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From: Gerard Kinzelmann

Subject: Taylor and Rolling Stone article

WTF not a puff piece but a hurricane. I laughed out  loud at some

sentences. Tayor’s publicists probably wrote this. How far RS

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-taylor-swift-won-commentary-1235351833/

_________________________________

That article is behind a paywall. Not that the news that Taylor Swift has reacquired her catalog of recordings is hidden, I saw it on my phone within moments of waking it up.

But that’s not the story that impressed me most today. Here’s what I read in the “Wall Street Journal”: 

“E.l.f. Buys Hailey Bieber’s Rhode Cosmetics Brand in $1 Billion Deal – Acquisition unites brands popular with Gen Z and helps buyer diversify its supply chain outside of China”

https://shorturl.at/7H5tS

Now this article too is behind a paywall, but if you Google the story…it comes up in spades, there are tons of references.

So I ask you, if you want to get rich which path are you going to take, become a musician or a model/influencer who is famous for nothing?

Not that all of Bieber’s billion is net. Then again, the billion plus that Taylor Swift earned on her last tour was far from net. Talk about costs…

So Taylor Swift reacquired her catalog. Kudos. But let’s be clear, SHE PAID FOR IT!

She paid less for it than she would have if she hadn’t rerecorded her initial albums, but she wrote a big check, it was too big a number to Zelle.

As far as a breakthrough for all artists, a pivot point in the music business?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If anything, labels now insert clauses that make it so you can’t rerecord your albums, not until a long period of time passes, if at all.

And if you think the labels are the most important entities in today’s music business, you’d be talking about how much money Swift made from her recordings as opposed to her tour, and that’s not the number thrown around.

However, since the labels no longer know how to create a hit, you have to do this yourself. And therefore you negotiate a deal on your terms. And ultimate ownership of the recordings is negotiable.

Actually, the big story here is “Sinners,” the blockbuster movie directed by Ryan Coogler. The rights revert to him after twenty five years, and Hollywood is FREAKING!

But Coogler had leverage. A history of success. And a studio desperate for hits.

Now if you subscribe to Apple News+ you can read the above-referenced “Rolling Stone” story here:

“How Taylor Won – Swift owning her life’s work is a historic victory with enormous ramifications for other artists, and the entire music world”

https://apple.news/A3nFtjqN1QrmVlEeAzKSCCA

It is hagiography, but it’s also not completely accurate.

Prince’s beef with Warner Bros. wasn’t about ownership of his masters, but how often he could release albums! Mo wanted to build and milk one album before he put out another. Also, every time Warner put out an album they had to pay Prince, and they didn’t want to do this, if for no other reason thank the most recent albums hadn’t sold as well as the previous ones.

And if you think Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun are evil, not only do you not know the men, but you don’t know business. Taylor could have bought her masters at multiple points along the way, BUT SHE DIDN’T WANT TO PAY FAIR MARKET VALUE FOR THEM!

I really don’t want to make this about Swift. It’s great that she owns her records. Everybody should. And I could go deep into an analysis of costs and royalties and the way the labels screw you, but…

How could this guy Rob Sheffield drink the kool-aid? I won’t say he got it wrong so much as he’s caught up in the hysteria, believing there is meaning here when there is very little. Everything is negotiable and everything is for sale. Period. It’s just a matter of the number.

But the same people reading Sheffield’s article are the same people raging against Live Nation about ticket prices, when the reason they’re high is because of market demand, and the prices are set by the acts!

But the acts can’t be guilty.

And neither can Taylor Swift.

It’s considered to be black and white, when almost always it’s chiaroscuro.

Sans Scott Borchetta the odds of Taylor Swift having made it are slim to none. Borchetta is an ace promotion person who was committed nearly full time to breaking Swift. Acts don’t become worldwide phenomena without help. Of course at the core there’s Taylor’s talent (along with Liz Rose’s and Max Martin’s and other players/creators), but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But once again, it’s the Bieber story that caught my eye.

