“The Bright Line Between Good and Evil”

Apple podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/ytzkvm9t

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/2juynzxe

You have to listen to this.

Let me repeat that, you HAVE to listen to this!

This is my number one audio recommendation of the year. Of all the music, all the podcasts I’ve told you about, this is where you should dedicate your time, this is where you should trust me, this speaks to the essence of what is going on in the Middle East.

Jihad.

I can’t tell you how many years people have told me to listen to the Sam Harris podcast. I actually tried once, but the slow delivery didn’t resonate. You see I’m overloaded, and so are you. In the pre-internet era we could get bored, there was an absence of opportunities, we didn’t have access to the entire history of recorded music at our fingertips, we did not even have cable, never mind streaming outlets like Netflix. You could go to the library, you could buy a record and listen to it, but we were starved for input.

Not anymore. But how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

Much of my inbox is a laugh, written by zealots, in defense of Phish or the Dead or hatred of Spotify, you have to dismiss it out of hand. These people are so inured to their vision that they cannot fathom anybody disagreeing with them. They’re fanatics.

But not like jihadists.

God is great, but so is death. Death, being a martyr, is a route to paradise, the afterlife. Most westerners cannot understand this. Which is why this Harris podcast is so illuminating. But nothing I write here, no synopsis, will do justice to Harris’s work. He lays it out slowly, deliberately, looking at all sides. Unlike too many testifying he has no agenda, he’s just trying to tell us what is going on. And in the process he undercuts a lot of the b.s. that is consuming us on college campuses, on social media, arguments made by people who have no idea what is going on.

And unless you’re a jihadist yourself, you’ll be intrigued, you’ll get it. You can’t listen to Harris and say he’s biased, that he’s taking a side, he’s just telling how it is, in a completely comprehendible way, and most people have no idea how it is. It’s much greater than Israel/Palestine. It’s about fanatical jihadists.

This is how virality works. I started to get e-mail about this particular episode of Sam’s podcast. That was not enough for me to listen. But having finished the latest episode of Jackson Hogen’s “RealSkiers” podcast on my way up the mountain, I needed something to listen to on the way down. I used to listen to “Pivot,” but as much as I’m a fan of Scott Galloway, I find Kara Swisher intolerable. I know this bans me from future opportunities, but if one can’t be honest, why even bother. Kara… When you keep boasting about who you know, it’s evidence of insecurity. Instead of making you look good, it makes you look bad. Furthermore, you don’t have to be an expert on everything, no one can be. And you need to stop telling us you were just on the phone with someone Scott references. Furthermore, your myopia means you’re often wrong. Scott isn’t, but you’re undercutting your credibility by constantly defending the visions of your friends in the tech industry, and in addition you know nothing about the law. And for the past week and a half, I see the “Pivot” podcast in my feed, and I just can’t bring myself to press play, because I know when it’s done I’ll be pissed off.

So I started scrolling through the offerings, and I saw that Bari Weiss was rebroadcasting the same Sam Harris episode people were e-mailing me about. And it clicked, I decided to check it out. I’m up and down on Bari, she’s very intelligent, but sometimes thin-skinned, and sometimes self-righteous, and many times too right-leaning for me. But some of her episodes are worth listening to, and unlike Kara she’s not plainly obnoxious.

Now not a single major media outlet influenced me. I didn’t see the Harris episode in any listing. It’s just that it rose up in my world, I saw it in multiple places, it was given the imprimatur of Bari Weiss, and I dove in.

And I need to tell you about it, everybody.

Harris is wiser than all those ceasefire bozos in the “New York Times.” Not that Harris believes the Israelis should be attacking Gaza in this way at all. It’s just that Harris can see the forest for the trees, he’s not caught up in the moment, he’s got perspective. It’s the opposite of a horse race, like the endless coverage of the presidential election a year out. Harris is not interested in gotcha headlines, you’re either into what he has to say or not. And not everybody is going to be into Harris. But his audience will grow if people keep telling others like I am now.

I don’t know almost anything about Sam Harris. Who knows, I could do some investigation and find out I don’t agree with him on most points.

