Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3a750NU

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3mvHgZk

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I’m immune to the hype.

Last week Bruce Springsteen interviewed Steve Van Zandt on pay-per-view: https://vanzandt.unisonevents.com/index.html I was unaware of it until the publicity person tracked me down. Bottom line, it was hype for the book, you got a signed book along with the video for $45, unsigned book and video for $35. A brilliant way to sell books. Assuming you knew about it. In the pre-internet era if Bruce Springsteen was going to be on TV it was big news, you tuned in, now his work is just part of the endless sea of product floating by us 24/7.

But I watched the video. SPRINGSTEEN WAS FANTASTIC! I’ve been down on Bruce, playing the humble elder statesman, but here he was completely relaxed, cracking jokes, it was like hanging with him at the kitchen table after dinner, opining on many subjects, reviewing history. Unfortunately, Van Zandt had a bit of stage fright, it took him a while to warm up. But Little Steven was better on Bill Maher, he’s been everywhere. Hoping you become aware, but then you’ve got to buy the book, and most people won’t, which is why we’ve become immune to the hype, even if we’re aware we don’t want to buy, the product is only for the hard core, why are you bugging us?

Nor was I interested in hearing Coldplay on Howard Stern. Funny how Chris Martin is the one who emerged with the gravitas, not his constantly in the news ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow, but Coldplay peaked back in 2002 with “A Rush of Blood to the Head.” Thereafter Martin has become lighter, and if you’re serious you can’t possibly be interested, the band’s projects are only for the hard core, which is larger than the hard core of all the new bands, because Coldplay broke and matured under the old system, when TV and terrestrial radio were dominant, that paradigm has completely expired.

So I’m reading today’s “Billboard Bulletin,” and the headline is “Coldplay & BTS’ ‘My Universe’ Blasts Off at No.1 on Billboard Hot 100.” Not surprising to me, anything with BTS involved is gonna make an impact, talk about fans, BTS has an army. So I decided to check out the play count, and on Spotify it was 60,593,807, which means the track’s success is not a manipulation, like so much on the chart, people are actually listening to “My Universe” and liking it.

Just for the record, the expensive video only has 41,979,120 views, proving that it’s what goes in the ears that matters today, the video game is no longer paramount, as for YouTube’s subscription numbers, I don’t believe them, the devil is in the details, I’m thinking a lot of people subscribed just to get rid of the ever more invasive commercials, and there have got to be a ton of trials, after all YouTube is imploring us to subscribe constantly. Bottom line, music does not live on YouTube, it’s not what the audience wants.

So with 60 million streams, I decide to play “My Universe,” and I can see why it’s a hit. It’s light, as I referenced above, it’s close to meaningless, but it’s what charts today.

So I’m scanning the “Billboard Bulletin.” You can’t read “Billboard,” what a joke. I now have a free subscription via Apple News+, I thought this was a benefit, but it’s unreadable, it’s all lowbrow consumer focused news, if you’re reading this rag to know what’s going on in the music business, god help you. The “Bulletin” is reciting endless statistics, pages of them, these labels know how to hype their vapid product, it’s a self-serving circle jerk, if you read every word you’re involved, it’s about as interesting as reading a book’s index. But as I’m scrolling I see “My Universe” was cowritten and coproduced by MAX MARTIN!

That’s right, a fifty year old from Sweden is the most powerful person in music, on the creative side, where the goods are baked. Everybody else has their era and then they’re done, this guy is coming up on twenty five consistent years of hits, THAT’S REMARKABLE! They should cancel the Grammys and just give all the statuettes to Max (except for the ones that go to Morgan Wallen), because he represents the zeitgeist of the music business.

About a year ago the buzz was how “Blinding Lights” was absent from the big Grammy nominations. The brand name might have been Weeknd, but the true star was Max Martin.

Max crossed Taylor Swift from country to pop. You buy insurance, just like Coldplay here.

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It started with “…Baby One More Time,” no “…Baby One More Time,” no Britney Spears, nothing she did thereafter was even in the league of “…Baby One More Time.” This was 1998, the era of dialup, music online was not a big thing, you had to buy it to hear it, and I did, I had to hear this track, talk about a hit, whew!!! “My Universe” is not even close.

Nor is it close to “I Want It That Way,” the Backstreet Boys’ gigantic hit from 1999. I bought that album too, “Millennium.” Those are the only two boy band/tween albums I ever purchased, and I must tell you “Millennium” is great! It starts off with a rock track better than anybody functioning during that era. You see those are Max’s roots, hard rock, before it lost all its melody and became a niche product. When if it was loud and in-your-face, sung at the top of your lungs, it could still be considered rock. I know the musos, the boomers, pooh-pooh stuff like this, but the joke is on them, they don’t know what they’re missing. “Larger Than Life” is what is absent from the rock world, if bands today listened  to “Larger Than Life” first maybe rock would still matter. Then again, there’s no one in the rock sphere as talented as Max Martin.

