Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3zwxmil
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3mCvsoJ
1
I wanted to hear this Gerry Rafferty song. But I wasn't exactly sure of the title or what album it was on. And I was just about to start driving and I gave up, I just put Rafferty on shuffle. And everything sounded right.
"Baker Street" was a huge hit in 1978, on both AM and FM, you'd hear it everywhere you went, it was a summer song, back before we even spoke of a song of the summer, after all what could compete with "Satisfaction" or "Summer in the City." And the sound of it was so pleasing the lyrics didn't matter, and after all I was only 25, what did I really know about disillusionment, even though I thought I knew everything. But years later, "Baker Street" started to reveal itself. And now, the older I get the more insight I get. I was cruising down Sunset, going west towards the beach, just like in that Bryan Ferry song, just past the light at Barrington, by where the school is and it was like my world got larger, I could finally see the full panoply of life. (Don't hassle me on the word choice, I had a self-satisfied criminal law professor who pronounced it like "monopoly," over and over, and as a result the word has stuck in my head forevermore.)
But this isn't about "Baker Street."
I'd invested in the first Stealer's Wheel album because I wanted to own "Stuck in the Middle With You," to be able to hear it whenever I wanted, funny how a song infects you with its magic that way, and the reviews were good. I played it multiple times, but the record never revealed itself to me. As for the second LP? Once bitten, twice shy. But "Baker Street' was so infectious, so great that I took a dive on "City to City," after all I was already invested in Gerry Rafferty's career.
"Stealin' Time" is probably the second best song on "City to City." Not that that was a single, the other cut that got radio play was "Right Down the Line." Which was good, but nothing could be in the category of "Baker Street," upon reflection it's one of the great records of ALL TIME! Something the label said wasn't a single, that fit no category, still fits no category, that's sui generis and survives to this day.
And there's one other really good song on "City to City," "Home and Dry." But honestly the album was not one of my favorites, I kept on playing it but these are the only tracks that revealed themselves to me.
But I bought the follow-up, "Night Owl," because that's what you did, and it wasn't as good as "City to City."
I might have bought "Snakes and Ladders," I think so, I'd have to check my vinyl in storage to be sure, but now I'm listening on Spotify and I definitely did own it, not that I loved it, and it meant nothing in America.
And then came 1982's "Sleepwalking," which I definitely wouldn't have bought, but I found a promo in the bin, one of the advantages of living in Los Angeles, and it was a complete return to form, but by this time no one in America was paying attention, cared.
The killer, the song I was looking for that night, which I wasn't absolutely sure of, is the closer, "As Wise as a Serpent."
"Now you once asked me why we can't communicate
But it doesn't always pay to tell the truth
If I told you right now you'd only run away, run away, run away home"
The tone is so personal, so introspective, so irresistible, you can't help but let it penetrate you. Do you tell the truth in relationships? It's one thing to lie, quite another to lie by omission.
"So we sit in empty rooms and dream our lives away"
At some point it gets too late, possibly a very few can lift themselves up by their bootstraps, but somewhere along the line you realize you missed it, the boat has passed you by, you thought opportunities would present themselves, you didn't know how to make them.
2
So I'm enjoying listening to Gerry Rafferty so much I don't want to lose the mood, so I continue listening after I start my hike, and that's when I hear "Sleepwalking".
"Sleep won't come so you lie there waitin', lookin' at the silvery light
Tellin' yourself there's nothin' new, so whatever gets you through the night
Meanwhile back in the music business the beat goes on and on
I sell my soul to the company man when there's nothin' else to lean upon"
These lines I could never forget, about selling his soul to the company man, Rafferty had a long history of trouble with labels, but back then there was a clear dividing line between the man and the act, between the company and the creator, there was no Don Passman book, most musicians were in the dark.
But it's not only the lyrics of "Sleepwalking," it's the sound, the groove.
You see after having no success Rafferty switched producers and sounds, he used synths, but subtly, it wasn't so much that his music was modernized as much as it was extracted from where it had been, put into a new context so the songs could finally shine.
So I'm on one of the hardest parts of the trail, it's relatively steep, and "Sleepwalking" is keeping me going, putting one foot in front of the other, and I can't turn it off, I'm shimmying as I go forward, I'm elated, but finally the trail flattens and I let my phone slip to the next song.
3
Now the funny thing is in my memory "Sleepwalking" was the radio track, the hit, but in truth I had it exactly backwards, it was "Get It Right Next Time" that penetrated the airwaves. I felt like I was having a revelation, an insight no one else had had, but this was untrue. Or was it?
"Out on the street I was talking to a man
He said there's so much of this life of mine that I don't understand"
I must have played the track three, maybe four times, before the lyrics started revealing themselves to me, and in truth it was the last verse that resonated. But it was like a bolt of lightning, I had to go back to the top to see what this song had to say.
The older you get, the less you know. Oh, you know more than the youngsters, but you're aware of all you don't know. Your perspective changes, you can see the entire world, it's vast, you can never know it all. And although life is a personal journey, you interact with others, do you know enough to do so?
"You shouldn't worry I said, that ain't no crime
'Cause if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time"
I hate this kind of optimism. But since I'd understood the last verse first, I knew what Rafferty was talking about. Which was going forward, not getting stuck in the past, so worried about making a mistake that you were paralyzed, that you couldn't go forward.
"You need direction, yeah, you need a name
When you're standing in the crossroads every highway looks the same
After a while you can recognize the signs
So if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time"
You do, need direction that is. And there are plenty of people who will tell you where to go and you risk sacrificing your life to them, not doing what you want to do. But life is so confusing, which way should you go? It's unclear, but as you forage it comes clear, you go down a few alleys and then you realize you could never stay there, you belong somewhere else. You gain this inner confidence.
"Life is a liar, yeah, life is a cheat
It'll lead you on and pull the ground from underneath your feet
No use complaining, don't you worry, don't you whine
'Cause if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time"
That's what you don't know, that you ultimately can't believe, no one is in charge, there is no scorecard, life is not fair, it just is. Meanwhile, time goes by, you make mistakes, there are fewer grains of sand in the hourglass. But all you can do is keep on keepin' on. And you'd be surprised how many people do not. They experience a couple of breakups and they're resistant to being in a relationship again. Oh, they say they want to be but they expect their significant other to drop from the sky, in love with them from the outset. You need a bit of optimism, a bit of get up and go, to proceed. And once you realize there is no hierarchy, that in truth no one cares about you, that there is no pecking order, you live and you die, no one will be remembered, you start to move forward, although sometimes this doesn't happen until you're near retirement age, but it's never too late.
4
My car was close to new. I'm more worried about the interior, the mechanics as opposed to the exterior, and therefore I don't wash my automobile as often as I should, but when I do I want it to be clean, to shine sans gross imperfections.
So I'm doing the same routine, driving to hike. But a buddy is with me. And I was feeling self-conscious, I wanted to go further up before I pulled a U-turn, but I didn't, and my car rubbed up against some bushes, no big deal, right? But there was this sound. And after I parked I went out to inspect. This bush had been trimmed back, these were not flexible fronds, the limbs of this bush were rigidly stiff, and they scratched my car from stem to stern, from the front panel all the way past the doors to the rear panel. Not that I could see it so well, it was nearly dark, but the next morning... Ugh.
So I went to the dealership, asked for an estimate, figuring they'd laugh at me, tell me it wasn't that big a problem, that the scratches could be buffed out. But after waiting for about twenty minutes they came back with an estimate for THOUSANDS!
Yeah, those scratches were pretty deep. But they were not down to the metal skin. They were not horrific. I was not going to lay down these kinds of dollars, I was disillusioned and defeated.
And then two days later I went to my shrink and told him the story. I knew he wouldn't give me any sympathy, but I was looking for understanding.
And he said unless you color outside the line sometimes you never know where the line is.
Some people spend their entire lives worried about crossing the line, so they stay far away. Others test the limits, and realize they're much further out than they thought. And in truth in so many ways I play it safe, I don't want any destruction, I don't want to metabolize the injury. But the shrink liberated me, I saw the possibilities, the OPPORTUNITIES!
"You got to grow, you got to learn by your mistakes
You got to die a little every day just to try to stay awake
When you believe there's no mountain you can climb
And if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time
Next time, hmm"
This is the final verse, this is the one that resonated with me. It's true, you've got to make mistakes, otherwise you don't know where the line is. And it hurts to get it wrong, but it's the only way to progress, to reach the destination, where you want to go. You can be fearful and get somewhere, but all the way? That's something different.
5
I know Gerry Rafferty died of alcoholism.
What I didn't know was the story was much worse than I thought. Enough years have gone by since the last time I researched him in depth that the story's been fleshed out, there's much more information. Rafferty was not only an alcoholic, at the end he moved from hotel to hotel, causing so much damage, leaving the rooms so soiled that the help, the management, had never seen anything like it. It was ugly.
There was also a story how Raphael Ravenscroft said he improvised the famous sax riff in "Baker Street." Rafferty said he did not. He said he sang the line to Ravenscroft, that it was in the original demo. And lo and behold, thanks to the magic of the internet, the "Baker Street" demo is online!
And the stunning thing is it is a demo. Today's demos are so polished they could be released as finished versions. But not this demo, it's a rough recording, but more than just an acoustic rendition. But the riff, that Raphael Ravenscroft built an entire career on, got a record deal out of, it's right there: https://bit.ly/39fgLVI
But what stunned me was not that Rafferty had written the riff, but his VOICE!
Today nobody can sing, or that's all they can do. Studio trickery rules. Effects. Auto-Tune. But in this demo Rafferty sounds EXACTLY THE SAME AS HE DOES ON RECORD!
It's astounding, it's not the kind of voice that wins a TV show, he's not a belter, his voice is rich, it's got character, a smoothness, yet it's still rock and roll. I was completely wowed, still am.
"You used to think that it was so easy
You used to say that it was so easy
But you're tryin', you're tryin' now
Another year and then you'll be happy
Just one more year and then you'll be happy
But you're cryin', you're cryin' now"
Delayed gratification. It's the key to any achievement in this life, but most people can't wait, can't pay their dues, they've got to forgo education, they've got to start now, and then years later they realize the building blocks they missed, the experiences they lost.
Life is so hard, so damn hard. It's hard to achieve one thing, never mind more. You put in years, and you still might not make it. Maybe you adjust your dream, but to make it all the way to the top, stardom in your world...man it's nearly impossible. And relationships are hard too.
But you've got to be determined, you can lick your wounds for a while but then you've got to get back up, get back at it.
"But you know he'll always keep movin'
You know he's never gonna stop movin'
'Cause he's rollin', he's the rollin' stone
And when you wake up, it's a new mornin'
The sun is shinin', it's a new mornin'
You're goin', you're goin' home"
This is what it's all about for a musician, they've got to keep movin', they're rolling stones. Once you pander to your fans, once you stop pushing the envelope, you may be rich, but you're done.
Every day it's a new morning, funny how that is. And if you get your head straight and the sun is shining you're thrilled to be alive, all you can think about is the POSSIBILITIES!
That's what we're looking for from our musical heroes. Some help, some direction, from people who've been there and done that. We're not going to get it from business people, false prophets, but unique individuals in pursuit of their personal truth. To the point when you hear their songs you're inspired to pick a direction and march forward, aware you're going to get it wrong...
But you're gonna get it right next time!
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Friday 10 June 2022
The Man Who Broke Capitalism
"The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy": https://amzn.to/3zw6BKQ
If everybody in America read this book there would be a revolution.
About fifteen years ago my dream died. You know, where the stars align and you become rich and famous. Because I realized there was no way I could do what I did and become rich. And by modern standards even entertainers are not rich. You can't earn billions by singing.
Now you want to argue with me. Yes, there is Paul McCartney, but he started eons ago. As for Dr. Dre, he made his money on headphones. But I don't want to go any deeper here, because this is just what the rulers of this country want, for the hoi polloi to be distracted with petty arguments.
My mother always told me I wasn't the one. There was always someone smarter, more connected, who knew more. As for my father? He was so internalized from a rough upbringing that all he could do was rage. And then try to make up for it by being loving. He was an outsider, and knew it and owned it. If I was looking for instructions on how to be a man in society, they would not come from him. But he constantly poured out business advice, telling me to dig beneath the surface, for things were frequently not what they appeared to be, what everybody was telling you they were.
So I went to college in the dark ages, when the goal was to be a doctor or a lawyer, so you'd be set up for life, so your parents wouldn't have to worry about you. I just read in the "Times" this morning that pay for public defenders is so bad they've got to take second jobs to make ends meet, never mind since Watergate lawyers have never been respected again. And although you read about MDs making beaucoup bucks, the truth is most are making a good living, far from seven figures, many not even mid six figures, working for the corporation, the paperwork will bury you otherwise. If you've got an independent practitioner, you're one of the few.
