OLD ACTS DIE

Don Henley is telling audiences at Eagles shows that this may be the last time they see the band. Whether this is true or not, so many of the legendary classic acts are in their seventies, and despite their plastic surgery nobody lives forever, and neither will they. This will put the nail in the coffin of rock and roll, just like the casket containing jazz was sealed over half a century ago. People will still play the music, but there will be very few rock hits.

PEOPLE WILL STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT STREAMING PAYMENTS

Yes, splits with record companies could be better, but the truth is there are only a hundred cents in the dollar. Once again, it’s the oldsters bitching loudest, and as they sail off into the sunset their cries will die with them. As for younger acts, they no longer see recording income as the end all and be all. When people talk about Drake or the Weeknd they don’t talk about the record deals they sign, or the amount of money they make from recordings, but their income overall, which comes from multiple revenue streams. Youngsters see that there are many ways to monetize today, that being a musical star is an entrée into a cornucopia of revenue opportunities. Their goal is to get enough traction, become a big enough star, to qualify for those opportunities. As for wannabes, they’ve always bitched and still will.

DEVELOPING LIVE ACTS

There’s nowhere to play. So more acts will make it from their bedrooms. Bands are passé. Nothing is universal these days, NOTHING. Meaning there will still be hard rock bands, the kind you hear on Active Rock radio, but people coming up will realize that first and foremost it’s about the track, Lil Nas X being the perfect example. Our entire nation has shifted inside, and it’s not only the pandemic that caused this. The local bar where a band can get started playing covers is nearly gone. Wanna make it? Write and record a hit song.

HIT SONGS

Are tracks that people know, not tracks pushed by the machine. Doesn’t matter if they’re on the radio, in advertisements, it’s just a matter of whether they’re hooky and special enough to penetrate the public consciousness. Sure, those in the top of the Spotify Top 50 can be hits, but not all of them are.

HYPE VS. REALITY

The gap between the two of them will continue to widen. The younger you are, the less susceptible to hype you are, well, at least if you’ve reached puberty. Today so many have grown up in a world where TV is on demand and doesn’t have commercials. They don’t read physical newspapers. Ads are something they tolerate online. But if you want to win in online advertising you must be gentle and truly fit the surfer’s specific needs. To experience this go on Instagram. Surf long enough and you’ll be seeing ads that make you think “this could help me”. As far as big marketing campaigns that shove things down our throat, not only are they less effective, they have the opposite effect, they turn people off.

E-SPORTS GROW

Football causes too many injuries that our nation ignores, at least many parents no longer let their kids play football…baseball is too slow and boring…hockey has never gained traction outside of Canada and Russia…basketball’s hipness seems to be fading, it will be played forever but its arc of popularity will be based on charismatic stars, then again, even these have less impact than ever before…it all comes down to E-sports: the action is fast, the barrier to entry is low, everybody plays them, anybody can make it. The point being if you want to promote an act, attach it to E-sports. Which is why concerts on Twitch are so big.

PRODUCTION IS KING

The bigger the show, the more the production. The bigger the show, the less it’s about music. This is the Broadwayification of the music business. If you’re going to charge this much for tickets, there must be spectacle, the audience must be wowed by what they see nearly as much as what they hear.

FESTIVALS WILL THRIVE

We’ve learned there can only be a limited number of them, but that does not mean they won’t grow in power and revenue. Ticket prices for festivals will go up and up. It’s like going to an amusement park, the roller coaster is what makes the reputation, but many attendees don’t even ride it. Many festivalgoers don’t even see the headliner, but it’s the headliner(s) that sells tickets. Festivals are a promoter’s dream, if successful, they’re uber-profitable. Therefore, headline prices will go up and up. Will headliners share in the gross? That will be argued, promoters will stick their heels in the ground, but just like acts with leverage get part of the Ticketmaster fee, they’ll want part of festival revenue, or festival OWNERSHIP! Especially if you want to start a new festival, those who help you gain traction will want a piece, especially if it’s not promoted by Live Nation or AEG, entities that can take the hit as the festival spends years trying to get in the black.

