Posted: 4/6/2012 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

PIRACY: THE TRUTH BE TOLD

"Piracy is a bit like the war on drugs, it's an unwinnable war in my opinion. But that's not necessarily the opinion of the industry, but I think the solution is to provide access to entertainment to as many people as possible, through a variety of different models – including the free models." -- Rio Caraeff, CEO of VEVO

For almost a decade I have been saying repeatedly what Rio Caraeff said recently.

I didn't say it in those exact words, but I've said it over and over again: Nothing will ever stop piracy because anything that can be done digitally, can be undone.

All those one and zeros that put together digital music can be duplicated and copied, no matter what encryption technology labels try to employ. That same encryption technology (just more codes with more ones and zeros) can be uncoded, and so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby.

But Rio is correct when he says "that's not necessarily the opinion of the industry."

Nope. The music (and film) industry don't want to believe what Rio and others have said. They still hold on to the hope in the back of their minds that legislation will somehow one day be the magic bullet to somehow stop all the illegal P2P file-sharing, downloading, copying, and piracy.

I've run this quote many times in the newsletter, "The proper response to digital technology is to embrace it as a new window on everything that's eternally human, and to use it with passion, wisdom, fearlessness, and joy." ( Ralph Lombreglia)

The music industry never did that, and only now, because of the increase in the sales of digital music online, sees where the future lies. They should have seen it over a decade ago when Napster, WinMx, LimeWire, and dozens of other P2P websites were being used by millions of people globally to download music for free, and yes, illegally.

They should have known where it was headed then, but they didn't want to accept it.

When there were over 100 million iPods sold, they should have realized that CD sales would decline more rapidly than expected. But they didn't want to accept that, and blamed falling CD sales on iTunes, and said iTunes cannibalized album sales.

The correct statement would be of course, iTunes only cannibalized the sales of albums that contained one or two good tracks and consumers got tired of spending $10 for CDs like that. In the meantime, artists that made good albums sold millions despite iTunes and all the illegal file-sharing and piracy. Most recent example: Adele.

So, thank you Rio Caraeff for coming out and telling it like it is. I'm quite sure many of those in the industry were not at all pleased with what you said.

The truth hurts at times.

The truth be told, the truth will set you free.

Let's see how the industry frees itself of the chains of the piracy stigma that will never go away.

MORE PEOPLE ARE LISTENING TO RADIO ONLINE

Online radio is the fastest-growing music-listening category among U.S. consumers, according to new findings from NPD Group.

The market research firm found that 43% of U.S. Web users in 2011 chose to listen to music via Pandora, Slacker, Yahoo Music and other online radio services -- up nine percentage points from 2010.

Read more here on MediaPost: http://tinyurl.com/cc8u3af

DISC & DigitalAudioTechnology (Music & Digital Audio/Video News) TM

A Newsletter For The Music Industry And The New Media

Vol 10 - #14 - 4/6/12 - Commentary - News - And More

-----------------------------

The Industry's Inside Music, Digital Audio & Video News And Commentary Of Choice To Keep You Informed Since 2003

You can always read it online at: http://stevemeyer.webs.com/

On 'Wrecking Ball,' Bruce Springsteen takes aim at robber barons and bankers

Posted: 3/4/2012 - 2 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

On 'Wrecking Ball,' Bruce Springsteen takes aim at robber barons and bankers

byLaura Clawson FollowforDaily Kos Labor

Share14

PERMALINK 60 COMMENTS

Bruce Springsteen has been, for more than 35 years, one of the great chroniclers of American working-class life. But until recent years, though, his songs only rarely connected the dots between the pains of that life and economic inequality and oppression. In recent years he has moved toward that, both in his public statements and his music, but Wrecking Ball, due out on Tuesday but already widely previewed (licitly and illicitly) online, contains some of the most political music he's written. It is also, in places, deeply gospel-inflected, with the political and spiritual knitting into a moral argument. We may be lost, individually or as a society, we may be oppressed and barely clinging to hope. But we can't believe either that it's good enough for things to be better in the next world (there's no "you'll get pie in the sky when you die" onWrecking Ball) or that the fight for something better in the here and now is anything but a fight for our souls and the soul of the nation.

"Death to My Hometown" is perhaps the strongest such political statement (and, to my biased ear, the strongest song) on the album, beginning as a riddle: "No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground" but "just as sure as the hand of God they brought death to my hometown." We don't know through most of the song who brought the death Springsteen sings about in clipped, bitter tones to music that alternates between a spare, driving beat and a more lush, swinging sound with the thread of a choir just audible beneath Celtic instrumentation. But death doesn't sound like a metaphor here. He is angry and he is mourning. Then, late in the song, we get the answer: It's robber barons, "greedy thieves who came around/And ate the flesh of everything they found." They, the robber barons, brought this blood-free death, and they'll be returning. Springsteen's voice drives through the final indictment; "Whose crimes have gone unpunished now/Who walk the streets as free men now," the final "now" echoing, reinforcing that while there is a death to be mourned, there is also an ongoing injustice. The song ends with another swell of that choir—a revolution? a funeral? some of both?

(Except that—and this is where my bias comes in—it's not a choir. It's a Sacred Harp convention, as recorded by Alan Lomax in Alabama in 1959 and I have sung that song with people who were there that day and, I would be remiss not to note, wrote a book partially inspired by the 1999 meeting of that same convention Lomax recorded and Springsteen samples.)

But "Death to My Hometown" has company on Wrecking Ball as a political song. As on so many earlier Springsteen albums, Wrecking Ball is populated by characters speaking to us, telling their stories. Those stories were never as bright and hopeful as their often-anthemic settings made casual or careless listeners think, but they've gotten darker and again, point a finger at thecauses of the darkness. In "Jack of All Trades," a man lists all the jobs he does in the effort to survive, assuring that "I'm a jack of all trades, honey, we'll be all right." But despite that reassurance, despite the comforting (or defeated? we can't quite tell) tone and the litany of work he can and will do, this struggle for survival has context—"The banker man grows fatter, the working man grows thin"—and, if at the time those lines are delivered they sound resigned, two verses later, the speaker voices his anger—"If I had me a gun, I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight."

The refrain, indeed almost the whole, of "We Take Care of Our Own" is "wherever this flag's flown/we take care of our own," lines that in another context could cross into jingoism, but the verses speak to abandonment—"From the shotgun shack to the Super Dome/There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home"—and to seeking, seeking home and mercy and the "promise from sea to the shining sea." Repeated so many times it becomes more like a mantra than a mere chorus, "we take care of our own" becomes both a promise and a promise betrayed. Even in the meditative, spiritual-inflected "Rocky Ground," which begins with another sample from a Lomax recording, this one of "I'm a Soldier in the Army of the Lord" as performed by a Church of God in Christ congregation in Mississippi, bankers make an appearance as the money changers in the temple. With that reference and in the broader context of the album, the rocky ground we're traveling and the higher ground we seek become not necessarily heaven but a better world here.

While I'm engaging these songs on political grounds, that's something I'd only take the time to do because they've engaged me on musical grounds. Wrecking Ball is not Springsteen's greatest album ever—but saying that in the context of a career that has repeatedly reached greatness is not necessarily faint praise. Springsteen is attempting here to grapple with a shattered world, a more complex task than inhabiting the stories of young men beating against the walls of their lives; just seeing where those walls are and who built them makes it hard to build to the anthemic pitch of albums like Born to Run and Born in the USA, even as the voices in those songs often undermined the headlong flight embodied in the music. Even as compared with the mournful tone of earlier songs such as "Factory" and "The River," the songs on Wrecking Balltake on a difficult task. The range of the songs, from sorrow to anger to determination to hope, offer an emotional map for our time and our fight for something better. It's not a perfect map or a perfect album, but it's an important task and a good listen.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO DAILY KOS LABOR ON SUN MAR 04, 2012 AT 12:55 PM PST.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY DAILY KOS.

Lessons from the Industry Formerly Known as "The Record Business"

Posted: 10/28/2011 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 1 Likes

Category: Music

Monday October 24, 2011
by James Barton and Brian Message

A record company's value used to be measured by the acquisition, protection, and exploitation of copyrights. Exploiting those copyrights by selling songs is an easy business model to understand and used to be the foundation of a very healthy global industry. Historically, the record business was the heart of the music industry. Sell a lot of records and you were a successful business. And artists also succeeded through record sales: they became household names when they had sold a lot of records.

From the business perspective, artists and songs could be viewed as interchangeable commodities. If any given artist failed to deliver hits, another waited in the wings to take their place. This impersonal approach allowed the music industry to grow extremely profitable by simply selling "product."

But the sale of recorded music has taken a battering over the last decade, and it's no longer smart to judge an artist's commercial viability on record sales alone — not least when there is a new generation who questions the need to pay for recorded music at all. For many artists and their managers, record sales are now just one of many revenue streams and one of a number of factors with which to judge success.

Despite this dramatic change in the marketplace, many struggle with the concept of uncoupling success from record sales. It doesn't help that most measures — the charts by which many fans learn about new music — are still based on this notion. For emerging artists this is particularly precarious, since careers are too often ended early if a first set of recordings fail to sell.

So how should a "content producer" behave in this new environment? And what lessons can we learn from this new model of value? Here are the two keys:

Do not treat artists as commodities
Value the artist-fan relationship as highly as traditional rights

Smart managers realize every artist is a standalone business that generates income from multiple revenue streams. A manager's job is to create those businesses and run them well. This requires thinking globally and being agnostic about which revenue stream or territory is the most important. As long as those channels can deliver the aesthetic the artist wants and make a profit, the business is a success.

But the business of relationship building is not a quick one. Artists have to earn the respect of fans, convert that respect into trust, and, eventually, convert that trust into faith. Building communities takes time, and it can only be achieved over the long-term. In this model, artists can no longer be treated as interchangeable hit makers.

The key to artist-management success is identifying talent early and developing it cost-effectively over a long period of time. Artists — and their art — are the only real assets. The systems and structures that surround them should be treated as a means to maximize the commercial value of each artist. As such, the traditional music industry — be that companies that make and distribute records, publishers who collect performance royalties and create sync opportunities, concert promoters, or merchandisers — should be regarded primarily as service providers to artists.

As the digital age gathers pace, managers must engage in the shaping of the music landscape. That landscape is still plagued by a mindset that regards copyright as an instrument of control (which further limits commercial exploitation to traditional models) rather than as a remuneration right that can generate revenue wherever a market may be. The future is about accepting consumer behavior and looking for as many ways as possible to monetize it.

In addition, managers must also simplify the complex structures of the industry and create healthy businesses based on monetizing the behavior of consumers and those businesses that wish to use creators' works for their own profit. Without a simpler, better structured digital market, the direct artist-to-fan business will struggle to grow. Moreover, it will undermine the modern-day manager's opportunities to improve their artists' business.

Managers must also figure out alternative investment for artist businesses. Traditionally, it was the record business that invested in new talent. Restricting investment to direct rights exploitation keeps the emphasis on making money from record sales, which keeps the "investment risk" for would-be investors high. A viable alternative would be a market for investors to put their money into artists' whole businesses, where artists retain rights and investors participate in all the profits.

The music industry was the first of the creative industries to be affected by the disruptive nature of the internet. But it's not all bad news. Disintermediation has forced a focus on talented individuals who produce great art. One of the jobs of their managers is to create an environment that allows them to do so. Ways of collecting fans and connecting them to artists are ever changing, but by embracing new technology opportunities, creative businesses will flourish. Other content producers take note.

New Rules...New Media - Bob Lefsetz

Posted: 7/6/2011 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 2 Likes

Category: Music

MTV rescued the music business. The novelty of seeing acts on television, especially risk-taking performers from the U.K., energized audiences, impacted the discussion and generated monstrous sales. But just before the advent of the television station music was in the doldrums, killed by AOR/corporate rock and disco, which flamed out as soon as it peaked.

