It’s back.\u00c2\u00a0 And its return has nothing to do with a change in record company strategy, no big time thinking on the part of managers or acts, but a change in the marketplace.<\/p>\n
It’s just about impossible to be ubiquitous.\u00c2\u00a0 And the cost of mainstream acceptance is prohibitive, not only in dollars, but career.\u00c2\u00a0 If you push an act down people’s throats, some might buy it once, but most will walk away, doing their best to get out of the shitstorm.<\/p>\n
Let’s put it this way…\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s a bigger act, Ke$ha or Muse?<\/p>\n
Ke$ha’s brand new.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, she sang on somebody’s track before this, but most people had never heard of her.\u00c2\u00a0 Until she worked with Dr. Luke (how much of the record is her?) and made a train-wreck video.\u00c2\u00a0 She hasn’t sold a million albums, not even close, and if she went on the road the return would be bupkes.<\/p>\n
And then there’s Muse.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve been doing it for fifteen years and umpteen albums and presently they’re exploding in America.<\/p>\n
Was their video all over MTV?\u00c2\u00a0 Is it about being on the "Today Show"?\u00c2\u00a0 Did they have a big hit single?<\/p>\n
None of these is true.\u00c2\u00a0 But what they did have was an incredible live act.\u00c2\u00a0 Which made concert attendees believers.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only bringing themselves back, but all their buddies…\u00c2\u00a0 YOU’VE GOT TO SEE THIS!<\/p>\n
Wow, this is exactly how it used to be, in the vaunted days of classic rock, but even slower!\u00c2\u00a0 At least we were all listening to the same radio stations back then.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the audience is completely scattered, it takes forever to reach critical mass, and when you do…still, most of the public has no idea who you are…just like in the days of yore!<\/p>\n
Not only were they the hit of Coachella, hell, they blow everybody else off the stage, Muse is going on an arena tour.\u00c2\u00a0 If they play their cards right, they might even be able to play stadiums.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the power of the music, that’s the power of the show.\u00c2\u00a0 People are reacting to the intrinsic elements, not the penumbra.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, it’s about the essence, the music and the performance thereof.<\/p>\n
Look at GaGa, at the other end of the spectrum.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s the most successful person doing it the old way.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s touring on momentum built by videos and radio hits.\u00c2\u00a0 And if those go away…\u00c2\u00a0 Even Justin Timberlake had a hard time filling buildings on his last tour, whereas the classic rock artists can tour decades later, with no new hits.\u00c2\u00a0 It can’t be what have you done for me lately, it’s got to be more I LOVE THIS BAND!<\/p>\n
GaGa may continue to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, her progenitor, Madonna, flourished in an era when video was king and we were all paying attention to the same hype.\u00c2\u00a0 We were living in a monoculture then, we’re living in chaos now.<\/p>\n
So, who do you want to be, a comet or a star?\u00c2\u00a0 Comets attract our attention and then disappear.\u00c2\u00a0 Stars are in the firmament forever.<\/p>\n
The Internet makes it look like we live in a world of train-wrecks.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that the gossip blogs, even the news sites are only interested in the universal or the bizarre.\u00c2\u00a0 And usually music is neither.\u00c2\u00a0 Not everybody likes it and it stands on its own.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you can’t hear an outfit in the MP3.\u00c2\u00a0 The train-wrecks that sustain online are cartoons, people with no depth, like Paris Hilton and Greasy Bear.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas acts that sustain always have depth.\u00c2\u00a0 "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" might exist on radio, but when was the last time you bought a ticket to see the Ohio Express?\u00c2\u00a0 Did you know it was the Ohio Express?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t those bubble gum acts all run together?<\/p>\n
You can’t confuse Muse with what’s on the hit parade.\u00c2\u00a0 Muse is unique, and different, just like Zeppelin sounded nothing like Three Dog Night.\u00c2\u00a0 Muse is better than ever because of all the effort, all the experimentation before the masses caught on.\u00c2\u00a0 They developed in relative obscurity, and are now attracting gobs of followers.\u00c2\u00a0 But no matter how big they get, many people in America will never have any idea who they are.\u00c2\u00a0 The days of iconic music superstars are through.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless, of course, you hype acts like movies, five new ones every weekend, almost none with a sequel.\u00c2\u00a0 Think about it, would you rather keep reinventing the wheel or construct a BMW and drive it around the world?<\/p>\n
Takes time to save up for a BMW.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s worth it.\u00c2\u00a0 Driving one gives such satisfaction.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, what do they call it, the Ultimate Driving Machine?\u00c2\u00a0 Does anybody think Ke$ha is the ultimate music machine?<\/p>\n
NO!<\/p>\n
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It’s back.\u00c2\u00a0 And its return has nothing to do with a change in record company strategy, no big time thinking on the part of managers or acts, but a change in the marketplace. It’s just about impossible to be ubiquitous.\u00c2\u00a0 And the cost of mainstream acceptance is prohibitive, not only in dollars, but career.\u00c2\u00a0 If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-2853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-K1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2854,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions\/2854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}