no one can like it. Second, if a fan base for your tune doesn’t grow, you could be too far ahead of the game, or maybe your music just isn’t that interesting to most people and you should pivot or get out of the game or be happy where you are.

But one thing TikTok can teach us about is creative innovation. That’s what it’s based on, the entire service, people at home coming up with new ideas. And ideas are paramount, which is why all the money comes down to songwriting, which is damn hard to do. If you’re doing it just like everybody else you won’t go viral, no one is interested, but when you push the envelope, skew the vision a bit, and underpin it with desirable music, you’re on the road to success. But just beginning.

Heard from David Pogue recently?

Actually he’s still doing some TV work, I read his tweets, but if you’re under the age of 45, you’ve probably never heard of him. But he and Walt Mossberg were the kings of tech reporting…

Until Pogue left “The New York Times” for Yahoo Finance, for freedom and money.

Just like Nate Silver. You know, the numbers guru who called the election right for the “Times” and then decamped to follow his passion of not only politics, but sports, over at his own site FiveThirtyEight. They’ve got a staff of reporters over there, but I don’t trust a single one, they’ve got no CV. The last time anybody talked about Silver was when he got the 2016 election wrong and said he didn’t. Now nobody trusts pollsters.

So Kara Swisher made her bones over at “The Wall Street Journal.” She teamed with Mossberg to break stories and become the authoritative source on mainstream tech news. Pogue was the more entertaining writer, but he left for greener pastures and then…

So did the “Wall Street Journal” tech crew, not only Mossberg and Swisher, but Peter Kafka and more. They called their new site “Recode,” but as time passed it turned out all the good will remained with the “Journal,” whose conferences did better than Recode’s. And then Recode ended up as part of Vox and like that old Dave Edmunds song, Swisher crawled from the wreckage into a brand new car, in this case “The New York Times.”

She was the tech ace. Which is better than most of their new opinion writers. Headscratchers. Don’t promote people from within, find those from without, experts in the field. I don’t care what Farhad Manjoo has to say about anything other than tech, and I don’t care much about that either.

So then time goes by and Swisher’s purview is expanded. She appears in the paper more and gets her own podcast, “Sway.”

The number one difficulty of anybody in media today is reach, it’s the number one problem of anybody trying to spread the word. Increasing your audience? Nearly impossible. Train wrecks gain momentary attention, but people have even moved on from Uvalde, never mind Buffalo and Roe v. Wade. There’s so much in the channel, people are looking for fewer options, they want to be fed less information from trusted sources. And they want to live their lives outside the information sphere too.

So, you take yourself out of the game at your peril.

So, Swisher’s decamping back to Vox, where she has a podcast cohosted by Scott Galloway. The NYU Business Professor has made a fortune in tech investments, maybe now that she’s 60 Swisher wants some of that same money too. Look at Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, they’re all about the Benjamins. Their images? Certainly Phil’s is irretrievably trashed. You don’t want to overlook human rights, then again Biden is interfacing with the Saudis. And if you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, that’s just the point. The new Saudi tour is the talk of golf. I’m not sure most Americans even know who Khashoggi was, but those dealing with Saudi Arabia certainly do. You see it’s that hard to reach people, especially if they don’t care.

The “New York Times” is the king of subscriptions, far eclipsing the WSJ and WaPo. The “Times” has over 10 million subscribers, and the number, unlike Netflix’s, is growing prodigiously. Sure, some are for games and other verticals, but the cross-promotion opportunities? HUGE!

The “Times” was promoting “Sway” everywhere, trying to build a podcast portfolio beyond “The Daily.” And Swisher hit her stride on “Sway,” making it less about her and more about the guests.

But now that’s history.

Most people have no idea what Vox is. They don’t have it bookmarked.

And today being great is only part of the puzzle. Sure, word might spread, but very slowly… And Swisher is already 60, how much time does she want to invest in building?

And she’s got a conference with Galloway, but she had the imprimatur of the “Times,” with that gone, do we have another Recode situation on our hands? Fading conference numbers, to the point the whole enterprise goes down the drain?

Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh?

That’s right, why should this night be different from any other night?

There are ever fewer tech titans, the FAANG companies. Yes, you can try and push that rock up the hill, but good luck, if you achieve anything the big companies will compete with you, doggedly, they’ll do their best to undercut you and steal your audience or just buy you. But the irony is that the “Times” already “bought” Swisher.

The devil is in the details. Maybe the “Times” deal was too constricting. Maybe Swisher has personal issues. Who knows. But on the surface, this appears to be a dumb deed. Akin to Ben Smith ankling the Gray Lady for his new news enterprise…SEMAFOR? That’s what it will be like, waving flags, trying to get people’s attention.

Let me see, Al Jazeera couldn’t make it in the U.S.

But that’s TV.

Heard of Grid? Most people haven’t, it’s a recent news startup.

BuzzFeed News, where Smith made his bones? The stock and whatever gravitas BuzzFeed might have had has been fading into irrelevance, just like the HuffPo. Stunting only takes you so far, you can’t read BuzzFeed for all the detritus. Smith finally gains traction, has his head above water, but he enters a sphere everybody else is in, never mind Axios and Politico, and expects to win? Hell, Ezra Klein STARTED Vox and decamped for the “Times” after realizing he wasn’t reaching as many people as he had at the WaPo previously. He woke up and smelled the coffee. Maybe because he worked at the “Post” first, and saw how much he lost. Whereas those who haven’t lost don’t see how far they can fall. Then again, Swisher did see what happened with Recode.