The twin pillars of MTV and the CD gave the impression that we were living in an era of intense creativity, because where there's money there's always an industry saying what's happening counts. Then MTV stopped airing videos and Napster eviscerated sales and somehow blame fell upon the audience when it's clear that the problem was the industry and the musicians it supported.

I just finished reading David Browne's "Fire and Rain", a look at the music scene of 1970 through the prism of the careers of Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles, James Taylor and CSNY. It was incredibly depressing, because one can see what happened back then is happening now. In tech.

Yes, the techies are all in their twenties, writing their own rules, creating irresistible products and becoming rich in the process. And the establishment hates them for it. Only now, the music business is the establishment.

Simon & Garfunkel had a hit in 1957, eight years before their breakthrough with "The Sound Of Silence". Tell someone to endure a decade in the wilderness today and they'll look at you incredulous, they need to be successful TOMORROW! This is the fallacy of the TV shows. There's no experience, no struggle behind the winners. Even on "The Voice"... Just because you had a record deal that doesn't mean you're ready. Stephen Stills had a hit under his belt, "For What It's Worth", but the Springfield broke up anyway, he played on "Super Session", he was still looking for his big breakthrough when he hooked up with Crosby and Nash.

James Taylor was committed to a mental hospital after his initial album on Apple tanked.

And the Beatles played a thousand gigs before anybody in the U.S. had heard of them.

All these acts paid their dues. They became players not to get rich, but for the music. Is it any wonder we're in trouble today?

In order for music to count today:

1. Control must be given to the artists. Sure, George Martin was an integral part of the Beatles' sound, and Mort Lewis had managed the Brothers Four and Dave Brubeck before Simon & Garfunkel. But both were subservient to the acts, which were not big on taking direction they did not agree with. Successful, groundbreaking music is about creativity, taking chances. Business people hate risk. They want insurance. Is it any wonder the tunes being released today have the personality of Allstate and Prudential?

2. The keys must be handed to the twentysomethings. When you've got nothing at all, you're willing to take chances. Everybody in the business today has so much invested, so much at risk, that they don't want to take chances. The Internet is the enemy, even though twentysomethings don't feel that way. The Net blew up in the midnineties, it's all they know, they've got a facility with it, it's the norm. As "The New Yorker" stated, online dating is de rigueur for twentysomethings, it's not odd at all. Discovering tracks online and e-mailing them to your friends is all twentysomethings know.

3. Just like "Sgt. Pepper" ended the tyranny of the single, the Net has eliminated the tyranny of the album. Then again, the wannabe acts have all watched TV and lack insight. He who is willing to break with convention will succeed in the new era.

4. Everybody has to stop trying to get rich. The MTV/CD era was an anomaly, a temporary monsoon, an earthquake, here for a moment and already gone. Raising ticket prices to make up for lost recording revenue is like Exxon Mobil raising prices to compensate for the proliferation of the Prius. Things change, own it. Money is for bankers. For corporate titans. Musicians are neither. If you're not satisfied with the adulation and the sex get into a different line of business.

5. Justin Bieber is not built to last. Music will be saved by people who know how to play who've been doing it for in excess of ten years, playing in local bands, getting more rejection than acceptance.

PERFORMERS

1. Listen to a lot of records. A knowledge of music is the best education. Spend more time listening than posting on Facebook. The musicians of yore could play every lick on their favorite blues records, can you?

2. Learn how to play. Start with lessons. Only give them up when you surpass your teacher. Know how to play what you don't like. It'll come in handy, just like studying algebra.

3. Write. We're interested in what you have to say. You can wring emotion with a note, but begin composing lyrics too. Music blew up in the sixties because we were interested in more than the surface, we wanted to know who these acts were, we wanted to know what they had to say.

4. Rehearse. If you're not frustrated, if you're not chomping at the bit, you're not doing it right. Sure, post the results to the Net, but don't expect anybody to pay attention. And promotion is passe. Don't tell people to listen, go back and cut more until you create something so good it spreads by itself.

5. Use what's come before as a stepping off point, not as a blueprint. Although you should know how to play the classics, your music should not sound just like the Beatles or Zeppelin, but different. If you haven't got people scratching their heads, telling you to turn it down, you're playing it too safe.

6. No one has the magic keys. Top forty radio is a formula fed by a conveyor belt no different from the one at GM, but with a lot less innovation. If you're interested in making a Cruze or a Camry, sign up. But it's the aforementioned Prius which is sold out and unavailable, it's what people want, what they're willing to overpay for, even though GM killed its electric car. It takes a while for the public to catch up. The Prius was not an overnight success. Hipsters and the green signed up first, Toyota improved the product, gas prices went through the roof and voila, a mania! Manias are not manufactured, not ones that last, they're all about being in the right place at the right time, anticipating the market, not playing it safe, but being dangerous.

7. If practice isn't hard, you're not doing it right. No matter how much success you've had, if it's become easy, if you're repeating yourself, you're on the road to failure.

8. Listen to no one but yourself. Recruit information, but preferably from someone without a financial interest in your success. Musical artists are the last loners, they're visionaries, they're not part of the group, but outside it. If you're showing up at the club or the Met Costume Ball you're doing it all wrong. No one should be inviting you, they should be afraid of you, and if they do call you won't go, because you know they're trading on your success for their own benefit.

NEW BUSINESS PEOPLE

1. Be willing to starve, just like the musicians.

2. Don't go to work for the established players, start your own thing, just like an act.

3. Finding and nurturing talent is a thankless task. If you're not up for it, provide an ancillary service. But you'll be at least one step away from the heart of the action.

4. Just because you know good music that doesn't mean you can find a good new act. There are more listeners than players. You're not that special.

5. Do the grunt work, that's where the lessons are learned. Be a roadie, an accountant, a road manager, you'll learn more than you will in any class at UCLA Extension or music business school. Who can teach a business that changes every day? Wouldn't that be like studying the iPod in an iPhone world?

6. Be the bridge between player and listener, beholden to both. This is a fine line to walk. Both must be satisfied for the game to work.

7. New ideas are the key to success. Promote unknown acts. Create a new online platform. Don't ask for permission, just do it. If it's good, people will flock to you.

ESTABLISHED BUSINESSES

1. You're in the service business. You're servicing the acts and the audience. You're secondary. You don't write the music and you don't pay to get in. Get over yourself.

2. If you're not thinking about tomorrow, get out of the way of those who are. Don't think about protecting what you have, but creating demand for something new. Almost no one wants the Top Forty hits of the last twenty years, why are you so busy protecting them?

3. Acts cannot see you as the enemy. If you're making more than they are it must be because you're so good and successful, not because you've got great bargaining power.

4. Labels... Adversary relationships are passe. The new mantra is trust. Accounting must be transparent. Success must be shared.

5. Attorneys. You're a protector of the rights of the performer, not a salesman. Defend your act, don't try to find someone who will bid a lot so you can get your percentage.

6. Promoters. Pay less and charge less. You're the only ones who can change this paradigm. Stop bidding against yourselves and losing money. Concertgoing must be a casual choice, barely more expensive than a movie. Fandom is cemented at the show, why would you want to exclude someone?

Tech has got the wow factor. There's a ton of product, constantly blowing your mind. If a tech company rides on its laurels, sells one product for three years, it's history in the marketplace. That's the story of RIM and Nokia. Don't get caught in this trap. If you're not constantly making new music, constantly destroying the old to get to the new, it's only a matter of time until you're kicked to the curb.

Bruce Springsteen Eulogy for Clarence

Posted: 6/29/2011 - 1 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 1 Likes

Category: Music

clarence Clemons by Joe Lopez
Jo lopez photography

- Danny Clinch

This is a slightly revised version of the eulogy I delivered for Clarence at his memorial. I'd like to thank all our fans and friends who have comforted us over the past difficult weeks.FOR THE BIG MAN

I've been sitting here listening to everyone talk about Clarence and staring at that photo of the two of us right there. It's a picture of Scooter and The Big Man, people who we were sometimes. As you can see in this particular photo, Clarence is admiring his muscles and I'm pretending to be nonchalant while leaning upon him. I leaned on Clarence a lot; I made a career out of it in some ways.

Those of us who shared Clarence's life, shared with him his love and his confusion. Though "C" mellowed with age, he was always a wild and unpredictable ride. Today I see his sons Nicky, Chuck, Christopher and Jarod sitting here and I see in them the reflection of a lot of C's qualities. I see his light, his darkness, his sweetness, his roughness, his gentleness, his anger, his brilliance, his handsomeness, and his goodness. But, as you boys know your pop was a not a day at the beach. "C" lived a life where he did what he wanted to do and he let the chips, human and otherwise, fall where they may. Like a lot of us your pop was capable of great magic and also of making quite an amazing mess. This was just the nature of your daddy and my beautiful friend. Clarence's unconditional love, which was very real, came with a lot of conditions. Your pop was a major project and always a work in progress. "C" never approached anything linearly, life never proceeded in a straight line. He never went A... B.... C.... D. It was always A... J.... C.... Z... Q... I....! That was the way Clarence lived and made his way through the world. I know that can lead to a lot of confusion and hurt, but your father also carried a lot of love with him, and I know he loved each of you very very dearly.

It took a village to take care of Clarence Clemons. Tina, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for taking care of my friend, for loving him. Victoria, you've been a loving, kind and caring wife to Clarence and you made a huge difference in his life at a time when the going was not always easy. To all of "C's" vast support network, names too numerous to mention, you know who you are and we thank you. Your rewards await you at the pearly gates. My pal was a tough act but he brought things into your life that were unique and when he turned on that love light, it illuminated your world. I was lucky enough to stand in that light for almost 40 years, near Clarence's heart, in the Temple of Soul.

So a little bit of history: from the early days when Clarence and I traveled together, we'd pull up to the evening's lodgings and within minutes "C" would transform his room into a world of his own. Out came the colored scarves to be draped over the lamps, the scented candles, the incense, the patchouli oil, the herbs, the music, the day would be banished, entertainment would come and go, and Clarence the Shaman would reign and work his magic, night after night. Clarence's ability to enjoy Clarence was incredible. By 69, he'd had a good run, because he'd already lived about 10 lives, 690 years in the life of an average man. Every night, in every place, the magic came flying out of C's suitcase. As soon as success allowed, his dressing room would take on the same trappings as his hotel room until a visit there was like a trip to a sovereign nation that had just struck huge oil reserves. "C" always knew how to live. Long before Prince was out of his diapers, an air of raunchy mysticism ruled in the Big Man's world. I'd wander in from my dressing room, which contained several fine couches and some athletic lockers, and wonder what I was doing wrong! Somewhere along the way all of this was christened the Temple of Soul; and "C" presided smilingly over its secrets, and its pleasures. Being allowed admittance to the Temple's wonders was a lovely thing.

As a young child my son Sam became enchanted with the Big Man... no surprise. To a child Clarence was a towering fairy tale figure, out of some very exotic storybook. He was a dreadlocked giant, with great hands and a deep mellifluous voice sugared with kindness and regard. And... to Sammy, who was just a little white boy, he was deeply and mysteriously black. In Sammy's eyes, "C" must have appeared as all of the African continent, shot through with American cool, rolled into one welcoming and loving figure. So... Sammy decided to pass on my work shirts and became fascinated by Clarence's suits and his royal robes. He declined a seat in dad's van and opted for "C's" stretch limousine, sitting by his side on the slow cruise to the show. He decided dinner in front of the hometown locker just wouldn't do, and he'd saunter up the hall and disappear into the Temple of Soul.

