{"id":3527,"date":"2010-11-17T17:33:48","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T01:33:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3527"},"modified":"2010-11-17T17:33:48","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T01:33:48","slug":"the-amanda-ghost-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/17\/the-amanda-ghost-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Amanda Ghost Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sony Music Exec Admits He Made ‘Radical Decision\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in Hiring Amanda Ghost<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Why did Rob Stringer go on the record?<\/p>\n

Rob is now 0 for 2.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Rubin and Amanda Ghost.\u00c2\u00a0 If he wasn’t Howard’s brother, would he keep his job?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course not!<\/p>\n

But this isn’t the story of Rob Stringer.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not even the story of Amanda Ghost.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the story of an infrastructure built to churn out something most people no longer want, a creator of buggy-whips in an era of automobiles.<\/p>\n

There is a point atop the pyramid.\u00c2\u00a0 There are acts that are going to be ubiquitous.\u00c2\u00a0 But how many?\u00c2\u00a0 It appears GaGa will last, then..? And she might not.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s reliant on radio airplay and mainstream media attention and not only do those mean ever less, they’ve each got a plethora of candidates to choose from.\u00c2\u00a0 And once you’re anointed, you end up playing the House of Blues?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s where the new "star" Ke$ha gigs.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to make money there.<\/p>\n

Hell, she’s just like a reality TV star.\u00c2\u00a0 Famous, but not rich.\u00c2\u00a0 Grist for the mill.<\/p>\n

In the future, maybe two record labels will compete to produce mainstream fodder, signing good-looking, malleable people whose songs are rewritten endlessly to ultimately satiate a dying machine that rains down ever less coin.<\/p>\n

But the real action will be in artists that take no feedback and speak to their audience as opposed to trying to endlessly reach those who don’t care, an ever more expensive proposition paying fewer and fewer dividends.<\/p>\n

What we’re seeing is the crumbling of an old edifice.\u00c2\u00a0 They like to blame Napster, but really it’s the inability to gain mindshare, and the ridiculous product that must be created to play across demos.<\/p>\n

So Amanda Ghost was a self-dealing tyrant.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s really no different from Tommy Mottola, it’s just when Tommy had a hit, he could sell 20 million copies.\u00c2\u00a0 Now no one can sell 20 million copies.<\/p>\n

Used to be stories like this never made print.\u00c2\u00a0 They were the subject of late night bull sessions between insiders.\u00c2\u00a0 But now nothing’s a secret.\u00c2\u00a0 And sure, you can participate and try to create your own spin, but when everything you’ve done is wrong, shouldn’t you shut up, maintain plausible deniability?<\/p>\n

I like Rob Stringer.\u00c2\u00a0 But the problem here isn’t Amanda Ghost, but the man himself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sony Music Exec Admits He Made ‘Radical Decision\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 in Hiring Amanda Ghost Why did Rob Stringer go on the record? Rob is now 0 for 2.\u00c2\u00a0 Rick Rubin and Amanda Ghost.\u00c2\u00a0 If he wasn’t Howard’s brother, would he keep his job?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course not! But this isn’t the story of Rob Stringer.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not […]<\/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-3527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-UT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527","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=3527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3528,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3527\/revisions\/3528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}