People will continue to bitch about Spotify payments, but they won’t change as a result. Believing that Spotify is ripping musicians off is the equivalent of believing in QAnon and other conspiracies. There are only a hundred cents in the dollar and Spotify is paying nearly seventy percent to rightsholders. But somehow Danile Ek is the enemy. As for running ICE ads…that bothers me too, but look what happened to the Hilton hotel that refused to admit ICE agents. Be very afraid of going against Trump and the government.

Meanwhile, Spotify is investing in a video podcast studio: 

“Spotify digs in on podcasts with new Hollywood studios”

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2026-01-07/spotify-opens-new-podcasting-studio-in-hollywood

When was the last time one of the three major labels invested in anything? They’re giant banking concerns at this point, trying to leverage their assets for AI the same way they leverage their assets to extract a fee from online companies that want to use music. The question always arises…are these funds trickling down to the artists?

Ticketing fees won’t decline. They’re part of the business. Bitching about ticketing fees is like complaining about the transportation fee on your new car…it ain’t going away. But just like prices of cars fluctuate, so do ticket prices. For all the ink about the high price of tickets, the truth is prices will fall for mid-market/less desirable acts playing in buildings a bit too big for them. The inventory has got to move. And no one likes playing to a half-full house. No one gives money back to Live Nation, and Live Nation must make its nut.

Acts will continue to sell their publishing…continuing to demonstrate they are ignorant when it comes to finances and their handlers want a percentage of a big check. Maybe if you’re an oldsters and you’re doing it for estate planning… Watch this video for edification on royalties and how they go up over time:

“Stephen Bishop: Top Five Songs by Income (1975-2000)

@lizthemusicmanager

@Stephen Bishop songs by income, 1975 to 2000. Includes publishing, record sales, writer share, and radio performance royalties. Does not include streaming, SoundExchange, touring, or sync. . . #fyp #musicindustry #musicbusiness #musicindustrytips #musicpublishing

? original sound – Liz The Music Manager

The best and the brightest will continue to not enter the music industry, which is a closed club that doesn’t want new members and doesn’t pay enough anyway. The big checks working for the man have evaporated, the money Lucian Grainge got for Universal going public is the last big payday. Sure, top execs are well-compensated, but they’ve paid their dues over years. The only big money available to newcomers is in management, where the odds of success are long. In the old days, with music generating as much of an income, if not more, than any occupation in America, the renegades who didn’t fit in all entered the music business. Today the business is calcified and like I said, you can make much more money elsewhere, in finance and tech. So we’ve got the lowest common denominator people becoming acts…those with no options because they’ve got little education, and as for working at companies…you can’t make money without paying your dues for a long time, and therefore if you want to be closer to music it’s easier to just buy a ticket than work behind the scenes.

Demand will continue to exceed supply for superstar concert tickets.

Rather than figure out ways to break new acts, the majors will continue to cut back on expenditures to add to the bottom line.

Television will continue to decline as an exposure opportunity for music, did you see that Kimmel is cutting back?

“‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ to Decrease Music Performances to a ‘Variable’ Number Per Week”

https://variety.com/2026/music/news/jimmy-kimmel-live-to-decrease-music-performances-1236624638/

KPop numbers will continue to grow, however other than HUNTR/X and other beneficiaries of “KPop Demon Hunters,” they all will be the equivalent of a walled garden, i.e. a silo, i.e. either you’re interested or you’re not, and most people are not. This is the story of music today, there’s tons of bluster how big acts are, but their reach/popularity is very narrow. The majors could make music that appeals to a broader spectrum of listeners, but that’s too heavy a lift/too big an investment of time and in many cases too unhip for the majors to do.

You will continue to be exposed to buzz on acts that you will check out and scratch your head over, wondering why you should be interested.

There will be continued efforts on brand extension/merchandising. The music is just a jumping off point.

The channel will continue to be flooded with mediocre acts spamming the marketplace to try and get attention that they do not deserve.