Max helped build and sustain Katy Perry.

Max has 60 Top Ten singles, SIXTY!!!

Max has 25 number one singles, TWENTY FIVE! Six of these debuted atop the chart!

And the charts don’t mean what they used to, nowhere close, but these are still significant achievements, he’s now tied with George Martin for having produced the most number ones ever, and George Martin had the benefit of working with THE BEATLES!

And you could say Max doesn’t always work solo. But isn’t it funny how he continues to have hits when the acts themselves, the other writers they use, do not.

Max manages to stay young, hip, on track, with it without looking bogus like so many on the business side of the equation.

AND HE DOES NO PUBLICITY!

The execs have flacks, but not Max. If you know Max it’s only because you’ve read the credits, have gone deep into the weeds. And Max sustains when seemingly nobody else does, the big acts he’s worked with are now doing Vegas residencies, he’s still in the studio creating hits!

And Max does it how everybody else no longer does. Melody is a key element. While all the delusional wankers are sitting at home making beats, Max is the one creating lasting hits. Max knows it’s more than rhythm. Max also knows it’s about sounds, listen to that piano intro on “…Baby One More Time,” never mind the effect on Britney’s vocal. And you wonder why your project gets no traction, try comparing it to Max’s, you’re playing in the bush leagues and he’s WORLD CLASS!

All the things other acts overlook, Max does not. First and foremost the song, then the instrumentation and then the SINGER! Come on, if you’re not a great singer let someone else be the front person. Sure, Bob Dylan doesn’t have the world’s greatest voice, BUT HE’S BOB DYLAN! And you’re not!

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Now at this point, Max Martin’s story is well known. He went to music school in Sweden, where they’ve got that dreaded SOCIALISM, which still provides arts in the educational system. Meanwhile, we’re starving the system in America, teachers don’t even have paper, never mind saxophones.

Then Max paid his dues FOR YEARS!

In America we’re supposed to be interested in the work of the barely pubescent. And there’s a canard that if you’re over 30, you’re on the scrapheap. Max is 50!

This guy is breaking all the rules and winning. He’s the antithesis of the American music business. Doing it the opposite of the way everybody else is.

As for working with collaborators, since Max is not an act, he lets everybody else participate in the riches, let them have a writing credit, let them be coproducers, better to be part of a hit than a stiff. And Max has so many hits…good luck getting him to work on your project.

Do you know how many tickets Coldplay is gonna sell on the back of Max Martin? There’s so much money involved, it’s staggering. And it’s all down to one track.

And these songs are not written and produced overnight, that’s not the route Max rides on, he’s not Neil Young, Max is not trying to make art, he’s making music for the machine, because he knows how hard it is to get any attention at all these days. You know what I want to see? Max Martin and Bruce Springsteen. Bruce knows melody, he’s just lost touch with what is a hit, and Max knows that through and through. When you’ve lost your way you’ve got to get outside advice, like Coldplay.

This is positively remarkable. This guy is consistently involved in the biggest hits in the world, year after year after year. And if you listen to “My Universe” three times it will resonate, you’ll feel good when you hear it in the background at the skating rink, while you’re shopping. That’s what music is today, something to hear while you’re doing something else.

Not that I doubt Max could do more, create art, but he’s changed with the times when so many others refuse to.

Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake…Max has had number one hits WITH ALL OF THEM!

This is the world we now live in, music is a producer’s medium, the artists are just faces, all the work is done behind the scenes, it’s just like the early sixties, just like “The Idolmaker.” I lament this, but it won’t be forever. We’ll never get a new Beatles, but we’ll get something! And I’d be surprised if Max Martin doesn’t end up working in the new world too, because the real talent is HIM! Max Martin should get a Kennedy Center award, Max should be teaching, his methods are much better than those at all the “music” schools, like Berklee. This guy has the music in him. He’s beaten America at its own game, and he’s not the only one, it’s just that Max’s focus is music, we’ve got no nukes to take him down, no tax policy, because music just can’t be denied, and it starts with Max Martin!

Albums where the second side is better than the first side.

Tune in tomorrow, October 5th, 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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Now that’s a rock star.

You remember rock stars, don’t you? Probably not if you’re a millennial or younger. Rock stars were musicians who channeled the truth, who stood up to corporations and bad behavior around the world. They were explicit, not complicit. And they and their messages were so powerful that money rained down upon them.