Of course, also enchanted was Sam's dad, from the first time I saw my pal striding out of the shadows of a half empty bar in Asbury Park, a path opening up before him; here comes my brother, here comes my sax man, my inspiration, my partner, my lifelong friend. Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest *** on the planet. You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together, you might be able to do. You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you. Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety, and in some funny way we became each other's protectors; I think perhaps I protected "C" from a world where it still wasn't so easy to be big and black. Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it. Clarence's celebrity and size did not make him immune. I think perhaps "C" protected me from a world where it wasn't always so easy to be an insecure, weird and skinny white boy either. But, standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet. We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself. And we were coming to your town to shake you and to wake you up. Together, we told an older, richer story about the possibilities of friendship that transcended those I'd written in my songs and in my music. Clarence carried it in his heart. It was a story where the Scooter and the Big Man not only busted the city in half, but we kicked *** and remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship would not be such an anomaly. And that... that's what I'm gonna miss. The chance to renew that vow and double down on that story on a nightly basis, because that is something, that is the thing that we did together... the two of us. Clarence was big, and he made me feel, and think, and love, and dream big. How big was the Big Man? Too fucking big to die. And that's just the facts. You can put it on his grave stone, you can tattoo it over your heart. Accept it... it's the New World.

Clarence doesn't leave the E Street Band when he dies. He leaves when we die.

So, I'll miss my friend, his sax, the force of nature his sound was, his glory, his foolishness, his accomplishments, his face, his hands, his humor, his skin, his noise, his confusion, his power, his peace. But his love and his story, the story that he gave me, that he whispered in my ear, that he allowed me to tell... and that he gave to you... is gonna carry on. I'm no mystic, but the undertow, the mystery and power of Clarence and my friendship leads me to believe we must have stood together in other, older times, along other rivers, in other cities, in other fields, doing our modest version of god's work... work that's still unfinished. So I won't say goodbye to my brother, I'll simply say, see you in the next life, further on up the road, where we will once again pick up that work, and get it done.

Big Man, thank you for your kindness, your strength, your dedication, your work, your story. Thanks for the miracle... and for letting a little white boy slip through the side door of the Temple of Soul.

SO LADIES AND GENTLEMAN... ALWAYS LAST, BUT NEVER LEAST. LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE MASTER OF DISASTER, the BIG KAHUNA, the MAN WITH A PHD IN SAXUAL HEALING, the DUKE OF PADUCAH, the KING OF THE WORLD, LOOK OUT OBAMA! THE NEXT BLACK PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES EVEN THOUGH HE'S DEAD... YOU WISH YOU COULD BE LIKE HIM BUT YOU CAN'T! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BIGGEST MAN YOU'VE EVER SEEN!... GIVE ME A C-L-A-R-E-N-C-E. WHAT'S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT'S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! WHAT'S THAT SPELL? CLARENCE! ... amen.

I'm gonna leave you today with a quote from the Big Man himself, which he shared on the plane ride home from Buffalo, the last show of the last tour. As we celebrated in the front cabin congratulating one another and telling tales of the many epic shows, rocking nights and good times we'd shared, "C" sat quietly, taking it all in, then he raised his glass, smiled and said to all gathered, "This could be the start of something big."

Love you, "C".

Lee Abrams says “It’s Time to Fight the Content War”

Posted: 5/5/2011 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

Mark Ramsey Media

Lee Abrams says “It’s Time to Fight the Content War”

Last Friday I anchored a roundtable of industry leaders to talk about the future of radio. It was the kickoff to the All Access Worldwide Radio Summit (you can watch a replay of the webcast here).

I asked the participants to cook up some of they key themes they see on radio’s horizon. Today, with his permission, I wanted to share with you the contributions of one of those industry leaders: Lee Abrams. Lee is a legend in radio, of course, and he is most recently Former Chief Innovation Officer of the Tribune Company and Chief Programming Officer of XM Satellite Radio.

Here’s where Lee sees radio’s present and future:

THE BIG TEN

Radio is in an undeniable position of strength in terms of accessibly, but as a fan of the medium, it has the potential for extinction in its current form. Overly dramatic maybe, but there are a lot of red flags that need to be addressed:

1. MERGERS, WALL STREET, THE ECONOMY AND ACQUISITIONS:
If you observe the radio business, the conversation is focused almost exclusively on the economic side. That’s great…this is America. But—when was the last time you heard or read about a radio content war, or a station that’s tearing up a market with a new sound. Content brilliance needs to be part of the conversation. If the excitement in radio is all about the deals, where does that leave the listener who could care less about who owns who. Death by deal is a real possibility as media’s eye is SO far off the content ball, that we simply can’t compete in the Google/Apple era. The business side is what makes it rock, but content is what makes it roll, and you need both. Deals will be done, but it’s the magic that comes out of the speakers and screens that’ll move things forward, and that needs to be the conversation every bit as much as the economics.

2. THE PLAYBOOK HASN’T BEEN UPDATED IN 40+ YEARS:
I heard a “new” Rock station recently and they presented;

–A “big voice” yelling at you about how hard they rock (that worked in 1979 when rock stations needed to re-enforce their manhood again the disco invasion….but that’s over)

–Star Wars laser sound effects complete with ‘man in the box’ filtered effect. (The Empire was destroyed in the 70′s…time to move on..if radio is “theater of the mind” I heard theater of the lame)

–Blocks, Two-fers, commercial free sets (Another relic of the 70′s. That was 30 years ago)

–Lunch. Not sure if it was a retro lunch, an electric lunch or whatever, but it was a “lunch”

–A station van. Cool in ’71 when hippies carried their pot and guitars in vans, now a soccer mom symbol that defines not cool drives a van

–DJ’s playing Free Bird. (What can POSSIBLY be said about Free Bird in this day and age?)

The station was on 70′s focus group auto pilot. We’re in the Google/Apple era but radio is in the “K108 plays more variety” era. The Simpsons and Onion parody this stuff.

Stations should install cliche buzzers—three buzzes and you’re fired. That should thwart “new” ideas like “The _____ Lunch”

Of course this station was raving about how cool they were. Embarrassing.

3. THE STARS OF RADIO:
50′s- Deejays
60′s- PD’s
70′s- Consultants
80′s- Researchers
90′s- Group Heads
00′s- Bankers

God bless bankers, but we are in a creative crisis as much as an economic one. Time to recruit, enable and inspire creative content stars, and not Talk hosts… but content creators. Radio seems to hire based on sales and operational aptitude, driving those with creative aptitude to other industries. That 19 year old creative star will probably look at TV and Radio as the last place they’d want to be. This is a problem IF media has any interest in entering the content war. We have to make our media a creative oasis for thinkers to thrive. Read a job posting from any major traditional media company. Sounds like HR hell. Then read the Apple postings. Wonder why they get the future stars?

4. BALANCE NOT BULLSHIT
It is a content war out there and Apple/Google seem to have the advantage. But Radio and TV has the eyes and ears. Without a balanced people/function configuration, you’re doomed to lose. Need STARS in;

-Business
-Revenue
-Technology
-Operations
and Creative.

I’m not talking about Morning Shows. I’m talking about creative leadership that, though actions and execution, create a creative priority that is equal to revenue priority. Working in sync to win the battle.

I recall waking into a TV station and seeing a mission statement in the lobby. It included lines account being cutting edge, innovating, leading, etc…. I asked the GSM if this was true. He smirked and said—Nope compete BS. Those statements exist throughout media. When you hear “Content is King”…run! It’s not king. Revenue is. Content drives revenue.

Speaking of Bullshit. Stop with the old school slogans. No one believes them. Like in TV News–EVERY station is “Best, First, On Your Side, In It For You, Accurate….etc….). America is too BS savvy to buy that anymore.

5. DENIAL & ARROGANCE:
You hear a lot of;

–Pandora only has 4% of listener ship. Ha Ha

–Radio is great. When a tornado hits, you don’t go to Pandora (Maybe not yet, but then again, what about the 358 non tornadic days?)

–We’re #1

STOP! If you’re talking to Agencies and Wall Street…OK. BUT—internally….STOP!

This stuff sounds like General Motors in 1980.

We are at the most dramatic crossroad in Media History and to be self congratulating ourselves with denial and arrogance is frightening. It’s NOT OK…it’s war. You gotta pull out the weapons, kill the denial and start creating content that’ll win on 21st Century terms. The denial and arrogance is deafening. It’s worse in Radio/TV than newspapers where they still think it’s 1935.

6. THE DIGITAL EXCUSE
Digital is now…and the future. Pretty obvious. But–it’s often an excuse. A short cut that undermines the REAL issue—Dated and tired 80′s rooted content. If a station is tired and dull, a new App won’t magically make it great, but that’s the thinking out there.
You constantly hear how a product is “moving forward” and entering the digital space. Well, that’s simply survival. What is being avoided like the plague is the core product…the brand itself. Fix the product first. I recall being at a newspaper and they were raving about their innovations and it was stunning. But when I asked about the printed paper, I got blank stares and a “we can’t touch that…it’s sacred” response. Same thing in radio and TV. WHAT COMES OUT OF THE SPEAKERS OR SCREEN is the problem that won’t be fixed by migrating it to online/mobile. Take TV News. It’s laughably dated with the Ultra Doppler super action weather, NORAD sets and big haired modern Ted Knight anchors. Will migrating that to Ipad save the day? Of course not. Fix the product first. Get the product in sync with 2011 before you start praying the delivery system will save you.

Then there’s “interacting” with your radio. That’s great, but not at the expense of the listening experience. Listen first…then interact. No one wants to interact with something tired and irrelevant.

7. THE SECRET CONSPIRACY
Seems there’s some secret law that says a Technology company can innovate daily. Version 2, Version 3, Upgrades, White IPhones, etc… Radio? Same playbook with new slogans. Even TV and Fashion has “New Fall Seasons”…radio is on innovation autopilot at a time when, to prosper in the Google/Apple era you need to innovate DAILY. American media is getting beaten by the Phone and Cable companies in terms of innovation. That’s wrong.

Radio has become a stagnant commodity hoping a new App will fix everything at a time when Tech companies have embraced the 21st Century. This ain’t 1975 where you plug in a format and go. It’s a new world requiring constant updating.

8. BUT WE’RE LOCAL!
No you aren’t. Well, the WGN and WLW types breathe local, but most stations are generic. When I was a kid, we’d drive from Chicago to Miami on Holiday. Indy, Louisville, Nashville, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Miami. Every city had stations with character. Maybe it was the Southern accents on WQXI in Atlanta or the undeniable pride that permeated every break. Make that same trip today and it’s a generic wasteland. Everyone sounds the same. Again, you’ll hear the denial. we have a local morning show…we do a blood drive every summer. Big deal. Stations should do a “local audit”…audit their sound and marketing and you’d find hundreds of missed opportunities. In Chicago, there are several billboards and outdoor vehicles, I’ve yet to see ONE that says “Chicago’s W—-”….
Incidentally, “local” can be an excuse too. We are becoming more Global by the minute. But if you commit to local…then DELIVER in EVERYTHING that you touch.

9. YOU CAN’T ABBREVIATE MAGIC
New station launches: “We have AM Drive, billboard, a tested library, some promos and an App—we’re good to go”
HUH??!! You can’t design the future until you understand the past. Look back to KHJ, KCBQ, THE LOOP, KFOG and scores of other ground breaking stations. They created a plan—completeness. Schwartzkopf style planning…a mission. Right down to how the receptionist answered the phone. Some say this/I’m old fashioned and you can’t do that today. Why? Is media so full of itself that a great game plan that REALLY reinvents is old fashioned? I’m one that believes ANY old media product can reinvent itself and kick *** in any market. Money? Imagination is free. In fact, the most passionate and gifted people are the ones you want in there, and they’re not about money. Of course media is driving them away. Winning media wars is hard. It takes emotional and managerial command. Media has to stop living in the Ad Club world and create teams that fight for brilliance…and deliver.