We no longer live in the Beatle/classic rock era and we no longer live in the MTV era, when not only were acts and their material known around the world, but they became richer than almost every other citizen. Now a ton of people make more money than musicians. Certainly techies and other entrepreneurs, and then there are managers who make it on salary and stock options.

But usually to make it in that monied world you have to have portfolio…education, smarts, experience. To make it as a model/influencer you don’t need any skills at all, other than hunger and your wiles. Once again, it’s easier to make money as an influencer than it is as a musician. You just wake up one day and call yourself an influencer and start. Starting in music is hard, it usually requires paying your dues off the radar screen for years.

And that’s too long for most people.

So who is going to go into music?

Oh, we know that everybody seems to be making a record now, with nearly a hundred thousand tracks added to Spotify every day. And what is the main complaint of the uploaders? THEY’RE NOT RICH! As for getting paid at YouTube, they don’t even give you a chance unless you reach a certain number of views.

And makeup and perfume? Cosmetics? Talk about evanescent… Taylor’s music will be listened to long after people forget what brand Hailey Bieber even began.

And the scuttlebutt online is that Justin Bieber, her husband, had to sell his rights as a result of overspending. He’s a lot less savvy than Swift, and does not have a financier as a father.

So what does this say about our culture? That young people would rather be famous for nothing because it pays better than trying to become a musician?

We can’t blame the people who pay them. These influencers earned the money.

And to compare social media to Spotify… The biggest streamer in TV is not Netflix, but YouTube…the internet is a juggernaut!

And speaking of the internet, it’s the root of the dissension in the world today. But rather than dig deep, Democrats would rather deny it, telling potential voters to put the phone down. What next, stop having sex?

So if you’re in music for the money…

There are easier ways to make cash.

So you have to ask yourself, why you are doing it?

Now many are doing it for the cash. Undercutting their credibility all the while. Gaining traction so they can branch out into perfume and clothing and alcohol…all of which have nothing to do with music. It’s almost laughable, the more you sell your soul, the less your impact/the shorter your career. But the people making the deals get a cut, so they’re going to tell you to do it.

It’s like selling your publishing. Do you think Blackstone is in the business of losing money? They bought Hipgnosis because they think it’s a good deal. As did all the rest of the financial entities in that space. In many ways they’re no different from the labels, you make a deal today and lose out in the future. Which is what Swift is avoiding…but never forget the costs involved, she did not get those rights back for free.

And they keep inventing new ways to monetize music. Revenues are going UP on a percentage basis, from  7% per annum to 10% per annum. You can’t get that return putting your money in a CD, no, you have to shoulder risk. But there’s no risk in owning a song, it pays out better than a slot machine, year after year after year.

So what’s a poor boy to do?

Certainly not play in a rock and roll band.

But the power of music today, more than ever…IS THE MUSIC ITSELF!

That’s what you’re selling, your right to affect people, to speak truth to power. But we have very few doing this. Everybody is looking for a way to monetize.

So what’s forever, “Desperado” or “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”? “Hotel California” or “Cruel Summer”?

You may hate the Eagles, but the numbers tell us most people love to listen to them, year after year. And the Eagles don’t sell out, with brand extensions and advertisements. They don’t own their early records, then again the amount of money they make from recordings is a pittance compared to what they make on the road. The game changes, but the music remains the same.

Speaking of which, Peter Grant sold Led Zeppelin’s rights to Atlantic and the only reason they got paid again is because the contract didn’t have provisions for new media, i.e. the CD, never mind streaming. But believe me, the labels closed that loophole shortly thereafter.

However, if you’re an influencer, you owe nobody. 

So what choice do you think today’s young ‘uns are taking?

Ask around, you’ll find out, and the answer is clear.

And it ain’t music.

HBO Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgR9W13B98w

This is a must-see, even though I waited a year to watch it.

I’d been to the Stax museum in Memphis. And I’m the kind of person who pores over the exhibits, reads all the cards, digests the information. Furthermore, I know the records. How much more was there to learn?

Well, not a whole hell of a lot about Stax, but there was great footage of back then and…

You really get a feeling for Memphis and race relations.