But it hasn’t been that way for a very long time.

First we had MTV. Which soon made looks more important than the music. Good luck getting signed if you weren’t beautiful. They had whole teams of people to help write your songs, to groom you, because there was big money at stake, and the executives wanted it. That big money was based on technology, i.e. the CD, which sold for two times viny and cassettes, yet to “help the format” artists halved their royalties, with promises they would be raised once the CD got traction, and this never happened. It was a game, the major labels, MTV, radio and print media were in cahoots. They built beautiful stars, who became more and more vapid.

And then came the internet. The paradigm was blown apart. But within the last decade a new order has been established, akin to the old one, but this time on steroids. Now the major labels sign very few acts, and don’t release any music from said acts until they’re sure they’re going to be hits. Furthermore, they have untold power at the streaming services, because they provide the lion’s share of their product, not only new music, but catalog, which represents in excess of 50% of streaming by everybody’s calculation. So every major label priority gets priority at the streaming service. It’s put on banners, it’s put on playlists, it’s given a chance. Good luck with your indie record. And as was proven in the movie business over the last forty-odd years, if you don’t have a library/catalog you can’t pay the bills, you end up selling or going out of business, because it’s the already paid-for assets that generate reliable income at essentially no cost while you do your best to make new hits. And now it’s even easier, it used to be impossible to get all your catalog in the retail store, you’d be lucky to get a greatest hits package, but today every one of the label’s owned songs appears on streaming services, and a lot of the past is better than what we’ve got today, but no one on the inside will say so. And don’t expect a whistleblower in the music business, where loyalty is everything.

So “The Wall Street Journal” did a series on Facebook based on documents received from a whistleblower. But not only were the lengthy, detailed articles behind a paywall, they were in print, and most people don’t read, at least not beyond the headlines and captions on news or social media sites. It was big news amongst the intelligentsia, but that leaves out most Americans. But today the whistleblower went on “60 Minutes”: 

https://cbsn.ws/3l7Z4KY

It’s less than fifteen minutes, you can afford the time, and it’s fascinating.

First and foremost Ms. Haugen. She’s a 37 year old woman. She’s the antithesis of Elizabeth Holmes. She’s the antithesis of today’s social media influencers, the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian paradigm, where it’s only the exterior that counts and money trumps everything. Haugen went to the not even 25 year old Olin College, an engineering specialty school, and ultimately got an MBA at Harvard. Should you listen to the uneducated nitwit in your neighborhood or Ms. Haugen? It’s no contest.

“Ms. Haugen was initially asked to build tools to study the potentially malicious targeting of information at specific communities.”

That’s from the one hour old “Wall Street Journal” article on Frances Haugen, now that she’s revealed herself, they’re detailing her history. You can read about it here:

“The Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen, Says She Wants to Fix the Company, Not Harm It – The former Facebook employee says her goal is to help prompt change at the social-media giant”: https://on.wsj.com/3oCEynw

But that’s behind a paywall. It took twenty five years, but that’s where the internet is going, I point you to this article centered around Patreon in “Bloomberg Businessweek”: 

“Patreon Battles for Creators by Investing in Original Content – Ahead of a potential IPO, the $4 billion startup is transforming itself as competition from tech giants intensifies”: https://bloom.bg/3D8hEIN

It used to just be Patreon. Then came Substack. Now all the usual suspect platforms want to be gateways for content provided by citizens that sits behind paywalls so the creators can get paid. So what we’ll end up with is a bunch of niche creative providers, forget whether they get paid or not, who will reach tiny slivers of the public as the big outlets get bigger, then again will the big outlets gain dominance? This is still up in the air. Sure, the “New York Times” has just under 10 million subscribers, but we live in a country of 330 million, and those subscribers aren’t all Americans. Ditto music, the big acts might be bigger than the indies, but in the aggregate, the indies are quite large. Never mind that there’s only so much money to go around. Everybody wants to get paid, they’re sick of giving it away for free, they’re going behind paywalls. And if you don’t pay, soon you’ll be in the dark.

But not on Facebook or Instagram, because there you’re paying with your attention, the time you’re logged-on, during which they can serve you advertising.

That’s right, Facebook changed the algorithm a couple of years back such that content that delivered a reaction was favored. Because you’d interact with said content and you’d stay on longer, it was a win for Facebook, but a loss for society.

Haugen says that Facebook turned on safety systems before the 2020 election, but once the contest was over, they turned them off, end result being the 1/6 insurrection.

That’s what everybody was saying on Workplace, the Facebook intranet where everything was available to everybody.

