1. Selling recorded music is not the only way to make money in music.\u00c2\u00a0 Ark Factory came up with a new way, ripping off the parents of little kids.\u00c2\u00a0 Let this be a lesson to you, rather than complain that the old model is dead, innovate.<\/p>\n
2. Old media loves to piggyback on new media.\u00c2\u00a0 "Good Morning America" featured Rebecca Black as did "The Tonight Show".\u00c2\u00a0 Make noise and old media comes running.<\/p>\n
3. Old media is last.<\/p>\n
4. If you want to make an instant splash, you’re better off starting online instead of hiring a publicity agent and using old wave apparatus to dun old wave media.<\/p>\n
5. Shelf life online is forever.\u00c2\u00a0 Like a land mine waiting to be stepped on decades later, if you can Google it, it can always blow up.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, a spin on radio evaporates, a YouTube clip is waiting to explode.<\/p>\n
6. Young kids want to play in the big time entertainment world.\u00c2\u00a0 Having been sold prepubescent kids as talent, they ask themselves, why not me?\u00c2\u00a0 This paradigm, like reality TV, will never die.\u00c2\u00a0 But like reality TV, it’s only part of the landscape.<\/p>\n
7. A tastemaker is anybody with an audience.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, Tosh.0’s got more impact than Lucian Grainge or Lyor Cohen.\u00c2\u00a0 Tosh.0’s got an audience.\u00c2\u00a0 If labels were smart, they’d figure out how to be a brand themselves and gain an audience independent of their roster, but they’re dumb.<\/p>\n
8. YouTube hosts videos for free.\u00c2\u00a0 Too much emphasis is being put on how much Rebecca Black is getting paid.\u00c2\u00a0 More important is the mechanism that led to her fame.\u00c2\u00a0 Used to be you had to pay independent promoters to get your track on radio, hoping to have it heard and discovered.\u00c2\u00a0 Today airplay is free.<\/p>\n
9. Music and video production are cheap.\u00c2\u00a0 Rebecca Black’s mother paid Ark Factory two grand and got not only a song but a video. Not only does this beg why major label productions are so expensive, it reinforces the fact that anybody can play.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, if you’re bitching about needing money to make it in the music game, you’re playing by the old rules.<\/p>\n
10. Train-wreck is more important than quality if you want instant attention.\u00c2\u00a0 If "Friday" weren’t bad, only mediocre, or mildly good, no one would care.<\/p>\n
11. In the modern world everybody feels he’s entitled to express his opinion.\u00c2\u00a0 Fifteen years of the World Wide Web have taught people this.\u00c2\u00a0 Track comments more than spins.\u00c2\u00a0 Comments demonstrate that people care.\u00c2\u00a0 But for how long?<\/p>\n
12. Don’t equate fame with being rich or longevity.\u00c2\u00a0 Fame is oftentimes brief and oftentimes the famous make almost no cash.\u00c2\u00a0 I.e. reality TV.\u00c2\u00a0 But there’s an endless parade of wannabes willing to prostitute themselves for a bit of fame.\u00c2\u00a0 Is it the human condition or a reflection of America, where the poor can no longer be rich and fame is a substitute?<\/p>\n
13. Those in the old world pooh-pooh.\u00c2\u00a0 Yesterday’s story was how little money Rebecca Black was making off her success.\u00c2\u00a0 If you think it’s about money, you’ve lost the plot, it’s about fame.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, in the connected world, real money comes AFTER fame.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s old wave CD thinking to believe people will pay up front to experience something new.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s usually free and you figure out how to extend the life and profit from it afterward.\u00c2\u00a0 With the mainstream media clamoring to feature Rebecca Black, she can get an agent and sign on as a host for Nick or Disney.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t think small, but big.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t think music, but fame.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, if all of today’s Top 40 acts want to start clothing lines, which have nothing to do with music, why should Rebecca Black be limited to the music field?<\/p>\n
14.\u00c2\u00a0 Give the money away.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only does it deflect criticism, it helps your bona fides.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, Rebecca Black is smarter than Beyonce.\u00c2\u00a0 In the new world, you give back simultaneously with making it.\u00c2\u00a0 Black is giving her profits to earthquake relief in Japan. How come she’s smarter than all those stars who played for a dictator?<\/p>\n
15. In the modern world, you’re part of your audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t place yourself above, but within.<\/p>\n
16. If you’re twentysomething and have been slugging it out for years trying to make it don’t complain about Rebecca Black.\u00c2\u00a0 She lives in a different world.\u00c2\u00a0 To make it and last in music takes longer than it has since the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 The MTV era made stars overnight, which faded almost instantly.\u00c2\u00a0 Now you gain traction slowly, only your fans know you, they spread the word online and you pray that you never gain a Rebecca Black moment, because that means you’ll be ridiculed and be toast.<\/p>\n
17. To get a lot of people to pay attention very quickly you’ve got to get lucky.\u00c2\u00a0 I.e. Tosh.0 directing fans to the Rebecca Black video. You cannot plot success, your career map is not set in stone, you get in the game and try to get lucky.\u00c2\u00a0 Better to keep playing and fail than polish one track and hype it to high heaven.<\/p>\n
18. You do not need radio or record stores to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 There is no physical product, airplay didn’t break "Friday".\u00c2\u00a0 Anyone telling you you need a label is sorely mistaken.<\/p>\n
19. Either go for train-wreck value or be exceptionally good.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, if you’re an "artist", mediocre doesn’t cut it.\u00c2\u00a0 The landscape is evanescent lowest common denominator crap or incredible art.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, if you’re not going to be the next Bob Dylan or Radiohead, stay in school. <\/p>\n
20. Rebecca Black is a bigger story than SXSW, certainly than any band that played there.\u00c2\u00a0 Question the old game.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of wasting money to make yourself feel good, stay home and think.\u00c2\u00a0 Come up with something that truly gets us to turn our heads.<\/p>\n
21. Scale is important to instant success.\u00c2\u00a0 Tens of millions of people can watch a YouTube clip in weeks.\u00c2\u00a0 Nowhere near that many can see you live.<\/p>\n
22. Broadcasting once not only fails in radio, it fails in TV.\u00c2\u00a0 We live in an on demand world.\u00c2\u00a0 Rebecca Black’s video was available on demand on YouTube.<\/p>\n
23. There are more people who want to glom on to a success and ride it to their own personal nirvana than can create something new and different and make it.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, there’s a cottage industry of prognosticators and analysts jumping on the Rebecca Black train for personal advancement, like ME!<\/p>\n
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1. Selling recorded music is not the only way to make money in music.\u00c2\u00a0 Ark Factory came up with a new way, ripping off the parents of little kids.\u00c2\u00a0 Let this be a lesson to you, rather than complain that the old model is dead, innovate. 2. Old media loves to piggyback on new media.\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/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-3967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-11Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967","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=3967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3968,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3967\/revisions\/3968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}