The music business should be much bigger than it is. But the old guard running on fumes is running on self-interest and there’s no vision. Usually we rely on artists for vision, but as a result of income inequality the best an the brightest don’t go into music and the “artists” we do have are brands, the penumbra is more important than the essence. The clothing brand, the fortified water, if you can make a buck, they say yes. Which is kind of interesting, because that’s how we got into this snit, because it used to be you could make big bucks in the music industry, whereas today you can’t. Sure, you can make millions, but techies and bankers make much more. Then again, they tend to be skilled. The great thing about music is there is no barrier to entry, but that does not mean we need lowest common denominator.

1. The Charts

It’s ridiculous. The labels utilize them for bragging rights, it’s an insiders’ game, but the public is exposed to the chart every week in the media. This is not the pure dollar chart of film, that’s the streaming numbers. Rather this is a manipulated chart of streams and sales, but it’s even worse, now you get to number one by add-ons, tickets, merch, to the point where the chart is completely meaningless. Truly. It’s a disservice to our business, because for many people that’s the touchpoint they experience.

2. Streaming Top 50

If streaming is the new radio, isn’t there a responsibility to expose the public to new artists?

Oh, they call that the playlist. Where you have to wade through excrement to get to the good stuff.

We need a new chart that will illuminate that which is happening even if it’s not streaming tonnage. Don’t tell me about the viral chart, the backwaters, I’m talking front page. The streaming service has a responsibility to break artists.

3. Streaming Top 50-2

It’s all hip-hop, and fifty percent of the public hates hip-hop. So they’re left out?

4. Tour numbers

This is what the public should be seeing. But they don’t. Except for year-end totals. If you see something is happening in Denver or across our country, you’re inclined to check it out.

5. Tower of Babel

People want to belong, they want to converse about music. But with so many niche acts, however large, this cannot happen.

6. The acts themselves.

No one is shooting for the moon, no one is saying no. I’ll say it another time, Adele is so big because she said no. At first she played small buildings, paperless. She turned down sponsorships. And she’s still white hot. Sam Smith played arenas on his first tour and suddenly he’s ice cold. It’s about building a fan base that will support you.

7. Acts 2

The business people run the business, not the acts. I know, I know, we keep paying fealty to the acts, but believe me, no one’s so hot that they can’t be replaced. Taylor Swift was big before she went pop. Then she lost the plot, she was suddenly me-too. Foo Fighters are working class at best. All the acts listen to their handlers. And the handlers want to get paid! So they tell the act to do things against their interest, the manager can always get another act, as for the act itself…good luck reinventing yourself.

So what we need is a handful of acts that have universal mindshare based on their music. Kanye has turned into a cartoon. It’s more about sneakers than tracks. The music needs to stand on its own legs. But we are not encouraging those acts, because we’re too involved in milking the past and brand extensions of those with any mindshare. So the music business thinks it’s winning, when the truth is it’s losing, it keeps edging further and further from top of mind. At best, the music is grease, background for a videogame. It used to be primary, but to be primary the track has to be exceptional and everybody has to get behind promoting it.

The Grammys are completely irrelevant. Because of the Balkanization of the business. No one is a fan of all these acts. Expect ratings to be horrific. The Grammy organization is on its way to cult status, especially after CBS fails to renew its TV contract. There are too many categories with too many awards. But a bright spot is Brandi Carlile. This is the future of the business. She’s been around for years, was on a major label and then not.

But then she recorded “The Joke.”

It only takes one track, but it’s really hard to write and record one. But somehow, despite being a non-player in the traditional infrastructure, the TV, the press, the stuff labels do that is ignored, Brandi succeeded via word of mouth, like Chris Stapleton before her. Meanwhile, everybody in Nashville keeps lauding Stapleton but on the coasts we’re into edgy crap that most people can’t relate to. But Brandi can sing and wrote a song with a message that she executed extremely well.

This used to be the formula. We were looking for home runs.

Now a bunt suffices. Most of the acts selling few tickets don’t deserve to sell more, the music isn’t good enough.

As for what we call home runs… It’s positively niche.

If Brandi wins, it’ll be like Bonnie Raitt thirty years ago. People who had no interest will glom on to the music. But they’re not glomming on to most of what we’re purveying, ever wonder why?

We’re setting our sights too low.

No one is willing to sacrifice.