Short term thinking will continue to rule. KPop didn’t happen overnight, for over a decade those involved were organizing/scheming/creating until there was finally a breakthrough. No one in the U.S. working for the establishment is willing to think outside the box and do this. Innovation always comes from the outside, the inside is moribund.

The basics will continue to be ignored. The audience is looking for someone who can sing and write…well. Too many acts feature substandard vocals and when the song is written by committee it is less believable, less identified with the singer. People need to believe the song is the singer’s life.

Country will continue to gobble up market share.

Pop will get all the attention, but never has pop had less impact on the market, most people don’t care. It’s like the days of Fabian and Bobby Rydell except even those two-dimensional acts had a greater footprint than today’s so-called hitmakers.

Will this be the year that acoustic music finally breaks through big? The vaunted singer-songwriter? Unfortunately, there are too many people playing in this space who do not deserve attention, which makes it harder for the focus to be on someone who does.

Classic rockers will continue to die. This probably is the last time. If you want to see them, go now!

Stadium tours will continue to do boffo at the b.o. That’s how much of a desire there is to see superstars.

Acts will continue to be unable to say no. Other than those with no traction with no offers anyway. In other words, everybody will sell out for a buck.

The Kardashians will continue to have more purchase on the marketplace than musical acts, because the penumbra is easier to manufacture and maintain than the essence, the soul. The Kardashians are all penumbra, i.e. the external, the look, the products… In music the essence is key. The penumbra comes later, and if you can say no to the penumbra, the essence grows.

The Spotify Top 50, the only chart that matters, will continue to be populated with acts that sound manufactured, that have no reach.

Acts will continue to boast about setting records that are manipulated and ultimately not meaningful, aided by the weighted Luminate chart. The only thing that matters is streaming, how many streams did a song have… Furthermore, when it comes to streams, a free one is as valuable as a paid one. There should be a separate chart for sales only, a sideshow…then, of course, vinyl sales will crater, because vinyl is sold in many iterations to falsely boost overall chart numbers.

What now?

The problem with getting old is you’ve seen this movie before. Even though America reveres youth, with Boomers and Gen-X’ers getting plastic surgery in order to look like their children, as if they are truly fooling anybody, there are many benefits to getting old, other than being closer to death and possible frailty old age is a golden era, one of happiness (this has been well-documented) and one of wisdom.

But no one gives a sh*t about what old people have to say.

Now my head is spinning because this is exactly what us oldsters protested against for decades, involvement in foreign wars, messing with foreign governments, regime change. And what is even more confounding is that Trump ran on a doctrine of America First, isolating our nation from the rest of the world, stopping our investments elsewhere, just focusing on the U.S. Saving money and taking care of our brethren all at the same time.

And if you believe that…

Now I’ve got to say, waking up for this past year has been an exercise in surprise. You never know what the headlines will be. Hollywood can’t even compete with what is going on in D.C. Then again, if they wrote a script, no one would believe it.

And if we’re worried about the rest of the world, why did we cut USAID and gut the Voice of America? I mean you don’t have to be a Democrat to know that this all doesn’t add up.

So how far is Trump going to push the envelope? The plane from Qatar, the demolition of the East Wing, the renaming of the Kennedy Center…it’s not like he asks for permission, there are no guardrails at all. What we’ve got is a rubber-stamping Supreme Court that bases all its decisions on what the Founders were thinking when they wrote the Constitution, which is like ignoring computers and asking a blacksmith what he thinks about technology.

I’m numb.

Now this is not the only day, however… If you’re my age, you remember the hangover of World War II. It was in the rearview mirror, but not by much. The death and destruction. We were fighting bad forces, then again today we’re in cahoots with bad forces. Russia invades Ukraine and it’s Zelenskyy’s fault. So therefore Volodymyr has to kiss Trump’s ass, the initial criticism being that Zelenskyy wasn’t dressed appropriately in the now gilded-up White House, which has become akin to the abode of an Eastern European dictator.

