There’s nothing here.

Today it was announced that Apple invested $50 million in UnitedMasters. That’s like you or me going to 7-11 and buying a Twinkie. This is how the rich get richer, they invest in a zillion companies and if one becomes successful…

Same deal with Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz. You want chump change, you want to hook us up with the players, give us access, give us opportunity with incredible upside? Why not!

But what do we actually have here?

UnitedMasters has been in business in excess of three years… What have they accomplished? NOTHING! How do we know this? Because if you have any success you tell everybody you know about it, you get your publicity team to spam news outlets and we’re all inundated with information we can live without that does not move the needle. But UnitedMasters? Not a peep!

So what do we really have here…

A glorified TuneCore and CDBaby, a way to get your music on to streaming services where it will likely go unheard, WHOO-HOO! Also, there’s a promise that you might get your music hooked up to an ad campaign, on a TV show… That paradigm has riddled the web for two decades now, give us your money and we’ll give you false hope. Then again, there’s a free tier on UnitedMasters, but that’s really only for the true amateur, someone who believes they’ll get no traction, otherwise why give up 10% instead of just paying a once a year fee of $59.99?

I’m sick of people giving hope to the wannabes, giving almost nothing in return other than a promise, a key to the lock of riches, which is rusty and doesn’t work anyway, you’re better off trying to 3D print your own.

That’s right, there’s no easy way to make it in music. There’s certainly no easy way to sustain.

Sure, you could get lucky. Have a clip on TikTok, or YouTube, even get on a playlist at Spotify. But then what? CRICKETS! You see it really does depend on talent, and not only that, but hard work and perseverance, and most people lack all three. But since the barrier to entrance is so damn low in music, people are climbing over it to clamor for attention and after spending money find out no one cares.

Used to be train-wreck publicity could work. But now people are constantly pulling these stunts on platforms all over the web, so if all you’ve got is a story, you’ve got nothing. Don’t get locked into the old game, thinking virality is just a click away and you’ll be in everybody’s hearts and minds forever after. That doesn’t even happen for the big boys and girls, that’s one of the reasons the Grammy ratings sucked, FEW CARE! If nobody cares about the supposed stars, trying to spam their way into our hearts, what are the odds for you? VERY LONG!

We don’t need UnitedMasters, we need one manager/company providing three to five great acts, ONE! That’s the way you beat the big companies, not with a smorgasbord of crap. One could say UnitedMasters is getting a first look, but if you happen to have any success, someone else will scoop you up, one of the majors, unless you want to go it alone.

Which is why we need the aforementioned innovative company/manager. Artists need help, from people, not platforms. Those willing to invest in new and different music, who are not inured to the old ways. Come on, sign to a major label and they’ll get you on radio, TV and in print, maybe sync a song or two to some TV show or commercial, and that’s IT! The same pre-internet paradigm they’ve been relying on forever. As for advertising, Netflix and its competitors don’t have it. The target market hates ads, why do you think that’s an in, a road to possible success?

It starts with the music. Ignore the penumbra. Today all the wannabes are business experts, complaining about streaming royalties when they’re getting none, because no one is listening to them. Where are the people focusing on music? And I’m gonna let you in on a little secret…if you release great music there are tons of ways to make money, sure, you could still be ripped off by a manager or label, but the cash will flow. Today there are more avenues of exploitation than ever before, but the inert, irrelevant news media keeps printing the story of supposedly inadequate streaming royalties. Let me ask you, if I declare myself a baseball player should the MLB start paying me? Case closed.

As for Apple… They know the score, they’re never going to invade the majors’ turf. And forget new music, the majors’ leverage is based on their catalog, which they own until the end of copyright. Apple needs the majors, they’re not going to cross them.

As for Andreessen Horowitz and Alphabet… These people are entertainment ignorant. They think it’s all about money when in truth it’s all about people. And not the people they know, who show up to work on time and deliver on a predetermined date, but free-spirited artists channeling God who will deliver when they’re inspired, and you’ve got to wait for it. Music companies are about marketing, not creation. If anything, you could say that when they get into creation they ruin it. Yes, it’s labels demanding hits that result in us having these tracks with twenty writers and features, which are remixed to death. They’re trying to buy insurance, and there’s no insurance in music, NONE!

Could Apple, Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz ultimately make money on their investment? Sure, that’s why they call it an investment! Hey, want ten bucks for your lemonade stand? Send me an e-mail with a business plan, I might go for that.

Or maybe I’ll create a SPAC, like the bozo business wannabes. Do all these entertainment big swinging dicks, and they’re all male, really think Wall Street is so easy that they can just run in and scoop up money? While they’re at it, why don’t they say they should head engineering at a tech company! Why is it everybody in America believes they can do everything, when this is patently untrue.

As for Steve Stoute… He made his bones in advertising. Now he can pick and choose acts to fill slots. But the truth is, the companies want names, or they want to pay bupkes.

Then again, Jay Z laid off the moribund Tidal on Jack Dorsey.  And what did all the news reports say? THE MONEY WAS A DROP IN THE BUCKET! Maybe Steve will be able to unload UnitedMasters on a deep pocket mesmerized by the entertainment business, if so, more power to him. But this distribution paradigm is not new, and we are not living in the aughts, it’s no longer about tech innovation, BUT THE MUSIC ITSELF!

But that’s a lot harder to do, especially if you’re a business person.

Come on, how many songs are hits?

