I’m just stunned how out of it I am.\u00c2\u00a0 If I didn’t read the newspaper I don’t
think I’d have any clue what was going on.<\/p>\n
I have a friend in Seattle my age.\u00c2\u00a0 I reference the most obvious popular
culture icons\/happenings and she’s got no clue of which I’m speaking.\u00c2\u00a0
And she has two teenage children.<\/p>\n
I’d like to just say we’re old and out of it.\u00c2\u00a0 But I don’t think kids know
what’s going on anymore either.<\/p>\n
Oh, it’s not like I know nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 But I don’t feel like I’m on the pulse.\u00c2\u00a0
Actually, I don’t feel like there IS a pulse.<\/p>\n
Going through a ton of mail Friday night I came across the new Bonnie Raitt
album.\u00c2\u00a0 And what blew my mind was I had no idea it had come out.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, maybe the
technical release date isn’t til today.\u00c2\u00a0 WHO KNOWS?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s just the point.\u00c2\u00a0
And, if I don’t know, a big fan, how in the hell else is ANYBODY ELSE GOING TO
KNOW?<\/p>\n
It would be one thing if Bonnie was on an independent label.\u00c2\u00a0 If she hadn’t
broken through with "Nick Of Time".\u00c2\u00a0 But Bonnie Raitt is a household word.\u00c2\u00a0 At
least to anybody over the age of twenty.\u00c2\u00a0 And, her tree is falling in the
forest and nobody knows.<\/p>\n
Oh, maybe she’ll appear on "The Today Show".\u00c2\u00a0 "Good Morning America".\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe
casual fans will become aware of her new release.\u00c2\u00a0 But I don’t watch those
shows, and most of my musical contemporaries don’t either.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe these hard core
fans of music go to Starbucks.\u00c2\u00a0 Read magazines, with ads.\u00c2\u00a0 But how in the
hell is a label supposed to make its investment back?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s IMPOSSIBLE!<\/p>\n
You can have a HIT now and a large segment of the population is clueless
about it.\u00c2\u00a0 Has never heard it.<\/p>\n
This is what’s killing the major labels.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if they PUT OUT good records
their audience is limited.\u00c2\u00a0 The machine is geared up to sell ten million
records, based on radio airplay and MTV exposure.\u00c2\u00a0 And those only exist for a
handful of acts.\u00c2\u00a0 And, most often, not the very good ones.<\/p>\n
The major labels don’t want to face this reality.\u00c2\u00a0 That their whole business
PARADIGM has changed.\u00c2\u00a0 That suddenly, they’re now in the long tail business.\u00c2\u00a0
Selling very few copies of everything.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, the majors will tell you that only
a few of their new releases catch fire.\u00c2\u00a0 But their catalog items.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re
what is keeping these companies alive.\u00c2\u00a0 Based on their present structure, I’d
tell everybody but Universal to shut down their new artist wings.\u00c2\u00a0 The
expenditures just don’t square with the revenues.\u00c2\u00a0 Universal seems to find artists that they can jam down everybody’s throats and make money.\u00c2\u00a0 But the other
labels…their hit to shit ratio is SO bad.\u00c2\u00a0 If they want to be in the new artist
business, they should retool.<\/p>\n
It’s not about Lyor Cohen starting an incubator, not an e-only release
company.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about firing himself and DISMANTLING Atlantic Records.\u00c2\u00a0 Just hiring a
bunch of A&R guys who TRULY know music who go by their guts.\u00c2\u00a0 And DON’T think
about commercial possibilities.\u00c2\u00a0 Who sign acts for essentially nothing and
then work them on a grass roots level.\u00c2\u00a0 All those big time marketing execs, the
field staff.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be one thing if they were paying dividends, but the red
ink keeps flowing.<\/p>\n
It’s time to go back to the way the music business used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 When it was
about RECORDING someone, getting their music into the marketplace, not building
STARS!<\/p>\n
Movies have to be stars themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 The economics dictate it.<\/p>\n
But records can be cut cheaply.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t need a lot of buyers to make your