So things started to change in the eighties, with Reagan. He's another person who has to be torn down from his pedestal. This guy ruined the economy forever, single-handedly opened the door for income inequality. And Clinton, after losing traction after the '94 election, stopped being progressive and endorsed right wing tropes, eliminating welfare benefits. And then the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush and it was all over.
Not that any of the foregoing people is that powerful. It's the corporations that rule this world, and now they're multinational, beholden to nobody. And their CEOs are seen as laudable titans.
Michael Eisner did a great job rescuing Disney from the doldrums, but was it worth a billion dollars? By time he exited the company he was its largest shareholder. How can that be? You go from being an employee to that big an owner?
You see executive salaries are way out of whack. And we can credit Jack Welch for that.
Jack Welch, the manager of the CENTURY! That's what they called him. For meeting Wall Street analysts' numbers year after year.
When I was in law school, my girlfriend's father gave her a subscription to the "Wall Street Journal." I saw this as a negative, because of its right wing politics. But as I read it I became more and more familiar with business. It's a different paper now, the business coverage is often better in the "Times," but if you read it on a regular basis you'll get an idea of what is going on. Then you've got to connect the dots yourself.
So we're in the go-go nineties, after the traction of the eighties, and this Welch guy is suddenly an icon and I look a little deeper and I say there is no way this can be true, this guy is obviously cooking the books. But what did I know? Isn't that exactly what my parents told me, I was an inferior outsider looking in, sans all the facts, these people were GIANTS!
Well it turned out it was true. Now everybody knows. We can ask whether Welch literally cooked the books, as in outright fraud, but it's clear that financial shenanigans were employed to meet Wall Street's numbers, SO THE STOCKHOLDERS WOULD BE REWARDED!
Let me tell you how this worked, it's not too hard. Welch invested heavily in finance. And then he would buy and sell stuff to make his numbers every quarter. Jeffrey Immelt, his successor, ultimately missed his numbers and his excuse was they couldn't get the usual financial transactions done in the last two weeks of the quarter! I'm chuckling just writing this. People oftentimes reveal their bad behavior if you just let them talk long enough.
So, used to be corporations were a partnership with the public, the essence was its products, and the employees were seen as an asset.
But not under Neutron Jack.
First thing he did was fire employees. Not only causing them to lose their jobs, but decimating entire communities. This made the numbers look better. And when the numbers looked bad, he just bought stuff. You'd be stunned how CFOs can work the books. The recipe was simple: downsize, make deals and financialize. End result? GE stock kept going up and up. As for GE itself? It's being broken up in the wake of Welch's efforts. There's no there there anymore, at least not much. And did I mention Welch made HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the process?
Let's dig a little deeper.
Economist Milton Friedman said a corporation's only obligation was to its shareholders, to make them money. So America became a casino, all the jobs were shipped overseas and the business of many of these companies was finance.
But it gets worse. These companies were making so much dough that they increased dividends and repurchased their shares to make their stock go ever higher. AND THIS IS STILL HAPPENING! That's right, you cut until you create a cache of cash, and then you distribute it and buy back shares to make your stock go up AND YOU ARE HANDSOMELY COMPENSATED FOR THIS! You're making money, but the corporation??
But it gets even worse than this, GE was seen as the bedrock of management skills, you wanted a GE titan in charge. So all these corporations brought in GE talent which then employed the exact same recipe. Can you say BOEING?? People died there, but Welch's protégés ruined one company after another, while they made tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Even Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, he was down with firings too, after all he's an investor first and foremost!
In other words, just about every CEO who is praised, who struts around like a king, and they're essentially all men, is a crook out for himself. Truly. As for knowing how to run a company? They know how to cook the books and make the stock price go up. The underlying company? WHO CARES! They ultimately get fired and get golden parachutes worth tens of millions of dollars on top of all that money they got paid while they were ruining the company!
Everybody inside knows the above. It's a club, and as George Carlin said, you're not in it. Prior to Welch CEOs were not making these outrageous salaries. But Jack convinced Wall Street the pay packages were worth it, after all, look how much money he made for them! Forget building, never mind sustaining the underlying company. One of the other things all these Welch acolytes do to save money is cut R&D, research and development, i.e. the longevity of the company.
It gets worse and worse. Welch fires 10% of the employees every year, resulting in a cutthroat worker environment. No one will take the time to help anybody else, they need to keep their numbers up, they can't waste any effort.
And it's not only Welch, how about Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz? Things are so bad in America that workers are starting to unionize. Not only the uneducated laborers, but the college educated who can't get a better job themselves, get on the corporate gravy train. And rather than embrace unions, Amazon and Starbucks fight them all the way, they don't want to give up an iota of power. That's right, the corporation rules and you're a fan, after all, who else is there to believe in, musicians hawking perfume and clothing, trying to suck the tit of corporations which laugh at these "singers," who don't realize they're the tools that are being used.
Rather than rebelling against corporations, people EMBRACE THEM! Get tattoos of them. And their leaders, who call themselves "rock stars," are looked to for answers about anything and everything, tell us they know better, when in truth they're clueless and helped cause the problems to begin with! Watch "Borgen," politics is a professional game. You've got to negotiate for a result. Instead we've got bozos in Congress who believe stonewalling steers the country forward. Hell, they should close down for a week and watch the last season of "Borgen."
Like I said, people on the inside know all this. But there's never been a book that's laid it all out, put it all together in such a damning way. One guy, Jack Welch, set in motion a transformation of society much bigger than the social issues discussed on TV, that too many Americans make their voting decisions upon, if they vote at all.
As for planning for the future? Just in time inventory programs made it so when the pandemic hit...there were no supplies. Yes, to cut costs, to increase the numbers, to make the stock go up, the corporate CEOs took everything off the books. Jobs were outsourced. Someone else built the parts, they held the inventory. Boeing stopped making almost all of its planes in-house and turned over manufacture to outside vendors. Why? Not because Boeing was doing a bad job, but to save money, to make the numbers look good, to make the stock go up, so the CEO could get ever richer! As for the problems this caused... Well, hundreds of people ultimately lost their lives, not that these execs are contrite when this happens. That was another one of Welch's credos, fight back, don't own it, it's not your fault, if there's even a problem to begin with!
But almost no one will read "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." Because they don't read books to begin with. Unless they're genre tomes, romance, mystery, if that! Or self-help from these same guys who ruined the economy to begin with!
And "The Man Who Broke Capitalism" is not the easiest read, it's far from tough, it's highly readable, you've just got to be interested. And it's not even that long.
And it doesn't matter if you're left or right, Democrat or Republican. This isn't a political issue, other than the government letting these companies rape and pillage without even paying any taxes, barely regulated. Everybody is affected by what these companies do.
Be the first on your block. Read "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." You won't stop talking about it. We've got to start somewhere.
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If everybody in America read this book there would be a revolution.
About fifteen years ago my dream died. You know, where the stars align and you become rich and famous. Because I realized there was no way I could do what I did and become rich. And by modern standards even entertainers are not rich. You can't earn billions by singing.
Now you want to argue with me. Yes, there is Paul McCartney, but he started eons ago. As for Dr. Dre, he made his money on headphones. But I don't want to go any deeper here, because this is just what the rulers of this country want, for the hoi polloi to be distracted with petty arguments.
My mother always told me I wasn't the one. There was always someone smarter, more connected, who knew more. As for my father? He was so internalized from a rough upbringing that all he could do was rage. And then try to make up for it by being loving. He was an outsider, and knew it and owned it. If I was looking for instructions on how to be a man in society, they would not come from him. But he constantly poured out business advice, telling me to dig beneath the surface, for things were frequently not what they appeared to be, what everybody was telling you they were.
So I went to college in the dark ages, when the goal was to be a doctor or a lawyer, so you'd be set up for life, so your parents wouldn't have to worry about you. I just read in the "Times" this morning that pay for public defenders is so bad they've got to take second jobs to make ends meet, never mind since Watergate lawyers have never been respected again. And although you read about MDs making beaucoup bucks, the truth is most are making a good living, far from seven figures, many not even mid six figures, working for the corporation, the paperwork will bury you otherwise. If you've got an independent practitioner, you're one of the few.
So things started to change in the eighties, with Reagan. He's another person who has to be torn down from his pedestal. This guy ruined the economy forever, single-handedly opened the door for income inequality. And Clinton, after losing traction after the '94 election, stopped being progressive and endorsed right wing tropes, eliminating welfare benefits. And then the Supreme Court gave the presidency to Bush and it was all over.
Not that any of the foregoing people is that powerful. It's the corporations that rule this world, and now they're multinational, beholden to nobody. And their CEOs are seen as laudable titans.
Michael Eisner did a great job rescuing Disney from the doldrums, but was it worth a billion dollars? By time he exited the company he was its largest shareholder. How can that be? You go from being an employee to that big an owner?
You see executive salaries are way out of whack. And we can credit Jack Welch for that.
Jack Welch, the manager of the CENTURY! That's what they called him. For meeting Wall Street analysts' numbers year after year.
When I was in law school, my girlfriend's father gave her a subscription to the "Wall Street Journal." I saw this as a negative, because of its right wing politics. But as I read it I became more and more familiar with business. It's a different paper now, the business coverage is often better in the "Times," but if you read it on a regular basis you'll get an idea of what is going on. Then you've got to connect the dots yourself.
So we're in the go-go nineties, after the traction of the eighties, and this Welch guy is suddenly an icon and I look a little deeper and I say there is no way this can be true, this guy is obviously cooking the books. But what did I know? Isn't that exactly what my parents told me, I was an inferior outsider looking in, sans all the facts, these people were GIANTS!
Well it turned out it was true. Now everybody knows. We can ask whether Welch literally cooked the books, as in outright fraud, but it's clear that financial shenanigans were employed to meet Wall Street's numbers, SO THE STOCKHOLDERS WOULD BE REWARDED!
Let me tell you how this worked, it's not too hard. Welch invested heavily in finance. And then he would buy and sell stuff to make his numbers every quarter. Jeffrey Immelt, his successor, ultimately missed his numbers and his excuse was they couldn't get the usual financial transactions done in the last two weeks of the quarter! I'm chuckling just writing this. People oftentimes reveal their bad behavior if you just let them talk long enough.
So, used to be corporations were a partnership with the public, the essence was its products, and the employees were seen as an asset.
But not under Neutron Jack.
First thing he did was fire employees. Not only causing them to lose their jobs, but decimating entire communities. This made the numbers look better. And when the numbers looked bad, he just bought stuff. You'd be stunned how CFOs can work the books. The recipe was simple: downsize, make deals and financialize. End result? GE stock kept going up and up. As for GE itself? It's being broken up in the wake of Welch's efforts. There's no there there anymore, at least not much. And did I mention Welch made HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the process?
Let's dig a little deeper.
Economist Milton Friedman said a corporation's only obligation was to its shareholders, to make them money. So America became a casino, all the jobs were shipped overseas and the business of many of these companies was finance.
But it gets worse. These companies were making so much dough that they increased dividends and repurchased their shares to make their stock go ever higher. AND THIS IS STILL HAPPENING! That's right, you cut until you create a cache of cash, and then you distribute it and buy back shares to make your stock go up AND YOU ARE HANDSOMELY COMPENSATED FOR THIS! You're making money, but the corporation??
But it gets even worse than this, GE was seen as the bedrock of management skills, you wanted a GE titan in charge. So all these corporations brought in GE talent which then employed the exact same recipe. Can you say BOEING?? People died there, but Welch's protégés ruined one company after another, while they made tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. Even Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, he was down with firings too, after all he's an investor first and foremost!
In other words, just about every CEO who is praised, who struts around like a king, and they're essentially all men, is a crook out for himself. Truly. As for knowing how to run a company? They know how to cook the books and make the stock price go up. The underlying company? WHO CARES! They ultimately get fired and get golden parachutes worth tens of millions of dollars on top of all that money they got paid while they were ruining the company!
Everybody inside knows the above. It's a club, and as George Carlin said, you're not in it. Prior to Welch CEOs were not making these outrageous salaries. But Jack convinced Wall Street the pay packages were worth it, after all, look how much money he made for them! Forget building, never mind sustaining the underlying company. One of the other things all these Welch acolytes do to save money is cut R&D, research and development, i.e. the longevity of the company.
It gets worse and worse. Welch fires 10% of the employees every year, resulting in a cutthroat worker environment. No one will take the time to help anybody else, they need to keep their numbers up, they can't waste any effort.
And it's not only Welch, how about Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz? Things are so bad in America that workers are starting to unionize. Not only the uneducated laborers, but the college educated who can't get a better job themselves, get on the corporate gravy train. And rather than embrace unions, Amazon and Starbucks fight them all the way, they don't want to give up an iota of power. That's right, the corporation rules and you're a fan, after all, who else is there to believe in, musicians hawking perfume and clothing, trying to suck the tit of corporations which laugh at these "singers," who don't realize they're the tools that are being used.
