I've been saying for the past couple of years, the audience doesn't want perfection, they want CONNECTION. Perfection is really impressive — for about 5 minutes. Then you want to know, "Yeah, but what's that got to do with me?"
Tom Rush
www.TomRush.com
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Re: Spotify's Numbers
My coworker and I were having a discussion about Spotify yesterday. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard left Spotify. Why? Because they think Spotify's tech bros are evil. Whatever. Now Gizzard isn't on the platform and I just won't be listening to them. I like the band, but a lot of my listening is done on the go, in the subway, and Spotify is the place where I have spent the time finding and organizing my music, downloading the albums I want whenever I want them. I have chosen Spotify. I have put too much work into organizing my library to change -- not that I would want to: it's a good product at a good price.
But this conversation wasn't just about Gizzard. It was about artists getting screwed by Spotify. My coworker made a comment about Spotify not paying their artists anything. He and I are both songwriters. I have put out albums on Bandcamp, albums that no one listens to. And that's perfectly fine, I do it because I love it. It's just what I do. But these musicians complaining about getting screwed by Spotify drive me nuts. I would be ecstatic if an album of mine got, I don't know, 20,000 streams. But these artists complain as if it's their right to make NSYNC CD money. The game has changed. It's done, it's over. Isn't what's most important is that your music is HEARD? It should be. And now there's the potential for your art to be heard by everybody and you don't have to get a contract, you don't need to enter the Record Plant, you can upload it and there's the chance. Isn't that beautiful?
In the 1970s no one would have heard of you. Yet there's money to be made if your music is good. You won't be Led Zeppelin but you might live a good life. Stop complaining, write some songs, and enjoy how easy it is to get your music out there. Everyone has a chance. Get a day job and keep making music. Maybe one day you'll be able to quit that job, but no one owes you anything. Sure, use Bandcamp or whatever else instead of Spotify. But if you want to be heard, get on Spotify and take your pennies.
It's over, it's done, it's changed. Accept it and capitalize on what's good.
Daniel Grgas
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Subject: Lord Huron's The Night We Met: The 10-year-old song that keeps getting bigger
Like you say, Bob, " Hold on to your songs."
Great podcast with Don Was, too.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyxqxv7y4zo
Robert Bond
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Subject: Re: More Ozzy
My first full length album purchase was Diary of a Madman and it was on cassette. I was raised in a very strict religious family and was taught there was evil music out there, and that heavy metal was DEFINITELY evil. I hid the album under my pillow and would listen to it on my walkman at night. I loved it! My parents eventually found the tape, threw it away, and a few days later I bought another copy. This time I did a much better job of hiding it.
I ended up playing in hard rock bands for 25+ years…
You can't kill rock and roll!
Kent Carter
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Re: Spotify's Numbers
Spotify is hugely important for labels, but it has also made millions of dollars for acts with strong legacy catalogs. There are plenty of albums I bought on CD and then vinyl and now I pay to stream almost every time I listen. For artists that made money on records and then CDs and now through streaming, Spotify has been a boon. Today's artists don't enjoy the spoils of the CD world, but high quality music will be a more evergreen source of revenue through streaming.
Andrew Coffman
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From: Michael Alex
Subject: Re: More Love On The Spectrum
It's a good show! As for they'll never work:
I have two family members on the spectrum. When they were young their parents were told they would need institutionalization for life. One is now an attorney, the other an HVAC contractor.
Kennedy is a disaster. How fast can he take backwards? The patron saint of polio.
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From: Jack Lynady
Subject: Re: Out Of Touch
"Oldsters hanging on to power"….that's it in a nutshell Bob.
I'm x-er. Voted for Trump mostly because the other side looked f*cking old. Biden. Jesus. That was insane. Kamala was just so damn scripted and when she wasn't it was a hot mess of word salad. To Deny that is to deny reality hitting u in the damn face.
Now here we are. It's 2025. And there is an opportunity for the Dems. Will they take advantage of it? Or go back to gaslighting me for voting for Trump? Tell me I'm racist or hate gays? Or hate this that and the other thing bla bla bla?
As if I have time to hate. I'm trying to pay my f*cking bills, save a little for my kids college, have a little fun on the weekends.
