Tune in today, June 22nd, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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The music business has changed dramatically and no one will admit it.

I was stretching last night, one of the world’s most boring activities, so while I was doing so I was reading the Apple News on my phone and came across this article:

“Why hit songs suddenly matter more than the stars that sing them – The pop star versus the playlist – Streaming services’ playlists make it easier for listeners to find music worth playing. But experts say they’re also breaking fans’ relationships with artists.”

Unfortunately, this article is part of Vox’s “The Highlight,” an entry in the magazine’s new “Gate Keepers” issue on Apple News+, and unless you’re on a Mac paying $9.99 for the service, you can’t read it, which means it might as well not exist. That’s the power of paywalls, they stop you before you get started.

Anyway, the article clearly states that TikTok hits…can almost never be repeated. You can have a track hiding in plain sight, that’s a relative stiff, and then it can be picked up by TikTok creators and you make bank and think you’re a star but the truth is you’re a one hit wonder. Bottom line, people are fans of the track, not its creator. Extended bottom line…it’s nearly impossible to build a career these days.

Now one phenomenon of the MTV era was that if the video service shot you to the moon, you fell back to earth almost as fast. Or maybe you had a few hits and then you fell back to earth. This was the opposite of the seventies ethos, where it was all about the slow build. Today’s paradigm, where someone comes out of the gate and triumphs, even plays arenas on their first tour, that did not exist back in the seventies. Of course there were exceptions, but the exceptions were of such quality that they were undeniable. Like Elton John, who’d paid umpteen dues before his breakthrough, and Tom Scholz’s Boston. The debut Boston LP was so good, people started to hate it in principle, called it corporate rock, but the album is as fresh today as it was back then, and just as playable and still played.

Today, if you have a hit at all, it’s probably luck. And you won’t have one again.

Today’s “Washington Post” has this article: 

“The TV hit isn’t just dying — it may already be dead – Astute observers of television say that the idea of a unifying show on even a modest scale is gone. In its wake are a hundred Twitter niches — and a dangerous lack of common culture”: https://wapo.st/3xNCeM5

Bottom line…the vaunted “Mare of Easttown,” which felt like it was talked about everywhere? Only four million people watched the finale.

And there’s been an evolution, or a devolution, in viewers in just the past few years. Five years ago an episode of the “Walking Dead” had 17 million viewers. Two years ago the “Game of Thrones” finale had 20 million viewers. But that was before streaming truly took hold, before the launch of Disney+ and AppleTV+, never mind the continued inroads of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

So there are no water cooler moments. NONE! Not enough people are watching! If you read the press, these shows are phenomena, but in truth they are not!

Just like today’s so-called hit acts.

Why tune into the Grammys if you’re unaware of the music? Sure, we live in an on demand world, no one wants to watch commercials, but who in hell would want to watch a show where they don’t know most of the music?

But the music industry trots out concert grosses to demonstrate stardom. Well, let’s say you go on a nationwide tour and sell out forty arenas. Assuming there are 20,000 seats, and very few arenas are this big, that means 800,000 people saw you, IN A COUNTRY OF 332 MILLION!

Now it used to be that radio brought us together, you may not have owned the record, you may not have gone to the show, but you knew the music. But today’s youngsters don’t listen to radio, despite the hogwash pushed down our throats by the terrestrial radio industry. And oldsters? They don’t want to listen to music, certainly not new music.

Music breaks and lives online today. But there are many more records than TV shows, what makes you think people are focused on any one act?

I hate to bring up Taylor Swift, whose record label is constantly telling us she’s breaking sales records, despite manipulating said figures through vinyl sales, et al, but she went on a stadium tour a few years back AND DIDN’T GO CLEAN! Back in the days of the Stones stadium tours, in the world of today’s Stones stadium tours, every ticket is sold, at exorbitant prices. But not Taylor Swift. Because this is heresy, I point you to the BBC, a more trusted outlet than music websites:

“Does it matter if tours don’t sell out?”: https://bbc.in/3gP0LuE

I don’t necessarily agree with all the reasoning postulated, but the fact is there, not only Taylor Swift, but Beyonce couldn’t sell out her stadium dates. If you click through to the article, you’ll see these tweets:

“I was walking down the street earlier and I literally tripped as I waded through free Taylor Swift tickets” Darren Geraghty

“I am now the last person in the greater Dublin area that has not been offered a free Taylor Swift ticket” Fiona Hyde

This information was hiding in plain sight, but conventional wisdom is Swift’s stadium tour was a raging success. And she’s supposedly the biggest act out there and she can’t go clean?