So Haugen wanted to move to Puerto Rico. Facebook said she couldn’t work there. So Haugen decided to quit. But during the month she transferred her projects to new people, she downloaded as much information as she could from Workplace. She was stunned what she could see and she was stunned that no one saw her looking, especially in areas outside her purview. Bottom line, Facebook commissioned internal studies that detailed over and over again the negative effects of the service. Instagram’s negative influence on teenage girls. The trade of drugs and human beings in plain sight. How people who posted frequently or were famous were whitelisted and could say anything with impunity.

And then she contacted the SEC and provided this information to “The Wall Street Journal.”

Now what happens?

Well, even Haugen says that breaking up Facebook wouldn’t work. She says there must be governmental regulations because the company prioritizes profits over safety.

But it’s worse than that. Facebook is not a manufacturer of physical goods. Half of the world is on Facebook, and the bottom line is the service is now out of the control of the company. As bad as it is in America, it’s a free-for-all in most countries. And, once again, it’s Europe cracking down on the service, saying it’s interfering with government, not the U.S.

“a betrayal of democracy.”

That’s what Haugen says about Facebook turning off its restrictions after the election. And democracy does hang in the balance. It’s been three and a half years since the Cambridge Analytica story broke, but now the anti-Facebook movement is gaining momentum.

But don’t expect Workplace to be available to all Facebook employees in the future, they’re gonna close that loophole posthaste, never mind already shutting down internal operations that deliver information the brass doesn’t want to hear. If you don’t hear it, it doesn’t exist, right?

Wrong!

But you knew that.

But you also thought the power resided in the public. Like yesterday’s inane anti-abortion/women’s rights marches. I sympathize with the sentiment, but not the method. We marched all the way through Trump’s term, did it make a difference? Of course not. It’s the twenty first century, not the twentieth. Battles are fought online. That’s where you make your statements and organize, a person behind a computer is much more powerful than a person at an evanescent rally.

But really, we need the big players, the government, the investors to get involved or no change happens. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not. That’s what voting rights are all about. At least you get a say in theory, but if the rules make it too hard for many to vote, and a partisan legislature is in charge of the results, irrelevant of the public’s will, look out.

This is what is happening right now.

And what is everybody doing?

Looking to make a buck for themselves. Everybody’s deep in their hole, trying to elbow out others to get ahead. They’ve got contempt for others, there is no common good. That’s what “Squid Game,” the most popular show in the world, is all about. It’s not a revelation, it’s reality. People will do anything to survive, to keep the world running how they want it to.

Meanwhile, people are addicted to social media. At least there are alternatives to Amazon, but no boycott of the operation has ever worked. But California has instituted warehouse workplace rules targeting Amazon. Good luck working in another state. Where odds are you’re going to get hurt, with repetitive stress injuries if nothing else. Oh, Amazon provides aspirin and band-aids, but the truth is you’re just a cog in the system, disposable, while the company and Wall Street make ever more money. That’s another message of “Squid Game.”

So one individual has already had a huge impact. What are the odds other major tech companies will be reaching out to hire her? NADA! She’s white hot, untouchable, let’s hope she gets a big whistleblower settlement, but even if she does, that takes years.

Meanwhile, our nation, our world, is being run by a college dropout with tunnel vision. And his number two is leaning into him, not the public at large, screw the public, it’s all about money, isn’t that the essence of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos?

But there’s a lot more truth in “Squid Game” than any of today’s music. And the goal of “musicians” today is to sell out to the corporation, or become a corporation, to sell crap to brain dead listeners. That’s to be lauded?

No, Frances Haugen is to be lauded. She will be remembered, the Spotify Top 50 will not. Because Haugen did something important, took a stand, risking her career, her future. Who else is doing this?

And if this were the pre-internet era, this “60 Minutes” story would be known by essentially every citizen, if they didn’t see it, they’d hear about it, but “60 Minutes” no longer has that kind of reach, nothing on network TV does anymore. Then again, Facebook hate knows no political boundaries, it can appeal to both right and left.

But not really.

Did you see that YouTube shut out anti-vaxxers? Trump wants back on Twitter. Trump had more reach than anybody in the world, now it’s been scaled back, but he’s already convinced his troops that Democrats are socialists who will ruin society and they must fight to protect their way of life, however bogus it might be. That’s what 1/6 was about. And the word was spread on Facebook. And despite all the doublespeak of Nick Clegg and the rest of the Facebook press team, we know it’s true.