I don't know the answer. I just know I haven't seen it yet from either side.
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Subject: Mario Medious
What a blast from the past! Remember him from early '70's as very hip Atlantic promo man. Duane Allman had just arrived in Boston from King Curtis funeral to play big outdoor show at Boston Common for Don Law. Manager Phil Walden told me to give Duane $200/300 in cash to give to Mario as a gift from the band to buy himself some street clothes. Mario was a sharp dressed hipster who knew how to get those new fm stations on a band and he did a great job for the ABB.
Willie Perkins
PS: Great live recording of that concert released years later.
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From: Toni Tennille
Subject: Re: How AI Changes Music
I like this one, Bob. And I believe you are right. I remember when musicians in Las Vegas went on strike because they were being replaced by synthesizers and drum machines. I knew that wasn't gonna work out well for them, having watched my former husband create whole tracks that sounded good, but didn't have a single real instrument in them. I always felt there was something missing when he did that… Heart? Soul? Any kind of emotion?
I was very lucky that, as Captain and Tennille wound down, I was able to make a kind of separate career for myself, singing with Symphony Orchestras and big bands, all around the country and in Canada. My father Frank Tennille, was the band vocalist for Bob Crosby and his bobcats in the late 30s and early 40s. That was the music he raised me on and I loved it. I remember the immense joy I always felt when I took the stage backed by some of the finest Symphony Orchestras in the country who accompanied me with their incredible skill and musicianship, playing the great arrangements that Sammy Nestico wrote for me over the years. I really don't know how AI is going to create that feeling of total joy through making music. Maybe MY joy is different from the people creating music with AI.
You probably won't believe this, but I read every email you send out. Your perspective makes me think about my musical choices over the decades. All in all, I have had a wonderful, creative and mostly joyous career.
"With every note I play
I play with love
With every word I sing,
Its coming from my heart
And so I sing a song of joy for you
With all the happiness this melody brings"
SONG OF JOY by BILLY PRESTON
TONI TENNILLE
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Subject: Re: How AI Changes Music
Steve Miller just had a cover with a Kia SUV commercial with Rockin Me. AI enhanced and reconstituted it with cleaner definition. Remixed and remastered and sped up a little. It's Steve's original lead vocal but the reverb was stripped away and it sounds crisper and more contemporary. Like you said, AI can live alongside the original art and augment rather than try to clone.
I'm in as long as it behaves.
Kenny Lee Lewis
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Re: Spotify's Numbers
I am thankful for the clear, no bones about it, honest writing. This is particularly sharp and on display in this note on Spotify. I feel a little sad, angry, duped etc. I've always been in awe of the LABEL of course. It's part of my culture growing up to understand that they seemed to control everything. When I worked at labels, I felt I had arrived. Somehow, I made it. It was a beautiful business. I used to see that quote somewhere and the romantic notion of it, much to my peril in my 20s for sure. Some of the grand illusion of the industry that you describe was there, a bright light visible behind a door that no one wanted to acknowledge let alone turn the knob to open. This entity of change was inevitable and moved into the room slowly and then, somewhere right before 2008 was on top of you. Quite a number of folks, including family members, thought I was completely bat-sh*t crazy for leaving my label gig to go work for Spotify. A start up? Streaming??? I can't claim mystical prescience or inside knowledge or any advantage, but soft skills, lifelong passion for music discovery. hustle, interest and a willingness to understand the new thing and that got me into the next room. Looking back, at least to me, I'd been sitting in comfortable quicksand doing radio promotion and very soon, I was going to choose to walk through the door or have it crush me. I wasn't at big green for a long time but long enough to get through the IPO, extend the lead over other services and create something I'm proud of that continues to stand. I have a feeling though that streaming can see something in the distance that's slowly coming its way, devouring everything on its way to them as well.
