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Tune in today June 23rd, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

Hey Bob. Let me respond to your email with WHY artists need an agent.

The focus of my work as an agent is on territories outside of the USA, especially in Europe, Latin America, Australasia, Japan/Asia etc. Many large acts do sell the ‘Whole World Tour’ to LN or AEG. However all tours still have to be routed and there are places where the ‘big’ promoters do not have companies or local relationships.

Often, with tour routes that we have helped to create (many times with those ‘big’ promoters), we include additional and useful ‘sell off’ shows. We also act as a buffer between the Manager/Artist and the Promoter. There are often difficult decisions to be made on logistics, local compliance rules, movement of equipment, local tax issues, currency fluctuations, insurance for pandemics and much more to make a tour run smoothly.

We also check the books (although vanishingly few promoters are dishonest, as you suggest). The point I’m making is that we agents have always provided good ‘old fashioned’, time-honoured service. Here are some of the reasons I say this:

We have geographical understanding gained from years of experience. Local ‘on the ground’ issues are informed and resolved by a wealth of knowledge about locality, culture, company, client, that we have accumulated over time.

We store fundamental information such as how long it takes to overnight from A-B (drive times), the network of ferry links, transport restrictions, crew swaps, air-freight of equipment, charter flights and the many behind-the-scenes activities that collectively make a tour work (we do all this in association with artist production managers and transport companies)

Sure you can leave much to promoters but an AGENT fighting for the artist in their corner provides a crucial and significant service. We’re a vital cog in the overall process. As well as handling regular fee negotiations, much else of what is done by the agent maximises earnings for the artist. At a basic level, your premise that the manager just calls Michael Rapino and makes the global deal (thereby cutting out the agent) could be perceived as short term saving. But believe me, in the longer term, this ‘by-passing’ of our role and function would be more costly because of the reservoir of accumulated knowledge and pivotal insight an agent is able to bring to the party.

The artist relationship with a bigger promoter is partly founded on big bucks advances and guarantees. Undoubtedly this alliance has a role to play as financial certainty helps to keep the world running. Nevertheless, and for reasons I have indicated above, the contribution of the agent remains critical to the success of the enterprise. I would also add that territories outside of the USA represent about half the touring world and an agent ‘on the ground’ with local knowledge is an indispensable element in the equation.

The concept of ‘agent’ is not antiquated and the function is much more than paperwork. We help break talent by assisting younger acts to get a leg up. We foster record label, radio, tv and social media liaisons. We also have excellent relationships with all the top managers. Those guys appreciate the added value and hard work that an agent invests in their artists’ success. The strength and depth of the relationships that we have forged with a number of strong headliners has also been influential when it comes to negotiating with promoters, festivals and other venues. The presence of an agent will be significantly more consequential to an artist, adding value and helping to build or sustain their career in such an uncertain world we now face. The desired end result of an agent’s presence is to allow the artist to concentrate on their performance and give of their best to their audience, free from any external concerns which may have arisen.

The holistic nature of the agent’s relationship with an artist/manager means we’re always there for them, supporting, protecting, nurturing through thick and thin. Our agency representation list and enduring artist bonds speaks for itself.

The pendulum of live music swings between the power of a) the artists and promoters and b) the public who pay good money to see the music performed. In the present climate of uncertainty, the law of the jungle applies so lets allow the market to determine “who agrees what”. You can’t blame Rapino for trying to close the gaps. He is a caring and intuitive man who has given up his own salary for the cause.

Rod MacSween (International Talent Booking) ITB AGENCY London

I’ve got three copies. Two e-mailed, one sent by iMessage.

And the book business keeps raising digital prices and trying to keep the paradigms of the past in place.

The dirty little secret of the book business is most people don’t want what they’re offering. And when they do, piracy/copyright infringement is as big a problem as it was in the music business.

Then again, you read a book once, you listen to songs over and over again.

That’s another reason the movie and TV businesses have not been impacted that much by piracy/copyright infringement. There’s the one time viewing, but also the insane size of the files. But with 5G coming…

As for the TV business, a day of reckoning is coming. They’re trying to replicate the cable model, but you pay more for less. How many services can one person subscribe to? And what’s worse, is even if you subscribe to them all, even Sundance, MHz and Criterion, shows still fall through the cracks, if you want to see them you have to buy them. Talk about getting ripped-off.

Jeff Bezos wanted to grow the book business.

Instead, publishers and authors declared him public enemy number one.

Same deal with classic musicians and even new rock musicians. Spotify is the devil! Well, end result is while you keep bitching and telling your fans not to subscribe, the vacuum has been filled with new acts who have no problem with the new paradigm. Who gave it away for free on Soundcloud, who put out singles instead of full albums, who put out mixtapes, who put out multiple albums a year while you labored over yours for years and when it was released it was instantly forgotten, swept away by the tsunami of new product. So, who’s the winner here?