Todd Storz had a timeless line: “First program…then sell.”

Media is entertainment…not utility. In some cases both, but always entertainment. The environment is too cluttered to think call letters, history and an abbreviated game plan will win.

10. MEDIA & INFORMATION IS THE NEW ROCK N ROLL.
Rock and roll is arguably on life support as is music radio. It’s may not be apparent yet, but when it starts looking backwards, the best days are behind it. But that’s OK, you can learn from it and build on the NEW Rock n Roll. By Rock being dead, I mean as a driver of culture. Whereas Elvis drove culture, nowadays it’s Facebook…and News. The world is having a nervous breakdown and that’s what s moving the culture. I doubt if a new Beatles will emerge that make everything right…culture is all about media and information. BUT–The M.O. of Rock n Roll is timeless and we need Rock n Roll THINKING, regardless of format or style. The characteristics of Rock n Roll thinking include:

ECCENTRICITY…ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK
INNOVATION AS A DRIVER IN EVERYTHING YOU DO
ATTITUDE…A SPIRIT
SWAGGER…A SENSE OF CONFIDENCE
NEWNESS…THE STRUGGLE TO BE FIRST
BIG—MASS APPEAL
RE-INVENTION…A DESIRE AND MOTIVATION TO
CREATES FANS NOT “USERS”
POWERFUL…CULTURE MOVING
CHANGING…ALWAYS PUSHING FORWARD
COMPETITIVE…FIGHTING FOR SUCCESS
ARTFUL…CREATING COMMERCE THROUGH ART (ART IS NOT A BAD WORD UNLESS IT’S BAD ART)
INSTINCTIVE…NOT RELYING ON YESTERDAYS INFORMATION
REBELLIOUS…AGAIN, A FIGHTING SPIRIT
INTELLIGENT…IN A MASS APPEAL WAY
NON ELITIST…FOR THE MASSES

SUMMARY:
Get back to the roots. What a listener/viewer hears and sees from the speakers, the screens and on the streets. Stop with the excuses—Everything will be fine when the economy improves…we have a new App…We’ve been here since 1942….we’re local because our tower is here. Radio has one incredible ting going for it—Reach. Everyone has a radio. Radio and TV are in a position of strength. Just imagine if EVERYone had a Mac. Do you think Apple would call it quits? Radio and TV have, as mediums, given up the content fight at a time when THE MAGIC OF WHAT COMES OUT OF THE SCREENS AND SPEAKERS is more powerful than ANY technology. Combined with technology, its untouchable. Time to get on war footing and start to create the magic on 2011 terms.

Lee – thanks! You’ve been gone from radio for far too long.

Forget About Buying Music Online -- People Don't Even Want To STEAL Music

Matt Rosoff, provided by

Friday, February 4, 2011

Music piracy used to be a big deal, but nowadays most pirates don't even bother.

Envisional, which helps companies prevent brand fraud, counterfeiting, and piracy, was recently commissioned by NBC Universal to look at the use of copyrighted material on the Internet.

The company looked at 10,000 files managed by the PublicBT BitTorrent tracker, and found that only 2.9% of them were music. That's way behind porn videos (35.8%), feature films (35.2%), and TV shows (12.7%). Even generic non-gaming software sparked more interest, with 4.2% of all pirated files.

In other words, people most don't care about music enough to pirate it. Although at least music came in ahead of anime.

The decline in music piracy is partly because iTunes did a lot to make digital music easy, removing one incentive to use file-sharing services like Napster (in the old days) and LimeWire (more recently). There's no question that iTunes moves a lot of music: it sold 5 billion songs just between June 2008and February 2010, and the Beatles sold more than five million songs through the service in less than two months.

Then again, the Beatles haven't made a new recording in more than 40 years. Who else is selling millions of downloads per month?

Here's another way of looking at it: maybe the CD declines of the last few years have nothing to do with piracy or the move to digital. Maybe recorded music is going the way of sheet music in the early 20th century.

The 56-page PDF of the full study is available here.

piracy by file type

Join the conversation about this story »

Lady GaGa's MGR Troy Carter - The College of Musical Knowledge

Posted: 2/5/2011 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

Subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter

Now THAT was interesting.

So I'm at Q Prime, back in October, and I'm checking my e-mail and I get a message from a guy who says he's Lady GaGa's manager. Off the top of my head, I don't know who Lady GaGa's manager is, so I ask Peter Mensch for confirmation of the relationship and when he says it's solid I dial the number in the e-mail and speak with Troy Carter. Who asks me if I'll come speak to his troops.

Today was the day. At Soho House. In West Hollywood. On the cusp of Beverly Hills. About twenty people, around a long slim table.

Funny, there was no attitude. No malaise. Just eagerness and attentiveness.

Troy asked questions.

And his team did too.

But the most fascinating interlude was when the tables turned, when I got Troy's story.

Son of a single mother. From Philadelphia. Came up with DJ Jazzy Smith and the Fresh Prince. Even to Bel Air with Will Smith.

Or, what did Bob Dylan once so famously sing, "when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose"?

That's what fascinating about the entertainment business. There's no admission requirement, no basic curriculum you complete to get in. And if you think music business college is gonna get you to the top, you're sorely mistaken. Entrepreneurs are born, not made. Or to put it more accurately, it's who you are, not what you own or who your daddy is or where you went to school that matters. Can you think on your feet? Can you make things happen?

Steve Jobs dropped out of college.

If you want to steer the corporation, you can get an MBA and work your way up the ranks. But if you want to invent something brand new, you've got to go your own way and take the hits. A path many pay lip service to but few ultimately journey forward upon. Because they're just too damned scared. Not only is it easier to go to law school, but it's also easier to make a deal with the devil, the major label, then it's THEIR problem. But you're only successful if it's YOUR PROBLEM!

And believe me, Lady GaGa's issues, her career, her direction, as well as Greyson Chance's, are Troy Carter's problems.

Now you can get a toehold if you've got a famous dad. And there's always someone in Hollywood ready to take your money if you're rich. But if you want to make it forever, you've got to be smart. Really smart. David Geffen smart. Irving Azoff smart.

I was impressed how smart Troy Carter is.

So he ends up going to work for Puffy. When Sean Combs was still using that moniker. What did he do? EVERYTHING! Take out the trash, open the mail. Too many people are too big to do the little things, and they get left behind.

Then he promoted shows in Philadelphia. And made a deal with Sanctuary. And then the English company ran out of money and Troy was out on the street.

That's when he connected with GaGa.

He got her when nobody wanted her. When she'd been dropped from Def Jam. Troy got her a new deal with Interscope. And then...

We talked about Justin Bieber.

It's an interesting question. Do you plan for the long haul? IS THERE A LONG HAUL?

I don't think so. Justin's voice is gonna change. And he didn't write the songs. GaGa wrote the songs. It bonded her to her audience. She blew up. Now?

This is where it gets really interesting, truly fascinating. Troy told me how he was going to launch the new album.

Unfortunately, it was off the record. But you'll see. It won't be long.

But I'll tell you this. His goal is to sell 30 million albums. Maybe 40 million.

Don't laugh. That's the power of the Internet. You can reach everybody. Shouldn't everybody be up for buying your music?

That's what we've got in the world today. Winners and losers. And not much in between. But if you're a winner, what's the limit?

Laugh at the number ones on the SoundScan chart. Amos Lee is never going to be a household word. And neither is that Christian rock band that's supposed to enter at number one next week. But GaGa is already a household name. If Verizon can break sales records in two hours with the iPhone (http://on.wsj.com/igBH89), shouldn't this mania be able to translate to a musical act?

But what's the price?

Troy is an advocate of lowering the price. To get everybody in. That's the future of music. Low-priced subscriptions that EVERYBODY buys. Instead of pooh-poohing this, look at the cell phone industry. Where handsets used to be a grand and calls were a buck a minute. Who needed a cell phone? Wasn't that for Maxwell Smart? Turns out EVERYBODY needs a cell phone, and what it does...you couldn't have even conceived of five years ago.

So how do you get everybody to buy those records...

Not via the radio, not at first. You'd think that radio would be jumping to air new product. But radio is now last. But Troy believes that without radio the project doesn't scale. And believe me, he's interested in projects that scale. He rejects nine out of ten acts that come to him for management.

First it's about the music. If you know you've got a hit, you've got to stick with it. Could take an entire year for the track to become ubiquitous, for radio to finally go on it. Don't get discouraged, don't change singles, either believe in your cut or don't put it out.

And you look for stickiness online. And then pounce.

Are people watching the video? Then instantly go on Twitter and Facebook, start a dialogue, promise to follow the first 20,000 people who follow you.

So GaGa's in a meeting with Steve Jobs...

That's right. Money can't buy you love. Not even fame. But artistry? Everyone wants to be involved with artists, because of the elusive charisma and the fanatical fan base. The doors come open. You've got access.

And the key is not to suck up to the bankers, but to manipulate them to your advantage.

Anyway, Steve shows GaGa....

I don't want to tell tales out of school. But Jobs shows GaGa the latest Apple creation and GaGa says it sucks. Steve didn't like this, he argued. But that's what being a rock star truly is. Being honest. Using your power to say what you think, playing to the audience as opposed to the middleman.

That's what we love. Unfiltered truth. Gimme some truth.

So far, GaGa's been right about that Apple product.

Stick to your guns.

Because of Lady GaGa's success, because of the rabidity of her fan base, doors have opened across the business landscape. She can get a meeting with anyone. Everybody wants to be in business with her.

And it's not about saying yes, but partnering with these enterprises to your greatest advantage.

At some point in the future we'll have acts that sell the equivalent of thirty million records. Will GaGa be the first? She's trying. Maybe.

You've got to think big. You can't worry about Wal-Mart and the old powers, you've got to enter the new world and figure out how to play by the new rules.

Troy Carter impressed me. It wasn't about winning through intimidation, but leading with the best music and then running that ball to the goal line.

We live in an exciting era where everything's up for grabs. If you're doing it the old way, you're destined for the scrapheap.

I believe new players will triumph over so many of the old.

But I also believe Malcolm Gladwell had it right. That the 10,000 hours make a difference. He with the most experience who's willing to take chances, who is not wedded to the past, will win.

Don't decry Spotify, e-mail Shak and get hooked up.

Tweet, social network, sign up for Groupon.

How can you succeed if you're not familiar with the tools?

Music doesn't change. When done right, nothing means more. How do you get the great music to the public? How do you inform and infect them? That's the question.

You're on your own, sink or swim on your talent and ingenuity

Posted: 2/2/2011 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

Subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter

This is not a music story.

We haven't had that spirit here since 1969. Since the conglomerates bought the indie labels. Because there was so much damn MONEY IN MUSIC!

But no more. Whose fault is that?

Don't blame the consumer. Don't say Apple wouldn't be successful if people stole their products. At least people want Apple's products! Ha!

If you don't think that the Internet is the best thing that ever happened to music you don't have a connection. Suddenly, the history of music is available at your fingertips. And it's only free because the rights holders refuse to embrace a model that comports with consumption. It's like Verizon insisting everybody keep their landline and demanding that people still pay a grand for a cell phone and a buck a minute for calls. I thought music was about innovation and change. Not at the label level. Then again, the execs never made the music anyway. It was concocted by a bunch of uncontrollable renegades following their muse, not the money. And now the execs are in charge and the "artists" will do whatever they say. The public has revolted. There was no violence, but they destroyed Tower Records, decimated the CD and the major labels' bottom line. And for this we should be thankful. Because you can't have the new unless you get rid of the old. In other words, how in the hell are we going to have innovation if Doug Morris is still in charge?