Rather than rebelling against corporations, people EMBRACE THEM! Get tattoos of them. And their leaders, who call themselves "rock stars," are looked to for answers about anything and everything, tell us they know better, when in truth they're clueless and helped cause the problems to begin with! Watch "Borgen," politics is a professional game. You've got to negotiate for a result. Instead we've got bozos in Congress who believe stonewalling steers the country forward. Hell, they should close down for a week and watch the last season of "Borgen."
Like I said, people on the inside know all this. But there's never been a book that's laid it all out, put it all together in such a damning way. One guy, Jack Welch, set in motion a transformation of society much bigger than the social issues discussed on TV, that too many Americans make their voting decisions upon, if they vote at all.
As for planning for the future? Just in time inventory programs made it so when the pandemic hit...there were no supplies. Yes, to cut costs, to increase the numbers, to make the stock go up, the corporate CEOs took everything off the books. Jobs were outsourced. Someone else built the parts, they held the inventory. Boeing stopped making almost all of its planes in-house and turned over manufacture to outside vendors. Why? Not because Boeing was doing a bad job, but to save money, to make the numbers look good, to make the stock go up, so the CEO could get ever richer! As for the problems this caused... Well, hundreds of people ultimately lost their lives, not that these execs are contrite when this happens. That was another one of Welch's credos, fight back, don't own it, it's not your fault, if there's even a problem to begin with!
But almost no one will read "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." Because they don't read books to begin with. Unless they're genre tomes, romance, mystery, if that! Or self-help from these same guys who ruined the economy to begin with!
And "The Man Who Broke Capitalism" is not the easiest read, it's far from tough, it's highly readable, you've just got to be interested. And it's not even that long.
And it doesn't matter if you're left or right, Democrat or Republican. This isn't a political issue, other than the government letting these companies rape and pillage without even paying any taxes, barely regulated. Everybody is affected by what these companies do.
Be the first on your block. Read "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." You won't stop talking about it. We've got to start somewhere.
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Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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Listen to the podcast:
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-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Thursday 9 June 2022
Logan Ury
She's selling the essence, not the penumbra.
A couple of years back I had dinner with John Dick, majordomo of the research company CivicScience. He puts out a weekly newsletter everybody loves, you can sign up here:
http://www2.civicscience.com/l/165381/2019-08-30/bjv6tb
CivicScience consults Fortune 500 companies and John was struggling with writing the newsletter, it was a chore. I told him to make it personal.
Then everything instantly changed. The story about his daughter saying "I love Dick!" was priceless. Also the one where he talked about a family tragedy. You see it's about people. First and foremost. Want to have success, especially in the arts, MAKE IT PERSONAL!
Everybody can relate, everybody is imperfect, has warts. Once you testify everybody else does too, they're just waiting for the signal to open up, especially guys.
A few years back I went on the Summit Series cruise. You can research it. And although Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Partners told me I had the best presentation of the weekend at a subsequent Summit event in Utah, the hit of the cruise was Esther Perel.
Everybody knows who Esther Perel is today. Because of her podcast and publications and... She's the relationship guru. Trained relationship guru.
But this was before all that.
I had to go see her, she had to do a bonus talk because people were turned away from the scheduled one. Esther was relatable, she wasn't dictatorial, she told it how it was, and it was very interesting.
This morning in the "New York Times" I saw a story about Logan Ury:
"Logan Ury Says You're Dating All Wrong - From her Oakland commune, a dating coach has made a big business out of her data-driven approach to modern romance.: https://nyti.ms/3tsZpLI
A COMMUNE? You mean hippies in Oregon wearing overalls? Takes balls to live in a commune in the twenty first century. This I had to read.
And that's when I found out Logan went to Harvard. Yes, growing up on the east coast that still means something to me. A person can go to Harvard and be socially awkward, have no practical sense, but they've got to be book smart, they've got to be able to read, understand and write. Those are the necessary criteria for admission. So was this the average dating coach?
Absolutely not.
She's not the usual charlatan. You know, the person who hangs up a shingle whose main goal is to get rich. Like the clairvoyants preying on the hopeful. You see Logan's approach is based on data, science. And she's got a degree in psychology. This ticks a few boxes.
As for the commune, Ury says "Research shows that people are happiest when they live in groups."
Now I'm not sure I want to join a kibbutz, but one thing is for sure, I'm happiest when I'm in a group, especially when the pretexts of society are stripped away, when it's just people. Where you went to school, how much money you have...take away the bragging and it turns out people are more alike than different, you can relate to anybody. Well, there is Gene Simmons...
Ury doesn't believe in soul mates. If you're not settling, you're not doing it right. Think someone is a perfect match? All you've got to do is live with them. Logan is being practical, and so many of the unmarried are not. Reminding me of those great Jackson Browne lines:
"Without dreaming of the perfect love
And holding it so far above
That if you stumbled on to someone real you'd never know"
People don't want to hear the truth. Not only from Jack Nicholson, but almost anybody. They'd rather hew to their delusional viewpoint.
And Ury's research says "A recent one (survey) found that 88 percent of the app's users would prefer to date someone who's in therapy."
There you have it! If you want to have a relationship you've got to have insight into yourself, otherwise how can you have insight into someone else? Going to therapy is hard for most people, they don't want to admit to themselves that they're imperfect, that they can't do it all by themselves. The truth is you can't, I'll just leave it at that.
Now Ury is building a business on relationship coaching. I don't know the woman, for all I know she could be motivated by money. But one thing I do know is people are looking for answers, especially when it comes to love.
So I decided to dig deeper, to go online.
And that's when I realized that Logan Ury's publicist deserves a bonus. Ury is everywhere, the "New York Times" is just the cherry on top. But it's where I saw the story.
And not only are there stories, there's Instagram and videos and...
I decided to check out Ury's Instagram, "loganury."
It's all advice. It's detailed. She's on a mission. And she's not obscuring it. Too many people are worried about their image. Who has got time for that? If you're on Instagram you want Logan's essence. And what is that?
One of her posts says your profile should be accurate, not aspirational. If you lie, what are the odds you're going to get what you want?
"Look for a partner, not a project."
People don't change. Not that much. So if they tick a lot of boxes, they look great and they're good in bed, that does not trump the fact that they cannot hold down a job, or are untrustworthy.
There's a cool video, "How to deal with a ZQ (Zero Questions) dater." She's got a lot of good advice, but it's the most practical thing that stood out... If you're wary of dates with no questions, no back and forth, PUT IT IN YOUR PROFILE! Yes, put in your profile that you love being asked questions. Brilliant!
Now the truth is all of this is not about finding the perfect partner, but getting your skills up, so if you do bump into someone at the grocery store, or meet someone at a party, you don't freeze up, you use the tools you've been taught to interact. There's a good chance you'll meet your love off an app, but there's also a good chance that you won't meet anybody if you never go on the apps.
As Logan says:
"'I'm not presenting myself as a guru,' Ms. Ury said. 'I tell people: I will create a system that helps you tackle your blind spots and change your decisions.'"
And Ury's story is relatable:
"...she was pining over a guy whom she referred to in her book as Brian. She'd made out with him during one of her six trips to Burning Man and had glommed onto him; he rebuffed her. He sent her occasional texts, and she sobbed about his dismissiveness. It was the kind of dynamic she sees her clients repeat again and again, clinging to the illusion of a connection."
Oh, you've been there, the unrequited crush. Eventually you get over it, but you can be hung up on these people FOR YEARS!
And finally, Ury appealed to me because:
"'I've done online dating. I've ghosted, I've been ghosted, I've gone on 8.5 dates in one week,' she said. 'I feel like I'm the perfect level of attractiveness — it's not like I'm so beautiful where it's like, "Oh, dating was so easy." You have to be someone people can relate to.'"
Ury knows who she is, that she's not so desirable that she's beating men off with a stick. Like most of us. And if you only focus on the exterior, you're gonna miss a lot of great people.
I'm not in the dating market, and I hope to never be again, but I am absolutely fascinated by relationships. Who people are, what brings them together. I can listen to these stories forever. (However I cannot listen to the same damn story told by the same damn person who never takes action.) Which is why I read this article and Googled Logan.
That's all there is, people. Your toys won't keep you warm at night. Some of those billionaires are the loneliest people you'll ever meet. They can't trust anyone, and they can't climb down from the totem pole. Yes, in relationships everybody can be a 10. You've just got to stop being aspirational and accept yourself. And know that everybody's idea of a 10 is different.
If you're in the market, you should check Logan out, just to get your brain going if nothing else. There's so much to see, so much to learn.
GO FOR IT!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
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A couple of years back I had dinner with John Dick, majordomo of the research company CivicScience. He puts out a weekly newsletter everybody loves, you can sign up here:
http://www2.civicscience.com/l/165381/2019-08-30/bjv6tb
CivicScience consults Fortune 500 companies and John was struggling with writing the newsletter, it was a chore. I told him to make it personal.
Then everything instantly changed. The story about his daughter saying "I love Dick!" was priceless. Also the one where he talked about a family tragedy. You see it's about people. First and foremost. Want to have success, especially in the arts, MAKE IT PERSONAL!
Everybody can relate, everybody is imperfect, has warts. Once you testify everybody else does too, they're just waiting for the signal to open up, especially guys.
A few years back I went on the Summit Series cruise. You can research it. And although Brad Gerstner of Altimeter Partners told me I had the best presentation of the weekend at a subsequent Summit event in Utah, the hit of the cruise was Esther Perel.
Everybody knows who Esther Perel is today. Because of her podcast and publications and... She's the relationship guru. Trained relationship guru.
But this was before all that.
I had to go see her, she had to do a bonus talk because people were turned away from the scheduled one. Esther was relatable, she wasn't dictatorial, she told it how it was, and it was very interesting.
This morning in the "New York Times" I saw a story about Logan Ury:
"Logan Ury Says You're Dating All Wrong - From her Oakland commune, a dating coach has made a big business out of her data-driven approach to modern romance.: https://nyti.ms/3tsZpLI
A COMMUNE? You mean hippies in Oregon wearing overalls? Takes balls to live in a commune in the twenty first century. This I had to read.
And that's when I found out Logan went to Harvard. Yes, growing up on the east coast that still means something to me. A person can go to Harvard and be socially awkward, have no practical sense, but they've got to be book smart, they've got to be able to read, understand and write. Those are the necessary criteria for admission. So was this the average dating coach?
Absolutely not.
She's not the usual charlatan. You know, the person who hangs up a shingle whose main goal is to get rich. Like the clairvoyants preying on the hopeful. You see Logan's approach is based on data, science. And she's got a degree in psychology. This ticks a few boxes.
As for the commune, Ury says "Research shows that people are happiest when they live in groups."
Now I'm not sure I want to join a kibbutz, but one thing is for sure, I'm happiest when I'm in a group, especially when the pretexts of society are stripped away, when it's just people. Where you went to school, how much money you have...take away the bragging and it turns out people are more alike than different, you can relate to anybody. Well, there is Gene Simmons...
Ury doesn't believe in soul mates. If you're not settling, you're not doing it right. Think someone is a perfect match? All you've got to do is live with them. Logan is being practical, and so many of the unmarried are not. Reminding me of those great Jackson Browne lines:
"Without dreaming of the perfect love
And holding it so far above
That if you stumbled on to someone real you'd never know"
People don't want to hear the truth. Not only from Jack Nicholson, but almost anybody. They'd rather hew to their delusional viewpoint.
And Ury's research says "A recent one (survey) found that 88 percent of the app's users would prefer to date someone who's in therapy."
There you have it! If you want to have a relationship you've got to have insight into yourself, otherwise how can you have insight into someone else? Going to therapy is hard for most people, they don't want to admit to themselves that they're imperfect, that they can't do it all by themselves. The truth is you can't, I'll just leave it at that.
Now Ury is building a business on relationship coaching. I don't know the woman, for all I know she could be motivated by money. But one thing I do know is people are looking for answers, especially when it comes to love.
So I decided to dig deeper, to go online.
And that's when I realized that Logan Ury's publicist deserves a bonus. Ury is everywhere, the "New York Times" is just the cherry on top. But it's where I saw the story.
And not only are there stories, there's Instagram and videos and...
I decided to check out Ury's Instagram, "loganury."
It's all advice. It's detailed. She's on a mission. And she's not obscuring it. Too many people are worried about their image. Who has got time for that? If you're on Instagram you want Logan's essence. And what is that?
One of her posts says your profile should be accurate, not aspirational. If you lie, what are the odds you're going to get what you want?
"Look for a partner, not a project."
People don't change. Not that much. So if they tick a lot of boxes, they look great and they're good in bed, that does not trump the fact that they cannot hold down a job, or are untrustworthy.
There's a cool video, "How to deal with a ZQ (Zero Questions) dater." She's got a lot of good advice, but it's the most practical thing that stood out... If you're wary of dates with no questions, no back and forth, PUT IT IN YOUR PROFILE! Yes, put in your profile that you love being asked questions. Brilliant!