Then there was Vietnam.

Forget Iran-Contra, what about the invasion of Iraq. Which was not responsible for 9/11. But Dick Cheney wanted to use the attack as justification for regime change and…

Look at Afghanistan. The Russians pulled out having made no headway, but somehow it was going to be different for us? I mean as Depeche Mode sang, people are people. There is nothing inherently superior about Americans. Meanwhile, we’re falling behind China militarily, this is the fight we want to pick, under a false pretext? The man who ran Honduras is pardoned for drug offenses and we pull Maduro from Venezuela when that country is not a haven of drug production, saying it is. Does the truth matter?

And there are many Americans who will support Trump in whatever he does. Primarily because they hate the Democrats, the woke, Joe Biden… You’d think that the years before Trump returned to office were hellish. Were we really living in the same America?

And then Marjorie Taylor Greene says she had no idea what was truly going on, because like a good foot soldier, she refused to read or be exposed to any news outlet that was not spewing right wing dogma. She saw the other side and she woke up. And now even nitwit Lauren Boebert is in a snit.

The truth is if you’ve been paying attention to the news you know all of what I’m referencing above, from the Supreme Court’s originalism to the Colorado water project.

Now you used to be able to live in a bubble, ignoring what is going on. But today you feel the consequences. Like high prices in the grocery store. You’re just trying to live your life and a profiteering dictator is running over not only the country, but your rights, willy-nilly.

Forget what’s next in Venezuela, an absolute quagmire, what’s next in the U.S?

And what signal does this send to Russia… That it too can invade countries whose governments it dislikes?

And Greenland must be freaking out. They’re next. One thing about Trump, he does what he says. He’s been wanting Greenland long before he got his knickers in a twist over Venezuela.

So now the entire world order has been upended. And if we’re going to start changing regimes, why begin with Venezuela? Oh, that’s right, they’ve got the oil!

Like the United States can run the world. Like every country needs our interference. Like we know what is going on in the landscape better than they do.

Of course Maduro was heinous. But the balance of power in Venezuela… It’s not just one bad guy against the nation, there are factions of power…what about the colectivos?

WHAT?

Hell, even I wasn’t aware of the colectivos until today. Was Trump? It’s complicated, and it’s not a movie, this is real life. And it’s being done on our watch, try to distance yourself all you want, but you are an American… We learned this traveling in Europe in the sixties and seventies… Some kids sewed Canadian flags on their backpacks so as not to be mistaken for U.S. citizens…

So do you believe in the system? Do you believe you have power? So far, Trump has acted with impunity. What’s the cost to you? Forget financial, is your kid going to have to go overseas and…

Play this out. What does this look like?

Be rah-rah all you want, but the oldsters have seen this movie. And it has played out poorly again and again and again.

This is scary.

But in truth I have not gotten to that emotion yet, because I’m in shock. I saw the headline on my phone and…my first reaction was this was a joke, that I was on a parody site.

But no, this is real, and this is real life.

This is what an uninvolved, somnambulant public gets, while it is focused on Jeff Bezos and Kim Kardashian in Aspen and musicians are afraid of taking a stand for fear of alienating a potential fan and…

Citizens are on the back foot. But Trump is not, he’s aggressive, acting without permission, even when it’s required. You need to consult Congress before you start a war. Then again, if you change the board of the Kennedy Center you can rename it and bend it to your will…

Forget Joe Biden, forget the Democrats, forget arguing the last election. It’s time to live in the now, because what’s coming down the pike is not pretty, it will have consequences, and if you think you’re immune…

You’re not really thinking at all. 

For the new year.

Tune in Saturday January 3rd to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

This is why I live in Nashville 🙂 “Music City” is not a marketing term, it’s a specification.

Craig Anderton

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From: Chris Willman

I wrote a story a little bit ago about how Stephen Wilson Jr. got signed… It’s pretty interesting and involved, and I didn’t even get into the whole thing as much as I could have. But through most of the years he’s been in the industry he had no plans to be an artist— which seems insane when you go see his show and see how multi-talented he is, and how solidly he connects with an audience.