But this one episode…

Wow.

Spotify playlist: https://tinyurl.com/mr3r2m3p

That’s the new Chris Stapleton album. Came out Friday, and I didn’t know until I saw an ad in the “Billboard Bulletin,” which undercuts my theory that print advertising doesn’t work. But more interestingly, how did I miss this? Was I just too far outside the footprint of the hype or is this an undersell, since it’s about the life of an album as opposed to the first week these days.

And if you look at the streams on Spotify, none of the songs, other than the three previously released cuts and the opening track, has a million streams, not yet, which means you don’t see “Higher” in the Spotify Top 50, it’s positively not mainstream, then again, maybe it is.

Now the bottom line is this album is too long, fourteen songs and fifty four and a half minutes, essentially an hour, and listening all the way through is akin to going to a show, you know, you’re excited at first, then you calm down and enjoy the sound, but as the hour wears on you’re nearly numb, you’re no longer as focused, you’re riding along but the feeling is just not as visceral.

But you’ve got to have a lot of tracks to make money. That’s right, if people like what you do, they’ll stream the whole album over and over again. So longer albums render more revenue. But this is just too much music to consume all at once. The albums of the past, pre-CD, rarely exceeded forty minutes, and they also had four main entry points, the opening and closing cuts on each side, whereas “Higher” is just a wash of songs, a smorgasbord of sound, partake and you’ll be filled beyond the brim. Yet this is superior to the paradigm of the last century, wherein you put out an album and milked it for singles for three years before you put out another. Today people put out more music more frequently, and that is great. But it’s a bitch when it comes to marketing.

Let’s say “Higher” was two albums, could the media get excited six months from now? How hard would it be to get the word out? Best to blow your load all at once? This has nothing to do with music, but the paradigm ultimately hurts the music. Yes, there’s just too much. There, I said it. We all know it, but nothing seems to change, we keep getting more and more.

But having said that, I played “Higher” from front to back, and until I started getting worn out about two-thirds of the way through, I was astounded, because this music doesn’t sound exactly like anything else, at least not anything shoved down our throat these days. There’s no desperate attempt for a single, it’s like “Higher” was cut in an alternative universe, one outside commercial demands, where the focus was solely on the artist and what he wanted to achieve.

The album begins with an acoustic guitar. The Rolling Stones would freak out, this isn’t the way you do it, you put your best foot forward, you bang the audience over the head. Then again, the country rock icons the Eagles opened the third side of their double live album and their live shows to this day with an a cappella version of Steve Young’s “Seven Bridges Road.” Every Eagles fan knows it, but it was never a hit.

But “What Am I Gonna Do” is an invitation. The door has been opened and the musicians are sitting on chairs, picking, vocalizing, welcoming you. That’s what “What Am I Gonna Do Is,” an invitation, and then comes “South Dakota.”

“Lord this morning when I woke up

I wanted that whiskey in my coffee cup

Had last night ringin’ in my head

Tellin’ me I oughta go back to bed”

I don’t drink coffee and the hangovers are not why I gave up drinking but I’ve been in this space many a time. It’s miserable. It’s anything but bright and sunny like the nitwits begging for our attention with their pop drivel. This is personal. And “South Dakota” is a perfect title, almost no one lives in that state, and you’re positively alone when you wake up after a bad night.

But what grabs you immediately is the groove. They’re locked in tight. This is a sound boomers will remember, that has been excised from most popular music. Yes, Chris Stapleton might be considered a country artist, but if this were back when we’d definitely consider him a rocker. And then comes the guitar solo, slow and tasteful, not showing off, but just right, you’re twisting and turning along. And that’s when you truly start to marvel, this is when you become overwhelmed, this is when you realize that Chris Stapleton could be the best artist working today, in any genre. Not only can he sing and play, he’s authentic, credible, you can’t criticize where he’s coming from. It’s hard to criticize his music at all, it hearkens back to what once was that we thought was gone forever, but Stapleton proves it is not.