JOBS

Once it was cool to work at a record store, they no longer exist. Once it was cool to work at a record label, but they no longer divine culture, acts start elsewhere and the majors hoover them up. All the action is in the live sphere. Or on the internet. Online you can make your own destiny, and the younger generations know there is no lifetime employment and no one cares about them so they’re always trying to make a buck online, and traditional industry is behind them. It takes money to be a promoter, but not to be a label. Where you start with no money is online, breakthroughs in platforms, campaigns and acts will continue to thrive there. No one in the music industry saw TikTok coming.

COMPETITION SHOWS WILL EXIST BUT MEAN EVEN LESS

It’s about the panel, the competition, not the music. Which is one reason why music competition shows have only burgeoned on network, which has to cover the widest audience. No music competition show has worked on a streaming outlet, NONE! Because online it’s about the goods as opposed to the penumbra. When you slice and dice the audience, which is what happens in streaming, you’ve got to appeal to a narrow niche, and the truth is very few fans of any genre want to watch these shows, they’d rather just listen to the music. So the big paydays of celebrity judges will decline. Then again, if you’re a star you always have power, because you have REACH! To grow a substantial audience and gain market share is almost impossible these days, so those who break through will be rewarded.

HIT ACTS AND THEN EVERYBODY ELSE

The head of the tail, which will be populated by ever fewer acts, will be where all the rewards are, because of both talent and reach. But music will continue to be overloaded with wannabe acts, the barrier to entry is essentially nonexistent and music is part of the fabric of life. But streaming sites might ultimately put up barriers to getting on their platforms, 60,000 new tracks a day on Spotify is just too much. Then again, Spotify, et al, may realize the negative consequences of disallowing people from their platforms is just too great and just pay for the storage space like YouTube, believing it’s good for the business.

YOUTUBE MEANS LESS FOR MUSIC

People are now seeing a streaming music subscription as a necessity. Sure, YouTube Music gains subscribers, but it will never be a player, and so much of its base just wants videos without commercials. Also, YouTube’s ads may now be de rigueur, but they’ve increased in number, don’t appeal to the audience…it may be free, but it’s a bad experience. Every time I go on YouTube I’ve got to say whether I want to subscribe? Imagine your phone service asking you whether you want to upgrade whenever you make a phone call…or text!

PUBLISHING

The share of streaming revenue going to songwriters will rise. It’s artificially low because major labels also control publishers and they don’t care where the money comes from, as long as it comes. But now so many publishing assets are outside the major label sphere. With sophisticated investors/owners who want a return. This has popularized the plight of the songwriter. And when light shines on inequity, change happens. The U.K. government report said the problem wasn’t streaming service payouts, but label payouts/deals. And now the light is shining on publishing, there will be change. But if you are a songwriter…it’s about the hits. The days of having an album track pay your rent are history. So, like everything else in the system, a very few will make more money and everybody else will be on the sidelines. This is the story of the last twenty five years. All the tech companies are huge in value but have proportionately fewer workers than the old blue collar behemoths like General Motors. As the business continues to be refined it will require fewer workers, not more. But those who survive will be handsomely compensated.

CATALOG

Is what gives you power and revenue, which is why those who own it, like the major labels, will always have a seat at the table.

HITS

It always comes down to hits. And hit acts. That’s the future. Distribution has been figured out, now it’s all about software. If you’re bitching about the platform you’re either ancient or ignorant, or about to be displaced. There’s a dearth of hit songs, and a dearth of magnetic acts. Breakthroughs are always unforeseen, and in a world of billions, there is someone who is always doing it differently. For some, the trappings are more important than the music, the sell, the wow factor is key. But there will be acts that focus on music only, that won’t complain, whose credibility will be key to their adoption and success. Today everybody says yes, tomorrow’s paradigm shifters will have to say no sometimes. These acts will not be brewed, not hatched by the usual suspects, they will come from seemingly nowhere. But to be ubiquitous you need help. Certainly from concert promoters. Online, you can to a great degree do it yourself, but an injection of cash, from a major with relationships, does aid the ascension. If you want to be a star in the future, be different, and not only in marketing. It’s very hard to write a hit song, to make a great record, but that is the starting point, and the competition will get even more fierce. Talent and vision supersede boundaries and rules. Always have, always will.

Sales don’t matter.