It’s still a street business in a tech era.

We need more acts that can appeal to more people. It’s just that simple. And when we’ve got them, the music business will matter once again. Right now it’s cruising along, raining down bucks, but it does not matter.

Not that anybody in the business will acknowledge that.

Jamie said the customer doesn’t want to know about the fees, they’re scared off if the fees are baked into the ticket price.

Jake said baby bands can’t develop because sometimes the fees are as much as the tickets.

A promoter said he had a show with seven pre-sales, and the end result was thirty tickets sold.

Marc said the biggest issue was awareness, people don’t know tickets are available. Meanwhile, Metallica sells fifty percent of their tickets before the general on-sale.

Greetings from Aspen, Colorado, where attendees are experiencing the twenty third iteration of what is now called Aspen Live. It used to be called the Aspen Artist Development Conference, back when labels sent their people and records were the music business driver. I ask you, how can Drake be the streaming victor and be unable to sell tickets in certain markets? Were the prices too high, or is live a separate sphere from recordings.

On the dais was David Marcus, a bigwig at Ticketmaster.

I was the interviewer and first I got his history, going to law school, hustling as a sole practitioner, working for music startups, then gigs at Ticketmaster and Warner, back when Lyor said every deal had to be a 360 one, to getting blown out after Lyor was axed, to working at ScoreBig, which failed. He had to cope with the failure, it’s tough. And then going back to Ticketmaster, with a different owner, heading up the concert/artist division.

And David laid out pretty clearly how he was working with acts to further everybody’s happiness and career. He said it was about identity, we don’t know who our customer is. Amazon does. And if we know who has the ticket and quash the bots…

But the fees are high because the venues take the money, from Ticketmaster, as an advance. The public is clueless as to this.

And the emphasis on the secondary market can halt primary ticket sales. And although Ticketmaster keeps touting the efficacy of Verified Fan, no one outside the company believes in it, and Ticketmaster won’t reveal the secret sauce.

So you know who is left out?

THE CONSUMER!

Ticketbastard, that’s what it’s called.

But Ticketmaster is only one part of the obfuscation food chain. Hell, who knows where they’re gonna be a year from now, better to sit at home and buy your ticket on StubHub the day before the show. Sure, you’ll pay more, but you’ll sit where you want, and you can always get a ticket.

But the public is ignorant too. People think they should be able to sit in the front row for sticker price for every show. IGNORE THEM!

And people buy extra tickets not knowing you cannot compete with the brokers, no way. List your ticket online for $100 and the brokers will underprice you at $99.99, instantly. That’s technology folks.

In other words, we’ve got the business we want, totally opaque, working for us.

But the consumer can’t understand it. Never mind the government, which is lobbied by the secondary market whenever policies are questioned.

And there’s this belief that we can continue to raise the prices and the public will tolerate it because they need to go and experiences are king.

FOR HOW LONG?

People would rather sit at home and watch the NFL on the big screen. That’s what hi-def and 65″ screens delivered.

Any business that is consumer unfriendly is headed towards destruction.

That’s what Napster taught us. People don’t want to pay twenty bucks for one good track on a CD.

Napster gave them an option.

Right now there is no option for tickets.

But the wheel always turns, change always comes.

Look at it this way, while we fought the future we ended up with fifty percent of recorded music revenues. You’ve got to disrupt yourself. This industry is afraid of change.

Meanwhile, the skiing is great.

You had to watch SNL, because it reflected our generation, it was the only place you could go to experience television that had the viewpoint of the boomers, where music was a staple building block and irreverence was baked-in. You felt alone until 11:30 Saturday night. And the time slot was reflective of the dividing line between young and old. The oldsters in charge didn’t want to give away a valuable time slot, and the youngsters were still up at that hour, when the oldsters were not.

I was watching SNL Saturday night, because Felice likes to and I was doing my back exercises, and I didn’t laugh once. The jokes were broad and the formula the same. That’s what makes the show so retro. David Bowie and Madonna reinvented themselves a number of times, while their contemporaries who did not faded away. Maybe Weekend Update has to come first. Maybe there is no musical segment. Maybe it’s not about skits.

Meanwhile, Lorne Michaels is lauded by a press that thinks the show has impact, touting its efforts every Sunday and Monday, when the truth is the action is elsewhere.