money back.<\/p>\n
But it’s not much money.<\/p>\n
So, in the future, it’s about a filter.\u00c2\u00a0 A label that you can trust.\u00c2\u00a0
Something LIKE Victory.\u00c2\u00a0 That will pique people’s INTEREST!<\/p>\n
It can’t be about giving away CD players and trips, it’s got to be about
truly convincing those in the business of exposing music that something’s GOOD!\u00c2\u00a0
Not that this person and that is on it, that you’ve got a five million dollar
marketing commitment.\u00c2\u00a0 Other than TV, people will laugh at you.\u00c2\u00a0 To the
Internet blogger the fact that you’ve committed to all these marketing expenditures
is IRRELEVANT!\u00c2\u00a0 Watch that episode of "Entourage".\u00c2\u00a0 Where Vince has to kiss the
ass of the blogger.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S what the business is turning into.\u00c2\u00a0 The geek has
power.<\/p>\n
There’s a very good track on this new Bonnie Raitt album "Souls Alike".<\/p>\n
But that makes no difference to the label.\u00c2\u00a0 They have about as much of a
chance working "So Close" as Warner Brothers did with anything off of Bonnie’s
"Give It Up", which is one of her two best records (the other being "Luck Of The
Draw"), which spawned no hit singles and garnered almost no airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 But
people told others about the record.\u00c2\u00a0 Bonnie toured.\u00c2\u00a0 She was building a base.\u00c2\u00a0
That’s supported her to this day.\u00c2\u00a0 All based on good music.<\/p>\n
I assume that Capitol will take advertisements in boomer magazines.\u00c2\u00a0 "The New
Yorker", maybe even "Vanity Fair".\u00c2\u00a0 Some of the audience will fire a synapse
and buy this album.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, it’s the adults who are now the impulse
buyers, they remember when music could change your life, and they’ve got the money to buy a CD, and not the time to download P2P.<\/p>\n
But the boomers are getting older by the minute.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re being replaced by a
generation SUSPICIOUS of everything that’s a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re suspicious not
only of the music, but the MARKETING!\u00c2\u00a0 And, since THEY’RE so hard to reach,
you’ve spent SO MUCH to finally get to them that they feel bombarded, and are
turned off.<\/p>\n
So close The boomers are not their parents.\u00c2\u00a0 They didn’t marry one person and stay But they do.<\/p>\n That flame never went out.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re battered.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’ve got hope.\u00c2\u00a0 With "So Close" is quiet.\u00c2\u00a0 With a keyboard that feels like the middle of the Listening to "So Close" not only soothes your soul, it enriches your life.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m just stunned how out of it I am.\u00c2\u00a0 If I didn’t read the newspaper I don’t think I’d have any clue what was going on. I have a friend in Seattle my age.\u00c2\u00a0 I reference the most obvious popular culture icons\/happenings and she’s got no clue of which I’m speaking.\u00c2\u00a0 And she has two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-2g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I can nearly taste it
Suppose
This is that one promised love
God knows
All that I’ve wasted now
Never letting love start<\/em><\/p>\n
with them.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, they had serial relationships, sometimes fucked more than one
person at one time.\u00c2\u00a0 They got married and divorced.\u00c2\u00a0 And married and
divorced.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d think they no longer believe.<\/p>\n
their receding hairlines and expanding waistlines they trepidatiously test the
waters.\u00c2\u00a0 A glance means as much as it did in high school.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got some
miles under your belt, you know how to do it, but it’s not easy to get your motor
running, to find mutual connection.<\/p>\n
night.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’re alone, but not desperate.\u00c2\u00a0 When you’ve got nothing to work with but a tiny interaction, that has you believing.<\/p>\n
That’s what music used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what music no longer is.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what
it’s going to be in the years that come.<\/p>\n