Ignore the hype. Citi is not in the business of holding on to assets. And they're not ignorant, unlike Vivendi. They want to sell. At the highest price. And you don't get the highest price by saying you want to unload immediately. That's Negotiation 101.

And there are only two buyers. No independent is that ignorant after Guy Hands's disaster. You need expertise to manage a music company. Which is one of the reasons Roger Faxon will go. Whatever expertise he has is in publishing. As for Warner keeping him on... They don't want a cock in the henhouse, they don't want anybody agitating for change. Edgar and Lyor are old school. Devious with a lack of transparency. They don't want the likes of Roger in the vicinity of their cash cow. Roger's gone if Warner buys EMI Publishing, which it probably will. After all, what's a record company without a publishing company?

Bertelsmann realized this. Which is not only why they sold their record company to Sony, but they want back in. Without the label.

Who'd want a label? The glamour is in new music, but that's a terrible business. You invest tons for a meager return. One in ten projects hits and you make a tenth of what you once did? Who'd sign up for that? If I ran any of these companies I'd shut new music down. The value is in the catalog.

Which is what Warner knows. They want to get their hands on the Beatles and the Beach Boys and... No one exploits this stuff better than Warner. Universal is all about new product. Thank god Doug is gone, he had it all wrong. We'll see if Lucian can correct this. Maximize what you've already got.

So Warner can't have both publishing companies. IMPALA will freak out and hold up the merger. But they can probably have one. And EMI is better than theirs, Warner/Chappell. So they sell Warner-Chappell to KKR/Bertelsmann.

Let's say I've got this all wrong. Let's say Warner sells everything to KKR and cashes out. Who gives a ****. Bottom line, there's going to be one less major label. And don't lament that you won't have anywhere to sell your crap music, think about the opportunity! EMI is going down not because of bad management, not that management was that good, but because it's a bad business. Why should we sustain bad businesses? The newspaper does not deserve to live. News does, but not the paper.

We're cleaning out the dead wood for the revolution. And in the new era it might not be about recorded music, but touring and merch and... And this revolution is about acts being in charge of their own destinies. Wilco just went independent. They looked at each other and said WHY SHOULD WE GIVE WARNER ALL THAT MONEY! Wilco sells their music, not the label. The label can just get you on TV and radio, and neither wants Wilco.

And OK Go generates plenty of revenue with licensing. Enough to feed a bunch of mouths. But not all those at EMI. You see bands don't throw off enough money to support the old scale. There will always be a few superstars, but not many. And those superstars will want to do it for themselves, in their own vision.

So if you're looking for a mommy or daddy to suck up to... Those days are through. You've been emancipated, you're on your own, sink or swim on your talent and ingenuity.

This is a business story. How a financier was so dumb he thought he could run a creative enterprise when he didn't even know its value. How a bank ended up with tons of debt when it couldn't find anybody to sell it to when the market crashed. Write this up in "Fortune", but it's not suitable for "Billboard". Is "Billboard" still in business?

--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
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=aa439274850bb1dbfe92652275c46ce7

Debate piracy? Let's focus on the music

Posted: 1/30/2011 - 1 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

Debate piracy? Let's focus on the music

Everybody wants to be rich.

Ever wonder why Bono joined forces with wannabe musician Roger McNamee in Elevation Partners? Believe me, it wasn't to shepherd the birth of the unnecessary Palm Pre, it was to get rich. Because you just can't make enough money in the music business anymore.

Bon Jovi had the top tour of 2010. Gross was $108 million. However you split that up, you're better off being Lloyd Blankfein than Jon Bon Jovi. You see Blankfein makes millions each and every year. He doesn't need a hit record, he doesn't need to convince punters in the hinterlands to invest, he just rapes and pillages and pays off politicians until the money comes rolling in.

And everybody else wants that money too. That's what our whole country is about. That's what the major labels are about.

We've been hearing this carping for a decade that people won't pay for music. All played out before a backdrop of Napster and BitTorrent and RapidShare and... I'll say if we eliminated the Internet revenues would go back up. But that's like saying if we got rid of cars we'd have fewer people dying in transportation accidents. Huh? People want their automobiles and they want their Internet. Because it puts information at their fingertips, they're no longer at the mercy of a handful of gatekeepers, they dig down deep to find and consume exactly what they want, and generally speaking that is not the mainstream crap that the record industry and its complicit old wave media outlets want it to be.

Yes, the Top Forty crap sells more than the rest of the product. Then again, sales are a fraction of what they once were and the Top Forty acts don't do as well on the road, and everybody knows that the money's on the road. Where Bon Jovi is touring ceaselessly playing gargantuan hits from two decades ago.

Give Jon Bon Jovi credit. He wanted it. His uncle may have owned a recording studio, but his father was a hairdresser. Jon didn't have advantages, he had desire. And this desire along with the efforts of a master producer, Bruce Fairbairn, and a master songwriter, Desmond Child, resulted in hits. Eventually. Because, as Ringo Starr once sang, it don't come easy.

Now the establishment music industry wants what it once had, the profits of yore. But it's the newbies, the upstarts that are truly the problem. Having been exposed to all the media hype, the fictions that used to build careers, they want to be rich and famous rock stars, and they want it to happen overnight. And why they still call it "rock star" is beyond me. Really, they want to be Jay-Z. They don't even want to go on the road, that's hard work! They want to make records and do endorsements and star in films and buy and sell companies and rape and pillage just like Lloyd Blankfein and the nameless stars at Goldman Sachs.

But you don't go straight from the street to the storied New York bank. No, entry is limited to the best and the brightest, who killed themselves at Ivy League schools for this chance to get rich. And yes, we'd have a better society if these people pursued something besides money, but you can't doubt that they've paid their dues and are winners. How about the people in music?

The songwriters and labels deserve the lion's share of the money. One can defend the 360 deal strategy based on the fact that the experienced oldsters do all the work. Used to be the acts wrote and recorded their own material independently. Those days are through in major label land, there's too much at risk. They need insurance. And they don't need you. They can find someone else pretty who's willing to be molded and play by the rules. They don't want unique. Unless it's fashion. Breakthrough music? You STARVE playing that.

But all those people who can't get major label deals, even though they secretly want them, keep telling us they're playing this breakthrough music. And if we'd just sign up for their mailing lists and come to their shows, we'd get it. Huh? Music is something you hear, and what you're making isn't good enough.

Hell, some of it might be good, but is it great?

You're probably aware of the Tiger Mother controversy. Broken by an excerpt in the "Wall Street Journal" (http://on.wsj.com/esA57L), the book's a best seller and the debate is frantic.

But you can't argue with the facts. The U.S. is number one in self-esteem. That's what the Brookings Institution discovered. Americans believe they're great, but unfortunately, statistically they are not. In the results of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests, the U.S. was number twenty three or four in most subjects (thirty first in math).

Doesn't this sound like the music business? A plethora of unskilled kids telling us they're great, that they deserve success?

Could it be the music business is faltering because the music just isn't good enough?

Now let me be clear, you've got to be great. The Palm Pre is pretty good. But not as good as an iPhone or an Android. And before you start quibbling, one of the things that made the iPhone such a phenomenon was the ecosystem, the App Store, and the synching software. Sure, the Pre would hold your music, but how in the hell were you going to get it on there, it was tedious!

So if you've got one hit, almost no one wants to see you live.

Justin Bieber? That's MySpace. Big story for a year or two, even the mainstream press buys it, and then instant devastation.

Where are the acts that blow us away?

Certainly not the Black Eyed Peas. That's entertainment. Still, will.i.am just can't get rich enough. Now he's gone and made a deal with Intel.

Hell, Steve Jobs was blown out of Apple, his own company. The iPod didn't even come out until twenty five years after the initial Apple computers. Where are the acts that are growing and developing into greatness? Are we really waiting for Ke$ha to deliver her "Sgt. Pepper"?

So let's stop the debate about piracy. Let's focus on the music. And agree that whatever money comes raining down, it's just not gonna be in the league of Lloyd Blankfein's compensation. That music isn't about getting rich, but making a statement. Doing it your way. Having an influence.

But in order to have said influence, you've got to gain adherents. Which takes a long time, see Mr. Jobs above. And Jobs purveyed incredible products before the iPod, just like the initial albums of classic artists were oftentimes ignored. But you don't cry, but soldier on.

We've got a huge filter problem, no one knows what to listen to. And yes, we do have a compensation problem. But first and foremost we've got a music problem. Because we've got a generation of entitled artists who just aren't that good.

Oh, don't protest. What did they used to say, you're either part of the problem or part of the solution? Capitol didn't have to close new Beatle fans. All they had to do was expose them to the music. People didn't wait and see with the iPhone, based on previous Apple products and the pics and the specs, they were instantly in. You're music has got to be just that good. So people want to line up to buy it.

When are we going to start this discussion? When are we going to agree that if you make atonal music and have a bad voice you're never going to sell millions, make millions, so you should stop complaining?

When are we going to agree that "American Idol" is about commerce, not music? It's very easy to sing the hits of another, it's almost fucking impossible to write those hits. Which is why the initial songs of so many suck, hell, they usually don't see the light of day, but I'm constantly inundated with the e-mail of parents of fourteen year olds who want me to listen to the warblings of their prepubescent progeny made on GarageBand. Would they let that kid work at Goldman Sachs? Is the kid qualified to rape and pillage on Wall Street? Then why in hell do we believe they can triumph in music?

The Lefsetz Letter - First in Music Analysis

Posted: 1/9/2011 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

Subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter

Visit the archive

To contact Bob Lefsetz: bob@lefsetz.com
Problems? Contact webmaster@lefsetz.com
Newsletter Formatting Problems? Ask to change to HTML

The Lefsetz Letter - First in Music Analysis

SOURCE: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

zenfilm
added this

Bob Lefsetz is the author of "The Lefsetz Letter." Famous for being beholden to no one and speaking the truth, Lefsetz addresses the issues that are at the core of the music business: downloading, copy protection, pricing and the music itself.

His intense brilliance captivates readers from Steven Tyler to Rick Nielsen to Bryan Adams to Quincy Jones to EVERYBODY who’s in the music business.

Never boring, always entertaining, Bob’s insights are fueled by his stint as an entertainment business attorney, majordomo of Sanctuary Music’s American division and consultancies to major labels.

"The Lefsetz Letter" has been publishing for the past 20 years. First as hard copy, most recently as an email newsletter and now, for the first time, in blog form.

Procrastination

I get this magazine "The Week". I just started getting it, I’m not sure I can recommend it, I decided to take the plunge when my "Newsweek" subscription ran out, since "Newsweek" changed its formula from survey to analysis I’ve felt a void, I want a weekly magazine that can catch me up quickly on all the stories I might have missed or were too dense for me to spend time with, that’s what I used to use "Newsweek" for, previously I employed "Time", but "Time" became so generic I switched, after encountering "Newsweek" in the shrink’s office every week and realizing it was better.

And just about the final article in the issue I was just finishing, actually entitled "The Last Word", was about procrastination, it was originally published in "The New Yorker", did you read Joyce Carol Oates’s story about her husband’s death, I get the magazine, but I missed this. And I’m not sure you can’t miss it too. But there was this one teeny-tiny episode, a paragraph that struck me, it was about General George McClellan, leader of the Union troops in the Civil War.

Now I’m gonna quote the whole thing for context and because we’ve become fascinated with the war between north and south, certainly ever since Ken Burns’s documentary, which Russ Titelman once told me was the best TV show ever, and I’m not disagreeing, then again I need room for "The Sopranos" and "Seinfeld", originally "The Seinfeld Chronicles", I watched from the first episode, I was a fan, especially after seeing Jerry do his supermarket routine on TV, you do know why they call it the "check out" line don’t you, but now it appears Larry David is the genius and Seinfeld is just another journeyman, it takes time to evaluate worth.

