{"id":647,"date":"2007-01-10T13:04:22","date_gmt":"2007-01-10T21:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/01\/10\/the-changing-face-of-the-business\/"},"modified":"2007-01-10T13:04:22","modified_gmt":"2007-01-10T21:04:22","slug":"the-changing-face-of-the-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/01\/10\/the-changing-face-of-the-business\/","title":{"rendered":"The Changing Face Of The Business"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Go to: The Long Tail<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m sick of newbies, ignorant of the music business, prognosticating what is happening in it.\u00c2\u00a0 Taking facts and drawing conclusions that are inane.<\/p>\n

The long tail says that there’s demand for everything, that people want a much wider swath of material than previously thought, and that via Internet distribution, it’s now available and will sell.\u00c2\u00a0 I AGREE with that.\u00c2\u00a0 But to say concomitantly that there’s less demand, less NEED for blockbusters, is just patently untrue.<\/p>\n

The labels stopped making mainstream music.<\/p>\n

If you think Top Forty is mainstream, then you’re just not listening.\u00c2\u00a0 Top Forty has an urban slant, is dominated by hip-hop and beats.\u00c2\u00a0 SPEAK to the average American and you’ll be STUNNED how many not only have no interest in this music, but HATE IT!\u00c2\u00a0 How the fuck do you plan to sell millions of albums when a great percentage of the public doesn’t like what you’re purveying?\u00c2\u00a0 It would be like a great swath of Americans refusing to buy computers, because they don’t like the models being sold.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t stay in business that way.<\/p>\n

How did it all go so wrong?’<\/p>\n

Blame Clive Davis.\u00c2\u00a0 His hit strategy.\u00c2\u00a0 Imitated by Donnie Ienner at Columbia and Charles Koppelman at SBK\/EMI.\u00c2\u00a0 They threw up instant sales numbers of crap while Mo Ostin was still throwing the long ball and their flash ended up winning.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, Mo got blown out.<\/p>\n

But Mo started over.\u00c2\u00a0 With a philosophy that no longer fit the marketplace.\u00c2\u00a0 Because there wasn’t a RADIO CLIMATE to support it.<\/p>\n

Warner was built by FM radio.\u00c2\u00a0 AOR died.\u00c2\u00a0 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 rendered radio unlistenable, unless you wanted to hear twenty plus minutes of commercials an hour peppered with the same damn tracks again and again.\u00c2\u00a0 The public tuned out.\u00c2\u00a0 THIS is what killed the record business, not file-trading.\u00c2\u00a0 People got OFF music.\u00c2\u00a0 And it didn’t help that MTV stopped airing it.<\/p>\n

We’ve got a huge EXHIBITION problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Where do you HEAR the new music?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you can surf the Web, but you’ve got to have a TON of time, EONS!\u00c2\u00a0 Radio used to be the trusted filter, that trusted filter is now gone, and people are spending their dough on other things.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is either incomprehensible or perceived to be crap!<\/p>\n

There is a need for mainstream music.\u00c2\u00a0 It brings people together.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody doesn’t want to listen to something different.\u00c2\u00a0 People want to be a member of the club, be in it together.\u00c2\u00a0 The human nature that brought everybody to rock festivals in the sixties and seventies still holds, it’s just that there’s no music at the CENTER!<\/p>\n

In order for music to sell in vast quantities for a long time, people have to BELIEVE in the act.\u00c2\u00a0 What they have to say, how they live their lives.\u00c2\u00a0 You say endorsements make no difference, everybody does it…BULLSHIT!\u00c2\u00a0 You’re a whore if you take the money, and no one believes in the whore, the whore is to be used and thrown away.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s all about career management, and to a great degree that’s gone, the labels have used their muscle to call the short term sales shots.<\/p>\n

And don’t tell me about the indie acts you love.\u00c2\u00a0 Most are deservedly marginal.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s great that the Net allows them to stay alive and do business, but they ARE NOT the future of this business.\u00c2\u00a0 The future is credible acts that speak to people.\u00c2\u00a0 NOT MAKING ALBUMS!<\/p>\n

It’s about MUSIC, not ALBUMS!\u00c2\u00a0 The album is an artificial construction that was zoomed to a zenith by the Beatles, who made full length CONCEPTS!\u00c2\u00a0 To sell albums today is akin to selling typewriters.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re outmoded!\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to sell a collection, make a statement, I’m all for it.\u00c2\u00a0 But most acts don’t do this and most fans don’t want this.\u00c2\u00a0 They want HITS, not filler.\u00c2\u00a0 And I don’t mean hits by today’s standards.\u00c2\u00a0 Not catchy evanescent crap.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather the FM hits of yore, that embed in your skull and change your life.\u00c2\u00a0 Three great tracks eclipse three albums of dreck.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not about a WEALTH of material so much as GOOD material, ultimately enough to fill a live set.<\/p>\n

If you focus on the audience, and not TOP FORTY RADIO, you see that sales are so small as to be laughable.\u00c2\u00a0 In a country of three hundred million fewer than 1% BUY?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s because Top Forty radio reaches SO FEW, with such CRAP!\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody can go to one Website and listen, without commercials, but labels won’t market this way, won’t go where the people are, sans the bullshit.<\/p>\n

Deliver something good, without the DRM and the other crippling crap, and the AUDIENCE will tell everybody.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll sell FAR MORE than a million.\u00c2\u00a0 Just check the BigChampagne numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 MANY people want music, we’re just not delivering it in a way they want it.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if the music were BETTER!<\/p>\n

Check the blogosphere.\u00c2\u00a0 Only a handful of sites get most of the hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, Sally in Houston’s mother reads hers, that’s your long tail for you.\u00c2\u00a0 But, most people want to go WHERE EVERYBODY ELSE IS, WHERE THE QUALITY IS!\u00c2\u00a0 Put out a new "Satisfaction" and TWENTY MILLION people want it, maybe MORE!\u00c2\u00a0 Same with "Smells Like Teen Spirit".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s untapped demand.\u00c2\u00a0 The public is ready, it’s just that the old powers are caught up in their bullshit systems, building junk for an antiquated game.<\/p>\n

Invest in something believable.\u00c2\u00a0 If the songs have good changes, and the people have good voices, you’ll sell a ton more than you do of the crap on this year-end sales chart.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what happened with the boy bands.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, what would you rather listen to, ‘N Sync or "Sexy Back"?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, SOME might like to dance to "Sexy Back" in a club, but ultimately it slides right off you!\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas ‘N Sync had harmonies, and changes.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, I preferred the Backstreet Boys.\u00c2\u00a0 If the group had written those songs and they had a shard of meaning the act would still be playing arenas, because that’s the BEATLE formula!<\/p>\n

The long tail is not killing this business.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s labels that are bunting and punting.\u00c2\u00a0 Not delivering what people want in the way they choose to consume it.<\/p>\n

Make an impact, maintain the product flow track by new track, keeping the people hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 Get them so into music that they expand their horizons, wanting not only sweet stuff, but edgier Pink Floydian fare.\u00c2\u00a0 People haven’t changed, human nature is the same, it’s just the systems that are different.\u00c2\u00a0 EMBRACE the new systems and watch sales go THROUGH THE ROOF!<\/p>\n

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

Go to: The Long Tail I’m sick of newbies, ignorant of the music business, prognosticating what is happening in it.\u00c2\u00a0 Taking facts and drawing conclusions that are inane. The long tail says that there’s demand for everything, that people want a much wider swath of material than previously thought, and that via Internet distribution, it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-ar","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}