Which is hard to believe in an era where seemingly every #1 is based on sales. You can no longer game the chart by giving away albums with tickets, so now there are these vinyl packages, most of which are souvenirs, many of which go unplayed, their owners don’t even have turntables, but that doesn’t mean the purveyors can’t sell them to go to #1 for a week, meaning you should never ever trust the “Billboard” chart…NEVER! Never mind that we’re even talking about sales in the streaming era. We live in an on demand culture, buy any movies on DVD lately?

And then comes today’s propaganda:

“4 versions of scathing anti-Biden rap ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ now in iTunes Top 10”: https://bit.ly/3pQmS8L

If you’re unaware of the “Brandon” phenomenon this article will explain it. Anyway, in a bit of right wing gamesmanship, the conservatives are doing their best to own the libs, even ramping up their publicity machine, with all of their bloviators on social media pushing the message, but…it doesn’t mean anything. Go to Spotify, “Let’s Go Brandon” is not in the Top 50, as a matter of fact it has almost no impact at all. As of this writing the track has a grand total of 565,434 streams on Spotify. #50 on the Spotify Top 50, “Freaks,” by Surf Curse, has 364,314 streams A DAY! As of this writing “Freaks” has 287,974,290 streams on Spotify. In other words, the right wing tried to own the libs and nobody noticed, it had no impact, other than in the echo chamber they reside in. You see today it’s not about sales, but CONSUMPTION!

This is a sea change the oldsters are still upset about and the wannabes are complaining about. It all comes down to how much people want to listen to your music. As for the iTunes Store, sales have been decreasing for years. So it’s no longer about a one time action, BUT A CONSISTENT BEHAVIOR!

Getting people to spend a buck at the iTunes Store is wholly different from getting them to spend hours listening to a song. And if you try to game Spotify by having a campaign of endless repeats of a song, the company’s data can pick up on this and quash it. So, creating a sustained fake hit is essentially impossible. No, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!

So that’s the music business. Completely transparent, you just look at the Spotify stream count, which usually exceeds the YouTube stream count, because music lives on Spotify, not YouTube…which is really for the incredibly young and the incredibly cheap, not to mention there’s a free, ad-supported tier on Spotify. YouTube is lousy for music, despite the company’s disinformation campaign saying otherwise.

But the music industry doesn’t like transparency, it’s their worst nightmare, so they employ smoke and mirrors to make you think something is a hit when it is not, and then hopefully there will be enough momentum that it actually will become a hit. Sometimes this works, but it’s nearly impossible for anybody but a major label to pull this off, you need money and relationships and commitment, and it doesn’t always work for the big boys either, then again their bottom line depends on tonnage, they’re not interested in a million plays, you’ve got to get about 100 million plays before they even begin to get interested!

As for the news/press… We can debate all day long whether Biden is doing a good job. Then again, there no longer is debate, just two major silos, on the left and the right, which barely intersect. And truth doesn’t even matter. So, if you want to use modern systems to make a difference, look at the end result, not the press story. Did your action truly move the needle, are people listening to the track? BTS fans signed up for tickets to Trump’s Oklahoma rally and changed the outcome, the Trump team thought there was huge demand, they even erected a secondary stage outside, but this wasn’t the case, most of the ticket requests were fake. End result, attendance was low and it looked bad for Trump and those truly paying attention learned that it was motivated youths online who moved the needle, and that demonstrated a new level of power, as opposed to running up some novelty track on iTunes.

If someone in the music business starts quoting iTunes numbers, laugh. They’re really stretching for a metric to make their case. And it gets even worse, someone will tell you their track/album is #1 on an obscure chart you’ve never even heard of, like Caribbean Children’s Music. That’s today, where there’s always a number to support your case, which means savvy people investigate and dig for the truth. But many people don’t really care about the truth, it’s all about team politics, winning. Which is why you’ll hear that vaccinated people are more contagious than the unvaxxed, I kid you not.

So what we’ve got here is a tug of war, between the oldsters and the youngsters, between people who want facts to stand and those who want to manipulate the facts to say something else. And if you’re just a casual consumer, surfing by, you might get a completely inaccurate picture of what is going on, especially in the era where it’s so hard to get people’s attention and deceptive, sensationalist headlines are employed.