Anyway:

"Gen. George McClellan, who led the Army of the Potomac during the early years of the Civil War, was considered a military genius, but he soon became famous for his chronic hesitancy. In 1862, despite an excellent opportunity to take Richmond from Robert E. Lee’s men, he dillydallied and missed his chance. Later that year, both before and after Antietam, he similarly squandered a two-to-one advantage over Lee’s troops. Afterward, Union Gen.-in-Chief Henry Halleck wrote, ‘It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass.’"

That’s the history. The following is why I’m writing this:

"McClellan was, in ways, a classic procrastinator. He was unsure that he could accomplish the tasks before him. And he was given to excessive planning, as if only the perfect strategy was worth doing. Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination; rather than risk failure, procrastinators create conditions that make success impossible."

Whew!

The Beatles cut those records in a day. Well, not all of them. But a bunch. Some of the most classic albums ever were cut in a week. Didn’t it only take them that long to cut the first Zeppelin record? They needed it done, to go on tour.

Let’s not confuse business with art. Labels always want the product sooner. Well, at least they did, Joe Smith was willing to bonus the Eagles to deliver "The Long Run" early. Now labels want you to wait, they want to squeeze the last dollar out of what you’ve delivered before they start again.

But it’s worse. If you’re a new act, they don’t want to put out the album until you’ve got the single! Which they’ll make you work with the usual suspects to deliver, to the point where you end up putting out something generic, which will ride the charts but then evaporate, just like your career.

But **** the labels, they’re evaporating anyway. I’m concerned with the artists. And the old artists, the classic artists, are so busy trying to get it right that they don’t do anything. It’s no longer about polishing to excellence and bequeathing upon the populace, now it’s about finishing it, getting it out, and then doing more. The heroic success is damn near impossible, why are you playing this game?

It hurts to create crap. But oftentimes you’ve got to make crap to get to the good stuff. You’ve got to oil the gears, get loose, then something of quality pops off. And so much of the great stuff literally popped off. "Satisfaction"… The Stones didn’t work on it for years, Keith Richards got the riff in a dream.

The Internet flattens distribution. Everybody can get their stuff out there, cheaply, it’s just hard to get noticed. Therefore, the oldsters think it’s about marketing. Getting the perfect product and hyping it to high hell. But it’s really the opposite, it’s about releasing tons of imperfect product and then letting it marinate in the marketplace, waiting to be discovered, if it’s good.

Don’t equate quick and plenty with crap. It’s about throwing off your fear, your inhibitions, and being able to create. Today if Moses came down from the mountaintop, too many people would be busy on their smartphones to notice the Ten Commandments. But maybe there’d be a video and millions would watch on YouTube for a day or a week and then it would be WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY?

The Ten Commandments made quite a splash. Big enough for Moses to be remembered as a one hit wonder if he’d done nothing else. But if you’re a one hit wonder in the artistic world, you can’t make any real money, you don’t have a career. And a hit just ain’t what it used to be.

Don’t create before you’re ready. Then again, if you write a song every day, your chops will be honed. That’s what the Brill Building people did, they wrote all day, a lot of it was crap, but they created so many classics.

2011/01/09 | Music Business | Trackback | No Comments »

Wallflower

No, this is not about Jakob Dylan. It’s about a solo, well, with piano accompaniment, in the studio take of one of the most precious, ingratiating, infectious songs off Peter Gabriel’s fourth solo album, his first on Geffen, entitled against his wishes "Security".

Gabriel fans are a cult. They’re not wishy-washy regarding their hero, they’re positively passionate. Like Peter himself. And I know all of them would love to see this video. But I bet you very few have. Because Peter Gabriel, for all his vaunted tech wizardry, is about half a decade behind the curve, and the person it’s hurting most is himself.

1. You must have constant contact with your fans. It must be a dialog. It’s not that they forget you if you’re absent, it’s that they’re overwhelmed with the detritus of life. We live in the opposite of the seventies rock star paradigm world. It’s not about coming down from the mountaintop every two or three years with tablets, otherwise known as a ten to twelve track LP/CD/album. Now you’re the village minstrel. You may not live in the center of town, but you’ve got to walk through every day. At least every other day. Sure, you can take a vacation, assuming you come back, assuming your audience knows you’ll walk amongst them soon. The era of just putting up a Website and believing people will find you are done. If for no other reason that most artist Websites have been updated so sporadically that most people rarely go there anymore.

2. You must cross-post. This incredible performance is not available on YouTube, at least I couldn’t easily find it. That’s where people go for video clips. To only host your clips on your site is to try to make it by only exhibiting your videos on your home television set in the 80s. They needed to be on MTV! YouTube is the new MTV. And since everything is available, the key is to make your fans stick. You don’t do that by infrequency of interaction.

3. It must be you. Do you have someone else type on your BlackBerry/iPhone? Do you print out your e-mails? Then why in hell can’t you do your own Tweeting, your own posting.

Peter Gabriel does have a Twitter account. Entitled "itspetergabriel". Only it’s not. IT’s some twit named Dickie in the studio. Who posts like an engineer. Just information. The kind that makes your eyes roll into the back of your head. Can you at least utilize a bit of creativity? Not that it requires much. Compare Steve Lukather’s Twitter feed to Peter Gabriel’s:

Luke

Gabriel

Luke feels no pressure to be clever. But he’s totally honest and it’s him. I read all his tweets, it makes me feel connected. Why isn’t Peter Gabriel following in Luke’s footsteps?

4. Facebook. Gabriel does have a presence there:

Peter Gabriel Facebook

But once again, it’s that same chap from Twitter posting, Dickie. I don’t care about him, I want Peter! And I want the video from the Website cross-posted. But it’s not.

5. Editing. I’m interested in Peter’s rap, marginally. Then again, this tends to be done better in print than video, you can scan if you’re not interested, now you have to wait interminably for the music to begin, and this inhibits not only playability, but repeatability, and didn’t we learn eons ago that the way to make fans is endless repetition? Why would you work against this? There should be a video, easily accessible/findable everywhere, that starts with the music. In this case, the video doesn’t even use an elapsed time counter, but time left…huh?

6. Too many old acts are the same. They think it’s the same way it used to be. But it’s not. Just check SoundScan. Or iTunes. Sure, people are stealing, but with so many diversions, it’s hard to get mindshare. You’ve got your catalog, your good will, but if you’re sitting on your stardom, thinking the old way is still gonna work, you’re wrong. You’ve got to get down in the pit, to mix metaphors, in bed with the people. You’ve got to make it easy for them to be fans. It’s no longer about mystery, unavailability, leaving people wanting more. Now it’s exactly the opposite, it’s about a plethora of material, too much for everybody, only your biggest fans will consume everything.

But the bottom line is to see Peter Gabriel alone in the studio singing "Wallfower" is just about as magical as watching Steve Winwood play "Can’t Find My Way Home" in front of his hearth. At least Winwood put his clip on YouTube, but both have gotten anemic views and for this I blame the artists themselves, not even their handlers. Don’t rely on others to tell you what to do, you’ve all got computers, delve into them. Stars have been removed for too long. That paradigm is dead. Now we’re all equal. But we still love you. And your music.

And that’s why I’m writing this. To alert all you Gabriel fans to this clip. Because you’ll love it. And I bet almost none of you have seen it. And for that, I blame Peter.

Go to: http://www.petergabriel.com/

Click on the first video, "Peter December 2010 update" (if you Google it, it’s the fifth entry, how messed up is that?)

Hit the play button.

The video loads pretty fast.

You can listen to Peter, but he gets pretty boring.

But you can drag the slider to 4:55 remaining to hear "Wallflower". And you should.

2011/01/08 | Music Business - The Music | Trackback | No Comments »

2011/01/07 | Music Business - Online | Trackback | 1 Comment »

Lisa Lauren

Satellite radio has not been the same since Lee Abrams’s departure.

I don’t want to be an apologist for Mr. Abrams, but that sluts video that got him fired at the "Tribune"…he was Dixie Chicked. There was no uproar at first. It was all after the fact.

Not that I believe the "Tribune" staff shouldn’t have been fired. Radio guys running newspapers? Isn’t that like baseball managers becoming football coaches?

But what made Mr. Abrams so great, so effective at XM, was his elimination of all the radio b.s., the shuck and jive, along with "Stairway To Heaven" and "Free Bird" and all the burned out tracks that we never need to hear again in our life. XM was made for fans. And fans built it.

Until Hugh Panero destroyed it by failing to make a deal with Howard Stern.

And now the Sirius brass is in charge of satellite radio. And all the lame bumpers, all the stuff that appeals to no human being but consultants think is necessary, is stuffed into the cracks, along with all the tuneouts.

But not on every station.

I can no longer sell satellite radio. Whereas I used to be a free evangelist. But that was eight years ago, a lifetime in the media world. But I still listen, because it’s better than anything else, but not as good as it could be and once was.

Which is an extremely long introduction to telling you about tracks I heard on the Coffee House yesterday. Hell, that’s an original Sirius station. And it’s not cohesive, it’s got jive bumpers, but every once in a while I hear a song that elates me, changes my life, if only for a few minutes on the highway.

Like "Marry Me".

I was a huge fan of Train before they started swinging for the fences. Do you know "I Am" and "Free" from their debut? You should.

And now I’m a fan again. Because "Marry Me" is exquisite.

It’s not my favorite song on this subject, that would be Don Henley’s cover of Larry John McNally’s "For My Wedding" on "Inside Job". Still, the feel, the vibe of "Marry Me" is what music does best. It’s wistful, it’s personal, it penetrates you because it’s so simple. Don’t even bother to listen to the lyrics, just marinate in the sound.

Eventually I heard "When I Was In Your Heart". After my doctor’s appointment. I haven’t gotten David Gray since "White Ladder". He changed his sound, the records were slick, they didn’t touch me in the same way. But this??? If you were ever a fan, check this out. It’s almost creepy, you almost want to leave the room. It’s like you stumbled on your best buddy alone in a room and you just can’t handle the raw intensity. This isn’t reflection, David is still feeling these feelings. And nothing you say to him will be able to soothe him, to make him lighten up and forget. This is so honest, so real that it almost scares you.

But right after that Train track, I heard a cover of "Love Me Do".

That’s a cheap shot, right? Covering the Beatles? Covering anybody? But this version was rearranged just enough to be different, and to add insight. I mean "Love Me Do" is one of the simplest Beatle songs, from the very beginning, it’s sing-songy, it’s about the rhythm, the sound. But Lisa Lauren’s version is also about the lyrics. Suddenly, I got them, in a way I never did listening to the original.

Lisa Lauren? Who’s that?

I e-mailed myself her name. And just Googled her.

She’s not famous enough to have her own Wikipedia page.

But she did work with David Sanborn…come on, he’s GREAT!

And "Love Me Do" is from a complete album of Beatles covers. Which I pulled up in Spotify (they were in Spotify??) Then I played "Dear Prudence". It had the same magic of "Love Me Do"… It was just different enough to be enticing.

The Coffee House is all acoustic music. Usually live takes, although all three of these are studio originals. You won’t hear any of this stuff on Top Forty radio, but that doesn’t mean it’s not great, that it’s not worth your time.

It’s like we’re living in 1968 all over again. All the good stuff’s on FM, AM is a wasteland. If you hate today’s music, I get it. Because the mainstream stuff that’s being jammed down your throat is too often crap. Did you read Jon Pareles’s story about the minimalism of today’s tracks in last Sunday’s "New York Times" ("Want A Hit? Keep It Simple": http://nyti.ms/fwWn3N)? Pretty soon, a track will just be a shout. Or a beat. Or a yelp. Something a consultant can point to in callout research to get those not playing by their guts to program by.

But we know better. We know it’s all about your gut. It’s about feeling. It’s about thought.