Now the truth is all of this is not about finding the perfect partner, but getting your skills up, so if you do bump into someone at the grocery store, or meet someone at a party, you don't freeze up, you use the tools you've been taught to interact. There's a good chance you'll meet your love off an app, but there's also a good chance that you won't meet anybody if you never go on the apps.
As Logan says:
"'I'm not presenting myself as a guru,' Ms. Ury said. 'I tell people: I will create a system that helps you tackle your blind spots and change your decisions.'"
And Ury's story is relatable:
"...she was pining over a guy whom she referred to in her book as Brian. She'd made out with him during one of her six trips to Burning Man and had glommed onto him; he rebuffed her. He sent her occasional texts, and she sobbed about his dismissiveness. It was the kind of dynamic she sees her clients repeat again and again, clinging to the illusion of a connection."
Oh, you've been there, the unrequited crush. Eventually you get over it, but you can be hung up on these people FOR YEARS!
And finally, Ury appealed to me because:
"'I've done online dating. I've ghosted, I've been ghosted, I've gone on 8.5 dates in one week,' she said. 'I feel like I'm the perfect level of attractiveness — it's not like I'm so beautiful where it's like, "Oh, dating was so easy." You have to be someone people can relate to.'"
Ury knows who she is, that she's not so desirable that she's beating men off with a stick. Like most of us. And if you only focus on the exterior, you're gonna miss a lot of great people.
I'm not in the dating market, and I hope to never be again, but I am absolutely fascinated by relationships. Who people are, what brings them together. I can listen to these stories forever. (However I cannot listen to the same damn story told by the same damn person who never takes action.) Which is why I read this article and Googled Logan.
That's all there is, people. Your toys won't keep you warm at night. Some of those billionaires are the loneliest people you'll ever meet. They can't trust anyone, and they can't climb down from the totem pole. Yes, in relationships everybody can be a 10. You've just got to stop being aspirational and accept yourself. And know that everybody's idea of a 10 is different.
If you're in the market, you should check Logan out, just to get your brain going if nothing else. There's so much to see, so much to learn.
GO FOR IT!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
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Bosch: Legacy
Tom Petty didn't want to be the guinea pig, he didn't want MCA to sell his next album for $9.98.
Although there was radio action on "Breakdown," Tom Petty's first two LPs were not commercial juggernauts. He was still somewhat of a secret. Unfortunately going in the wrong direction. You can only be the new thing once, and when the build is at a feverish pitch and your second album is not as good, it's hard to recover from that.
But Tom and the Heartbreakers (Who should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as their own group if the E Street Band is, but being mainly from Florida and living in California there's no chance. Didn't you know they only make serious music in New York?) employed Jimmy Iovine and released a blockbuster, "Damn the Torpedoes." One must ponder whether the LP would have been as big if it were released by ABC, Shelter's prior distributor, but in any event Petty didn't like being traded and declared bankruptcy and that story has become industry legend. But the story of $9.98? That seems to have faded away.
Records were an addiction. This was just before MTV was launched. Sure, there were casual customers who only bought one, based on what they heard on the radio, but the business was driven by those who couldn't resist purchasing two, three or five. I wouldn't say records were cheap, but unlike in the U.K. they were not ridiculously expensive, one can argue quite strongly that the U.K. remained a "hits" business, i.e. Top Forty, because singles were affordable and albums were not. A trip to the record store was a weekly ritual. You watched the papers for sales. And if you were paying suggested retail...you were one of the very few. The key was how much of a discount you got. The new releases were always cheaper, which is kind of funny, you'd think they'd be more expensive, and the catalog stuff was the most expensive. But you'd wait for the all label sale, when the entire inventory was at its cheapest. Or if you lived in the metropolis you went to certain indie outlets were the albums were always cheap. Fans were aware of the price of records. And were they going to take a risk for a buck more?
Petty, a customer himself, knew many wouldn't, so he agitated for the standard $8.98 price on his album, which really meant that savvy customers could buy it for five bucks.
Ironically, "Hard Promises" was darker and not as commercially successful as "Damn the Torpedoes," and "Long After Dark" even more so. Then Petty put out "Southern Accents" and "Don't Come Around Here No More" ended up being gigantic, driven by a ubiquitous video with Tom in a giant hat. Tom made the transition from the seventies to the eighties, from AOR to MTV, he started to become the Tom Petty of legend, not that everybody was on the same page until the release of his solo LP, "Full Moon Fever," in 1989. I'd like to be free fallin' right now!
Not everybody recovers from hiccups in the road. They can stall a career. You want to make it easy for fans to continue to follow and appreciate you. Like Titus Welliver in "Bosch."
That's the reason to watch, Titus is so damn good. Tom Cruise is mostly external, Titus Welliver is mostly internal, but there's an external element too. You know guys like Titus, who go their own way, not caring what anybody thinks, who seem to be plugged in in a way no one else is, who radiate weird loner charisma. It's more of an anti-star than a star. It's the difference between Metallica and the Spotify Top 50. What becomes a legend most? Metallica!
So I got hooked on "Bosch" six summers ago, recovering from shoulder surgery. It was like discovering a new band, where you had to go back and devour all of the catalog. And then I waited every spring for a new season.
Yes, it's a formula. But you can't stop watching Titus. And the supporting cast too, it's quite an ensemble.
But now Amazon, in all of its "wisdom," has moved the "Bosch" sequel, "Bosch: Legacy," to Freevee.
HUH?
I'm such a fan that I knew that Amazon's IMDb TV was rebranded as Freevee and you had to go there to watch the new season of "Bosch." BUT NOT A SINGLE PERSON I INTERACTED WITH KNEW THIS! They were all fans of the show, they were positively shocked, shocked I tell you, when they found out there was a new season. As far as being on Freevee...they'd never heard of IMDb TV!
But it gets worse, it's not on Freevee all over the world.
And you know how it is in today's world, you can't get the word out. And even if people got it, they had to know to download a new app, and that you didn't have to register to watch it, but you know Amazon wants all your data. To HELP you. Yeah, that's right.
So since it's on Freevee, that means there are...COMMERCIALS!
I pay for Amazon Prime, one of the perks is the streaming TV without commercials, and now you take my favorite original show from the service and exile it to the hinterlands and make me watch adverts after having made the journey?
I know some people are cheap. Actually, a lot are cheap. But most of them will pay for convenience. Which is why they pay for Spotify instead of continuing to steal music. Sure, there's a free tier with advertising on Spotify, but it's hobbled, it's not fully-featured, it's for casual users only, to be able to pick and choose what you want to hear you need to pay. You need to pay for everything good in this life.
I don't want to see no stinking commercials.
Talk to a young 'un, they don't know what a commercial is! Well, they refuse to watch 'em. And where would they see 'em, they don't watch network, they don't even have a cable TV subscription! But they do have a Netflix account, even if it might be their parents'.
Clamp down on password sharing, why not. It's like when cable went digital, you could no longer steal HBO by removing a filter.
So Amazon was building momentum, a catalog, of "Bosch." Hell, most of the legendary TV shows were not gigantic out of the box, not only "Seinfeld," but "Breaking Bad." It's harder to reach people today, but the key is to hook 'em, which Amazon did with "Bosch," and now they're throwing all that good will away, putting "Bosch: Legacy" on Freevee? The people paying for Prime are the same people who don't want to watch commercials!
Amazon could realize the error of its ways. And put "Legacy" on the main service right now, most people would have no idea it had been previously released.
As for the commercials on Freevee... They're less in number than they are on network/cable, but that's like saying five bee stings are better than twenty, when in truth you don't want to be stung at all!
Commercials disrespect the art.
We can finally air visual product sans reformatting and editing. Yes, the aspect ratio of your flat screen is akin to the one in the movie theatre, that all the producers create for. And, there are no longer time restraints, in streaming a movie or series episode can be as long as you want. This is liberation!
But the powers-that-be, out of touch with the public, think otherwise.
Have you seen "Tehran"?
The first season was pretty good. But I haven't watched the second yet, I can't watch anything week to week, you forget too much, it's not the same experience. And is there any buzz on "Tehran"? NO! Maybe if they had released it all at once there would be. The only damn show with buzz on Apple TV+ is "Ted Lasso." Meaning they must be doing something wrong. Forget good reviews, there is no word of mouth, because Apple is stifling it. To think that Steve Jobs was about breaking norms, being ahead of the customer, and Apple is going backwards.
But in any event, watch "Bosch: Legacy." Titus can carry the show alone, but the usual suspects are there too, Maddie and Money, and even cameos from Crate and Barrel. And there's a breakout star, Stephen Chang, who is so unknown he doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page!
Eventually all albums were sold for $9.98. And then CDs for twice that price. And the labels were rolling in dough, laughing all the way to the bank after selling catalog all over again and cutting out singles if they hit, forcing consumers to purchase the whole overpriced album, can you say "Chumbawamba"? And then came Napster.
Don't force the public to do what it doesn't want to. You only build resentment. And I resent the fact that "Bosch: Legacy" is on Freevee!
Although there was radio action on "Breakdown," Tom Petty's first two LPs were not commercial juggernauts. He was still somewhat of a secret. Unfortunately going in the wrong direction. You can only be the new thing once, and when the build is at a feverish pitch and your second album is not as good, it's hard to recover from that.
But Tom and the Heartbreakers (Who should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as their own group if the E Street Band is, but being mainly from Florida and living in California there's no chance. Didn't you know they only make serious music in New York?) employed Jimmy Iovine and released a blockbuster, "Damn the Torpedoes." One must ponder whether the LP would have been as big if it were released by ABC, Shelter's prior distributor, but in any event Petty didn't like being traded and declared bankruptcy and that story has become industry legend. But the story of $9.98? That seems to have faded away.
Records were an addiction. This was just before MTV was launched. Sure, there were casual customers who only bought one, based on what they heard on the radio, but the business was driven by those who couldn't resist purchasing two, three or five. I wouldn't say records were cheap, but unlike in the U.K. they were not ridiculously expensive, one can argue quite strongly that the U.K. remained a "hits" business, i.e. Top Forty, because singles were affordable and albums were not. A trip to the record store was a weekly ritual. You watched the papers for sales. And if you were paying suggested retail...you were one of the very few. The key was how much of a discount you got. The new releases were always cheaper, which is kind of funny, you'd think they'd be more expensive, and the catalog stuff was the most expensive. But you'd wait for the all label sale, when the entire inventory was at its cheapest. Or if you lived in the metropolis you went to certain indie outlets were the albums were always cheap. Fans were aware of the price of records. And were they going to take a risk for a buck more?
Petty, a customer himself, knew many wouldn't, so he agitated for the standard $8.98 price on his album, which really meant that savvy customers could buy it for five bucks.
Ironically, "Hard Promises" was darker and not as commercially successful as "Damn the Torpedoes," and "Long After Dark" even more so. Then Petty put out "Southern Accents" and "Don't Come Around Here No More" ended up being gigantic, driven by a ubiquitous video with Tom in a giant hat. Tom made the transition from the seventies to the eighties, from AOR to MTV, he started to become the Tom Petty of legend, not that everybody was on the same page until the release of his solo LP, "Full Moon Fever," in 1989. I'd like to be free fallin' right now!
Not everybody recovers from hiccups in the road. They can stall a career. You want to make it easy for fans to continue to follow and appreciate you. Like Titus Welliver in "Bosch."
That's the reason to watch, Titus is so damn good. Tom Cruise is mostly external, Titus Welliver is mostly internal, but there's an external element too. You know guys like Titus, who go their own way, not caring what anybody thinks, who seem to be plugged in in a way no one else is, who radiate weird loner charisma. It's more of an anti-star than a star. It's the difference between Metallica and the Spotify Top 50. What becomes a legend most? Metallica!
So I got hooked on "Bosch" six summers ago, recovering from shoulder surgery. It was like discovering a new band, where you had to go back and devour all of the catalog. And then I waited every spring for a new season.
Yes, it's a formula. But you can't stop watching Titus. And the supporting cast too, it's quite an ensemble.
But now Amazon, in all of its "wisdom," has moved the "Bosch" sequel, "Bosch: Legacy," to Freevee.
HUH?
I'm such a fan that I knew that Amazon's IMDb TV was rebranded as Freevee and you had to go there to watch the new season of "Bosch." BUT NOT A SINGLE PERSON I INTERACTED WITH KNEW THIS! They were all fans of the show, they were positively shocked, shocked I tell you, when they found out there was a new season. As far as being on Freevee...they'd never heard of IMDb TV!
But it gets worse, it's not on Freevee all over the world.
And you know how it is in today's world, you can't get the word out. And even if people got it, they had to know to download a new app, and that you didn't have to register to watch it, but you know Amazon wants all your data. To HELP you. Yeah, that's right.
So since it's on Freevee, that means there are...COMMERCIALS!
I pay for Amazon Prime, one of the perks is the streaming TV without commercials, and now you take my favorite original show from the service and exile it to the hinterlands and make me watch adverts after having made the journey?