Sasha Frere-Jones left “The New Yorker” for Genius.com, and then got there and realized there was no there there, that all the promises were going to go unfulfilled, turns out Genius is just a lyrics site, no more.

Swisher shouldn’t have given up her power base, she should have stayed at the “Times.”

Why are journalists so dumb when it comes to their own business?

In song titles and lyrics.

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

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

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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It’s very well-established. You take your time to record an album and you keep it alive on terrestrial radio. In the best of circumstances you dribble out track after track, keeping the album alive for years.

But that was then and this is now.

The “Billboard” chart has become irrelevant. It’s completely manipulated. Want to go number one? Sell vinyl. The real action is in streaming, but the chart includes sales, which are de minimis, to the point where the chart is completely untrustworthy.

So who is the chart for?

The industry itself.

Yet it is publicized in media every week!

But this is the media consumed by oldsters, not youngsters, the active music streaming/buying audience.

And insiders know the chart is a joke, you can brag to your client you made them number one, but everybody on the business side is snickering.

But that’s the least of the industry’s problems.

Today you can make an album and it can be gone in a week. I don’t care how much publicity you’ve garnered, makes no difference. The active fan base buys it, and then what? Crickets. Maybe you can go on the road and sell some to concertgoers, but at this point tickets are so expensive that no act dares go on the road and not play their hits. The idea of playing most of the new album is kaput.

So it’s like the album never came out. You can see it in Discogs, but the fact of its existence is greater than the music itself.

Meanwhile, major labels keep pursuing terrestrial radio, which means less than ever before, which the younger generation does not listen to. The old paradigm is you go where the most people are, but if that mass is declining, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means, you’re missing most of the audience.

So if you have Spotify Top 50 music, it’s easier. It can be seen and heard there, as part of a playlist if nothing else. But if you don’t make it to the list, or if you don’t qualify for the list, not making hip-hop or pop, then what?

Oh, that’s right, you want to get on a playlist. Sure, some passive listener might hear your song and save it, but the business is based on active listeners, ever heard of the 90/10 rule?

And then the whole paradigm is disrupted by TikTok. Disruption always happens, especially when you’re asleep at the wheel. Turns out watching the hoi polloi is more interesting than watching dressed-up, media-trained bozos on YouTube. (As for the YouTube music subscription numbers, don’t believe them, an incredible percentage are just paying to get rid of the interminable video ads.)

So the major labels try and control TikTok. But this is playing from the rear as opposed to the front. And the truth is most acts make music that isn’t TikTok friendly. If it’s long and slow, forget about it.

What about that music?

The majors don’t sign it.

So, the majors are losing control of new music production. The story isn’t how TikTok stars can go forward without a label, but how the major labels don’t want to sign most music, and acts making these tunes are forced to go it alone.

As for the big TikTok acts going independent… Almost none of them can resist the huge check, the better deals the majors will proffer just to keep product in their system, and influencer culture is ridden with overnight successes who turn into nothings almost as fast. Make it in music as a social media star? Sure, there are examples, but there are exceptions to every rule.

And the music business continues to detach itself from the public.

I was watching this Netflix comedy special last night, Jeff Ross and Dave Attell looked like they’d just stumbled out for a pack of cigarettes. Bill Burr was wearing his Nikes. This is why you used to want to be a rock star, to break cultural norms, to do it your own way. Now all the stars and wannabe stars have stylists, want to break into the world of fashion, do you think this resonates with the average person on the street? No, for them it’s about the music first and foremost. You shouldn’t need clothing or production to sell it.

And I think it was Jeff Ross who said he lost his sense of taste during Covid. Yes, he bought tickets to a Dave Matthews show! I’m laughing just writing this. Irreverence, it used to be a hallmark of rock music. But the dimwits coddled by the industry can’t even make a joke, never mind take one.

Is the above depressing?

Of course!

But when things are in the doldrums, that’s when disruption occurs. People who think outside the box triumph.

Want to think outside the box?

Fire your lead singer who has got a mediocre voice, I don’t care that he wrote the lyrics, find someone who can sing, who the audience wants to hear.

Write one song so good that it goes viral. That should be your goal, to write individual great songs, forget the album, unless you’re one of those Patreonites bragging that you’re making money selling to an ever-dwindling number of hard core fans. Patreon is not the game, it’s a paper route.

Yes, it’s a hits business. It’s always been a hits business.

Or forget the recordings all together. Make it about the live show. But then it’s got to be different every time you come through, if not every night, and it’s got to be spectacular.

No one wants to hear the above, because that would mean they have to change their thinking. Not do it the typical way. Raise money, book a studio, record an album, pay people to promote it…straight to the dumper.

And it would mean you’d have to reach higher, stop letting others tell you how great you are and measure yourself against…

The Beatles.

That’s right, you’re competing against them every day, they’re right there next to you online, and Paul McCartney is even on the road, hoovering up dollars, that could have gone to you.

In addition to that great voice, maybe you want songs with changes, bridges… Worked for Paul!

Not that that’s the only way to break in. But if you don’t do it the traditional way, you’ve got to be even better than the rest, to bring people to you.

I’d say it can’t go on this way, but it has for over a decade, getting worse and worse.

And what has changed?

ALMOST NOTHING!