Play this ****. It’ll turn your head. You won’t be able to say there’s no good music anymore.

"Marry Me"

"When I Was In Your Heart"

"Love Me Do"

"Dear Prudence"

2011/01/07 | Radio - The Music | Trackback | No Comments »

« Previous Entries

Author

Activity

Pages

Archives

Categories
- Life and Life Only
- Music Business
  - Live Shows
  - Radio
- Technology
  - Apple
  - Online
- The Media
- The Music

Feeds

Meta
- Subscribe to the
  Lefsetz Letter

The New Rock-Star Paradigm

Posted: 12/19/2010 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
DECEMBER 17, 2010

The New Rock-Star Paradigm

Succeeding in the music business isn't just about selling albums anymore. The lead singer of OK Go on how to make it without a record label (treadmill videos help)

By DAMIAN KULASH JR.

Daryl Peveto/Luceo for The Wall Street Journal

OK Go performs at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, above. The band is known as much for its inventive music videos as it is for its music.

My rock band has leapt across treadmills, camouflaged ourselves in wallpaper, performed with the Notre Dame marching band, danced with a dozen trained dogs, made an animation with 2,300 pieces of toast, crammed a day-long continuous shot into 4½ minutes and built the first ever Rube Goldberg machine—at least that we know of—to operate in time to music. We are known for our music videos, which we make with the same passion and perseverance we do our songs. Our videos have combined views in excess of 120 million on YouTube alone, with countless millions more from television and repostings all over the Internet.

The band OK Go is no stranger to viral video success, with combined views in excess of 125 million on YouTube alone. Lead singer Damian Kulush explains how video works into the band's strategy.

For most people, the obvious question is: Has this helped sell records? The quick answer is yes. We've sold more than 600,000 records over the last decade. But the more relevant answer is that doesn't really matter. A half a million records is nothing to shake a stick at, but it's the online statistics that set the tone of our business and, ultimately, the size of our income.

We once relied on investment and support from a major label. Now we make a comparable living raising money directly from fans and through licensing and sponsorship. Our bank accounts don't rival Lady Gaga's, but we've got more creative freedom than we did as small fish in her pond.

View Full Image

A scene from the music video 'This Too Shall Pass.'

This Too Shall Pass

21 million YouTube views (Rube Goldberg version)

About 50 engineers constructed a giant Rube Goldberg machine that operated in time to the music
The machine took up two floors of a 12,000 square-foot warehouse
Insurance company State Farm funded the video

For a decade, analysts have been hyperventilating about the demise of the music industry. But music isn't going away. We're just moving out of the brief period—a flash in history's pan—when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. Music is as old as humanity itself, and just as difficult to define. It's an ephemeral, temporal and subjective experience.

For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.

Then came the Internet, and in less than a decade, that system fell. With uncontrollable and infinite duplication and distribution of recordings, selling records suddenly became a lot like selling apples to people who live in orchards. In 1999, global record sales totaled $26.9 billion; in 2009, that figure, including digital purchases, which now represent 25% of sales (nearly 50% in the U.S.), is down to $17 billion. For eight of the last 10 years, the decline in revenue from record sales has gotten steeper, which is to say the business is imploding with increasing vigor.

View Full Image

'Last Leaf'

Last Leaf

600,000 YouTube views

The video features 2,430 pieces of toast (Pepperidge Farms white bread that had gone past expiration)
15 still shots of toast were shown per second of video
The video was sponsored by Samsung and shot on a Samsung NX100 camera

Music is getting harder to define again. It's becoming more of an experience and less of an object. Without records as clearly delineated receptacles of value, last century's rules—both industrial and creative—are out the window. For those who can find an audience or a paycheck outside the traditional system, this can mean blessed freedom from the music industry's gatekeepers.

Georgia singer/songwriter Corey Smith has never had a traditional record contract, but in 2008 he grossed about $4 million from touring, merchandise and other revenue, yielding roughly $2 million that was reinvested in the singer's business, according to his manager, Marty Winsch. Mr. Smith makes his recordings downloadable at no cost from his website, and Mr. Winsch emphasizes that they are promotion for his live shows, not the other way around. "We don't look at it as 'free,' " he says. "When people come to the website and download the music, they're giving us their time, their most valuable commodity." Recently, Mr. Smith entered a partnership with a small music company, but unlike a traditional label deal, the arrangement will give him 50% of any net revenue.

Mr. Smith's touring success, unfortunately, isn't indicative of industry trends. Live performance, once seen as the last great hope of the music industry, now looks like anything but. Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the U.S., recently reported that concert revenue is down 14.5% since last year. A report by Edison Research found that in 2010, 12-to-24-year-olds went to fewer than half as many concerts as they did in 2000; nearly two-thirds went to none at all.

View Full Image

no credit

A scene from the music video for 'Here It Goes Again'

Here It Goes Again

59.5 million YouTube views

The elaborate dance routine, performed on eight treadmills, was choreographed by the band and Trish Sie, Damian Kulash's sister
Out of 21 attempts, they completed the full routine three times
The band directs or co-directs all their videos

So if vanishing record revenue isn't being replaced by touring income, how are musicians feeding themselves? For moderately well established artists, the answer is increasingly corporate sponsorship and licensing—a return, in a sense, to the centuries-old logic of patronage. In 1995, it was rare for musicians to partner with corporations; in most corners of the music industry, it was seen as the ultimate sell-out. But with investments from labels harder to come by, attitudes towards outside corporate deals have changed.

These days, money coming from a record label often comes with more embedded creative restrictions than the marketing dollars of other industries. A record label typically measures success in number of records sold. Outside sponsors, by contrast, tend to take a broader view of success. The measuring stick could be mentions in the press, traffic to a website, email addresses collected or views of online videos. Artists have meaningful, direct, and emotional access to our fans, and at a time when capturing the public's attention is increasingly difficult for the army of competing marketers, that access is a big asset.

View Full Image

A scene from the 'White Knuckles' music video.

White Knuckles

8.1 million YouTube views

The video involves 14 dogs, 12 trainers, two furniture wranglers, several dozen buckets and a goat
Like most of OK Go's videos, it consists of a single take
Filming took 12 days and 124 takes; the official video is take 7

My band parted ways with the record label EMI a little less than a year ago. While we were profitable for them, our margins were smaller than those of more traditionally successful bands, because our YouTube views don't directly generate as much revenue as record sales. Our idea of what constitutes success and how to wring income out of it eventually wound up too far apart from EMI's.

Now when we need funding for a large project, we look for a sponsor. A couple weeks ago, my band held an eight-mile musical street parade through Los Angeles, courtesy of Range Rover. They brought no cars, signage or branding; they just asked that we credit them in the documentation of it. A few weeks earlier, we released a music video made in partnership with Samsung, and in February, one was underwritten by State Farm.

We had complete creative control in the productions. At the end of each clip we thanked the company involved, and genuinely, because we truly are thankful. We got the money we needed to make what we want, our fans enjoyed our videos for free, and our corporate Medicis got what their marketing departments were after: millions of eyes and goodwill from our fans. While most bands struggle to wrestle modest video budgets from labels that see videos as loss leaders, ours wind up making us a profit.

YouTube's Top Music Videos

Earlier this week, YouTube released a list of its most watched videos of 2010. Here's the scoop on the top five music videos. (Total views as of 12/13/2010).

1. Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris, "Baby"

Views: 409 million

In 2010, Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber was the king of YouTube. The star's music video for the upbeat song "Baby," which featured Mr. Bieber innocently chasing after a girl in a bowling alley, is currently the video-sharing website's most viewed video of all time.

2. Shakira featuring Freshlyground, "Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)"

Views: 257 million

The video for Shakira's inspirational tune, which was selected as the 2010 FIFA World Cup's official song, is notable for its inclusion of archival World Cup footage and cameos by Lionel Messi and other famous soccer players—the Colombian singer's colorful costumes and hip gyrations are just gravy.

3. Eminem featuring Rihanna, "Love the Way You Lie"

Views: 234 million

Justin Bieber may have four of YouTube's top ten videos of 2010, but both Rihanna and Eminem each have two videos in the top five. The rapper and the R&B songstress teamed up for this (literally) incendiary video about a couple—played by Dominic Monaghan and Megan Fox—stuck in a love/hate relationship. Both end up covered in flames.

4. Eminem, "Not Afraid"

Views: 166 million

For his first single off his best-selling album "Recovery," the 38-year-old rapper ponders his life choices in a typically acrobatic and angry track. His emotional delivery becomes the heart of his corresponding music video, as he demonstrates his ability to survive—even from a jump off the edge of world.

5. Rihanna, "Rude Boy"

Views: 119 million

Shot in front of a green screen, Rihanna's dancehall-inspired video is a hurricane of color; the Barbados-born singer dances and is pictured riding a stuffed zebra as patterned images explode and brightly-colored words are scribbled behind her.

—Michelle Kung

We're not the only ones working with brands. Corporate sponsorship of music and musical events in North America will exceed $1 billion in 2010, up from $575 million in 2003, according to William Chipps, author of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a Chicago-based newsletter that tracks and analyzes corporate sponsorship. By comparison, the U.K. music licensing organization PPL reports that record companies' global annual investment in developing and marketing artists stands at $5 billion. The numbers measure slightly different parts of the industry, but from an artist's standpoint, one thing is clear: Outside corporate investment in music is rapidly climbing into the range of the traditional labels'.

Still, this model isn't much use to unknown bands, since companies tend to bet their marketing money on the already established. This brings us to one part of the old record industry that no one seems to know how to replace: the bank. Even in the halcyon days, profitable labels were only successful with about 5% of their artists. Contracts were heavily tilted in favor of labels, so that the huge profits on the few successes paid for the legions of failures. Labels aggregated the music industry's high risks. Even if there are newer, more efficient models for distribution and promotion in the digital era, there aren't many new models for startup investment.

"That's the billion-dollar question," says Ed Donnelly of Aderra Inc., a company that helps touring bands record their live shows and, right there at the venue, sell the recordings to show-goers on custom-decorated USB flash drives (OK Go is a client). "Sure, I work with a lot of young and unheard-of bands," Mr. Donnelly says, "but I'm not a venture capitalist, and I have no interest in trying to totally replace the infrastructure that labels used to provide. I'm trying to give tools to young bands who are doing things their own way. What labels sold were recordings, what we sell is an experience and an emotional connection with the band."

Though his system can't provide the six-figure advances that young bands landed in the 1990s, it can be one crucial puzzle piece in a band's revenue. The unsigned and unmanaged Los Angeles band Killola toured last summer and offered deluxe USB packages that included full albums, live recordings and access to two future private online concerts for $40 per piece. Killola grossed $18,000 and wound up in the black for their tour. Mr. Donnelly says, "I can't imagine they'll be ordering their yacht anytime soon, but traditionally bands at that point in their careers aren't even breaking even on tour."

View Full Image

Daryl Peveto/Luceo for The Wall Street Journal

OK Go members Dan Kanopka, Tim Nordwind, Damian Kulash and Andy Ross, photographed before a concert in Los Angeles.

OKGO_JUMP

What Killola is learning is that making a living in music isn't just about selling studio recordings anymore. It's about selling the whole package: themselves. And there are plenty of pioneers leading the way. Top-shelf studio drummer Josh Freese sold his album online with a suite of add-ons. For $250, fans could have lunch with him at P.F. Chang's; he says the 25 slots he offered sold out in a day. One fan sprung for the $20,000 option, which included a miniature golf outing with Mr. Freese and his friends.

Singer Amanda Palmer made over $6,000 in three hours—without leaving her apartment—by personally auctioning off souvenirs from tours and video shoots. The New Orleans trombone rock band Bonerama advertises online that they'll play a show in your home for $10,000.

View Full Image

The band in the 'A Million Ways' video.