I know some people are cheap. Actually, a lot are cheap. But most of them will pay for convenience. Which is why they pay for Spotify instead of continuing to steal music. Sure, there's a free tier with advertising on Spotify, but it's hobbled, it's not fully-featured, it's for casual users only, to be able to pick and choose what you want to hear you need to pay. You need to pay for everything good in this life.
I don't want to see no stinking commercials.
Talk to a young 'un, they don't know what a commercial is! Well, they refuse to watch 'em. And where would they see 'em, they don't watch network, they don't even have a cable TV subscription! But they do have a Netflix account, even if it might be their parents'.
Clamp down on password sharing, why not. It's like when cable went digital, you could no longer steal HBO by removing a filter.
So Amazon was building momentum, a catalog, of "Bosch." Hell, most of the legendary TV shows were not gigantic out of the box, not only "Seinfeld," but "Breaking Bad." It's harder to reach people today, but the key is to hook 'em, which Amazon did with "Bosch," and now they're throwing all that good will away, putting "Bosch: Legacy" on Freevee? The people paying for Prime are the same people who don't want to watch commercials!
Amazon could realize the error of its ways. And put "Legacy" on the main service right now, most people would have no idea it had been previously released.
As for the commercials on Freevee... They're less in number than they are on network/cable, but that's like saying five bee stings are better than twenty, when in truth you don't want to be stung at all!
Commercials disrespect the art.
We can finally air visual product sans reformatting and editing. Yes, the aspect ratio of your flat screen is akin to the one in the movie theatre, that all the producers create for. And, there are no longer time restraints, in streaming a movie or series episode can be as long as you want. This is liberation!
But the powers-that-be, out of touch with the public, think otherwise.
Have you seen "Tehran"?
The first season was pretty good. But I haven't watched the second yet, I can't watch anything week to week, you forget too much, it's not the same experience. And is there any buzz on "Tehran"? NO! Maybe if they had released it all at once there would be. The only damn show with buzz on Apple TV+ is "Ted Lasso." Meaning they must be doing something wrong. Forget good reviews, there is no word of mouth, because Apple is stifling it. To think that Steve Jobs was about breaking norms, being ahead of the customer, and Apple is going backwards.
But in any event, watch "Bosch: Legacy." Titus can carry the show alone, but the usual suspects are there too, Maddie and Money, and even cameos from Crate and Barrel. And there's a breakout star, Stephen Chang, who is so unknown he doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page!
Eventually all albums were sold for $9.98. And then CDs for twice that price. And the labels were rolling in dough, laughing all the way to the bank after selling catalog all over again and cutting out singles if they hit, forcing consumers to purchase the whole overpriced album, can you say "Chumbawamba"? And then came Napster.
Don't force the public to do what it doesn't want to. You only build resentment. And I resent the fact that "Bosch: Legacy" is on Freevee!
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Elliott Murphy-This Week's Podcast
Elliott Murphy was one of the new Dylans of 1973, along with his friend Bruce Springsteen. But despite being on three major labels, Murphy never broke through in the States. However, Elliott was big in France, so he moved there in 1989 and has been living the life of the independent troubadour ever since, making records and touring to acclaim all over Europe. Listen to the story of how one man was spit out of the machine but found a way to survive by doing it himself.
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/elliott-murphy-98108053/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elliott-murphy/id1316200737?i=1000565794856
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bjU0MMe9w2Dm3z09v1eqt?si=25WjSy5cT2W4UQyuPmyfNQ
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/7cf40a66-ccf2-4020-899b-a9fca10562d8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-elliott-murphy
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/elliott-murphy-203922764
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/elliott-murphy-98108053/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elliott-murphy/id1316200737?i=1000565794856
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0bjU0MMe9w2Dm3z09v1eqt?si=25WjSy5cT2W4UQyuPmyfNQ
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/7cf40a66-ccf2-4020-899b-a9fca10562d8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-elliott-murphy
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/elliott-murphy-203922764
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Wednesday 8 June 2022
Mailbag
Subject: Re: The Model Is Broken
RE: The Model Is Broken.??Bob, you're killing it, mate. Superbly reasoned piece and within it lies the awful truth…or is it that awful? Yes, in many ways, but change is always a new pair of boots that need breaking in.
The message at the heart of even this sea change is the same; write a great song and sing it well. It might not make you rich but then again, it just might and you can probably sleep a little better knowing you don't suck. Then get up and try to do it again.
Keep firing
JD Souther
___________________________________
From: Michael Cantor
Subject: Re: The TikTok Backlash
Another testament to TikTok's influence: My 18yo daughter and I saw Billy Joel at MSG 10 days ago. He played "Vienna" and "Zanzibar" among the usual hits. Even for big fans , those are relatively obscure songs (especially Zanzibar). My daughter knew them both because those are his 2 big songs on TikTok!
Best,
Michael
___________________________________
From: Matthew Sterling
Subject: Re: Running Up That Hill
RE: Running Up That Hill and other 'net-driven resurgences...
My kids are 14 and 11. When we're in the car, I let them play whatever they want on Spotify. The other day, in the midst of a larger shuffle of modern hits they had going on, Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" came on. I laughed and asked where they'd heard it before. They both looked at me, as teenagers are wont to do, like I was from Mars. The following exchange took place.
"Dad, this is, like, the biggest song from the 80s."
"Ha! No, it's not. This was maybe Top 40. A one-hit wonder. Guy made more money producing No Doubt."
"Wrong, Dad. This song is huge. Everybody knows this song."
"No way. Check the streams. I bet it has 5m-10m, tops. Check out 'No One Is To Blame' by Howard Jones. That was probably a bigger hit."
(Pause for 14yo to check stats. Meanwhile my 11yo is singing along to 'Stride.' Knows every single word.)
"8.8m streams for your song."
"Exactly. Now check the streams on 'Break My Stride.' No way it's more than Howard Jones."
(Pause for 14yo to check stats. 11yo still singing along to 'Stride.' Even knows the bridge!)
"Umm... 289m streams."
(Pause for me to prevent driving into a ditch.)
"What the fudge?!? How is that possible?!? 'Break My Stride?' That defies all logic."
(Pause for both kids to pull out their phones and show me various TikTok / Memes utilizing 'Stride.' I think a deer jumps over a fence in one while the song plays in the background.)
"See, Dad? Everybody knows this song. It's one of the biggest hits of the 80s."
(Pause for me to insist we put on 'No One Is To Blame,' which they begrudgingly tolerated until the second verse.)
Never underestimate the power of the teenager to dictate the future, and casually (perhaps even unknowingly) rewrite the past. It took me a solid fifteen minutes to explain to my kids that Matthew Wilder, while a very successful musician with an enviable career, is not a household name on par with the biggest stars of the 80s. One of the reasons it took me so long to explain is because Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T." and "Rock With You" both have around the same number of streams as "Break My Stride." Let that sink in.
The power of teenagers. Same as it ever was.
___________________________________
From: adam barnes
Subject: Re: Distribution Is King
We are moving away from the "importance" of press in an album cycle - at least on an independent level. What's the point? I know it's all about clicks clicks clicks. Has been for a while, but even more so now. The new head honcho at Rolling Stone only cares about these, and rightfully so, it is the only business model they have left. Gone are the days of putting the music star on the cover of music's favorite magazine and being able to slip in some emerging (amazing) artists to discover.
I speak to a lot of publicists and artists about this - and we all were stumped for a while. Where is all the support we used to receive? Well, if only the clicks matter and you're emerging you better be ready to pay to show you are worth it. There is just too much happening and the publications are trying to pull back and run what they know will get that ad revenue.
We've been entering this for a while - but you have to have the buzz before considering a publicist at this point. You are better off tailoring your team with folks that can help you put a plan together to achieve this buzz (whether it be on social media, or DSPs, or just making a HIT) - and if you get to a spot where you have so many journalists and people reaching out that you need someone to filter what is right and wrong and to get your "buzz-worthiness" out there, then pull the trigger.
It's all changing…same goes for music videos - I'll talk about that some other time.
___________________________________
Subject: Re: Re-Billy Strings
Hey Bob,
Thanks for finding Billy Strings,
I'd like to echo Pete Wernick aka Dr Banjo and other's sentiments. This is a whole world unto itself- Bluegrass. And it's existed for a very long time. As my friend saxophonist extraordinaire Marc Russo said one time "Oh Bluegrass- the "other Jazz". People learning Bluegrass music growing up ARE like Jazz artists, they put "20,000 hours" in learning their craft. They/we make for the most part pretty meager wages but that's not why they/we do it. I was in a band called The New Grass Revival through the '70's & 80's. Our last show as a band was opening for The Dead at Oakland Colliseum '89.
Two years ago we were inducted into International Hall of Fame. I've been touring with The Doobie Brothers now since 2010 so I really don't tour that circuit anymore. Bluegrass is a world of amazing artists dedicated solely to a truly American art form. Billy is for sure the REAL DEAL as is his band, and he's as sweet as he's been described. Now, go check out The Punch Brothers, Green Sky Bluegrass, Tony Rice, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, The Infamous String Dusters, Molly Tuttle, I'm With Her, Sarah Hull, Dale Ann Bradley. It's a world so well worth wandering into.
Kind thanks,
John Cowan
___________________________________
From: Dan Millen
Subject: Re: Re-Billy Strings
Damn... lost control of my inbox this week.
Adam King summed it up.
Patrick Effing May, Crossover Touring.
Pat is - like Billy - a development story of his own. Affable huggable and when he says "trust me" you trust him. Slugged it out in the trenches booking $500 jambands in menu venues and did things his way which always involves taking care of his acts AND his promoters.
It says a lot about an agent / agency when an act goes from nothing to six figure grosses and still stays with the agent.
Oh, and one helluva bass player too!
___________________________________
Subject: Re: Go All The Way 50th Anniversary
Bob,
Thanks for the great Raspberries piece. We heard a lot of similar comments at the reunion shows, how people didn't listen to their records at first but as their musical tastes expanded really came to love the music. And then when Stevie Van Zandt, Jon Bon Jovi, Paul Stanley, Matthew Sweet, and so many other musicians came to the shows, we started to realize the profound influence the band had on some of their peers. Those reunion shows - basically a series of 16 one-offs, weren't easy to pull off. Quality was job 1. No rented gear for these shows, so the crew, also the original guys from the '70's - trucked Jim Bonfanti's original Ludwig drum kit, Wally Bryson's original Gibson double neck, Flying V and Rickenbacker guitars, all of which were played on the original recordings, and the fresh new Vox amps - to every show, coast-to-coast. The band wanted the shows to be as authentic as possible for the fans, budget be damned! As a result, the vibe and the electricity at those shows was palpable! Throw in 2 hour long meet and greets at every show that included a pic with the band and a ticket for $100, and you had a concert experience for the band's longtime loyal fans that blew their minds! Again, it was all to thank the fans who waited over 30 years for the "classic" version of the band to reunite. Unfortunately there was never any high quality live video of the band back in the '70's, which fueled their legendary onstage rep for decades, including a mythical 1973 Carnegie Hall show, that of course wasn't recorded. But now we've recently found a 2007 reunion concert recorded in HD that is, well, pretty damn great, and so far we've posted two tracks "Tonight" and "Go All The Way" - on the band's YouTube channel (RaspberriesOnline). We hope to be posting more video tracks there in the coming year, so the fans can get a very real idea of just how great this band still was live, even 30 years after they last played together! Cheers!
Al Kaston
___________________________________
From: Joe Walsh
Subject: Re: Hacks-Episode 6
Hey Bob-
Good job looking at
grand-slam hit songs.
My advice to young artists-
1) If you're going to write a
song that lasts forever:
RECORD IT DOWN A
HALF-STEP NOW!
so you can sing it when
you're my age.
Walsh
RE: The Model Is Broken.??Bob, you're killing it, mate. Superbly reasoned piece and within it lies the awful truth…or is it that awful? Yes, in many ways, but change is always a new pair of boots that need breaking in.
The message at the heart of even this sea change is the same; write a great song and sing it well. It might not make you rich but then again, it just might and you can probably sleep a little better knowing you don't suck. Then get up and try to do it again.
Keep firing
JD Souther
___________________________________
From: Michael Cantor
Subject: Re: The TikTok Backlash
Another testament to TikTok's influence: My 18yo daughter and I saw Billy Joel at MSG 10 days ago. He played "Vienna" and "Zanzibar" among the usual hits. Even for big fans , those are relatively obscure songs (especially Zanzibar). My daughter knew them both because those are his 2 big songs on TikTok!
Best,
Michael
___________________________________
From: Matthew Sterling
Subject: Re: Running Up That Hill
RE: Running Up That Hill and other 'net-driven resurgences...
My kids are 14 and 11. When we're in the car, I let them play whatever they want on Spotify. The other day, in the midst of a larger shuffle of modern hits they had going on, Matthew Wilder's "Break My Stride" came on. I laughed and asked where they'd heard it before. They both looked at me, as teenagers are wont to do, like I was from Mars. The following exchange took place.