I said right after the CMAs that he “won” the CMAs. His two performances on that show didn’t result in a deluge of radio adds, yet everyone I know was talking about him the next day, so that’s going to pay off whether or not we can say exactly when, But he’s already winning just by being on people’s lips.

When I won a CMA award a couple of months ago, it was him handing it to me, and I felt honored getting it from him…

“Stephen Wilson Jr., Best New Artist Nominee for CMA Awards, on Why His Maverick ‘Death Cab for Country’ Approach Found a Home at Big Loud Records”

https://variety.com/2025/music/news/stephen-wilson-jr-big-loud-records-country-interview-1236582486/

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I did the same as you for a while last night and came away with a similar take. I don’t think for one second people love anything Ryan Seacrest does. He is pablum. The blandest of crackers. I think of him as the ultimate risk averse commercial sell out. DC’sNYRE pretaped for his comfort. Wheel of Fortune? Same. Everything he does is something that any other talented human could do, he is far from an “only”.

I respect him for one reason, he seemingly sized up his needs/wants and took deals in the entertainment business to the tune of what, 50M$ a year in total? More with his production company? And he has the easiest shifts in the trade… I hope he is happy because if he did all this and isn’t then my heart goes out to him.

Happy New Year Bob…

Andrew Zimmern

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My wife and I laughed out loud when I read her your comment on Ryan Seacrest.

We also saw Stephen Wilson, Jr’s Stand by Me performance and agree: Outstanding!

Happy New Year – The Kimballs

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Couldn’t agree with you more. The Dick Clark thing was pure dreck; why would Anderson Cooper, a serious, hard working journalist embarrass himself with this crap.

I’ve been commuting from Philly to Nashville for the past ten years, running an indie publishing and record company. The talent level is off the chart, the artists are real. And the food scene is rapidly improving!

Come to Nashville!

Best,

David Robkin

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Just couldn’t stay with the Nashville broadcast. The sound was marginal at best and the cornpone “realness” you cite was just boring for us. At least there was some choreography on the Times Square stage and it seemed like a pro collective effort rooted in stage, theater and dance. You know the classic arts? I understand your point about authenticity but I want that, I’ll just head down to the beer bar downtown on amateur night to get it. New Year’s needs to have some sizzle and bang like a true skyrocket should, and CBS wasn’t it. I actually enjoyed Diana Ross.

Kenny Lee Lewis

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Totally agree, Nash Big Bash was where it was at. AC & AC on CNN were unwatchable, and I am just tired of watching Lip-Synched Choreography Extravaganzas like on ABC.

Happy New Year.   Let’s save the small clubs, it’s the only hope to develop new live performers.

Kelly Breaks

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Once again, your assessment is spot on. I’ve been going to rock shows since 1970 and I never liked country music with its sappy lyrics and twangy voices but today’s country is rock and roll from the late 60’s, early 70’s. I have yet to see some of my favorite acts live because tickets are not only outrageously high, they are difficult to get without going through the secondary market. As to the politics of country music I’ve always felt you have to separate the person from the performer. Thanks again for your honesty and insightfulness. I’ve read most of the books you recommend and I feel fortunate to be a recipient of your daily musings.

Tom Fitzsimmons

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I couldn’t agree with you more. My wife and I were home with the flu and did the same channel surfing. Stayed on the Nashville Bash almost the entire time  once I saw Stephen Wilson Jr. I somehow missed Keith Urban playing You Get What You Give (which is a shame since I played guitar and sang backing vocals with New Radicals of the song at the Biden inauguration).

But from a refreshing point of pure musicianship, songs you can sing with actual melodies and lyrics you can understand and it not being pre-taped (usually months in advance by the way making it even more fake) it was all REAL.

Country is the new rock.