And the weird thing is Stapleton is revered in Nashville, yet no one sounds exactly like him. You see they’re afraid to give up the system, they’re afraid to let go of the rules, they want right-leaning stuff about drinking and family, putting the audience first, but Chris Stapleton is not putting the audience first, he’s just doing what he wants and the audience follows along.

Not that Stapleton is the only one going straight for the gut in country music. Hardy and Lainey Wilson’s “Wait in the Truck” won not only the Music Video of the Year award, but it was declared the Musical Event of the Year at last week’s CMA Awards. But crickets at the Grammys, that’s right, the Video of the Year in the country world didn’t even score a nomination at the Grammys, what was the Event of the Year got no attention from the Grammys. And you wonder why the South hates the North. Talk about elitism. And unlike the drivel with accolades the Grammys focus on, “Wait in the Truck” is about domestic violence. How could the Grammy organization get it so wrong! Sure, they nominated women, kudos, but they’re completely clueless in this year of country.

After “South Dakota” comes “Trust,” which has got an acoustic feel that got its start with Stephen Stills and hasn’t been heard much recently, if at all. “Trust” is sweet, it rings right whether you’re sitting in front of the fire or driving down the highway.

“It Takes a Woman” is more authentic country than anything aired in that format on the radio. This is the kind of song you might skip over at first, like “You Gotta Move” or “Dead Flowers” on “Sticky Fingers,” but with repeated plays you get it.

And then we get another acoustic number, the title song, “The Fire,” that has got that homemade feel, it’s simple, a ditty, but not a throwaway, Stapleton can throw this stuff seemingly at will, and the vocal is so sweet.

But then comes “Think I’m in Love with You.”

Now when you listen to an album for the first time you see what jumps out. “South Dakota” did. And so did “Think I’m in Love with You,” which also has an indelible groove, that is in the pocket from the very first note, it’s hard not to move along as you listen, the music penetrates your body and comes out in said movement. And there’s tasteful picking, and the chorus sounds more R&B than country, it’s positively infectious. And not overproduced. Stapleton is not throwing everything in including the kitchen sink, he’s not looking for sheen, he’s leaving some air, letting the instruments breathe, and the result is life, which is too often absent in what is made to be a hit.

Now there’s the highly revered “White Horse,” co-written with Mr. Semisonic Dan Wilson. But the next song that stuck out for me was “The Day I Die.”

“I had never ever hurt this way

The pain is almost more than I can take

I’d give anything for you to stay with me

And never say ‘goodbye'”

Whew, most of us have felt this way. The celebrities say they can get over breakups instantly, but the rest of us know this is impossible, they may haunt your dreams for the rest of your life.

And there’s that change at the end of the chorus, and even a bridge. Stapleton knows how to write a song, something that too many people never even learned, never mind forgotten.

And the two concluding numbers, “Weight of Your World” and “Mountains of My Mind,” are winners too.

Assuming anyone gets this far.

Albums are best when played start to finish, for the mood. That’s the goal, to entrance the listener, draw them in and change their life, even if it’s only temporarily.

Am I going to sit here and say “Higher” is the best album I’ve ever heard? No. But what stunned me is I played it, through and through, and now as I go back it sounds even better. And that’s a rare occurrence. Hell, look at the plays of most albums on Spotify, there are hits and the rest, the rest are overlooked, but the rest resonate on “Higher.”

I’d say your mileage may vary, but I also know if you were addicted to buying records back when, especially in the seventies, if you liked not only one style of music, but many, if you could own a Joni Mitchell record and a Zeppelin album too, “Higher” is going to be familiar in a way that you can’t quite put into words. You see Stapleton is coming from where your heroes of yore once did. He puts the music first. And he’s employing the building blocks. And you don’t have to study a manual to get it, you’ve just got to push play and you’re engrossed.

Try it.

If you’re only interested in money…

I got an e-mail about this last Thursday, when it went live. Before I saw it on the WaPo site. Would I have seen it anyway? Probably. It was never the top story, but it was featured pretty prominently in the app.

But no one else contacted me about it until just now, when I got a text.