The old want the game of the past to maintain. And they don’t understand the tools/methods the youngsters use to manipulate today’s game. We thought the internet would propagate truth, but just the opposite has happened. We have hard numbers in the streaming business, but no one wants to use them, because they’re immutable, they show whether people are listening to a song, and too many make excuses if people do not. “It’s only young people who stream.” “I made so much more money in the CD world”… I’m not saying the streaming world is perfect, but it’s the most accurate we’ve ever had. People bought albums and played them once. Now, in the on demand world, it comes down to whether people actually listen to your music. And in a world where you’re competing with the greatest hits of all time, never mind the hit records of today, that’s very hard to make happen.

Then again, the winners of today mean less than the winners of yesterday, their reach is less, there’s just too much in the marketplace.

Confused yet?

That’s exactly how they want you to be.

From the Baltimore docks to the Hollywood Bowl… Gina Schock is the drummer of the Go-Go’s, a songwriter for Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez and the author of a new photo book about her band. Tune in to hear how a woman with a passion for rock made it to the top.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gina-schock/id1316200737?i=1000539988981

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

DON’T BOTHER TRYING TO CHANGE SOMEBODY’S MIND

Read this article:

“Where Facts Were No Match for Fear – Civic boosters in central Montana hoped for some federal money to promote tourism. A disinformation campaign got in the way.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/us/politics/montana-misinformation-national-heritage.html

Then you’ll know it’s hopeless trying to convince people of the truth if they’re invested in falsehoods.

STOP COMPETING

I know, this sounds ridiculous, but today it’s all about the individual and their efforts. There used to be a totem pole, with many markers along the way: college, graduate school, job, spouse, money, children… The hierarchy has been completely blown apart, if you’re judging yourself based on other people’s opinions the joke is on you. There is no center, there is no pecking order, there’s just you and your own little life. The Spotify Top 50 doesn’t reflect music accurately nor does any other Top 10 or 50 list. And there are endless lists, endless rankings. Publications put out rankings believing that the public’s attention span is so short they won’t bother to read anything, whereas the truth is today it’s all about longform, streaming television taught us this, it’s all about bingeing. Those who won’t go deep are uninterested, forget them, don’t try to appeal to everybody, it’s impossible. Just appeal to those who like what you’re doing, there are enough of them to make a living, and chances are you can’t reach the rest of the world anyway.

DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO

This is so hard in a world that tells you to conform from day one, where they do their best to beat out the creativity and individuality of kids in school. It’s the nonconformists who change the world, not the sheep. And in the internet era you can align yourself with other nonconformists easily, it’s not like you’re living in the middle of nowhere as the only person of your persuasion and viewpoint yearning for connection, just go online, you’ll find your people, and that’s all that matters.

READ THE NEWS

This is how you keep up today. The news is the solidifying point of our society. And you don’t get news on television, you get talking heads, opinion, and maybe if there’s an accident there will be some footage. No, the news is in print. Whether it be in a physical newspaper or online. If you want to be truly informed subscribe to the “New York Times.” You don’t even have to read the Opinion pages if you’re of the right of center persuasion, although there are right wingers contained therein, like Ross Douthat. Every educated, intelligent person reads the “New York Times.” It’s the Bible at Fox, they may criticize it, but they get their info from it. DON’T get your news from secondary sources, like Facebook. Go straight to the heart of the matter, directly to the “Times” site. If you want more, subscribe to the “Washington Post.” And if you’ve got a business focus, subscribe to the “Wall Street Journal” (but beware of their right wing Opinion page, so biased it’s laughable). The “Times” is the best education you’ll ever get, better than college. You’ll be up to date, you’ll have a wide perspective. Invest in your future, read the “Times.”

EXPERTISE HAS INCREDIBLE VALUE

Funny in a world where Donald Trump says he loves the uneducated. It doesn’t have to be traditional book learning, you can be an expert in fly fishing, anything… The key is to find a subject that you just can’t get enough of, that you have a passion for. Information is free. You go down the rabbit hole online. And since you’re interested, you’ll start intersecting with others with the same interest and they will note the breadth of your knowledge and you will ultimately be rewarded. Here is where it’s important to know how to get along with people, that’s how you get ahead on the micro level. It’s fun to argue, but arguments are much less valuable than raw knowledge. In fact, if you have expertise you’ll find that you don’t even want to bother arguing with most people, they’re too uninformed. But if you’re with other experts, you can get into the nuances, where the excitement and the change is. There’s a bleeding edge in every vertical of life. You want to work your way to it. You can’t jump from zero to a hundred without doing the work in between.

