HeadCount<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Which even got Jay-Z to do PSAs.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m into it because there’s gonna be an election in 2012, and it’s gonna affect all of our futures, and I want my constituency, the music fans, to have a say in it.<\/p>\nGoldberg used to lease airplanes.\u00c2\u00a0 His learning curve at the Belly Up has been steep.\u00c2\u00a0 He found out that people either want to see name talent, or nobodies.\u00c2\u00a0 Either charge a lot for acts people want to see or book developing acts cheaply and let everybody in for free.\u00c2\u00a0 Last night he had Bret Michaels.\u00c2\u00a0 He figured Bret owed him, since he was on "Celebrity Apprentice" with his younger brother, the wrestler.<\/p>\n
It all comes down to acts people want to see.\u00c2\u00a0 As for prices…\u00c2\u00a0 When I say a lot at the Belly Up, I mean a price where Goldberg can make money and keep the doors open.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re doing this to get rich, you’re on the wrong path.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just too hard.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to love the music, you’ve got to like to take risks, you’ve got to be willing to burn the candle on both ends not for cash, but because you’re passionate about music, and shows.<\/p>\n
Back to MGMT.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out I fucked up Kates’ quote.\u00c2\u00a0 He really said it’s not about a master plan and it’s not about MONEY! Only old school people think they need a bankroll.\u00c2\u00a0 The music is enough if it’s really damn good.\u00c2\u00a0 People will spread the word.<\/p>\n
And who exactly are these people, the "friend" who tells everybody about the act\/show?\u00c2\u00a0 Jamie Loeb wants to know who they are and I do too.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s this network of influencers that truly runs our business, not the people at radio stations or MTV.<\/p>\n
Speaking of MTV, MGMT thinks that’s a station with reality shows.\u00c2\u00a0 Lewi’s kids don’t realize MTV EVER played music! Things change.<\/p>\n
Like Ticketmaster.<\/p>\n
Do you know Ticketmaster has an app?\u00c2\u00a0 And you can share the fact you bought a ticket to a show with your friends on Facebook?\u00c2\u00a0 If Michael Rapino didn’t have such a bunker mentality, he’d hire a PR guy and let people know.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to tell your story, especially when you’re one of the most hated entities on earth.<\/p>\n
Ticketmaster prices are all-in on Live Nation shows they control.\u00c2\u00a0 Ticketmaster prints seat maps (which you can see on the app!), it’s old school acts and promoters who abhor these and won’t play.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s these old school people who are holding the business back.\u00c2\u00a0 Paperless ticketing?\u00c2\u00a0 We need it!\u00c2\u00a0 You can kill StubHub overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 Why not?\u00c2\u00a0 Because the acts want to scalp their own tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 The oldsters are afraid of reality.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, as Jack Nicholson so famously said, they can’t handle the truth.<\/p>\n
The truth is we’ve got a business with no clear price points selling whored out acts trying to get as much cash as possible from a burning building.<\/p>\n
But that’s not everybody.<\/p>\n
The new acts insist ticket prices be low.\u00c2\u00a0 They communicate with their fans.\u00c2\u00a0 They solve problems.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t have an outlet, whether it be Twitter\/Facebook or a message board, where a fan can complain and be heard and have his problem taken care of immediately, you’re living in the past.\u00c2\u00a0 Live Nation\/Ticketmaster does a great job of doing this.\u00c2\u00a0 Nathan Hubbard constantly puts out fires.\u00c2\u00a0 Michael Rapino calls customers.\u00c2\u00a0 But they don’t tell anybody!\u00c2\u00a0 This would be like a drug company recalling tainted merchandise and not taking out newspaper ads, not hiring a PR team to put out accurate information and control the story.\u00c2\u00a0 Today you’ve got to tell your own story, otherwise other people do and they get it wrong!<\/p>\n
And you tell it primarily online.<\/p>\n
There was a lot of discussion today about buying tickets.\u00c2\u00a0 How the secondary market comes up in Google before the legit sites.\u00c2\u00a0 But you can’t compete with this Mafia the same way you can’t compete with P2P pirates.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to build a better mousetrap.\u00c2\u00a0 Make sure everybody’s got the Ticketmaster app.\u00c2\u00a0 Make sure you need the credit card you bought the tickets with to get into the show.\u00c2\u00a0 Is it a hassle?\u00c2\u00a0 OF COURSE!\u00c2\u00a0 But fans love it.\u00c2\u00a0 How come Metallica can do it right and almost no one else can!<\/p>\n
I learned about TV advertising.\u00c2\u00a0 Bill Young can make great spots, even make apps or splash pages, but they never get current material.\u00c2\u00a0 They need to make James Taylor ads with pictures from when he still had hair?<\/p>\n
Still, whatever we just discussed in the free-for-all in the meeting room pales in comparison to the conversations I had on the mountain today.\u00c2\u00a0 How often do you get ten minutes one on one with no interruptions with a business colleague?\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, you even meet new people!<\/p>\n
But that’s our Aspen secret.<\/p>\n
And you can’t really know it until you’ve experienced it.<\/p>\n
I’ve got to run to Matsuhisa!<\/p>\n
P.S. I met Michael Goldberg on a lift.\u00c2\u00a0 Ruthie’s, in fact.\u00c2\u00a0 We were skiing in a group and we were paired up at random.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve got to write fast because I’m going to dinner with Goldberg.\u00c2\u00a0 At Matsuhisa.\u00c2\u00a0 He owns the place.\u00c2\u00a0 And the Belly Up. What naysayers don’t get about the Aspen conference is it IS about the skiing!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about the time you spend on the lift bonding with people, hearing their stories.\u00c2\u00a0 Like today at Snowmass, […]<\/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-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-WF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637","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=3637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3638,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions\/3638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}