To analogize the record business, this is a hit, hiding in plain sight. Used to be hits surfaced all by their lonesome, you couldn’t keep a good record down. Now a track can be phenomenal and not break. Just like this story.

Ah, it’s not that good, it’s not phenomenal, but it’s very interesting, sex is always fascinating, but the way the business is done, it can translate to almost any industry, but once again, you are probably unaware of it.

This is what happens when you live in a silo. This is a more interesting story than you’ll ever read in “Billboard,” this is the kind of story we used to salivate over in “Rolling Stone,” the kind that made the magazine great, the heartbeat of a generation. But there are no ripples, none that can be found when searching in the Google News. Maybe because it involves sex. Maybe because those purveying conventional celebrities have no idea who the real celebrities are. Scratch that, you can make a ton of dough being known by very few. So if you’re interested in cash, don’t go into music, which is why so many went into it back when, because there are a lot easier ways to make money.

So now you’re interested, I made you aware. But you’ve got to pay to play, just like with OnlyFans itself. No, that’s not true. A lot of these women, and it’s almost all women, give away a taste for free. This is how Spotify works. If you want it all, you’ve got to pay. And you can tell me how bad a free, advertiser-supported tier is, but then I’ll tell you Spotify dwarfs its competitors in the number of subscribers, but even more in overall consumption. Spotify subscribers are active, they listen a lot, and only when people listen do they create a bond with the song and the act.

But to subscribe you’ve got to pay. Oh, you get a certain number of articles free every month, there’s a soft paywall, just like with the OnlyFans girls, but this restricts activity, because you don’t want to waste your freebies and you end up not even coming close to the limit. Or, you reach the limit and are so damn cheap you won’t pay the $120 a year.

But the dirty little secret is you get the “Washington Post” with your Apple News+ subscription. Yes, for ten bucks, you get the WaPo and more. But you’ve heard that information wants to be free on the internet. But you forgot the second half of that aphorism, it also wants to be really expensive! In other words, if you don’t pay, you don’t get the good information, and information is everything.

That’s what Charlie Munger said. In the “Wall Street Journal,” also behind a paywall.

“I think I learn a little something from…everything I’ve read. I think that one of the reasons I was as economically successful as I was in life is because I read so damn much all my life, starting when I was about six years old. I don’t know how to get smart without reading a lot.”

https://tinyurl.com/26xznbjp

Bingo, it’s all there in books and periodicals, you just have to spend the time. I get more out of reading than I do in conversation with almost anybody. Hate to say it, but it’s true. Except for a thin layer of people who truly know what is going on. Then again, everybody thinks they know what is going on, they keep telling me so.

Now here’s my gift to you, a free link to the WaPo OnlyFans story:

“Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream – The fast-growing platform represents the creator economy at its most bluntly transactional, where sex is just another unit of content to monetize.”: https://wapo.st/3u5zgFY

And you should read this article. And be sure to watch the video embedded therein.

Or, you can watch the WaPo OnlyFans video on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/2vp2y39p

And now I’m wondering about the tone of this piece. It’s didactic, and angry. And I guess that’s a result of all the b.s. that comes over my transom each and every day, oftentimes blatantly wrong, a Google would tell the the writer the truth, and always spewed forth with anger and suffused with intimidation. To the point that you get the pushback above. But it makes me crazy the world we live in, with self-declared experts who’ve got no clue what is really going on.

Now when I read this OnlyFans article one thing became clear, I’d want nothing to do with this, this is not where I’d want to spend my time, no matter how much money I might make. Because it’s boring!

And if you watch enough TikTok you’ll see the big-breasted girl lamenting that she can’t date because of her OnlyFans account, the boys don’t want someone who’s been with seemingly everyone. She signed off OnlyFans, gave up porn, but came back, because that’s the only place she’d be understood, never mind all that money.

And these are middle class girls. Oftentimes in college.

And Bryce Adams has a boyfriend, her partner in crime. But there is no crime, OnlyFans is totally legitimate. I wonder if it pegs the needle in that anti-masturbation app that Mike Johnson shares with his son.