Fred Goldring

_____________________________________

My wife wants to watch Andy and Anderson after five minutes, it was pretty obvious to me they’re done. They need new material or they need to Quit. Anderson gets so silly it’s embarrassing

Edward Arguijo

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Andy Cohen’s powder blue puffer jacket was the true star of the CNN show. Nicole Skyer, New Jersey

_____________________________________

Nashville’s story is twice as deep as it appears on the surface and I know because I’m a native Nashvillian.

Country’s culture is sticking it’s landing in pop music, finally. CNN’s daytime programming for their global 2026 NYE presentation centered not on Lower Broadway or even Bicentennial Park. Rather, it was at Anzie Blue, an intimate, female-owned independent venue located in Hillsboro Village, my husband and I have owned it since ’19.

There, it was line dancing by the instructor of the moment Justin Lee Williams, Grammy-winning songwriter Sebastian Kole (who now records as Pynk Beard — yes, because he dyed his beard neon pink, so people would be forced to pay greater attention to him, he admits), and Grammy nominated artist Maggie Rose, legend Chris Isaak, plus legacy artists including John Carter Cash (and his wife, Ana Cristina) on the same billing that highlighted where Nashville heads next.

As this story continues to expand, it’s important to be  aware that on any given week of 2025, 50 percent of Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart reflected the American and global cultural grip that Nashville broadly — not just with country music’s industry at the forefront — is sustaining.

Sure, the downtown story is what’s leading. However, as a city, overall? The dynamic of the natural interplay between a more diverse set of pop stars authentically understanding country, Southern and Western culture foremost, with the support of legends and those deep in country and America’s legacy, overall, offers what’s potentially next — and even more impactful, for Nashville and the music industry.

When I finally woke up this morning after a 16+ hour day yesterday, my heart was full from all the messages from other independents in the music biz, and they all said the same thing. Get ready ’26, the independents are not going anywhere.

Thank you CNN for highlighting the “other” Nashville, music is all over the city, not just downtown and not just country music.  That’s what makes it MUSIC CITY.

Happy new year BOB.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DS-OXCcgMtQ/?igsh=MWZqNTl4bjZrbW81dA==

Marcie Allen

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I was at the Nashville show. What you didn’t see was when the TV cameras cut away from Lainey, Jason, and Bailey, they continued playing.  The audience at Bicentennial Capital Mall got to see one-hour shows by each of the three headliners.  As you said, it was more like a concert, because that’s what it was.

As for Stephen Wilson Jr., you should speak with the TV show’s producer Robert Deaton about him.

George Achaves

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YESSSS! So glad you got to have that SWJ experience, Bob! I’ve been waiting/hoping to see his name pop up in your emails. Stephen is such a genuine guy, an incredible talent and proof that there’s still a place in this world for authentic artistry and real songs to cut through and connect with people (let alone do it in your mid-40s). He works his ass off too.

I’ve seen him live many times, and am grateful to call him a friend, but you know someone truly has it when he’s selling out a venue in the Newcastle, UK – a true “working man’s town”, miles away from Nashville – and everyone in the room knows every word to every song, crying (including me!), laughing, galvanized and on the journey with him.

Happy New Year and thanks for all you do.

Cheers,

Richard Grewar

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Thank you for being the best blogger of 2025. My wife is growing tired of me saying, “Well my blogger says…”

But your takes are terrific. You introduce me to great books, shows and bands. (I recently loved the book on the Boston saga. Captivating.)

Peace and love to you and your wife and thanks again for your well-thought out words.

Gary Judson

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You sound like a bitter old weak out of touch sell-out has been, who’s decided it’s time to switch teams, Bob. So now you write from cowardice and contempt and have decided to get on your knees, bend over and suck up to your new team hoping they’ll invite inside’, Bob.

You’ve become a shadow of your former inspiring and insightful self in the wake of Trump / Right Wing / Hate / NAZIfication of America and it’s been a pathetic spiral.

That’s one way to end an legacy.

Have a wonderful year Bob.

Dale ‘Rage’ Resteghini