There’s a fascinating diatribe waiting to be written about disinformation, about how the truth does not out, and we can start with politics, but that’s not my point here. Turns out most people don’t want to see Taylor Swift, EVEN IF IT’S FREE!

So those songs in the Spotify Top 50, today’s number one consumption chart, forget the manipulated “Billboard,” they have a fraction of the reach of the hits of the past, of even a few years back. It’s the same damn people listening to the same damn songs over and over and over again.

As for playlists… The platform is more powerful than the music. It’s about what Spotify chooses to playlist more than the quality and lasting power of any of the tracks. People want music, but not necessarily your music. And if it feels like no one is listening to you, THAT’S PROBABLY TRUE! As for being unable to make a living making music… Well, it turns out there’s too much choice and you’re not that big, not everyone can make a living. Furthermore, there’s only a hundred cents in the dollar, Spotify literally can’t pay you more. It FEELS like you’re getting ripped-off, but you’re not!

So, the music industry is throwing songs against the wall to see what sticks. But the tastemakers are not traditional gatekeepers, but regular folk on social media platforms. You can playlist a song all day long on Spotify but it won’t turn it into a hit, you need external forces to do that.

So, we are not minting new superstars, and those stars we are creating are smaller than ever, and if the whole scene doesn’t make sense to you, if you think people are creating lowest common denominator stuff to try to go viral on social media platforms, YOU’RE RIGHT!

What we’ve got is utter chaos. There are charts, all kinds of traditional metrics that fit the old but are completely out of date and don’t fit the new. It’d be like reading Tesla sold 1,000 cars. Then again, Tesla gets more ink than sales.

And it’s not only adults, kids don’t know most of these acts either. They might know more than the adults, but no one can know them all.

And this is all working against the music industry, music has sacrificed its power in pursuit of an old paradigm, world domination, that is no longer possible. You can make it appear possible, it can FEEL possible, but it’s impossible.

So you might as well create and promote more lasting, more valuable music, to build careers, but that does not square with the short term mentality of the record labels, never mind the other players in the food chain. Those who work at the labels don’t own them, they’re contracted employees, they want those hits now, so they can get paid NOW!

So maybe you’ve never heard Phoebe Bridgers. But then you keep reading about her and check her out and you say to yourself…THIS IS IT?

Or maybe Olivia Rodrigo, whose lyrics are speaking truth but whose tracks are far from cutting edge.

And then you tune out completely.

But the young and brain dead keep playing a track over and over and a number is totaled and held up as representative of a worldwide smash WHEN IT’S NOT!

As for Phoebe Bridgers, she does not have a single track in nine digits on Spotify…and twenty or forty million might seem like a lot to you, but Clairo, an act I’d never heard of until I read the paid-for hype in HitsDailyDouble, has six tracks in nine figures. One with 277 million streams, another with 237 million. Jody Gerson said listening to Clairo was like listening to Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell, check Clairo out, if you agree, you must be on UMPG’s payroll.

And it’s not like I need to pick on any of the acts above, BUT THEY’RE THE BIGGEST ONES OUT THERE, AND THEY’RE NOT THAT BIG!

But you won’t read about this in rah-rah ignorant “Billboard.” Generally speaking you won’t read about this at all. But it’s true, a hit just ain’t what it used to be.

1

I just finished reading Seth Rogen’s “Yearbook.” He told Howard Stern he wrote every word of it and I believe it, the organization could be vastly improved, and unfortunately Seth is more of a live thing, the written word is not the best format for his stories. However, if you’re a subscriber to Sirius XM, you definitely need to pull up Howard’s interview with Seth, the stories are amazing. Unfortunately the same stories are told in the book, but not as well.

Yet there is more.

Seth was a teen phenom who broke through in “Freaks and Geeks” but then he was broke, he had a huge lull in his career, others would have given up, never underestimate persistence.