Bezos made every Kindle book $9.99 or less. So no one would think about the price of a book if they wanted it. Furthermore, the Kindle supersedes the store experience, as in you don’t have to travel to buy and everything is in inventory at all times. So what does the book business do? LAUD INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES! You’ve got to save your bookstore just like you had to save your record store. And sure, there are some people who still want to go to their disc shop, but almost all of the outlets have faded away and not radiated, which is what should happen to bookstores too.

If you want to call a bookstore a social experience, where you grab some coffee and talk about books, fine. But as for buying…it’s a ridiculous enterprise. Sure, you can browse, but the truth is the recommendation engine on Amazon is far superior (although you’ve not got to wade through all the sponsored product, enough already Amazon, how much more money do you need to make, no more advertising on your own site, it’s confusing!) And prices are too high.

We live in a digital, on demand world.

But not in books.

Maybe there should be a subscription model. Amazon is trying this, but with too few titles. Imagine if everything was available for ten bucks a month. Sure, this would be a good deal for frequent readers, but imagine all the casual readers who would sign up!

Forget those who go to the library, even via Libby, they’ll never pay, these are the same people who ironically say they want to own their music and won’t sign up for Spotify.

It gets even crazier. Steve Jobs changed book selling to the agency model, but then the government cracked down for collusion and the bottom line, leaving all the b.s. out, is that digital book prices in the Kindle store WENT UP! And I thought antitrust was supposed to be to the benefit of the consumer.

The publishing model is broken. For so many reasons. First, the inane publication schedule. You finish the book and it doesn’t come out for a year. They’ve got to seed reviewers, they’ve got to print, they’ve got to ship…all that’s gone out the window in the music business, because it’s about the long haul, not the short, front-loading is now irrelevant, tracks live forever online and if there’s a groundswell, you’ll make money over time, if people listen and then move on, you’ll be broke. Print the books when they’re ready, digitally. What kind of bizarre world do we live in where the printed word is last, where you can make and distribute music, movies and TV in less time!

And we all know production, shipping and returns are a waste of money and time. Think of all the landfills full of CDs!

So, Bolton is hot and people want to read, ergo the piracy/copyright infringement.

But imagine how many people would read the Bolton book if access felt free, because they subscribed, or was $9.99 for a digital copy instead of the $16.99 it presently is.

Oh, don’t cough up that canard about “value,” look what it did for the music business, NOTHING!

The customer is king.

And despite Oprah and Reese Witherspoon books have less impact that at any time in my life. You think someone would be contemplating this, scared, thinking about the future.

But the book business?

It’s Jethro Tull 24/7, they’re living in the past.

One generation got old
One generation got soul

“Volunteers”
Jefferson Airplane

It’s bottom up. And the oldsters have got no clue.

I found this story in my Twitter feed:

“TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally – Did a successful prank inflate attendance expectations for President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Okla?”

But it’s not on the “New York Times” homepage, so if you think you’re up to date by skimming the Gray Lady constantly, you’re wrong. You’ve got to dig.

But it’s easier to find out on the excoriated Twitter, where this is tonight’s story. And tomorrow you’ll know it too. Stories start on Twitter. The news is first on Twitter. You keep hearing about the opinions and the arguing, but who is following those people anyway, I’m just looking for INFORMATION!

Now the music business sees TikTok as its tool. After being caught flat-footed by the success of “Old Town Road,” and then bringing it in-house at Sony, the labels decided they wanted some of that action. If TikTok could build the unknown Lil Nas X, imagine what it could do with a known quantity, a star?

The music business used to be first, but now it’s last. Because it is controlled by old people who did not get the memo, who believe they are indispensable and that no one can resist their money.

But isn’t it funny that not a single musical star has captured the zeitgeist of the Minneapolis/Black Lives Matter explosion in a song we all know. Illustrating that reflecting life, and opening up an audience’s eyes as to the way of life, are not part of the equation. In the music business, it’s all about collecting fans and milking them dry. When one of the biggest acts in the business, Justin Bieber, tries to manipulate the system to make his record number one, who in the hell is gonna listen to the words of a pop star?

They’re listening to themselves.

This internet revolution has been going on for twenty five years. At least twenty, however you calculate it. But the power elite, in government and media, have still not gotten the memo. They think it’s still top-down. Example #1, the utter failure of Quibi. Which is never going to make it. The parts will be sold to somebody and Katzenberg will declare victory, but don’t you believe it. Turns out Jeffrey knew all the insiders, which is how the old game was played, he not only did not know the outsiders, he didn’t understand their power, of user-generated content, of word of mouth.

So, you’re asking if an outside entity, like Russia, could sway opinion and tilt the election…well if teens, many of whom can’t even vote, can snooker the the Trump team and the entire media, the answer most definitely is YES!

And it wasn’t only TikTok. It was K-Pop “Stans.” You remember that old Eminem tune don’t you? Set to Dido’s “Thank You”? If you investigate, the K-Pop stars are not just dancing fools, two-dimensional cardboard acts manipulated by Svengalis behind the scenes. This is not the Backstreet Boys or ‘NSYNC, the K-Pop acts evidence a whole culture, where the members of the act testify as to their truth online, and fans eat it up. Yes, the Spotify Top 50 come and go, but K-Pop sustains, because it’s all about the CULTURE! We learned that back in the classic rock era, but we seem to have lost the formula.