"Dad, this is, like, the biggest song from the 80s."
"Ha! No, it's not. This was maybe Top 40. A one-hit wonder. Guy made more money producing No Doubt."
"Wrong, Dad. This song is huge. Everybody knows this song."
"No way. Check the streams. I bet it has 5m-10m, tops. Check out 'No One Is To Blame' by Howard Jones. That was probably a bigger hit."
(Pause for 14yo to check stats. Meanwhile my 11yo is singing along to 'Stride.' Knows every single word.)
"8.8m streams for your song."
"Exactly. Now check the streams on 'Break My Stride.' No way it's more than Howard Jones."
(Pause for 14yo to check stats. 11yo still singing along to 'Stride.' Even knows the bridge!)
"Umm... 289m streams."
(Pause for me to prevent driving into a ditch.)
"What the fudge?!? How is that possible?!? 'Break My Stride?' That defies all logic."
(Pause for both kids to pull out their phones and show me various TikTok / Memes utilizing 'Stride.' I think a deer jumps over a fence in one while the song plays in the background.)
"See, Dad? Everybody knows this song. It's one of the biggest hits of the 80s."
(Pause for me to insist we put on 'No One Is To Blame,' which they begrudgingly tolerated until the second verse.)
Never underestimate the power of the teenager to dictate the future, and casually (perhaps even unknowingly) rewrite the past. It took me a solid fifteen minutes to explain to my kids that Matthew Wilder, while a very successful musician with an enviable career, is not a household name on par with the biggest stars of the 80s. One of the reasons it took me so long to explain is because Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T." and "Rock With You" both have around the same number of streams as "Break My Stride." Let that sink in.
The power of teenagers. Same as it ever was.
___________________________________
From: adam barnes
Subject: Re: Distribution Is King
We are moving away from the "importance" of press in an album cycle - at least on an independent level. What's the point? I know it's all about clicks clicks clicks. Has been for a while, but even more so now. The new head honcho at Rolling Stone only cares about these, and rightfully so, it is the only business model they have left. Gone are the days of putting the music star on the cover of music's favorite magazine and being able to slip in some emerging (amazing) artists to discover.
I speak to a lot of publicists and artists about this - and we all were stumped for a while. Where is all the support we used to receive? Well, if only the clicks matter and you're emerging you better be ready to pay to show you are worth it. There is just too much happening and the publications are trying to pull back and run what they know will get that ad revenue.
We've been entering this for a while - but you have to have the buzz before considering a publicist at this point. You are better off tailoring your team with folks that can help you put a plan together to achieve this buzz (whether it be on social media, or DSPs, or just making a HIT) - and if you get to a spot where you have so many journalists and people reaching out that you need someone to filter what is right and wrong and to get your "buzz-worthiness" out there, then pull the trigger.
It's all changing…same goes for music videos - I'll talk about that some other time.
___________________________________
Subject: Re: Re-Billy Strings
Hey Bob,
Thanks for finding Billy Strings,
I'd like to echo Pete Wernick aka Dr Banjo and other's sentiments. This is a whole world unto itself- Bluegrass. And it's existed for a very long time. As my friend saxophonist extraordinaire Marc Russo said one time "Oh Bluegrass- the "other Jazz". People learning Bluegrass music growing up ARE like Jazz artists, they put "20,000 hours" in learning their craft. They/we make for the most part pretty meager wages but that's not why they/we do it. I was in a band called The New Grass Revival through the '70's & 80's. Our last show as a band was opening for The Dead at Oakland Colliseum '89.
Two years ago we were inducted into International Hall of Fame. I've been touring with The Doobie Brothers now since 2010 so I really don't tour that circuit anymore. Bluegrass is a world of amazing artists dedicated solely to a truly American art form. Billy is for sure the REAL DEAL as is his band, and he's as sweet as he's been described. Now, go check out The Punch Brothers, Green Sky Bluegrass, Tony Rice, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, The Infamous String Dusters, Molly Tuttle, I'm With Her, Sarah Hull, Dale Ann Bradley. It's a world so well worth wandering into.
Kind thanks,
John Cowan
___________________________________
From: Dan Millen
Subject: Re: Re-Billy Strings
Damn... lost control of my inbox this week.
Adam King summed it up.
Patrick Effing May, Crossover Touring.
Pat is - like Billy - a development story of his own. Affable huggable and when he says "trust me" you trust him. Slugged it out in the trenches booking $500 jambands in menu venues and did things his way which always involves taking care of his acts AND his promoters.
It says a lot about an agent / agency when an act goes from nothing to six figure grosses and still stays with the agent.
Oh, and one helluva bass player too!
___________________________________
Subject: Re: Go All The Way 50th Anniversary
Bob,
Thanks for the great Raspberries piece. We heard a lot of similar comments at the reunion shows, how people didn't listen to their records at first but as their musical tastes expanded really came to love the music. And then when Stevie Van Zandt, Jon Bon Jovi, Paul Stanley, Matthew Sweet, and so many other musicians came to the shows, we started to realize the profound influence the band had on some of their peers. Those reunion shows - basically a series of 16 one-offs, weren't easy to pull off. Quality was job 1. No rented gear for these shows, so the crew, also the original guys from the '70's - trucked Jim Bonfanti's original Ludwig drum kit, Wally Bryson's original Gibson double neck, Flying V and Rickenbacker guitars, all of which were played on the original recordings, and the fresh new Vox amps - to every show, coast-to-coast. The band wanted the shows to be as authentic as possible for the fans, budget be damned! As a result, the vibe and the electricity at those shows was palpable! Throw in 2 hour long meet and greets at every show that included a pic with the band and a ticket for $100, and you had a concert experience for the band's longtime loyal fans that blew their minds! Again, it was all to thank the fans who waited over 30 years for the "classic" version of the band to reunite. Unfortunately there was never any high quality live video of the band back in the '70's, which fueled their legendary onstage rep for decades, including a mythical 1973 Carnegie Hall show, that of course wasn't recorded. But now we've recently found a 2007 reunion concert recorded in HD that is, well, pretty damn great, and so far we've posted two tracks "Tonight" and "Go All The Way" - on the band's YouTube channel (RaspberriesOnline). We hope to be posting more video tracks there in the coming year, so the fans can get a very real idea of just how great this band still was live, even 30 years after they last played together! Cheers!
Al Kaston
___________________________________
From: Joe Walsh
Subject: Re: Hacks-Episode 6
Hey Bob-
Good job looking at
grand-slam hit songs.
My advice to young artists-
1) If you're going to write a
song that lasts forever:
RECORD IT DOWN A
HALF-STEP NOW!
so you can sing it when
you're my age.
Walsh
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Recordings vs. Careers
Have you seen this video?
"We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral": https://bit.ly/3Q8HZhk
Unfortunately it conflates monthly listeners with streams, and the difference is important. The bottom line is if you want to make money it's the total number of streams, not the total number of monthly listeners. Each listener is unique, but the same listener can listen to a song one time, which is really only 30 seconds, or two hundred times.
I could go deeper, but in truth no one really cares, they just want to make it, get that big record company check, what they're actually doing, the quality of the material... IRRELEVANT!
Now if you're sophisticated, you really won't learn anything in this video. It promises a lot, but ultimately it's all known, assuming you're in the game. However very few are in the game, and if you're not you should check it out. But it costs 22 minutes. Which is an eternity in internet time. But it's snazzily produced by Vox. But when you get to the end of it you'll have a completely skewed vision of the music business. You'll think it's all about hatching TikTok stars, because all of the ink is on streaming payouts as opposed to overall income, and if you truly want to make bank in music you've got to have a career, and a viral video is only the first stepping stone, far from the cherry on top. In other words, you may have multiple millions of views on TikTok, but will anybody buy a ticket to see you play? Even more important, will they buy another ticket after they've seen you once and the novelty factor has worn off?
News comes from the bottom-up.
And this is sometimes scary.
If you're paying attention to the story behind the story of Depp/Heard, you know it was not driven by mainstream media, but online influencers. Who did it for the bread. And the bread was in being pro-Depp, so all these sold-out video makers skewed their productions that way. And they didn't only post once a day, but many times a day. They became mini-fan clubs. And the purveyors got momentary attention, will it sustain? Probably not. And just because you have one viral video online, that does not mean you can replicate the success, especially on TikTok, whose algorithm allows nobodies to score.
And one of the big questions proffered in this video is whether to take the record company bucks or go independent.
The truth is TikTok stars are almost never going to have any more success, so take the check. They're doing the math of recoupment, of low royalty rates... Just take the check and try to give up as few rights for as little time as possible.
Of course there are exceptions, but if there weren't there wouldn't be any rules!
Bottom line, punters said that the internet would allow the square pegs that didn't fit into round holes to flourish. In other words, there was tons of unsigned talent overlooked by the major labels and it would come out of the woodwork and...
It didn't happen. Turns out the labels were doing a very good job of finding who deserved amplification of their musical efforts.
Which brings us back to the point that almost all of the viral TikTok hits are not about music, but COMMERCE! As are most of the Spotify Top 50 tracks, so they have that in common, which is contributing to the second class status of new music.
So, if you're sitting at home, you've got the tools, seemingly everybody does, you can play the music industry game. Doesn't require much musical talent, and the penumbra is important, i.e. how you look and how you move. Not that innovation is absent. This is something the TikTok creators have that the denizens of the Spotify Top 50 do not. Knowing that the music is not enough to sell them, they come up with wacky ideas to garner eyeballs. Train-wreck value. Innovation is key in popular music, but homogenization has creeped into the halls of the major labels. Don't make it hard, make it easy. Just sell that which sounds like everything else that is successful. Don't try and swim upstream, don't try and do something new. Which means the mainstream is boring and the excitement is on TikTok so the labels are going there to find talent. It's just that on TikTok the music is secondary, they're selling video, stupid pet tricks. You can try to capture lightning in a bottle, but lightning disappears almost instantly.
Rather than develop acts which might sustain, the labels hoover up these nascent TikTok acts before they're fully grown. And the truth is almost none of them will grow fully.
As for cover songs, do it right and you can blow up the original, but we already knew those were hits!
As for acts breaking in more traditional ways, via live performance and full recordings, the labels are tapped into that too, but here's where you don't want to take the check, if it's even offered, which usually it is not. Because if you have an ongoing enterprise you don't want that million dollars, you'll be hobbling your future. You can monetize all day long sans cross-collateralization. And the truth is your fans spread the word, not traditional publicity. The major label can do little for you unless you make music in either hip-hop, pop or country. That's right, the majors are ceding most of the music business. Not most of the RECORDED music business, but that percentage continues to decline. If you're debating streaming remuneration you're missing the point. Thank god everybody can hear all your music, unlike in the old days, it's up to you to make it pay. The recordings are just the STARTING POINT!
So, TikTok is the new radio.
But terrestrial radio has been moribund for more than decade. The labels are chasing trends as opposed to birthing new ones. They've stripped those departments from their company, it costs too much money to find real talent and develop it, best to just skim the cream off the top of what rears its head online.
In other words, the labels are making beaucoup bucks while they're killing their business. Thank god they have those gold-plated catalogs, because otherwise their numbers would look terrible.
So what this means is you've got to decide which side you're on. Are you a stunt player, someone looking to get lucky, or a dedicated musician? Hell, a million dollars isn't even that much anymore, and it's the only time you'll get paid. These viral hits have no legs, they're not "American Pie," paying dividends for decades thereafter.
But everybody believes the system is rigged against them and the game is too hard.
Welcome to the world. It's not only record companies that have sacrificed costly research and development to keep their shareholders happy.
In other words, you're on your own. You must build it yourself. Your VC fund is your parents. And/or your fans. It's positively cottage industry. You just need enough money to make music and go on the road. Nothing more, you're not entitled to make a living.
So it comes down to you.
And sure, you must find a way to nexus with potential fans. But you can't let this nexus supersede the core elements, like the music itself and your ability to play. The goal is to get to the point where you don't need any of the shenanigans, where the music sells itself, draws customers. But that's a long, slow, hard process.
So you need to be aware of the TikTok game, you should know the entire landscape. But TikTok is the land of amateurs, on a lark. Or those with more business-savvy than musical talent.
There are no short cuts.
And nobody wants to hear this.
But you know if you have to continue.
And if you're making no progress, don't blame it on everybody else. First, are you in the game? If you never release your music no one can like it. Second, if a fan base for your tune doesn't grow, you could be too far ahead of the game, or maybe your music just isn't that interesting to most people and you should pivot or get out of the game or be happy where you are.
But one thing TikTok can teach us about is creative innovation. That's what it's based on, the entire service, people at home coming up with new ideas. And ideas are paramount, which is why all the money comes down to songwriting, which is damn hard to do. If you're doing it just like everybody else you won't go viral, no one is interested, but when you push the envelope, skew the vision a bit, and underpin it with desirable music, you're on the road to success. But just beginning.