Memphis is not on most people’s vacation to-do list. Nashville? They call it NashVegas and not is it only the home of country music, it’s the land of bachelorette parties. Not far from New York, the home of L.A. expat musicians, everybody knows about Nashville.

But most people don’t know about Memphis.

Memphis is the south. I know, I know, technically they call Nashville the south, but one step into Memphis will illustrate the difference.

So a wannabe country singer gets his sister to take out a mortgage on her house and they open a recording studio in an old movie theatre with a record store out front. And this record store attracts all the kids in the neighborhood. And these kids are Black.

The other. To be scared of. There are many people who still feel this way.

But with Jim Stewart behind the controls, and whites Steve Cropper and Duck Dunn melding with Blacks Booker T. Jones and Al Jackson, Jr., this integrated house band creates what are ultimately legendary records. From Rufus and Carla Thomas to Otis Redding to Sam & Dave. Never mind as themselves as Booker T. and the M.G.’s.

But Otis dies in a plane crash, along with members of the Bar-Kays, and Atlantic ends up with all the masters and…Al Bell rallies the troops and rebuilds the label.

Al Bell… He’s the heart and soul of the movie. A man without much portfolio, a deejay, who ends up driving the entire company commercially and ultimately creatively too. He’s got a vision. And he’s a preacher and a coach and he keeps the troops going. This is the kind of person who conventionally triumphed in the music business. An outsider who made it on their wits, developing skills along the way. And when Al talks about the lessons he learned from Winthrop Rockefeller…

When the movie is over you’ll think twice about competing with the big boys. I would doubt CBS putting Stax on hold, not sending the company checks, but this same company did the exact same thing with Tom Scholz to force him to deliver a second Boston album. And the funny thing about the man is the corporation continues but not the executives doing its dirty week. You stay for a while, act as the big swinging dick, take your money and one day you’re done.

But if you’re an entrepreneur, it’s YOUR company, and you want it to last forever.

Al wants Stax and Memphis to be taken seriously by the people on the coasts. Black-owned businesses were always seen as second-class, in some cases irrelevant, or to be toyed with and ripped-off. As for Memphis… Despite so many residents moving south for the weather in the past few decades, if for no other reason following the companies who were evading the northern unions, in the sixties and even seventies northerners had contempt for the south.

If you watch this documentary you’ll feel the power of Martin Luther King, Jr. In a way taking a day off from work will not. You get insight into what it was like to be Black in America, a second class citizen. As it is said in the film, they didn’t want more, just the same, the same opportunity, the same equality.

You get a history of civil rights in a music doc, you’re not beaten over the head with it, and I wish everybody in America could see this doc.

And a concomitant one about being Black in America today, which doesn’t exist.

And there is the music. And Isaac Hayes gets his due as Black Moses. Something that has been lost to the sands of history, eclipsed by his role as Chef in “South Park” and his ultimate exit.

Now to a degree this documentary is hagiography. How could Al Bell not know that the company’s masters could be attached? It’s one thing to be screwed by Jerry Wexler when you’re wet behind the ears, quite another to be ignorant when you’re facing trial for fraud…you’ve got high-priced lawyers, you know what is going on.

Was everybody out to get Stax, to put it in its place, wanting to keep Blacks down? Definitely to a degree, to what degree…

These documentaries are made by people trying to draw attention to the catalog and burnish its image. You’re not going to find a deep exposé.

Then again, the real story of Stax is the music, and that’s given a fuller treatment here than anywhere else. There’s a strong case made that the Memphis sound was homegrown and unique, and when it was snuffed out something was lost.

No one will watch this documentary and say it was a waste of time. No one will be bored during it.

Two thumbs definitely up, WAY UP!

Peter Wolf has a new book, “Waiting on the Moon,” and we dive into the tales of the artists, poets, drifters, grifters and goddesses he writes about.

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/peter-wolf/id1316200737?i=1000710409924

 

 

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/0e9ff436-3f2e-4002-9ca1-6a281b0dfe6c/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-peter-wolf