COVER_OKGO5

A Million Ways

3.8 million YouTube views

The routine was choreographed by Mr. Kulash's sister and shot in Mr. Kulash's Los Angeles backyard
The only production costs were a videotape and coffee, totaling less than $30

Not every musician takes the project of selling themselves literally, but the personality and personal lives of musicians are being more openly recognized as valuable assets. The Twitter account of rapper 50 Cent arguably has wider reach than his last album did, and Kanye West has made an art form out of existing in the public eye, holding spontaneous online press conferences and posting rambling blog entries.

This isn't so revolutionary an idea. Pop music has always been a bigger canvas than beats, chords and lyrics alone. In his early days, Elvis's hips were as famous as his voice, and Jimi Hendrix's lighter fluid is as memorable as any of his riffs, but back then the only yardstick to quantify success was the Billboard charts. Now we are untethered from the studio recording as our singular medium, and we measure in Facebook fans, website hits, and—lucky for me—YouTube views.

—Mr. Kulash is the lead singer and guitarist for OK Go.

How to Make It in the Music Business

As record sales continue to decline, some bands are finding alternate routes to success. Here are some guidelines for the new music landscape.

Apple

Some bands are finding alternate routes to success by tapping into the app market or reinventing the music video.

Apps could be the new albums.

Many bands, from Phish to rapper T-Pain, have developed their own apps, which fans download to their smartphones, typically for less than a dollar. With features such as remixing tools and games, apps can offer bands a deeper connection to their fans. Developer RjDj makes apps that pick up noises through a phone's microphone and weaves them into the music, promising a new version on each listen. The company has created apps for the U.K. rock group Clinic and the film "Inception" and its Hans Zimmer score.

Fans don't just buy records, they make donations.

Via a crop of sites such as PledgeMusic and ArtistShare, acts are soliciting donations directly from fans for tours and recording projects, offering donors access and clever swag. Recently on Kickstarter.com, a Las Vegas "lounge legend" named Richard Cheese raised more than $21,000 to make an album called "Let It Brie." He promised to thank donors of $250 by name on the record.

Keep reinventing the music video

A clever music-video concept can be a band's best marketing tool, and savvy acts apply their creativity to their videos as well as their albums. For its song "We Used to Wait," the indie-rock band Arcade Fire collaborated with Google Web developers to create an online video that incorporated customized maps of the viewer's hometown into a dreamscape that spilled across multiple browser windows.

Rework the classics

Pomplamoose, a San Francisco guy-girl duo, has a repertoire of its own endearingly warm pop songs and videos, but it was their homespun versions of hits by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson that raked in millions of views on YouTube. Then the group broke into the mainstream with another set of covers: performing holiday tunes such as "Deck the Halls" in TV ads for Hyundai.

—John Jurgensen

Ambassador Mag Round Table: Detroit Rock City

Posted: 12/18/2010 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

Ambassador Mag Round Table: Detroit Rock City

By Nadir ⋅ August 12, 2010 ⋅

Email This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Originally Published in Ambassador Magazine May/June 2010

Next time you travel beyond Michigan’s mitten, stop a stranger and ask what he thinks about when you say “Detroit.” Most likely, you’ll get one of two answers: “The Motor City” or “Motown.”

The traditions run deep. This is an industry town, and its two most celebrated commodities are cars and music.

While the automotive business has taken a beating over the past few years, Detroit’s music industry is celebrating something of a creative renaissance. Armed with an arsenal of new technology and girded with Detroit’s trademark, “never say die” spirit, area musicians are lighting the path through uncertain economic times and succeeding on their own terms.

Young artists like Invincible, My Dear Disco, One Be Lo, Hot Club of Detroit, and Monica Blaire carry a longstanding tradition into the new millennium. They follow icons like Kid Rock, Amp Fiddler, Carl Craig, J Dilla, and The Dirt Bombs. Before them it was The Romantics, Awesome Dre, Alice Cooper, and Anita Baker.

What is it about this town? How does Detroit produce so many amazing artists with the same clockwork precision that new model cars roll off Big Three assembly lines?

For this month’s edition of Ambassador’s roundtable, we assembled a group of Detroit music industry veterans whose careers were molded in the city’s clubs and studios. The gathering took place at Harmonie Park Studios, where since 1996, partners and brothers Mark and Brian Pastoria have hosted music royalty – Aretha Franklin, George Clinton, Eminem, Grand Funk Railroad – and some of the region’s most powerful brands – DTE, The Tigers, The Red Wings, and Rock Financial. In fact, Mark picked up a couple of Grammys along the way for his work with Queen Aretha.

Ambassador publisher Denise Ilitch kicked off our discussion by invoking the most hallowed of Detroit music legends, Motown. 2009 witnessed the 50th anniversary of the music empire that began on West Grand Boulevard, and went on to change popular culture throughout the world. “How has Motown influenced your music, your aspirations?” Ilitch asked.

“I don’t think you can get away from the tradition of Motown, and I don’t think you want to,” replied noted blue-eyed soul singer/songwriter Stewart Francke, who so reveres the label’s sound that he hired The Funk Brothers, members of Motown’s house band, to record several songs on his 2005 album Motor City Serenade. “I think the tradition is so powerful and so enduring, that you want to remain within the influence of it musically, traditionally, historically.”

bones_edwards Although Jimmie Bones spends much of his time playing rock and roll keyboards for Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker, he says, “not only Motown, but all of the soul labels, Stax, Volt, whatever… It’s religion to me.” Bones confesses that when he isn’t playing music or learning new songs, he listens to old soul music and rock bands like The Faces and The Rolling Stones who were inspired by it.

Harmonie Park partner, Brian Pastoria, notes that The Beatles so loved the label that they recorded three Motown hits for one of their earliest albums. Pastoria is not only impressed with the music created at Hitsville, but also with how Berry Gordy structured his hit making assembly line.

“The focus was on the producers and writers,” Pastoria says. “I think they felt like they could make stars out of anybody if they had the right songs and the right records.”

Jim Edwards, who has done everything on the Detroit music scene from being a roadie, to running his own label, is currently lead singer for Detroit rockers, The Hell Drivers. He stresses that great songwriting was an important part of the Motown system, and he studies the label’s hits to understand the finer points of song structure. “It’s like going to school every time you listen to those records.”

johnnybee Another Hell Driver, drummer Johnny Bee, witnessed that Motown artistry first hand. Bee provided the backbeat for Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, a band that scored a top five hit of their own in 1966 with “Devil With A Blue Dress On.” The Wheels often shared the bill with their Motown heroes, and Bee took it all in.

“We started off as little kids, 12 or 13, playing on TV shows with Stevie Wonder, and the Temptations,” Bee recalls. “They kind of took us under their wings.“

Bee remembers playing college shows where Ryder and The Wheels would open for a red-suited Marvin Gaye. “Everything was learning, just watching his every move, and how they were schooling everybody at Motown. It was everything – the songwriting, the music, the choreography… You’ll never see anything like that again, EVER!”

So perhaps what makes Detroit music so great is both learning from the best and the pressure of living up to the legacy. And though Hitsville affected the entire city, the heritage reaches beyond Motown.

Francke explains that there were twin traditions that grew up side by side in Detroit – black soul music, with Motown and the other labels that sprang up in Gordy’s wake, and white rock and roll, epitomized by Mitch Ryder, and the MC5. The musicians would watch and learn, compliment and comment on each other.

Francke cites the MC5 classic, “Kick Out The Jams.” “The end of that [lyric] is, ‘or we’ll find someone who will.’ ”He says there’s a certain way you do things. Do it till you drop. Don’t fake it. Look and dress sharp. “There’s a certain ethos to this place, and it affected the world. It still does.”

Detroit music is high quality. In the past, excellent music programs in the public schools bred world-class musicians. With the current state of area school budgets, this truth is now debatable. But it is certain that Detroit audiences expect a lot from the city’s entertainers.

“Detroit’s a town of hard-working people,” Johnny Bee says. “They work hard and they party hard. When they go out they want to see good music.”

“It’s almost like the DNA that was set by Motown is culturally embedded in the community of Detroit,” says Bill Evo, who isn’t a musician, but an attorney, former pro hockey player, past president of the Detroit Red Wings, and a strategic consultant for Harmonie Park. He believes that non-musicians in Detroit – the fans – don’t understand how sophisticated their musical taste is. There is so much stellar music around the city, it can be easily taken for granted.

Artist manager Steven Sowers used to own a nightclub that represented all that was great about Detroit. The Motor Lounge took its name from Detroit’s other famous industry, but on any given night, patrons at the Hamtramck bar would hear the city’s best sounds in its many varied genres. Sowers says that music is such a part of the spirit and culture of the city, that whenever a young Detroiter demonstrates a spark of talent, someone is there to help. “That’s one thing I’ve seen,” Sowers says. “When somebody shows an interest, there’s always someone there to grab them, help them along, and encourage them. I don’t know if that happens in other cities, but it sure does here.”

Juan Atkins emphasizes another important aspect of Detroit’s musical community. Atkins is the “Godfather of Techno,” a title he earned as the first to develop the Detroit-born sound that bangs from speakers in dance clubs all over the world. Juan Atkins, along with his Belleville High School friends, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, is one of “the Belleville Three,” the holy trinity credited with founding what later came to be known as techno music.

juan_sowers “Detroit is not a really big city like New York or LA, so all the musicians know each other, and it’s a close knit community,” says Atkins whose independent label, Metroplex Records, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

“There’s a friendly competition.” Because all the artists compete with each other in a friendly way, the quality of the music is raised to a higher level. “It’s a respectful competitiveness,” Brian Pastoria explains. He saw it at Harmonie Park while recording Christmas in Detroit, an annual all-star holiday album the studio produces to benefit S.A.Y. Detroit (Super All Year Detroit), a non-profit charity that improves the lives of homeless people.

There were many artists who donated their time and talent for the cause, but the friendly competition pushed each of them to greater heights. “Somebody would come in to do a song, and hear what the guy did the night before,” Brian says. “And it was like, ‘Wow! That was really killer!’ This set the bar higher forcing each artist to step his or her game up.“

In addition to the competition, Detroit musicians are not only willing, but are enthusiastic about collaborating with one another. “Everybody mixes together,” Bones says, “and we all kind of add our own little flavors to everybody else’s thing.”

All of these elements meld with Detroit’s blue-collar work ethic to inspire boundless creativity and originality.“It makes you want to try something new, build something from the ground up, and make it the best it can be,” Bones says.

“There’s a lot of soul here,” Johnny Bee interjects. “Buckets and trucks full of soul.” – Nadir Omowale

DC Drive: The Making of "U Need Love" featuring the Legendary Choreagrapher Cholly "Pops" Atkins

Posted: 12/16/2010 - 0 comment(s) [ Comment ] - 0 trackback(s) [ Trackback ] - 0 Likes

Category: Music

A behind the scenes look at Detroit Band DC Drive and the making of their video "You Need Love" featuring legendary Motown Choreographer Cholly "Pops" Atkins. Pops returns to Motown & the Hitsville USA studio for the first time since 1973 with the band and tells incredible stories about some his Motown experiences. Also featured is the bands legendary Producer Vini Poncia (Ringo, Kiss, Malissa Manchester) who accompanies the band for his first trip to Hitsville, cooks them a pasta dinner and works his way into cameo roles in the video.

DC Drive is: Joey Bowen, Mark Pastoria, Brian Pastoria, Doug Kahan, Michael Romeo, Jimmy Romeo.

Video made 1991 United Artists Theatre, Detroit MI featuring Cholly "Pops" Atkins.

Directed by Stewart Shevin

Song Produced by Vini Poncia

Special guests, Vini Poncia, Alfredo Scotti, David Pastoria, David Bernas, Frank Rand, Maurice King, Tim Trombley