Repeating Yourself

Is death.

Or at best stasis.

But probably a step in the wrong direction.

Tell me about a band whose road numbers increased after they stopped having hits.

Tell me about a movie sequel that did better than the original.

Of course there are exceptions. Nitpicking is not the point. The point is if you're not changing, you're falling behind.

This is what is hobbling Trump. It's no longer 2016. Eight years later the world has changed. Not only do we have all these new voters, Trump no longer represents the outsider throwing the long ball, up against the usual suspects. Now Trump is a usual suspect. And that ain't working for him.

Of course Trump could still win. It's only about seven states, and although Nate Silver has Kamala triumphing, things don't look so good over at the WaPo. And never forget, if someone only has a twenty five percent chance of winning, that does not mean they cannot win.

But who is buying Trump's spiel who did not buy it before?

And what are the odds that everybody who bought it last time is on board this time?

This is a completely different question from whether those with Republican values will vote for him. We've seen even the brass hold their nose and fall in line for him. But this election is about very few people. Are nicknames, insults and falsehoods going to convince those on the fence, the undecided?

Trends change. I guarantee what you're doing today won't be in vogue eight years from now.

Meanwhile, everybody will keep telling you to do the same damn thing.

Change course and a healthy chunk of your audience will abandon you. Furthermore, the odds of success in your new vertical are not good, just ask David Bowie. He had commercial misfires before he won once again. As for Garth Brooks, he wanted it both ways, changing his name for his rock album, which ultimately satisfies no one. People need to believe in you. Otherwise they won't follow you to the next destination.

Look back, even the titans had very brief careers. The Beatles' studio albums were all released in one decade. And that's half a century ago. And as hard as they tried, no member of the band could achieve the ubiquity of the original band. Sure, Paul had huge commercial success following the same template he established with the other three, but John Lennon gets more respect because he widened his horizons, he experimented.

If you're not willing to fail, you're not going to succeed.

It's nearly impossible to make it, to garner an audience. And once they get it, people are afraid to lose it. The more success you have, the less eager you are to experiment. But Neil Young did, and he outsold, and has more cred than Crosby, Stills or Nash, even though some of his records were commercial turkeys, relatively speaking.

This is where the labels come into play. This is one reason they're faltering now. Because they're providing the same thing they have for nearly two decades. And public tastes have changed. Once upon a time, hip-hop was new and fresh, and there are exceptions, but so much is calcified today. The audience has seen the movie, they're looking for something different.

Nirvana killed the hair bands, but where do you go from there? There's a harder edged modern sound that has its own format, Active Rock, but it reaches a fraction of the number of people rock did in the past.

And distribution makes a difference too.

Used to be even Tower Records carried a limited stock. Now streaming services have everything, meaning you've got to compete against the greats of music history, and that's difficult. And if you're doing a poor job of imitation, I'd rather hear the original, as most people would.

And the world changes nearly instantly today. Trump got shot not even two months ago and not only does it seem like ancient history, it has nowhere near the gravitas, the import, of what it had back then and usual suspect prognosticators believed it would continue to have.

Stratospheric peaks are no longer the poles holding up the big tent. Today you need a lot of peaks, maybe not as high, but without them, there's no reason for the audience to continue to pay attention, it moves on.

And complaining gets you nowhere. If you think you're going to win by carping about Spotify payments, you've already lost. And I hate to tell you, if you win, and continue to win, there's a ton of money for everybody. But it's easier to complain about the game than figure out how to break through yourself.

You've got to change it up. Even if you do it as well as you did the first time around, the public saw it the first time around, it's no longer as incredible. There might be a bit of money involved, but very little excitement.

Post Malone's recording career was going in the wrong direction. But now he's gone country and it looks like he's following the yellow brick road all the way to Oz.

And somehow Post did it with authenticity. Evidencing country roots. And he did it live before records. Which is the opposite of the way it used to be. Do something different on stage and even though few people were there, word can spread.

You cannot be a prisoner of your audience. It just isn't comprised of enough people. This is Trump's failure. He's playing to the converted, not the uncommitted he needs to win.

As for Kamala... Most people still don't know who she is. All they know is it's no longer two aged men inured to the old system running for President. This is how much people wanted change. They've come out of the woodwork in support of...exactly what? Well, I don't think it's Harris herself, but what she represents, the new, the different, the young.

Harris is just like the new act replacing the old.

And you've got to make the news. The paper reports what has already happened. But news outlets need stories. Stunts can garner eyeballs, but how do you sustain viewership? Remember when BuzzFeed was all the rage? All those listicles? Well, they shut down their news department and no one has forwarded me one of those listicles in years. Turns out BuzzFeed didn't have a second act.

Same deal with Yahoo. And AOL.

But with music, you can always rely on your catalog, your hits. But usually, these acts complain that they're no longer on the chart, that no one wants their new music. That's right, they don't want new music that sounds just like the old. And blindly following trends doesn't work either, all those rock bands who made disco records in the late seventies in a dash for cash ended up losing credibility, never mind not having success.

But reinvention, pushing the envelope is hard. It's easier to rely on the tried and true.

But people always want the new. Look at the Sphere.

But that's not the only place to look.

The public always wants something different, even though it says it wants the same and doesn't know it wants the new until it does.

This is why market research doesn't work in music, never mind anywhere else. How did Apple become the most valuable company in the world? By going by Steve Jobs's gut. He famously did no research. He gave people what they needed, not what they wanted.

And this is all amorphous. It's one thing to decide to change, it's another thing to figure out where to go.

And don't count on any support. Your audience will complain that you've changed. Your percentage partners don't want to make less, they'll tell you to stay the course.

So it's down to you.

An artist challenges conceptions. Pushes people. Both irritates and thrills them. Which is why people who've never heard "Blitzkrieg Bop" know who the Ramones are.

Even the MLB changed the rules. The games were just too long. Going or watching is now a completely different experience.

But we haven't had a new sound in decades, whereas we used to have one every four or five years.

And the landscape is amorphous. It's a long hard struggle. There are no rockets to the moon. And TikTok is a game of chance.

No, it comes down to you.

Change is hard, but it's the only way to continue to win and have impact, the only way to keep yourself in the conversation, to dominate it.

Which is what you want, right?


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