Scratch that, how many songs do you want to listen to? If I told you you had to listen to a complete Spotify playlist without a skip option you’d go insane, or turn it down and let it play in the background.

We all want just what we want exactly when we want it. And we don’t want most things. Including UnitedMasters.

I rest my case.

Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/3ksc4jbb

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/2zrk2ju7

It’s a cross between Pure Prairie League, New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Grateful Dead.

It’s really all about the second Pure Prairie League album, with Craig Fuller’s vocals. At this point, “Falling In and Out of Love” and “Amie” are classics, but the album being released on RCA they didn’t get the attention they deserved upon release in 1972, and it wasn’t long thereafter that FM radio switched from a cornucopia of soft and loud to loud and homogenized and compromised, but you did hear these two every once in a while, and now they’re staples, at least on SiriusXM, people know them, more than did back then.

I’ll argue it’s all about the first New Riders album, in retrospect, it’s better than any Dead LP other than the “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty” twins, at least when the Dead dwelled in this country rock idiom.

As for that idiom, it was dominated by Jerry Garcia’s laid back plaintive vocals, Jerry wasn’t singing to dominate, but to get his message across, you held your hand to your ear, you wanted to listen…

And bask in the sound.

Today concerts are all about the fan experience. The music is nearly secondary. If you went with your friends and had a good time, that’s what counts most. And the truth is too often the music is rote, on hard drive, and the production is nearly as important as what comes out of the speakers.

But it didn’t used to be this way.

This was the San Francisco experience, the ballroom experience, getting together with like-minded people at the Fillmore and other ballrooms to immerse yourself in the sound and have the music wash over you and take you away, drifting to a place of happiness.

Like with Lord Huron’s “Mine Forever.”

It’s important to tell you that I discovered it via Jeff Pollack’s weekly e-mail, Jeff only includes five tracks, and although most I only want to hear once, if that, I check them all out, the longer playlists…it’s too much work.

And when I heard “Mine Forever,” I turned my head to see who it was. Lord Huron? I know the name, but the act has never done something that has stuck with me. Then again, when I went on Spotify it turned out their track “The Night We Met” had 714,393,145 streams…that’s almost a BILLION! Further research told me its success was driven by its inclusion on the soundtrack of “13 Reasons Why.” But, interestingly, it only has 197,238,628 views on YouTube, proving, once again, YouTube is not the home of active listeners, if you’re really into music you have a streaming subscription and you listen there, and it is all about listening, what goes in the ears as opposed to what you see.

So what appealed to me about “Mine Forever”?

To tell you the truth it was halfway through the song when it went on an instrumental adventure, this was the essence of the Grateful Dead, the song was just a setup, a jumping off point, to improvisation and exploration, a trip, which you rode shotgun on. Sure, there were other people at the show but its success depended upon you linking up to the music first, and with it in your ears you looked into the eyes of others also infected and began to transcend.

And transcendence is what it’s all about. Don’t forget, the late sixties were not that different from today, it was an era of turmoil. Then again, a lot of this music was made in the seventies, when we were licking our wounds, which is kind of like today, we’re wondering what comes next, who would have thought what came next way back when was a mercenary streak that ran throughout the boomer population, people became eager to sell out and make money, what will happen now that the Trump train has been temporarily stopped? Well, maybe first we’re gonna listen to music.

You’re never going to hear “Mine Forever” on Top 40 radio.

Then again, you never heard the Grateful Dead on Top 40 radio. All three bands, Pure Prairie League, the New Riders and the Dead were not made for Top 40 radio, their music wasn’t even made for radio at all, they bypassed that waystation and went directly into people’s hearts, if radio played ’em, great, but they depended upon the people, the culture, to spread the word.

So the truth is you want “Mine Forever” to envelop you. You want to play it on the big rig. You need the sound to penetrate every nook and cranny, squeeze out what was there before, replace it with a mood, an excursion you can only get from music.

“Mine Forever” is not a one listen smash, something you hear and believe will be ubiquitous, but you’ll want to hear it again, and again, to return to that mood, that feeling. And sometime you’ll be listening and someone else will feel the magic and they’ll be infected and eventually the word will spread.

And the truth is music, now more than ever, is not really about recordings.

We hear too much about recordings, when the truth is there’s been a sea change since Napster, music, more than ever, is live, which is kinda funny when more of the recordings have become robotic and fake, unlike life.

“Mine Forever” is made for the gig. You already know it, but you know the act will sustain it, it’s just a framework for exploration, and you’re eager to take the trip.

This is an alternative universe, this is the heartbeat of the music business, not what you see in the Spotify Top 50, we’re returning to the sixties, when it’s not about what’s popular on AM radio, what’s obvious, but something more underground on FM, something that demands a bit more, something that does not slide off your shoulders, but sticks with you.

Sometime this afternoon, when you’ve already worked long hours, when your body is tired, pull up “Mine Forever,” it will rejuvenate you…

And you’ll be thrilled this spirit is still alive, and it really didn’t die in 1969.

Tune in today, March 30th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

I’ve written about John Dick and his polling company CivicScience and even had him on my podcast: https://apple.co/2QEJdXd

Anyway, John has started a podcast himself, “The Dumbest Guy in the Room,” and this week I’m on it: https://spoti.fi/39qeR1m

I cover a lot of ground re today’s landscape and we address topics not covered in the newsletter, so you might want to check it out.

In any event, be sure to sign up for John’s weekly e-mail full of insights if you haven’t already: https://bit.ly/3rI45df