All the focus is on streaming numbers when it should be on how many tickets you can sell. Pop music is a highly-promoted arena based on a single song, which may stream prodigiously, but that does not mean the act has any fans. Fans are made live. That's where the bond is sealed. For nearly two decades acts have been complaining that they have to go on the road to make their bread, as if this is a bad thing. The paradigm has shifted completely, if you're not willing to work live, the odds of you having a lengthy career are not good. Furthermore, what works on the road is oftentimes completely different from what's in the Spotify Top 50. See streaming as promotion. In truth, many artists are making a fortune as a result of streaming. But then there are the artists complaining that despite even six digits of plays, they're not making any real money. Now the dirty little secret is very few of the acts in the so-called golden years ever got royalties. You may have heard them on the radio, and money was generated by airplay and sales, but this cash was eaten up by expenses and bad deals. The label would charge everything to your account, from limos to videos. It was very hard to get ahead unless you had a slew of hits/success and you had a manager who renegotiated. So, this fantasy that you're being screwed by streaming is a falsehood. And the sooner you accept this, the sooner you can focus on building your career. Streaming is the best thing that ever happened to you. Whether it be the DSPs like Spotify or social media. Your music is exposed. In the pre-internet era, very little music got exposure. But now, if people want to hear your music, it's just a click away. The audience doesn't have to buy it to hear it. Then again, there's a plethora of material in the food chain and it's harder than ever to gain attention. So don't focus on boosting your streams, focus on building your audience, which starts live and is goosed utilizing social media. See your recordings as an afterthought. Look at Billy Strings... He plays arenas, seen as one of the biggest breakthroughs of the last five years, with tons of media attention, never mind fans. But his streaming numbers? Positively anemic for an act of this caliber. Not a single track of his breaks a hundred million streams. Sure, he's got stuff in the low eight figures, 18 or 22 million, but only two cuts even break 50 million. Now these numbers are nothing to sneeze at, but compared to the acts in the Spotify Top 50, they're a joke. And it's not like there's a hit that's waiting to go stratospheric. The material is secondary with Billy Strings. It's about his playing ability and the music made live. Yes, you can check in with the cuts on a DSP, but you're probably more interested in a live video on YouTube or recordings from Nugs.net or the Internet Archive. Sure, you can call this Grateful Dead model, but don't take that too far. Yes, the recordings were a secondary revenue source for the Dead, but they were progenitors, from a different era. Jam band music survives on the fumes of the Dead, and its live business is nothing to sneer at, but that's not the only kind of music that works live. But one thing that doesn't work live on the way up is production. The Spotify Top 50 play big buildings and charge a lot for tickets and therefore believe they have to provide a ton of production, oftentimes with a lot of the music on hard drive. That's more like a Broadway show than music. And interestingly, what works live is oftentimes not in the genres featured in the Spotify Top 50. If you're a starting pop singer, who doesn't write, or only gets credits in collaboration, good luck. No, live, first and foremost you must have the chops, you must have the ability to play and sing. Writing is important too, but not as critical as it is with the Spotify Top 50. Rather you're selling more than music, you're selling a performance, an experience. A live, human experience in a computerized/mechanized world. Audiences are not looking for perfection, they're looking to feel connected, to be moved. And once you make a fan live, usually they're a fan forever, if for no other reason than they paid for the ticket, they're invested, it's a sunk cost! Guitars? They rule live, even though they may be hard to find in the Spotify Top 50. Rock is not dead live, it's fully alive! So if you're an up and comer, focus on gigs, whether they pay or not. Get yourself in front of people, learn the ropes, hone your act. If you've got it, people will respond. And this does not mean you can never have a hit. And you never know when the Spotify Top 50 might flip, to career artists who are individuals who have something to say. Also, live, bands rule. On recordings... It's easier to focus on a single person, and no one wants to share the wealth, and managers don't want to have to deal with four or five people or more. All this focus on streams is skewing perception. The media constantly publicizes the record charts, but ticket sales and grosses might as well be locked up in a black box. Then again, everybody lies about ticket sales on the way up, it's part of the hype. It's amorphous as opposed to clear-cut. This is why the label groups are in trouble. They're in the wrong business. The focus now is on live. There's a much broader audience for live. Talk to people...it seems that everybody is going to multiple shows, acts don't only play the metropolis anymore, people are hungry for live music. Provide 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, 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