"We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral": https://bit.ly/3Q8HZhk
Unfortunately it conflates monthly listeners with streams, and the difference is important. The bottom line is if you want to make money it's the total number of streams, not the total number of monthly listeners. Each listener is unique, but the same listener can listen to a song one time, which is really only 30 seconds, or two hundred times.
I could go deeper, but in truth no one really cares, they just want to make it, get that big record company check, what they're actually doing, the quality of the material... IRRELEVANT!
Now if you're sophisticated, you really won't learn anything in this video. It promises a lot, but ultimately it's all known, assuming you're in the game. However very few are in the game, and if you're not you should check it out. But it costs 22 minutes. Which is an eternity in internet time. But it's snazzily produced by Vox. But when you get to the end of it you'll have a completely skewed vision of the music business. You'll think it's all about hatching TikTok stars, because all of the ink is on streaming payouts as opposed to overall income, and if you truly want to make bank in music you've got to have a career, and a viral video is only the first stepping stone, far from the cherry on top. In other words, you may have multiple millions of views on TikTok, but will anybody buy a ticket to see you play? Even more important, will they buy another ticket after they've seen you once and the novelty factor has worn off?
News comes from the bottom-up.
And this is sometimes scary.
If you're paying attention to the story behind the story of Depp/Heard, you know it was not driven by mainstream media, but online influencers. Who did it for the bread. And the bread was in being pro-Depp, so all these sold-out video makers skewed their productions that way. And they didn't only post once a day, but many times a day. They became mini-fan clubs. And the purveyors got momentary attention, will it sustain? Probably not. And just because you have one viral video online, that does not mean you can replicate the success, especially on TikTok, whose algorithm allows nobodies to score.
And one of the big questions proffered in this video is whether to take the record company bucks or go independent.
The truth is TikTok stars are almost never going to have any more success, so take the check. They're doing the math of recoupment, of low royalty rates... Just take the check and try to give up as few rights for as little time as possible.
Of course there are exceptions, but if there weren't there wouldn't be any rules!
Bottom line, punters said that the internet would allow the square pegs that didn't fit into round holes to flourish. In other words, there was tons of unsigned talent overlooked by the major labels and it would come out of the woodwork and...
It didn't happen. Turns out the labels were doing a very good job of finding who deserved amplification of their musical efforts.
Which brings us back to the point that almost all of the viral TikTok hits are not about music, but COMMERCE! As are most of the Spotify Top 50 tracks, so they have that in common, which is contributing to the second class status of new music.
So, if you're sitting at home, you've got the tools, seemingly everybody does, you can play the music industry game. Doesn't require much musical talent, and the penumbra is important, i.e. how you look and how you move. Not that innovation is absent. This is something the TikTok creators have that the denizens of the Spotify Top 50 do not. Knowing that the music is not enough to sell them, they come up with wacky ideas to garner eyeballs. Train-wreck value. Innovation is key in popular music, but homogenization has creeped into the halls of the major labels. Don't make it hard, make it easy. Just sell that which sounds like everything else that is successful. Don't try and swim upstream, don't try and do something new. Which means the mainstream is boring and the excitement is on TikTok so the labels are going there to find talent. It's just that on TikTok the music is secondary, they're selling video, stupid pet tricks. You can try to capture lightning in a bottle, but lightning disappears almost instantly.
Rather than develop acts which might sustain, the labels hoover up these nascent TikTok acts before they're fully grown. And the truth is almost none of them will grow fully.
As for cover songs, do it right and you can blow up the original, but we already knew those were hits!
As for acts breaking in more traditional ways, via live performance and full recordings, the labels are tapped into that too, but here's where you don't want to take the check, if it's even offered, which usually it is not. Because if you have an ongoing enterprise you don't want that million dollars, you'll be hobbling your future. You can monetize all day long sans cross-collateralization. And the truth is your fans spread the word, not traditional publicity. The major label can do little for you unless you make music in either hip-hop, pop or country. That's right, the majors are ceding most of the music business. Not most of the RECORDED music business, but that percentage continues to decline. If you're debating streaming remuneration you're missing the point. Thank god everybody can hear all your music, unlike in the old days, it's up to you to make it pay. The recordings are just the STARTING POINT!
So, TikTok is the new radio.
But terrestrial radio has been moribund for more than decade. The labels are chasing trends as opposed to birthing new ones. They've stripped those departments from their company, it costs too much money to find real talent and develop it, best to just skim the cream off the top of what rears its head online.
In other words, the labels are making beaucoup bucks while they're killing their business. Thank god they have those gold-plated catalogs, because otherwise their numbers would look terrible.
So what this means is you've got to decide which side you're on. Are you a stunt player, someone looking to get lucky, or a dedicated musician? Hell, a million dollars isn't even that much anymore, and it's the only time you'll get paid. These viral hits have no legs, they're not "American Pie," paying dividends for decades thereafter.
But everybody believes the system is rigged against them and the game is too hard.
Welcome to the world. It's not only record companies that have sacrificed costly research and development to keep their shareholders happy.
In other words, you're on your own. You must build it yourself. Your VC fund is your parents. And/or your fans. It's positively cottage industry. You just need enough money to make music and go on the road. Nothing more, you're not entitled to make a living.
So it comes down to you.
And sure, you must find a way to nexus with potential fans. But you can't let this nexus supersede the core elements, like the music itself and your ability to play. The goal is to get to the point where you don't need any of the shenanigans, where the music sells itself, draws customers. But that's a long, slow, hard process.
So you need to be aware of the TikTok game, you should know the entire landscape. But TikTok is the land of amateurs, on a lark. Or those with more business-savvy than musical talent.
There are no short cuts.
And nobody wants to hear this.
But you know if you have to continue.
And if you're making no progress, don't blame it on everybody else. First, are you in the game? If you never release your music no one can like it. Second, if a fan base for your tune doesn't grow, you could be too far ahead of the game, or maybe your music just isn't that interesting to most people and you should pivot or get out of the game or be happy where you are.
But one thing TikTok can teach us about is creative innovation. That's what it's based on, the entire service, people at home coming up with new ideas. And ideas are paramount, which is why all the money comes down to songwriting, which is damn hard to do. If you're doing it just like everybody else you won't go viral, no one is interested, but when you push the envelope, skew the vision a bit, and underpin it with desirable music, you're on the road to success. But just beginning.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Tuesday 7 June 2022
Distribution Is King
Heard from David Pogue recently?
Actually he's still doing some TV work, I read his tweets, but if you're under the age of 45, you've probably never heard of him. But he and Walt Mossberg were the kings of tech reporting...
Until Pogue left "The New York Times" for Yahoo Finance, for freedom and money.
Just like Nate Silver. You know, the numbers guru who called the election right for the "Times" and then decamped to follow his passion of not only politics, but sports, over at his own site FiveThirtyEight. They've got a staff of reporters over there, but I don't trust a single one, they've got no CV. The last time anybody talked about Silver was when he got the 2016 election wrong and said he didn't. Now nobody trusts pollsters.
So Kara Swisher made her bones over at "The Wall Street Journal." She teamed with Mossberg to break stories and become the authoritative source on mainstream tech news. Pogue was the more entertaining writer, but he left for greener pastures and then...
So did the "Wall Street Journal" tech crew, not only Mossberg and Swisher, but Peter Kafka and more. They called their new site "Recode," but as time passed it turned out all the good will remained with the "Journal," whose conferences did better than Recode's. And then Recode ended up as part of Vox and like that old Dave Edmunds song, Swisher crawled from the wreckage into a brand new car, in this case "The New York Times."
She was the tech ace. Which is better than most of their new opinion writers. Headscratchers. Don't promote people from within, find those from without, experts in the field. I don't care what Farhad Manjoo has to say about anything other than tech, and I don't care much about that either.
So then time goes by and Swisher's purview is expanded. She appears in the paper more and gets her own podcast, "Sway."
The number one difficulty of anybody in media today is reach, it's the number one problem of anybody trying to spread the word. Increasing your audience? Nearly impossible. Train wrecks gain momentary attention, but people have even moved on from Uvalde, never mind Buffalo and Roe v. Wade. There's so much in the channel, people are looking for fewer options, they want to be fed less information from trusted sources. And they want to live their lives outside the information sphere too.
So, you take yourself out of the game at your peril.
So, Swisher's decamping back to Vox, where she has a podcast cohosted by Scott Galloway. The NYU Business Professor has made a fortune in tech investments, maybe now that she's 60 Swisher wants some of that same money too. Look at Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, they're all about the Benjamins. Their images? Certainly Phil's is irretrievably trashed. You don't want to overlook human rights, then again Biden is interfacing with the Saudis. And if you've got no idea what I'm talking about, that's just the point. The new Saudi tour is the talk of golf. I'm not sure most Americans even know who Khashoggi was, but those dealing with Saudi Arabia certainly do. You see it's that hard to reach people, especially if they don't care.
The "New York Times" is the king of subscriptions, far eclipsing the WSJ and WaPo. The "Times" has over 10 million subscribers, and the number, unlike Netflix's, is growing prodigiously. Sure, some are for games and other verticals, but the cross-promotion opportunities? HUGE!
The "Times" was promoting "Sway" everywhere, trying to build a podcast portfolio beyond "The Daily." And Swisher hit her stride on "Sway," making it less about her and more about the guests.
But now that's history.
Most people have no idea what Vox is. They don't have it bookmarked.
And today being great is only part of the puzzle. Sure, word might spread, but very slowly... And Swisher is already 60, how much time does she want to invest in building?
And she's got a conference with Galloway, but she had the imprimatur of the "Times," with that gone, do we have another Recode situation on our hands? Fading conference numbers, to the point the whole enterprise goes down the drain?
Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh?
That's right, why should this night be different from any other night?
There are ever fewer tech titans, the FAANG companies. Yes, you can try and push that rock up the hill, but good luck, if you achieve anything the big companies will compete with you, doggedly, they'll do their best to undercut you and steal your audience or just buy you. But the irony is that the "Times" already "bought" Swisher.
The devil is in the details. Maybe the "Times" deal was too constricting. Maybe Swisher has personal issues. Who knows. But on the surface, this appears to be a dumb deed. Akin to Ben Smith ankling the Gray Lady for his new news enterprise...SEMAFOR? That's what it will be like, waving flags, trying to get people's attention.
Let me see, Al Jazeera couldn't make it in the U.S.
But that's TV.
Heard of Grid? Most people haven't, it's a recent news startup.
BuzzFeed News, where Smith made his bones? The stock and whatever gravitas BuzzFeed might have had has been fading into irrelevance, just like the HuffPo. Stunting only takes you so far, you can't read BuzzFeed for all the detritus. Smith finally gains traction, has his head above water, but he enters a sphere everybody else is in, never mind Axios and Politico, and expects to win? Hell, Ezra Klein STARTED Vox and decamped for the "Times" after realizing he wasn't reaching as many people as he had at the WaPo previously. He woke up and smelled the coffee. Maybe because he worked at the "Post" first, and saw how much he lost. Whereas those who haven't lost don't see how far they can fall. Then again, Swisher did see what happened with Recode.
Sasha Frere-Jones left "The New Yorker" for Genius.com, and then got there and realized there was no there there, that all the promises were going to go unfulfilled, turns out Genius is just a lyrics site, no more.
Swisher shouldn't have given up her power base, she should have stayed at the "Times."
Why are journalists so dumb when it comes to their own business?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Actually he's still doing some TV work, I read his tweets, but if you're under the age of 45, you've probably never heard of him. But he and Walt Mossberg were the kings of tech reporting...
Until Pogue left "The New York Times" for Yahoo Finance, for freedom and money.
Just like Nate Silver. You know, the numbers guru who called the election right for the "Times" and then decamped to follow his passion of not only politics, but sports, over at his own site FiveThirtyEight. They've got a staff of reporters over there, but I don't trust a single one, they've got no CV. The last time anybody talked about Silver was when he got the 2016 election wrong and said he didn't. Now nobody trusts pollsters.
So Kara Swisher made her bones over at "The Wall Street Journal." She teamed with Mossberg to break stories and become the authoritative source on mainstream tech news. Pogue was the more entertaining writer, but he left for greener pastures and then...
So did the "Wall Street Journal" tech crew, not only Mossberg and Swisher, but Peter Kafka and more. They called their new site "Recode," but as time passed it turned out all the good will remained with the "Journal," whose conferences did better than Recode's. And then Recode ended up as part of Vox and like that old Dave Edmunds song, Swisher crawled from the wreckage into a brand new car, in this case "The New York Times."
She was the tech ace. Which is better than most of their new opinion writers. Headscratchers. Don't promote people from within, find those from without, experts in the field. I don't care what Farhad Manjoo has to say about anything other than tech, and I don't care much about that either.
So then time goes by and Swisher's purview is expanded. She appears in the paper more and gets her own podcast, "Sway."
