{"id":732,"date":"2007-03-21T22:20:36","date_gmt":"2007-03-22T06:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/03\/21\/jon-toppers-dinner-report\/"},"modified":"2007-03-21T22:20:36","modified_gmt":"2007-03-22T06:20:36","slug":"jon-toppers-dinner-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/03\/21\/jon-toppers-dinner-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Topper’s Dinner Report"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A few thoughts that came from SXSW.<\/p>\n

What is the most powerful sector of the music business today?\u00c2\u00a0 The record labels? The managers? The publicists?\u00c2\u00a0 The answer is: the agents.\u00c2\u00a0 It used to be that you could not get an agent until you were doing unbelievable numbers in a dozen or so markets, or you were signing to a major label.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, bands that have no following are being picked up by agencies.\u00c2\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with an agent hearing a band and seeing a vision, but it seems things are at a point where an agent wants to pick up a band simply because they are afraid of losing that act to another agent. (Sound familiar? Look out – up next: bidding wars!)<\/p>\n

I think the next evolution of the music business will be agents giving advances to bands to sign with them.\u00c2\u00a0 A young band will make agents come to the table and it will tell agents to put their money where their mouth is.\u00c2\u00a0 I can see a band going to CAA instead of Skyline because CAA says "We will give you a $250,000 advance against your touring to be with us."\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously there will be more to the deal then just the normal 10%.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Agents then will develop bands to a point where they will be worth something to a record label, and they will have a piece of the album. Or perhaps it will be the agent’s own label that puts out the album.<\/p>\n

This in turn will also make more labels have in-house agents.\u00c2\u00a0 I talked to two young bands at SXSW who both told me they were not there to get a record label.\u00c2\u00a0 They can do it themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyone can put out music in this day and age; no, they were there to get a booking agent.<\/p>\n

I went to SXSW to mainly do business for moe. and maybe get lucky and find a new act to work with.\u00c2\u00a0 I got a ton of business done for moe., but as far as finding a new band…90% of what I saw sounded horrible.\u00c2\u00a0 The music was too loud and the mixes were so bad.\u00c2\u00a0 If I was in a band that played at SXSW, and someone came up to me and said "Wow, you guys were great – I sure would like to work with you" I think I would cross that person off the list because they are
most likely full of shit.<\/p>\n

In this report, I would like to thank Hank Sacks for a Hilton Dinner and Eric Lemasters for a Sports bar lunch.<\/p>\n

Off to snoe.down.<\/p>\n

Enjoy your dinner,<\/p>\n

Jon Topper<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Jon Topper is the manager of moe.
To get on his dinner report list, wherein he muses irregularly about music industry topics and what he ate for dinner, e-mail him at: jontopper12@yahoo.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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

A few thoughts that came from SXSW. What is the most powerful sector of the music business today?\u00c2\u00a0 The record labels? The managers? The publicists?\u00c2\u00a0 The answer is: the agents.\u00c2\u00a0 It used to be that you could not get an agent until you were doing unbelievable numbers in a dozen or so markets, or you […]<\/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-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-bO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","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=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}