FIND YOUR OWN PATH

The road well-traveled is heavily advertised. But thinking for yourself and going through the weeds is not. Why go where everybody else has traveled, the odds of you standing out are almost nil.

EVERYBODY’S AN ENTREPRENEUR

There is no lifetime employment, put your faith in your employer at your peril. You must not only navigate your own career, if you want to be truly happy you must strike out and forge your own way. First you must have confidence, based on knowledge. You must risk to get ahead, and if you’re not risking you’re falling behind. You’ve got to determine your own path. If someone says they’re bad with money, the joke is on them. You can learn about money online, there are a zillion resources. It’s everybody for themselves these days and you don’t want to be at the mercy of anybody else.

MONEY IS NOT THE ONLY MARKER

You want to have enough not to worry about it all the time, but the truth is happiness comes from career satisfaction and your family and friends. Period. Focus down, not up.

BEWARE OF THOSE GIVING BACK

I’m not talking about your local food bank, I’m talking on a bigger level, especially political people. They’re mostly doing it for THEMSELVES! To burnish THEIR image. Sure, they want to help the “little people” along the way, but they’re primary. Remember this.

YOU GOTTA ASK

Rejection feels so bad, but if you don’t ask you don’t get. You’d be surprised how many people will say yes who you’re convinced would say no. Then again, don’t knock at the door of the hospital asking to be a doctor if you dropped out of high school. But if you’ve got the qualifications… Same deal with love, but there are qualifications here too. If you want to date someone desirable, you must be desirable too. You could be good-looking, rich, smart, analytical, a good storyteller…or maybe you could be all of these things, then again if this was so you’d be hobbled by always being treated differently and won’t be able to deal with failure. If you want to date a better class of person, you’ve got to better yourself. That’s the way it is, it’s just true.

THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE

If you got a response…FOLLOW IT UP! People are busy, it’s not their job to do your work for you. But if they open the door a little, be sure to keep knocking. Persistence is key. As long as you’re not an annoyance. If you get no response, chances are the person doesn’t want to be bothered, maybe try to connect with them again, but if they continue to be silent, move on. Someone who rejects you out of the box won’t accept you until others do, until you’ve made a name for yourself. Rail against this all you want, but this is the way the landscape is. And nobody likes a pest.

DON’T BE A DILETTANTE AND EXPECT DIVIDENDS

If you want to be an online influencer, you must be posting all of the time, to the exclusion of everything else other than your job or school. You need to sacrifice so much. Hell, you need to sacrifice so much to be successful at any thing, and you’re lucky if you can make it in one vertical. If you’re not willing to sacrifice, if you want a little bit of everything, move away from the coasts and focus on lifestyle, because it’s going to be damn hard to get ahead.

FOCUS ON THE ESSENCE

Followers are secondary to content. Marketing is secondary to content. They teach how to market in school, but as far as creativity…the best seems to always come from outside of the educational system, because education is rote, within boundaries, and true leaders can’t be constricted. Your work speaks for you. It almost doesn’t even matter whether you market anymore. Your underlying product must be so damn good it sells itself. So anybody exposed to it wants more. If you’ve got to convince someone they want your artistic work, you’re already losing. But know, most people won’t like what you’re doing. But we live in a country of 330+ million and there are billions of people outside the U.S., there are plenty of people around to hook and make you if not rich, at least comfortable.

YOU CREATE YOUR OWN GAME

Sure, there’s a major label record business, but you can be just as successful and make more money OUTSIDE IT! And chances are they don’t want you anyway. Same deal with publishing and Hollywood. But you can write online and post videos on YouTube. Don’t rail against the system, use the tools for yourself, take advantage and get ahead.

DECIDE IF YOU’RE A MEMBER OF THE CLUB

Most entrepreneurs, most limit testers, are not. There’s a club in every industry, everybody knows everybody, it’s hard to penetrate and there are unwritten rules. If you don’t want to conform, stay out.

SOMEONE HAS GOT YOUR JOB

Yes, you could do the job better. But if you want it, being good enough is not enough. You’ve got to create your own base, establish your own business, and then you’ll oftentimes find you don’t want the job you thought you did to begin with.