Also, during this period Seth woke up and realized he wasn’t quite good enough at standup and should retire, he saw Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk and Zach Galifianakis and realized he could never be that good, he was a middling comic at best. Too often people believe if they just double-down, believe in themselves, everything will work out, but this is patently untrue. Also, please quit when you get that feeling, and you know it, when you’re thinking of giving up after all that hard work because it all just doesn’t resonate like it used to, you’re allowed to change, you’re often better off if you change. Funny enough, it’s oftentimes the delusional wankers who never have self-doubt, who keep on pushing on. And these self-promoting tools ruin it for the rest of us. You wonder why the famous person won’t listen to your music? Blame the delusional wankers, not the overburdened professionals.

Also, Seth does not walk away from his religion. He talks about Jewish summer camp, and he also delineates his war with Jack Dorsey over anti-Semites on Twitter. Not only are they spewing their B.S., they’re VERIFIED! Dorsey keeps telling Seth there will be change, but it’s never forthcoming, until Trump is banned after the January 6th riot, but all those anti-Semites? They’re still on the service.

Unfortunately, this is at the end of the book, and therefore has not been emphasized in the hype, but kudos to Seth for standing up for his truth, which too many celebrities will not do, afraid of pissing off a potential customer.

And the book is littered with Seth’s engagements with the rich and famous where he ends up scratching his head and walking away. Seth can say no. He can stand up to studio executives. Maybe it’s because he’s Canadian. Seth doesn’t see himself as being on the same level as the household names, and then he describes experiences with the household names that are so whacked, you’ll find yourself questioning them. When you gain a lot of fame, people let you get away with…sometimes even murder, Hollywood is a yes-person’s paradise.

But unfortunately, Seth nailed the difference between rock stars and movie stars better on Stern than he does in the book and the end result is most people will never hear his words. Rock stars can’t share a dressing room. Rock stars hew to their own schedule… Listen to Stern.

And also read that it takes 6-7 years for one of Seth’s projects to come to fruition.

Also, on both Stern and in the book, Seth reveals that his father has Tourette’s and he has a mild case too. This explains his delivery, the laugh, and it also explains the self-medication with weed.

Musicians use dope to ease the pain, Seth sees dope as an amusement park. He’ll single-handedly influence more people to take mushrooms than anybody in the Spotify Top 50.

So, the more I write about the book, the more it seems I recommend it, but if you listen to Seth verbalize these stories… He’s a normal person encountering bizarreness, just like you and me, he’s our man in Hollywood. The tone of the book is a bit different, he’s not quite as likable as he was on Stern, nor does he truly delineate the reasons for his success, but…

You don’t have to go to Harvard to make it, Seth dropped out of high school.

And making it in your teens doesn’t mean you’ve made it for all time.

But reading/listening to Seth you feel like one of the good guys made it. Sure, he ends up bending over backward not to offend people after he’s offended them, written negative stuff about them, but he actually lays down the truth, where most people don’t.

But if you want to hear the Eddie Griffin anti-Semitism story properly told…

Listen to Howard.

https://amzn.to/35GQwlt

2

Maybe I read Jennifer Weiner’s “That Summer” because it was so hard to get. There was a months-long wait at the library for this book. But then I got a chance to skip the line, downloaded it and dug in and…

I was disappointed, it was too formulaic, a beach read.

But just when I was about to give up, suddenly it got good again, it wasn’t so clear-cut, the emotions were well-delineated.

So the issue is, can trauma ruin your life?

We’re constantly told to get over it, but can we?

It appears that Diana can’t.

And the book also raises issues of privilege, education, uniqueness, personal path… Does everybody need to go to college? Can you make it without a college degree? Do people marry for financial security more than love? Do they beat your creativity out of you as you get older, is school just about making you conform?

And at the end of the day is it about the big career or happiness, and are they mutually exclusive?

I don’t want to reveal the plot points, but let’s just say the book devolves into a revenge fantasy, and you start to wince, but then it veers from typical Hollywood fare.

Ultimately “That Summer” is a more sophisticated beach read. You know if you want to read it, you’re a Weiner fan or you’re not.

And if you’re not and you’re male, you probably won’t enjoy it, then again it’s males who need to read “That Summer” the most. You see too many males have been brought up in a bro culture and are as blind to their behavior and the truth as the ever growing white nationalist population in our country. Furthermore, it’s the bros who egg you on, get you to engage in bad behavior. After all, being a member of the group is the most important thing. And you get a better education at a first tier prep school but does it cripple you for life?