In reality, Mark Zuckerberg needs to lose his job. He can keep his money, but he can’t have his hands on the steering wheel of Facebook anymore. But that would require the board to have balls, which it doesn’t possess. Unlike Uber, where Travis Kalanick was exiled for bad behavior, Facebook throws off a ton of money, and since profits are everything, there is no change unless the government insists. But you can’t get agreement on anything in D.C. And not only is there no longer any trust in Congress, there’s no trust in the Supreme Court. And Ted Cruz is single-handedly holding up the appointment of 59 ambassadors, how does that help us exactly? https://nyti.ms/3Abb5Ds

But welcome to the modern world.

Where what happens online supersedes everything else. And it happens so fast that elected officials cannot keep up with it. And the internet itself is fluid, so you end up playing a game of Whac-A-Mole.

Meanwhile, China is clamping down.

But Evergrande has revealed the country’s economic underpinnings are shaky. But Xi is trying to minimize the bad influences of the internet, he’s trying to tamp down celebrity culture, he’s trying to return China to the past, and ultimately that will never work. What did the Rascals say? “People everywhere just want to be free”?

But things have to get really bad before they react.

They’re really bad at Facebook. This is the first shoe dropping.

What’s next? 

Mandates work.

That’s the story this week. Fewer than 1% of United Airlines employees refused to get vaccinated when told they needed to get the jab to keep their jobs. That’s right, out of 67,000 employees, only 593 refused to get the shot. Two months ago, only 70% of the airline’s employees were vaccinated, now only 1% are not.

But it’s not only United. Tyson Foods reported that 91% of its employees are now vaccinated, and the deadline has not yet arrived. As for the New York health system, it went from 75% to 92% today. Many individual hospitals are even higher. St. Barnabas in the Bronx went from 80% to 97%. Mohawk Valley went from 70% to 95.6%. https://wapo.st/3uyvp0p

What drove the increase? Economics!

“Of Vaccine Mandates and Facing Reality”: https://nyti.ms/2Yo3a8V

“The point is that most vaccine resistance isn’t about deep concerns, but it often involves assertions of the right to give (misguided perceptions of) self-interest priority over the public interest. So, luckily, many resisters fold as soon as the calculus of self-interest reverses, and refusing to take their shots has immediate, tangible financial costs.”

Turns out when it comes to money, people will bite the bullet, get the shot. You read about people sacrificing their jobs, but they’re a distinct minority.

As for the mentality of the true believers, you must read this article in “Vox”: 

“Why people who don’t trust vaccines are embracing unproven drugs – Inside the upside-down world where Covid-19 vaccines are dangerous and ivermectin is saving lives”: https://bit.ly/3FfVaay

“‘People listen to people “from their group” and whom they think they can trust,’ David Dunning, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, told me. ‘People really don’t know what science is, and so do you feel you can trust the person giving you advice, rather than appraising their expertise, becomes the thing.'”

It’s about cults. You always twist the facts to support your position. The doomsday cult waits for the world to end, and then when it doesn’t they’re joyous, because of their belief the rest of the world was saved!

“In communities of hardened vaccine skeptics, new information isn’t necessarily treated as an opportunity to reassess their beliefs. Instead, new facts are seen either as affirmation of what this community already believes or as a distraction that should be dismissed because it doesn’t neatly sort into their anti-vaccine narrative.”

And:

“That theory holds that, within the American right, the concepts of loyalty and betrayal are more influential to their worldview than on the American left. Staying true to your group is a powerful pull for conservatives.

‘For these folks, facts mean nothing; membership and identity, everything,’ Bernstein said over email. ‘Groupishness, in-/out-group differentiation … is much stronger on the right.'”

In other words, there’s no chance of convincing these hard core deniers with logic, it just won’t work, they’re invested in their position, facts don’t matter.

But money does.

As does the ability to function in a society. If you make life hard enough, people will get the shot. You can’t smoke in a theatre, in almost any public place, and you shouldn’t be allowed inside one if you’re not vaccinated. Turns out most people want vaccine mandates, it’s just that politicians lack the will.

And then we have the strange case of California…

The Republicans thought they would dethrone Newsom and turn the Golden State into a Covid-19 free-for-all like Florida or Texas. But their efforts resulted in a debacle, Newsom won almost three-quarters of the vote. And thus emboldened, he declared that all students must be vaccinated. Elections have consequences, the people spoke and it turns out the Republicans are in an even worse position in California, whose inoculation rate is so high and Covid prevention laws so tough that the state’s infection and death rate are consistently amongst the lowest in the nation.

We need more politicians to do what is right as opposed to what is wrong because they’re afraid of a minority of their constituents.

We need more vaccine mandates.

We need to make life so hard for the unvaccinated that they decide to get the shot to their benefit.

Mandates work, we need more!