The two sided business model concept where Spotify eats its own freemium tier users that could drive ad revenue has always been awkward. I mean if you have enough bucks for the premium service (which most of the world doesn't) you would because it's so good. But it's hard not to see the top end of paid conversions. However, if Spotify can make free better than good enough and figure out the paradigm for ad revenue growth, this is the hedge and the crucible. I feel bad for all the post Barry McCarthy CFOs because the gig is ruthless given where the company sits. They can replace the CFO every year for all I care if they need to because I, along with other investors believe that it's when, not if, they really crack that code. Spotify will have hooked 3/4 of a billion people soon onto the platform because it "just works" and there is demand from users for it to be many things because of this. The hiccups are little sideshows into a story that's already ended. Daniel often would use a Baseball metaphor (which I found amusing from a swede) in that Spotify was in the early innings of a baseball game. To me, that's not even close. The closer came in and the game is over. They just played and ended the game in a different time zone and you weren't watching it.
John Butler - former Spotifyer
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Re: C.T.E.
Bob, I read this email to my boyfriend who recognized that you've echoed my sentiments exactly. However, I am complicit and I do feel guilty but it's not enough to change. Just today we passed grade school and highschool kids out practicing football in Tuscaloosa Alabama. I've always said who puts their kids in football, hockey or soccer anymore? Isn't golf the way to go? It seems so much safer for the kids. Who chooses to shorten their kids lives? Why aren't people thinking this way? I'm already Debbie Downer in my friend group, pointing out the emergency exits, asking if they've thought about the players futures and how they'll probably be broke and broken shortly after retirement. No one wants to think this way. There's no recycling down here. My golf club is called Indian Hills for Christ sake. The big ask from my (adult) kids is to bring some plastic straws home to Canada. Going to a football game doesn't feel like a crime yet but I do want that to change. I say all this and I'll be at two SEC games this fall and I'll be at the Bills season opener. Do you think because we pay thousands for tickets we feel elite? I think that's part of it. I wondered if witnessing a horrible injury at a game would make us think again about supporting the sport but nope. It was just a chance to hit the bar for another beer. I went to Talladega in the spring and everyone said the big one was going to happen. I was thinking that meant photo finish or an underdog winning. I was completely wrong - it means a big crash. That's the excitement at the races - a big crash!!! And it happened and the cheering was louder than the engines! You've got me thinking again about my choices and thank you. I feel like a loser for having these feelings about the sport and the damage it does to the players and still partaking. I'll let you know if I can sort out how to be true to myself and boycott.
All the best,
Sue Schreider
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From: Kevin Cronin
Subject: Re: In The Big Room
Hey Bob,
Early in the Pandemic, I dug out my '70s McIntosh stereo amp and pre-amp, and my wife and I set up a little vinyl bar in the Family Room. We were faced with the dilemma of choosing which album to play first. Lisa had worked at Geffen back in that label's glory days, and had a promotional copy of Peter Gabriel's "So". We both agreed it was a stone masterpiece, and a perfect choice as our children's maiden voyage into the magical world of album listening. So, we gathered our family around that glowing blue McIntosh gear, cranked it up, listened, and watched as all of our attention spans was stretched across this entire LP. "So" held us, mesmerized us, and gave Mom and Dad an opportunity to remind our kids about the lost art of album making.
The first album I ever owned was a copy of the newly released, American version of "Rubber Soul", the playfully titled Beatle album that Santa left under the tree on Christmas Day, 1965. Sixty years later, I know and love every song on that record, and place that delicious slice Licorice Pizza on to my turntable on a fairly regular basis.
I wore out two copies of the first Crosby Stills and Nash album, and am currently working on my third. When I got my first brand new copy back to my high school girlfriend's house, (she had the best stereo), I picked up the needle, and replayed "Suite, Judy Blue Eyes" twelve times before I even got to "Marrakesh Express"! And even as I was curious to hear how our 1978 "You can tune a Piano, but you can't Tuna fish" would hold up, it would not be my first choice.
I was amazed at how "So" was received by my little family audience. They all stuck around through the album flipping ritual, and we devoured side two together. I feel very lucky to have grown up and lived through the Golden Age of the Long Playing record. And I do my best to expose my younger brethren to take part in and enjoy the experience of listening to an artist's fresh batch of songs, in their intended order. (We used to spend days sequencing our albums, and deciding just how many seconds between tracks.)
Anyway thank you, Bob Lefsetz, for your passion in keeping this art form vibrant and helping to save it from extinction … kc
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