Yes, when you finish “That Summer” you’ll still be thinking about the issues it raises, which means it is not typical beach fare.

Still, it’s not Jonathan Franzen.

Then again, Jonathan Franzen takes himself so seriously that he can’t see context, and oftentimes misses the target.

It’s hard to write a great book. But the number one criterion is that a book be readable, and “That Summer” is. You’ll get to the point where you want to keep on reading it, it will close the blinds on real life, taking you into a whole ‘nother world. And that’s what great fiction does, create a new world that illuminates the old world. If you’re overwhelmed by reality, “That Summer” will take you away. Then again, “That Summer” deals with real issues, but unlike the news, they don’t revolve around politics.

https://amzn.to/35GQytB

File trading is history. 10% of the public will never pay for music, ignore them.

Files are history. Music, like television and so much more, is on demand. As time goes by we will own less and less. As for those worried about a blackout, a breakdown of the internet, if you’ve got no power it makes no difference if you own files, and those in the know know you can sync files from streaming services like Spotify and Netflix to your device for those out of internet range excursions.

Streaming won. If you’re anti-streaming, you’re no different from the buggy whip manufacturers. Streaming is where you get paid, encourage your fans to sign up and partake.

Recorded music revenues are higher than ever for a hit, but recorded music revenue is just a sliver of your income. Of course there’s the road, but there are so many more avenues of remuneration. Instead of bitching, you should be smiling, the future continues to be so bright that you should never remove your shades.

Albums are for oldsters. Today it’s about a constant flow of product.

If you don’t know who your audience is, you’re dead in the water. Bottom up, not top down. Mainstream media publicity means less than ever before, don’t count on the label or the press to build, inform and sustain your audience, that’s your job.

There’s no such thing as too much music. Your own long tail satisfies the hard core that will not shut up about you.

Major labels have never had less power.

The goal is to get on a streaming playlist as opposed to a radio playlist. Spotify, et al, are looking for reaction. It’s not how many people listen to the playlist, but how many people listen through your entire song and save it to their library. Those which are listened to and saved are put on other playlists and can be on the road to success.

Managers are more important than ever, they’re the new record companies.

You don’t shop for a deal, agents, managers and labels find you, based on the data. Executives are combing the internet, looking at the data, 24/7, your goal is to post numbers, that is the game. And sure, the numbers can be manipulated, but it’s hard to do so across the board, in every vertical. If you’ve got high YouTube numbers but low Spotify numbers, if you’ve got streaming numbers but can’t draw a fan to a gig…then insiders know you’re a fraud.

Labels and other investors only want to know if you’ve got fans. That’s what they build from.

Hip-hop dominates and rock is dead. Rock shot itself in the foot, it didn’t embrace streaming, it focused on albums, it was based on impressing the small coterie that make up the rock infrastructure, it became an echo chamber.

Used to be the undercard at a festival was irrelevant, now it’s the way to get exposed.

The market is still manipulated, can you say “Billie Eilish”?

Play the game or don’t, decide which side you are on.

In the movie business no one knows who runs the studios, and in the music business no one knows who runs the labels. All the power is in the platforms, i.e. Netflix and Spotify.

Ignore the valuation of labels and publishing catalogs. They’re all based on the past. And investors are ignorant, can you say “Guy Hands”? It’s about monetization of past assets more than monetization of the present. Then again, money needs to be parked somewhere, and if media tells the Street that music is burgeoning, that’s where the money goes. Live Nation stock went through the roof during the pandemic when there were no shows!

Bitching gets you nowhere, now more than ever, there’s just too much news in the channel, best to hunker down and work or get out of the lane.

Repeatability is everything, when was the last time you listened to Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul”?

Don’t believe the press, it’s manipulated. If someone is constantly in the news, it means that someone with relationships is spending dollars. That does not mean the hoi polloi cares, and it’s only about the hoi polloi.

No act will ever be as big as the pre-internet acts. There are just too many options, too many desires, and there’s too much clutter to cut through to make a big noise.

Innovation is hard, but innovation is where the rewards are. We live in the era of me-too, everybody copies what someone else has done, and true creativity is ignored. Everything new starts off slowly, remember that. And it’s the music that starts the scene, not the media, you can be featured everywhere and still be dead in the water.

