Everybody wants to be rich.<\/p>\n
Ever wonder why Bono joined forces with wannabe musician Roger McNamee in Elevation Partners?\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, it wasn’t to shepherd the birth of the unnecessary Palm Pre, it was to get rich.\u00c2\u00a0 Because you just can’t make enough money in the music business anymore.<\/p>\n
Bon Jovi had the top tour of 2010.\u00c2\u00a0 Gross was $108 million.\u00c2\u00a0 However you split that up, you’re better off being Lloyd Blankfein than Jon Bon Jovi.\u00c2\u00a0 You see Blankfein makes millions each and every year.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t need a hit record, he doesn’t need to convince punters in the hinterlands to invest, he just rapes and pillages and pays off politicians until the money comes rolling in.<\/p>\n
And everybody else wants that money too.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what our whole country is about.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the major labels are about.<\/p>\n
We’ve been hearing this carping for a decade that people won’t pay for music.\u00c2\u00a0 All played out before a backdrop of Napster and BitTorrent and RapidShare and…\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll say if we eliminated the Internet revenues would go back up.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s like saying if we got rid of cars we’d have fewer people dying in transportation accidents.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 People want their automobiles and they want their Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it puts information at their fingertips, they’re no longer at the mercy of a handful of gatekeepers, they dig down deep to find and consume exactly what they want, and generally speaking that is not the mainstream crap that the record industry and its complicit old wave media outlets want it to be.<\/p>\n
Yes, the Top Forty crap sells more than the rest of the product.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, sales are a fraction of what they once were and the Top Forty acts don’t do as well on the road, and everybody knows that the money’s on the road.\u00c2\u00a0 Where Bon Jovi is touring ceaselessly playing gargantuan hits from two decades ago.<\/p>\n
Give Jon Bon Jovi credit.\u00c2\u00a0 He wanted it.\u00c2\u00a0 His uncle may have owned a recording studio, but his father was a hairdresser.\u00c2\u00a0 Jon didn’t have advantages, he had desire.\u00c2\u00a0 And this desire along with the efforts of a master producer, Bruce Fairbairn, and a master songwriter, Desmond Child, resulted in hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually.\u00c2\u00a0 Because, as Ringo Starr once sang, it don’t come easy.<\/p>\n
Now the establishment music industry wants what it once had, the profits of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s the newbies, the upstarts that are truly the problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Having been exposed to all the media hype, the fictions that used to build careers, they want to be rich and famous rock stars, and they want it to happen overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 And why they still call it "rock star" is beyond me.\u00c2\u00a0 Really, they want to be Jay-Z. They don’t even want to go on the road, that’s hard work!\u00c2\u00a0 They want to make records and do endorsements and star in films and buy and sell companies and rape and pillage just like Lloyd Blankfein and the nameless stars at Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n
But you don’t go straight from the street to the storied New York bank.\u00c2\u00a0 No, entry is limited to the best and the brightest, who killed themselves at Ivy League schools for this chance to get rich.\u00c2\u00a0 And yes, we’d have a better society if these people pursued something besides money, but you can’t doubt that they’ve paid their dues and are winners.\u00c2\u00a0 How about the people in music?<\/p>\n
The songwriters and labels deserve the lion’s share of the money.\u00c2\u00a0 One can defend the 360 deal strategy based on the fact that the experienced oldsters do all the work.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be the acts wrote and recorded their own material independently.\u00c2\u00a0 Those days are through in major label land, there’s too much at risk.\u00c2\u00a0 They need insurance.\u00c2\u00a0 And they don’t need you.\u00c2\u00a0 They can find someone else pretty who’s willing to be molded and play by the rules.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t want unique.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless it’s fashion. Breakthrough music?\u00c2\u00a0 You STARVE playing that.<\/p>\n
But all those people who can’t get major label deals, even though they secretly want them, keep telling us they’re playing this breakthrough music.\u00c2\u00a0 And if we’d just sign up for their mailing lists and come to their shows, we’d get it.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Music is something you hear, and what you’re making isn’t good enough.<\/p>\n
Hell, some of it might be good, but is it great?<\/p>\n
You’re probably aware of the Tiger Mother controversy.\u00c2\u00a0 Broken by an excerpt in the "Wall Street Journal" <\/p>\n
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