The number one difficulty of anybody in media today is reach, it's the number one problem of anybody trying to spread the word. Increasing your audience? Nearly impossible. Train wrecks gain momentary attention, but people have even moved on from Uvalde, never mind Buffalo and Roe v. Wade. There's so much in the channel, people are looking for fewer options, they want to be fed less information from trusted sources. And they want to live their lives outside the information sphere too.
So, you take yourself out of the game at your peril.
So, Swisher's decamping back to Vox, where she has a podcast cohosted by Scott Galloway. The NYU Business Professor has made a fortune in tech investments, maybe now that she's 60 Swisher wants some of that same money too. Look at Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, they're all about the Benjamins. Their images? Certainly Phil's is irretrievably trashed. You don't want to overlook human rights, then again Biden is interfacing with the Saudis. And if you've got no idea what I'm talking about, that's just the point. The new Saudi tour is the talk of golf. I'm not sure most Americans even know who Khashoggi was, but those dealing with Saudi Arabia certainly do. You see it's that hard to reach people, especially if they don't care.
The "New York Times" is the king of subscriptions, far eclipsing the WSJ and WaPo. The "Times" has over 10 million subscribers, and the number, unlike Netflix's, is growing prodigiously. Sure, some are for games and other verticals, but the cross-promotion opportunities? HUGE!
The "Times" was promoting "Sway" everywhere, trying to build a podcast portfolio beyond "The Daily." And Swisher hit her stride on "Sway," making it less about her and more about the guests.
But now that's history.
Most people have no idea what Vox is. They don't have it bookmarked.
And today being great is only part of the puzzle. Sure, word might spread, but very slowly... And Swisher is already 60, how much time does she want to invest in building?
And she's got a conference with Galloway, but she had the imprimatur of the "Times," with that gone, do we have another Recode situation on our hands? Fading conference numbers, to the point the whole enterprise goes down the drain?
Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh?
That's right, why should this night be different from any other night?
There are ever fewer tech titans, the FAANG companies. Yes, you can try and push that rock up the hill, but good luck, if you achieve anything the big companies will compete with you, doggedly, they'll do their best to undercut you and steal your audience or just buy you. But the irony is that the "Times" already "bought" Swisher.
The devil is in the details. Maybe the "Times" deal was too constricting. Maybe Swisher has personal issues. Who knows. But on the surface, this appears to be a dumb deed. Akin to Ben Smith ankling the Gray Lady for his new news enterprise...SEMAFOR? That's what it will be like, waving flags, trying to get people's attention.
Let me see, Al Jazeera couldn't make it in the U.S.
But that's TV.
Heard of Grid? Most people haven't, it's a recent news startup.
BuzzFeed News, where Smith made his bones? The stock and whatever gravitas BuzzFeed might have had has been fading into irrelevance, just like the HuffPo. Stunting only takes you so far, you can't read BuzzFeed for all the detritus. Smith finally gains traction, has his head above water, but he enters a sphere everybody else is in, never mind Axios and Politico, and expects to win? Hell, Ezra Klein STARTED Vox and decamped for the "Times" after realizing he wasn't reaching as many people as he had at the WaPo previously. He woke up and smelled the coffee. Maybe because he worked at the "Post" first, and saw how much he lost. Whereas those who haven't lost don't see how far they can fall. Then again, Swisher did see what happened with Recode.
Sasha Frere-Jones left "The New Yorker" for Genius.com, and then got there and realized there was no there there, that all the promises were going to go unfulfilled, turns out Genius is just a lyrics site, no more.
Swisher shouldn't have given up her power base, she should have stayed at the "Times."
Why are journalists so dumb when it comes to their own business?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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Bad Grammar-This Week On SiriusXM
In song titles and lyrics.
Tune in today, June 7th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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--
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Tune in today, June 7th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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The Model Is Broken
It's very well-established. You take your time to record an album and you keep it alive on terrestrial radio. In the best of circumstances you dribble out track after track, keeping the album alive for years.
But that was then and this is now.
The "Billboard" chart has become irrelevant. It's completely manipulated. Want to go number one? Sell vinyl. The real action is in streaming, but the chart includes sales, which are de minimis, to the point where the chart is completely untrustworthy.
So who is the chart for?
The industry itself.
Yet it is publicized in media every week!
But this is the media consumed by oldsters, not youngsters, the active music streaming/buying audience.
And insiders know the chart is a joke, you can brag to your client you made them number one, but everybody on the business side is snickering.
But that's the least of the industry's problems.
Today you can make an album and it can be gone in a week. I don't care how much publicity you've garnered, makes no difference. The active fan base buys it, and then what? Crickets. Maybe you can go on the road and sell some to concertgoers, but at this point tickets are so expensive that no act dares go on the road and not play their hits. The idea of playing most of the new album is kaput.
So it's like the album never came out. You can see it in Discogs, but the fact of its existence is greater than the music itself.
Meanwhile, major labels keep pursuing terrestrial radio, which means less than ever before, which the younger generation does not listen to. The old paradigm is you go where the most people are, but if that mass is declining, what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means, you're missing most of the audience.
So if you have Spotify Top 50 music, it's easier. It can be seen and heard there, as part of a playlist if nothing else. But if you don't make it to the list, or if you don't qualify for the list, not making hip-hop or pop, then what?
Oh, that's right, you want to get on a playlist. Sure, some passive listener might hear your song and save it, but the business is based on active listeners, ever heard of the 90/10 rule?
And then the whole paradigm is disrupted by TikTok. Disruption always happens, especially when you're asleep at the wheel. Turns out watching the hoi polloi is more interesting than watching dressed-up, media-trained bozos on YouTube. (As for the YouTube music subscription numbers, don't believe them, an incredible percentage are just paying to get rid of the interminable video ads.)
So the major labels try and control TikTok. But this is playing from the rear as opposed to the front. And the truth is most acts make music that isn't TikTok friendly. If it's long and slow, forget about it.
What about that music?
The majors don't sign it.
So, the majors are losing control of new music production. The story isn't how TikTok stars can go forward without a label, but how the major labels don't want to sign most music, and acts making these tunes are forced to go it alone.
As for the big TikTok acts going independent... Almost none of them can resist the huge check, the better deals the majors will proffer just to keep product in their system, and influencer culture is ridden with overnight successes who turn into nothings almost as fast. Make it in music as a social media star? Sure, there are examples, but there are exceptions to every rule.
And the music business continues to detach itself from the public.
I was watching this Netflix comedy special last night, Jeff Ross and Dave Attell looked like they'd just stumbled out for a pack of cigarettes. Bill Burr was wearing his Nikes. This is why you used to want to be a rock star, to break cultural norms, to do it your own way. Now all the stars and wannabe stars have stylists, want to break into the world of fashion, do you think this resonates with the average person on the street? No, for them it's about the music first and foremost. You shouldn't need clothing or production to sell it.
And I think it was Jeff Ross who said he lost his sense of taste during Covid. Yes, he bought tickets to a Dave Matthews show! I'm laughing just writing this. Irreverence, it used to be a hallmark of rock music. But the dimwits coddled by the industry can't even make a joke, never mind take one.
Is the above depressing?
Of course!
But when things are in the doldrums, that's when disruption occurs. People who think outside the box triumph.
Want to think outside the box?
Fire your lead singer who has got a mediocre voice, I don't care that he wrote the lyrics, find someone who can sing, who the audience wants to hear.
Write one song so good that it goes viral. That should be your goal, to write individual great songs, forget the album, unless you're one of those Patreonites bragging that you're making money selling to an ever-dwindling number of hard core fans. Patreon is not the game, it's a paper route.
Yes, it's a hits business. It's always been a hits business.
Or forget the recordings all together. Make it about the live show. But then it's got to be different every time you come through, if not every night, and it's got to be spectacular.
No one wants to hear the above, because that would mean they have to change their thinking. Not do it the typical way. Raise money, book a studio, record an album, pay people to promote it...straight to the dumper.
And it would mean you'd have to reach higher, stop letting others tell you how great you are and measure yourself against...
The Beatles.
That's right, you're competing against them every day, they're right there next to you online, and Paul McCartney is even on the road, hoovering up dollars, that could have gone to you.
In addition to that great voice, maybe you want songs with changes, bridges... Worked for Paul!
Not that that's the only way to break in. But if you don't do it the traditional way, you've got to be even better than the rest, to bring people to you.
I'd say it can't go on this way, but it has for over a decade, getting worse and worse.
And what has changed?
ALMOST NOTHING!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
But that was then and this is now.
The "Billboard" chart has become irrelevant. It's completely manipulated. Want to go number one? Sell vinyl. The real action is in streaming, but the chart includes sales, which are de minimis, to the point where the chart is completely untrustworthy.
So who is the chart for?
The industry itself.
Yet it is publicized in media every week!
But this is the media consumed by oldsters, not youngsters, the active music streaming/buying audience.
And insiders know the chart is a joke, you can brag to your client you made them number one, but everybody on the business side is snickering.
But that's the least of the industry's problems.
Today you can make an album and it can be gone in a week. I don't care how much publicity you've garnered, makes no difference. The active fan base buys it, and then what? Crickets. Maybe you can go on the road and sell some to concertgoers, but at this point tickets are so expensive that no act dares go on the road and not play their hits. The idea of playing most of the new album is kaput.
So it's like the album never came out. You can see it in Discogs, but the fact of its existence is greater than the music itself.
Meanwhile, major labels keep pursuing terrestrial radio, which means less than ever before, which the younger generation does not listen to. The old paradigm is you go where the most people are, but if that mass is declining, what does that mean? I'll tell you what it means, you're missing most of the audience.
So if you have Spotify Top 50 music, it's easier. It can be seen and heard there, as part of a playlist if nothing else. But if you don't make it to the list, or if you don't qualify for the list, not making hip-hop or pop, then what?
Oh, that's right, you want to get on a playlist. Sure, some passive listener might hear your song and save it, but the business is based on active listeners, ever heard of the 90/10 rule?
And then the whole paradigm is disrupted by TikTok. Disruption always happens, especially when you're asleep at the wheel. Turns out watching the hoi polloi is more interesting than watching dressed-up, media-trained bozos on YouTube. (As for the YouTube music subscription numbers, don't believe them, an incredible percentage are just paying to get rid of the interminable video ads.)
So the major labels try and control TikTok. But this is playing from the rear as opposed to the front. And the truth is most acts make music that isn't TikTok friendly. If it's long and slow, forget about it.
What about that music?
The majors don't sign it.
So, the majors are losing control of new music production. The story isn't how TikTok stars can go forward without a label, but how the major labels don't want to sign most music, and acts making these tunes are forced to go it alone.
As for the big TikTok acts going independent... Almost none of them can resist the huge check, the better deals the majors will proffer just to keep product in their system, and influencer culture is ridden with overnight successes who turn into nothings almost as fast. Make it in music as a social media star? Sure, there are examples, but there are exceptions to every rule.
And the music business continues to detach itself from the public.
I was watching this Netflix comedy special last night, Jeff Ross and Dave Attell looked like they'd just stumbled out for a pack of cigarettes. Bill Burr was wearing his Nikes. This is why you used to want to be a rock star, to break cultural norms, to do it your own way. Now all the stars and wannabe stars have stylists, want to break into the world of fashion, do you think this resonates with the average person on the street? No, for them it's about the music first and foremost. You shouldn't need clothing or production to sell it.
And I think it was Jeff Ross who said he lost his sense of taste during Covid. Yes, he bought tickets to a Dave Matthews show! I'm laughing just writing this. Irreverence, it used to be a hallmark of rock music. But the dimwits coddled by the industry can't even make a joke, never mind take one.
Is the above depressing?
Of course!
But when things are in the doldrums, that's when disruption occurs. People who think outside the box triumph.
Want to think outside the box?
Fire your lead singer who has got a mediocre voice, I don't care that he wrote the lyrics, find someone who can sing, who the audience wants to hear.
Write one song so good that it goes viral. That should be your goal, to write individual great songs, forget the album, unless you're one of those Patreonites bragging that you're making money selling to an ever-dwindling number of hard core fans. Patreon is not the game, it's a paper route.
Yes, it's a hits business. It's always been a hits business.
Or forget the recordings all together. Make it about the live show. But then it's got to be different every time you come through, if not every night, and it's got to be spectacular.
No one wants to hear the above, because that would mean they have to change their thinking. Not do it the typical way. Raise money, book a studio, record an album, pay people to promote it...straight to the dumper.
And it would mean you'd have to reach higher, stop letting others tell you how great you are and measure yourself against...
The Beatles.
That's right, you're competing against them every day, they're right there next to you online, and Paul McCartney is even on the road, hoovering up dollars, that could have gone to you.
In addition to that great voice, maybe you want songs with changes, bridges... Worked for Paul!
Not that that's the only way to break in. But if you don't do it the traditional way, you've got to be even better than the rest, to bring people to you.
I'd say it can't go on this way, but it has for over a decade, getting worse and worse.
And what has changed?
ALMOST NOTHING!
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
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