Tell Me What You Want, And I'll Give You What You Need

Yes, that's a twist on the Doobie Brothers' number.

But this has nothing to do with that Northern California band.

That's what separates artists from everybody else. They don't give people what they want, they give people what they NEED!

If you think you know what people want, you're dreaming. They can't articulate it. Hell, talk to the dating pros. The women say they want tall dark and handsome but they end up marrying short blond and...looks-challenged. Even more so for the guys. They're not settling when they don't marry supermodels, they're finding their niche, they're finding what's right. That's what the statistics indicate, people choose contrary to what they say they want. So when you're playing to people's expectations, you're missing out.

Kind of like all those surveys saying how much kids will pay for albums... They always say albums are worth ten bucks, but then you dig deeper and they haven't bought one in eons.

I learned this long ago...

Want someone to be happy? Give them your all, deliver what you do best, not what they say they want.

Kind of like in Ibiza... They wanted me to give a closing speech, articulating the highlights of the conference. Huh? I'd already written about them and that would be boring.

So I ignored their request. Completely.

And I told the story of how I got into EDM.

Hell, I'll tell it to you now!

So I'm standing upstairs at the Whisky, with Robin Zander, and he starts telling me a joke...

A musician comes home to find his house burned down and his wife gone. He asks his next door neighbor what happened.

"Well, your manager's been coming over every day to screw your wife and he fell asleep with a lit cigarette and the house burned down and now he's in the Bahamas with your significant other and all the cash from your joint account."

MY MANAGER CAME TO MY HOUSE?

The newspaper was full of stories about an underage girl who died at the Electric Daisy Carnival in the summer of 2011. Sad story, she was only fifteen. But that was not what impressed me... They did 230,000 people in three days?

NO ONE CAN DO THAT!

There are only three stadium acts out there. U2 took all the money out, if they went on a stadium tour tomorrow, there'd be a ton of unsold seats, certainly in the U.S. As for Kenny Chesney...he had to take a year off because of soft demand, he did a bunch of papering just before that. And Taylor Swift can go clean... Maybe she could match these numbers... But she's only one act. These EDM events go wild everywhere!

EDM... The IMS people hate that term.

I chided them.

Yup, you can't be afraid of alienating people. The truth is more powerful than any ass-kissing or b.s. Kind of like Robert Gottlieb's review of Clive Davis's tome in the "New York Review Of Books." Yes, this pedigreed member of the New York publishing industry said exactly what I did, that Clive left nothing out... That it was about hagiography as opposed to readability.

But you didn't see that in a single review elsewhere.

And has anybody talked about this book for months?

Has anybody even finished it?

As for Clive, he's done. He aged out.

But Gottlieb even attacks Clive's vaunted Grammy party... WHO CARES?

Truth.

I can't tell you how much negative feedback I got for pissing on Clive's book. Hell, I wanted to like it, you just can't.

Kind of like your record. It's just not different enough, it just doesn't break new ground.

And one can argue strongly that Daft Punk's record has retread elements, but it's quite definitely not what people wanted, but it's certainly what they need.

The fans wanted something closer to Kraftwerk, something made completely with machines.

But Daft Punk surprised them. And has its biggest seller ever as a result.

EDM? Who cares what they call it. Truth is, everybody complaining about this term has been in the dance/deejay business for decades, they don't like all the newcomers. But without the newcomers, it's niche. GET OVER IT!

This rule is rampant on TV. Cable gives people what they need, deep dramas, not always with sympathetic characters. Network tries to give people what they want, and continues to fade.

And the labels just try to copy Rihanna. They go to the usual suspects to make the records. Leaving too many of the audience tuned out. Radio is even worse. Once upon a time it led, now it's a dying rearview carcass.

Apple is giving people downloads. Which they now want.

But Spotify is giving them streams, which they need.

Oh, the public says they'll never pay for access.

The same public which rented videotapes, then bought them, then bought DVDs, then rented them and now streams via Netflix.

The public has no idea what it wants.

But it's wide open to what it needs.

Robert Gottlieb "At The Top Of Pop": http://bit.ly/10TNx2E


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