And speaking of the classic rock formula, Jefferson Airplane released “Volunteers” in late ’69 and you were either on the bus or you were off. And if you don’t get the reference, you were most definitely not on the bus. And so many of the lyrics of that fifty year old number still resonate:

Ain’t it amazing all the people I meet

Doesn’t matter if someone is physically close, today’s teens have friends all over the world.

Hey now it’s time for you and me

Turns out the turning point is coming with Gen-Z, not the millennials. For all the talk about the millennial ethos, most of it wrong, how do you explain Zuck, it turns out change is truly coming from the younger generation, which is not old enough to have been beaten down yet, who grew up with the internet, never mind smartphones, and despite their parents wanting to be best friends, there’s no way this can happen. Because they’re digital natives, and their parents are not.

It’s harder to learn new tricks when you’re older. And you don’t want to spend the time to learn new tricks. So, what you do is denigrate, push aside and then feel superior, however delusional that might be.

That’s what happened in the sixties, with the generation gap. And it’s happening again right now.

Look at the tweets. People with teens in the house knew about this prank. But they didn’t have access to a megaphone. And those with the megaphone, the teens, didn’t want to amplify the story, for fear of the joke getting out. IT WAS HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT and the media and the Democrats missed it!

As for the low attendance…

It doesn’t matter anyway.

Did you actually listen to Trump’s speech? To a leftie, it was almost funny if it wasn’t so horrifying. But if you were an acolyte, it spoke to you. Trump, however bumbling, is dynamic, he goes for the jugular, he gives the illusion of being relaxed, and is almost cracking jokes, however wooden they might be, failing to truly land because Trump can’t let go of his hubris.

On the other side we’ve got…

Another bumbling septuagenarian, but this one can barely get it out, and when he does, he’s prone to misstatements.

Oh, that looks good.

The best thing happening to Biden is Covid-19, it prevents him from reaching the people and screwing up his message and having these faux pas amplified by not only the right wing media, but the left wing media too, in an effort to appear fair. Biden is playing by twentieth century rules, Trump by twenty first, where it’s all about followers, set yourself on fire, do whatever you need to gain attention. And he’s winning at that.

And Gen-Z understands this too. Watch a few TikTok clips, this is not AP students commenting on Camus. The game is to be as outrageous as possible so that you’ll go viral. But despite this focus on individual triumph, Gen-Z knows its collective power, and just like the millennials, and unlike their boomer parents, Gen-Z knows your primary desire is to be a member of the group.

And the power of this group can be harnessed.

So what really happened in Tulsa?

Were there just not that many people who wanted to see Trump? Or was some of his constituency afraid of getting Covid-19?

One thing is for sure, Trump and the media expected many more people than showed up. The narrative was incorrect.

As for facts… Trump’s team is already saying he was joking when he said he told his people to not test for Covid anymore. It almost doesn’t matter what he says… The left prints it and alternately laughs and screams, and the right doesn’t even come across it, and if it does, it does not care.

So if the left thinks it is winning…

It’s a long way to the election baby. And it’s Biden’s race to lose. And never underestimate his power to do this. This is not the first time Joe’s run for president, last time he blew himself up, he’s got a long tradition of doing this, as well as enough skeletons in his closet to fill a graveyard.

The Republicans are playing football.

Gen-Z is playing three-dimensional chess.

And the Democrats are playing checkers. Yup, they think it’s easy, the game is not complicated, and if you do what you’ve always done before, you will win. Can you say Kerry? Can you say Hillary?

But forget the campaigning, it really comes down to just one thing…interference.

Did you see that corporations are now boycotting Facebook, trying to get Zuck to stand up to misinformation? The Republicans have learned the power of false facts and are doubling-down, seemingly every day a Trump fan sends me a manipulated video that they think is real. How do you fight that? The Democrats have no plan. The corporations are more savvy than the DNC!

As far as third party interlopers… The TikTokkers and K-Pop fans manipulated a presidential event, imagine what those with money and a sustained effort could do!

But you don’t really need money, it’s really about hearts and minds. And distribution is free on the internet. But you only gain acolytes if you burn yourself up, or you appeal to people’s insides to the point where they must forward your message. People want to believe, they’re looking for someone to believe in. And believe me, the younger generation doesn’t think it’s Biden, and neither do the protesters.

I’m just the messenger, sling your arrows all you want, that does not deny my point.

And my point is if anybody’s got control, it’s the younger generation, and the older generation doesn’t even understand the game.

And this tech savvy is what is employed to manipulate the vote. What did we hear about Georgia, the vote was so slow because the elderly poll workers couldn’t understand the new machines, didn’t have enough training? TikTok does not come with a manual. But somehow kids figure out everything without instruction. And they don’t bitch about the lack of tech help, because they know there is none, other than Google. And they’ve got all day to use these tools to their benefit. And tonight they did.

Oh, what a wonderful country!