We’re all looking for a home. And we denigrate those who are locked into the past, doing it the usual way. This is why you derided the girls hooked on pop. This is why the vinyl test was given in “Diner,” which made the film legendary. And “Animal House” tested limits. And…

Everything today is me-too or is clamoring for undeserved attention.

Nobody involved in the original SNL was inexperienced. Chevy Chase was 32! You could see him and Belushi in “Lemmings” Off-Broadway, and I did. Kinda like the “National Lampoon” itself, when it got it right, it captured the zeitgeist.

As did Live Aid. Which was when the MTV generation was crowned.

Or Michael Jackson with the “Thriller” video on the same channel.

And Ice-T telling us the reality of what was going on in the hood.

Or Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook. Suddenly, we could all connect!

And then it all fades. Zuckerberg today is a zero, not a hero. And seemingly everybody I know never goes on Facebook anyway.

And not only is Ice-T an actor, rap is pure entertainment with villains and heroes akin to wrestling.

And Michael Jackson lost it as soon as he insisted on being called “The King Of Pop.” That’s not how it works, WE ANOINT YOU!

And once video became an on demand item online, we deserted MTV and it faltered.

Now for the last twenty years, the internet captured the zeitgeist. We were addicted to gadgets, new platforms, and then it all went kaput. It got consolidated, your old gadgets were good enough. Sure, there are still breakthroughs, but none like the iPod, which had everybody excited.

And then there were the Beatles, who wrote ditties and then amped it up and blew our minds. Unlike SNL, they weren’t happy resting on their laurels, repeating themselves, they wanted to explore, and they took the rest of the world with them, to drugs, meditation, a way of looking at the world through glasses our parents couldn’t locate.

So what we are missing in music is artists that capture the zeitgeist.

We used to have a slew of them. Kurt Cobain. Alanis Morissette…a woman singing her truth with angst, she owned the airwaves!

But then the delivery method eclipsed the music and for twenty years, music has been a sideshow.

You know who captured the zeitgeist? Donald Trump! He rounded up all those left behind, all those fearful of immigrants, all those angry at minorities, and he said the unsayable, again and again and again. He ended up looking authentic, which Hillary did not. Once again, even though I voted for the woman, when she claimed the Bible was her favorite book, I winced. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, tell me what you truly feel!

But Hillary is incapable, which is why she could never triumph.

But Trump believes it’s the same as it ever was, that what worked two years ago will still work today. But it doesn’t, ergo the Blue Wave, the takeover of the House by the Democrats…he’s stuck in a rut.

I’m not saying there are not consequences, but he’s lost his hold on America. He might win again via the electoral college, like Bill Maher said, he might lose and insist he won, but those states that were crucial to his 2016 victory, like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, they seem to be turning away from him. As they did in usually red Arizona.

Sure, there’s a market in retro. Look at all the acts plying the boards playing the hits of yesteryear. They don’t dare do something new, for fear of losing status and cash. Then there’s Bob Dylan who is reinventing the songs, and Todd Rundgren who refuses to write the ditties that made him famous. I’m not endorsing their new music, but I am endorsing their tacks.

As for the media…

The papers still think they dominate when they don’t. And if the “New York Times” writes one more anti-tech column I’m gonna puke. Don’t upgrade your cell phone, don’t upgrade the operating system of your computer, don’t be an early adopter, the virtues of a flip-phone… The Gray Lady has printed all these stories recently, when the public feels just the opposite. I ain’t giving up my phone, I love it! I just upgraded! The “Times” prescription leaves one hopelessly lost in the past, and where’s that at, if you want me I’ll be in the bar.

So for the past two plus years politics has captured the zeitgeist.

But this won’t last forever.

What will be next?

Your move.

Albums, tracks or acts that have faded into the woodwork that deserve attention/recognition.

Like Blondie Chaplin’s “Lonely Traveler,” have you heard it? The whole initial solo LP is fine:

Blondie Chaplin

Or Nik Kershaw’s “15 Minutes,” absolutely brilliant in sound and lyrics and it’s not even on Spotify, never mind any other streaming music service! (Although you can find tracks on YouTube.)

Then there are albums by acts like the Rowan Brothers. Their initial Asylum LP was hyped heavily by Jerry Garcia, yet other than the opening track, “Hickory Day,” it was positively pedestrian.

Call in or tweet your favorites!

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday December 4th, on Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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