Never has the public had more power. The public makes the hits, not the labels or the media. And the public spreads the word. And more than ever, it’s nearly impossible to manipulate. True success is more organic than ever before. Do what you do and make it better. Chart reaction. You’re building yourself. Step by step. It’s not about one big break, but many little breaks that hopefully add up to more.

Your hardest core fans are crazy, so be wary of feeding them. There are too many Rupert Pupkins out there, and most people have no idea who Rupert Pupkin was. If it happened in the twentieth century, it’s deep history, most of it unknown.

Awards won’t keep you warm at night and they won’t increase your bank account. People don’t watch the shows and they don’t care.

It’s a sexist business. But it’s a conundrum, because so much successful music is based on sex.

Black culture rules. This is a touchy subject, but Black music has traditionally represented the underclass, which is less invested in traditional tropes and is willing to innovate and test limits because there is less to lose. Now everybody is poor, everybody is frustrated, everybody is looking for a way up, and Black culture leads the way. Unfortunately, these same Black people leading the culture are not rewarded with executive positions because the white people on Wall Street, which own these companies, are racist and scared of losing control of the store. They want to hire on criteria that no longer apply. They care more about where you went to school than whether you can get the job done. Are there exceptions, you bet! But never forget a huge percentage of Americans are threatened by the increasing population of people of color, and they are doing their best to keep their fingers in the dike. Meanwhile, their children are all rapping. How to make sense of it? You can’t!

The basics never change, it’s about the song.

If you want to have a hit write a song with melody, changes and have it sung by a great voice. Sounds simple, but very few can do this.

Voice competitions are TV shows, not music industry markets. We want to hear what you have to say more than we care about how you can sing. Write your own songs and the quality of your voice is less important, but if you’ve also got a great voice you’re closer to success.

It doesn’t have to be loud to be successful.

Spamming people doesn’t work, it only pisses them off, the road to success is an organic journey that can rarely be pumped.

Streaming and the road are oftentimes separate avenues. The road is about catalog, streaming is about of the moment. Then again, if you string together a few of the moment cuts you can sell out arenas, but don’t plan on playing the big rooms shortly thereafter.

Some of the biggest acts have no hits. Can you say Lady Gaga? Prior to “A Star is Born” she was on a long cold streak. She’s back there again. But because there are so few hit acts with her level of mindshare today, she continues to be focused on. The machine needs fodder, and there’s less A-level fodder than ever before.

Producers are creators, oftentimes more important than the act itself, can you say “Max Martin”? Proving if you’ve got the chops, if you can write a hit song, you can work forever. It’s more about the song than the sound.

Recordings service the youth. Oldster word of mouth moves much more slowly and it oftentimes focuses on live. And now millennials are oldsters.

Don’t complain concert attendees are using their phones. You’re selling an experience more than music, the music is just the enticement for a public gathering.

Documentation is everything, not only for concertgoers, but acts. Complete set lists and more documentation of each and every show, all activities of the act, are crucial to an act’s success. Don’t hire a PR person, hire a documentarian!

TikTok is about the audience, not the act. Remember this. Service the creators, not yourself. And if you don’t make youth music, you can successfully ignore TikTok all together. But don’t ignore Instagram!

Don’t make hip-hop? Go to Nashville, that’s where all the players are. Radio is losing control of country music, and therefore the country music landscape is widening. Today, country means guitars and trucks and families. You can start with the guitars and ignore the rest and still make inroads. It’s an open highway.

It’s a long way to the top if you want to make it. Bo Burnham had been doing it for fifteen years before his big Netflix breakthrough. You’ve got to pay your dues, and along the way you’ll be singing a lot of blues. If you’re fourteen and envision success…maybe you can have a hit, but you almost definitely won’t have a career.

There’s no adult version of Disney. So, Miley Cyrus and Olivia Rodrigo came up through the Disney system…Warren Haynes did not. If you’re a player, you’ve got to practice, you’ve got to find your way, it’s going to be a long journey.

Music is not an automatic road to riches, you’re lucky if you can give up your day job. The power in music is the attention, the ability to change people’s minds/viewpoints, if you want to make bank finish college and work for the Fortune 500.