Now it’s not that Bryce Adams is so delicious. I mean she’s pretty attractive, but her visage does not send the message “porn star,” like that woman with macromastia I referenced above. But Bryce Adams, not her real name, knows how to work it. She knows what her fans want. And how does she do this? VIA THE DATA!

Yes, that’s why you should read this article, to see how they do it. This is the modern music business, you just don’t know it. You’ve got to know how the game is played if you want to win. And to win, you don’t have to appeal to everybody, just a certain few, who become really attached, who form a bond with you, that you feed.

Sure, you pay for a subscription to the OnlyFans page, but the money is in the upsell. The texts. The private videos. And Bryce doesn’t have time to service all her fans, so she has a team that does this. And the guys buy it, because it’s all a fantasy anyway.

That’s what music, when done right, is also selling, a fantasy. Too often it’s based on cash these days, but it used to be based on identity. That the artist understood the listener, and if the listener could just meet the artist, their life would work, it would be complete. Believe me, I’ve met these people, and it’s almost universally untrue. But you need to believe in it to carry on, just like you believe in the American Dream, even though statistically it is fading. That’s the world we live in, facts don’t matter. But usually those who deny the truth are the ones who pay the price.

And Bryce and her boyfriend are working ’round the clock. They don’t have time to crash and smoke dope. They’ve got to be on their audience, because the audience is fickle, either serve people or die. Truly, there are so many competitors. This is what musicians don’t realize, they’re competing against everybody, both alive and dead, they’ve got to be top of mind or they’re not in mind at all. But we’ve still got people hewing to the album paradigm. That might satiate hard core fans, but it’s a piss-poor way to grow your career. That’s seventies thinking, and we’re in the third decade of the twenty first century.

So they comparison test pics and videos, they’re constantly researching what works. If you’re an oldster, Gen-X or above, you’ll read this article and want to give up. Because one thing is for sure, Bryce, and especially her boyfriend, are digitally savvy. And you need to be to succeed in the world today. All those in-person meetings, the bluster of business, it’s passé. I hear it from oldsters who work with youngsters all the time. The office is now quiet, whereas it used to be noisy. The youngsters don’t talk on the phone. Drives the oldsters nuts, it’s not how they did it, but it’s much more efficient. God, if I had to talk on the phone I’d get about a quarter of what I do done. The younger generation knows this.

So you’ve got to know how the devices work. Literally. Because there is no help, you’re on your own, there’s not time for help, you’ve got to understand computers, you’ve got to understand online, you’ve got to be digitally native. You know how to make a PowerPoint? Whoo-hoo! Welcome to twenty years ago, the younger generation has no time for PowerPoints anymore.

So the money is incredible. But the creators make it perfectly clear, the game changes. This is something that still is not accepted in the music business. Radio is forever, TV counts! No. We’re many steps beyond that, but the new world is so chaotic you don’t want to admit it, you want to believe the old one still has merit.

“Since sending her first photo in 2021, Adams’s OnlyFans accounts have earned $16.5 million in sales, more than 1.4 million fans and more than 11 million “likes.” She now makes about $30,000 a day — more than most American small businesses — from subscriptions, video sales, messages and tips, half of which is pure profit.”

This is more than almost all musicians. I mean if you’re broke playing music, maybe you should do something else, especially if you’re into money first and foremost, which seems to be the case with all these artists that call themselves “brands.” Bryce Adams is taking her assets and making it the way musicians used to, not by formula, but from her noggin. She’s making it up as she goes, there is no template. Sounds more like music of the sixties and seventies than today.

And she is doing it for herself. That’s how it works in OnlyFans and that’s how it works in music. You build it and maintain it yourself. And you reap almost all of the money when you do, 80% in the case of OnlyFans. And if you don’t use a label and go direct to Spotify (via a distributor that charges little), you’ll end up with 60-70% of the revenue. But better to bitch at the label, none of which pays this amount, and is busy recouping that advance you thought was so impressive.

And in OnlyFans, like music, your career peak is very short, you’d better make bank then. Sure, a few artists have long careers, but most don’t.

Also, all the money is in the top. This is what musicians can’t get over. If the best is the same cost as the worst, why would I spend time with the worst, or mediocre, even good? Everybody is available all the time. I’ve got to be super to gain attention and get paid. But this is unfair! No, it’s not! Think of it from the viewpoint of the consumer. Do you want to be forced to watch TV in real time, on network, with commercials, or would you rather stream on demand? Do you want to be forced to watch a mediocre program instead of a great one? This is the modern world, the public only wants a thin layer of what is produced, and if you’re not great, superior, incredible, get out of the way, because you’re never going to make it.

I know, the truth hurts. But what is great about Bryce and her boyfriend is it’s their truth. They’re doing it their way. They think they know better than anybody else.

But that damn algorithm, the game is gonna change. Just like in the music business. It keeps evolving, Napster to KaZaA to lockers to iTunes track sales to YouTube to Spotify to TikTok to… Oh, I forgot to mention MySpace! Everything is evanescent, you’ve got to be a student of the game.

And if you’ve gotten this far, if you’re not turned off by my attitude, please read this piece and watch the video. You’ll be stimulated. Your brain will start to cogitate, come up with ideas, refine thoughts. This is what it’s all about. And it seems simple, but it’s not. Rest on your laurels and you’re toast.

“Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don’t criticize

What you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one

If you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'”

Those words are just as relevant today as when Bob Dylan wrote them back in ’63. Only now you’re on the wrong side of the generation gap. So buckle down, or get out of the way. It’s a new world and if you want a place in it…

Read this article.

Say no. If you can’t say no you’re never going to have credibility.

You’re selling more than music, you’re selling your identity. I’m not saying you have to be all over social media, I’m just saying your identity should be baked-in to your music. This is why hip-hop eclipsed hair bands. The hair bands were wearing spandex, unlike the rock bands of the seventies, who wore street clothes, and they were writing ballads to appeal to people who otherwise wouldn’t like them. And when the tide turned, the hair bands became laughable. You cannot regain credibility, it doesn’t work that way. Meanwhile, hip-hop was all about truth. Living the life. Having an identity. And the public resonated with that.

Your career is your responsibility. If you’re looking for people to help you, to shoulder the weight, you’ve got it wrong. Today you are responsible for your own career. This is something that social media influencers have right that musicians refuse to accept. Yes, pre-internet, when distribution was closed to most, when radio and music television ruled, the major label had power and you could utilize this power to your advantage. But that game is on life support.

No one will work unless pressed. Don’t tell the label, anybody who is ultimately working for you, and a label works for you, what you’re doing, become friends, contact them on a regular basis, and get them to do work for you that you can’t do yourself. Yes, you’re willing to help out the label, et al. But my point here is these people are overwhelmed, and if you tell them you’re going to do the heavy lifting, you’re letting them off the hook. It’s a partnership, and your partners have to pull their weight. They love nothing more than to be let off the hook.

Live, live, live. The era of sitting at home in your bedroom and creating a hit are done. Even if you have that hit, odds are you’ll never have another one. You’ve got no real fans, no one to support you. Be ready to go on the road if you get any streaming action.

Ignore Spotify counts. The best thing in life is that Spotify and YouTube are free. You can get your music heard if someone chooses to listen to it. It’s available to all. And this is very different from the way it was in the pre-internet era. The key is to have fans who go to Spotify, et al, to hear your music. As far as people discovering your music on streaming outlets… It’s nice when it happens, but that’s not the way it usually happens. As for the vaunted playlists… Those are listened to by the most passive of listeners. You want active fans. And active fans search and play exactly what they want to. Streaming is the sideshow. Correlate concert grosses with streams, oftentimes they’re upside down, incredible dollars in the venue, anemic streams. People are fans of the live experience. And their fan bases are narrow. The billion stream club is populated by those who appeal to the broadest audience, oftentimes sacrificing credibility in the process.

Money comes last. You’re a tech startup. Grow the audience, there are plenty of ways to monetize thereafter.

TikTok is a fool’s errand. No one has figured out how to game the system. Furthermore, usually only a snippet is employed by TikTokkers anyway. And a lot of people who get traction with their music on TikTok…are homemade artists creating music just for this purpose. The retrograde labels are signing these people, believing they’ve got an audience, which will scarf up their albums, but in truth that is wrong. People only want the snippet. Yes, you can go viral via TikTok, but it’s serendipitous.

Just because it happened once doesn’t mean it will happen again. Fleetwood Mac got a bounce from that skateboarding worker, Lil Nas X blew up after TikTok, but that’s like Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” one and done. When it involves tech, it’s a fad. Focus on the music.

It happens later than ever before. If you’ve got a Plan B, take it. To make it in music requires all of your time and effort. And you still may not make it. But that does not mean you should labor in obscurity forever.

Be wary of focusing on albums. The Stones? All that hype over “Hackney Diamonds”? The album is already in the rearview mirror. People are focused on the now, it’s the only way they can cope. What happened yesterday is forgotten. Embrace this paradigm. Think of creating ’round the year, keeping your fans satiated and giving you hope that you’ll get lucky with a track down the road.

You know as much as those working at the label, if not more. This is why the labels have not broken a new act in a year. And the landscape has changed, there’s no universality. Everybody is listening to different stuff. And the majors don’t like this, they are built for mass, and they keep employing old school systems thinking they’ll work today. Sure, terrestrial radio reaches more people than any other medium. It’s just that it’s fewer than ever before and its listeners are the least active. Terrestrial radio is like network TV, it’s a business, but a small fraction of what it once was.

Innovators succeed. Both in music and business. The majors are supported by their catalogs, sans them they’d be screwed. Don’t let someone tell you how to do it, do it the way you want to. That does not mean you shouldn’t respond to audience feedback. You play a song live and you know whether it works or not. In other words, if you’re progressing, having success, stick to your guns. If you’re not, then you need to change. Or give up. You can wait forever and nothing can happen, no matter how much you like what you’re doing, how much your friends and family like what you’re doing. As for professional feedback…people will rarely tell you honestly what they think. They’re afraid of pissing you off. So, if you adjust to what everybody says, you’re screwed. Having said that, if you’re going to ask for professional feedback, accept it, don’t tell the pro why they’re wrong.

Talk to people in the business. They’ll tell you they’ve never gotten an unsolicited tape from an act that they’ve ended up signing. So don’t bother to dun people, it’s useless. Focus on satiating your audience, and if you make enough noise people will come check you out, but they still may not be interested.

It’s the music business, emphasis on business. The only thing people are interested in is whether you can make them money. Everybody…agents, managers, promoters, labels. If you can make them money, they’re interested. If not…they’re not running a museum.

Hits often can’t be quantified. It’s not how many streams a song has, but what it means to the audience. If it means enough, these listeners will tell others.

Virality. It’s key, it’s king. But don’t think of it solely in terms of social media, think about it in everything you do. Did someone tell someone else to listen to your song? Did someone tell someone else to come to your show?

Mobilize your fans. They’re your street team, even though they do most of their work online. They love working for you. Find out who wants to participate and give them something to do. Your army spreads the word, better than any other medium.

Print publicity only means something if you’re appealing to people who still read newspapers and magazines. And most active young listeners do not read, do not pay attention to those outlets. So the story is worthless. And no story reaches everybody, in fact, stories reach fewer people than ever before. I’m not saying print will hurt, I’m just saying it’s oftentimes a wasted effort.

No one knows how online word of mouth, i.e. virality, works. The key is to be in the marketplace, otherwise you can’t get lucky. You’ve got to play to win. And everything starts online, and not on the big music streamers. You keep playing, trying to get lucky.

Your big break is never your big break, ask anybody who’s ever had one. Your big break is always the afterthought, the thing you did reluctantly, or that you thought was minor.

There is no one breakthrough moment, it’s a slew of breakthroughs. And when you get to the end, you will not be on top of the world, no one is. Be satisfied anybody is listening at all.