bob in drag shows off his ticket to tom jones, with some random girl

You can’t get a good ticket.  Not unless you’re an insider or you’re willing
to pay a ton of dough on the aftermarket.  To what degree is this hurting
the music industry?

There’s a fascinating analysis on ESPN’s site that claims that the luxury
box, high-priced ticket stadiums in the NFL have eviscerated home field
advantage.  The true fans just can’t get close enough to the field to feel
part of the game.  Those who talk about the team, who live for the team, who
tailgate and keep sports talk radio alive have been if not completely frozen
out, turned into second class citizens.  Made to park far away and sit down
during the game, so as to not block the view of the wine and cheese crowd.

Used to be if you were willing to camp out overnight, you could get a
concert seat right down front.  At a reasonable price.  Now you go on
Ticketmaster.com and find out mere seconds into the sale that your only hope
of getting a good seat is to pay way more than face value at TicketsNow,
where Ticketmaster scalps the act’s own tickets for them.  Concerts used to
be a tribal rite, now they’re evidence of a have/have not culture.  Doesn’t
make a difference if you played the album every night for a month, doesn’t
matter that you turn your friends on to your favorite, it just comes down to
how much money you’ve got.

Unless, of course, you’re a fan of the Dave Matthews Band.  Fan club members
get good seats.  And Coldplay upgrades those in the rafters to seats right
down front.  Hell, Chris Martin is smart enough to know you want the people
right down front on their feet screaming.  And it’s much harder to scream
from the rafters, you feel almost like you’re watching on TV.

Concerts are not only about grosses, not only about momentary profits.  A
concert tour should be another linchpin in your career, building you to a
new height.  But in the nineties, before the Net impacted the mainstream to
such a degree, the arena concert was where the flavor of the moment MTV act
appeared on maybe their one and only concert tour.  Sure, they played some
smaller buildings on the way up, but by time the second album came out, most
people didn’t even care.  Can we say “Spice Girls”?  And the dinosaurs made
you feel privileged to attend.  After all, they might die any moment.  But
Keith Richards is like a cockroach, he’s going to outlive us all.  Why pay
all that money to see him and his band ruin their old tunes and your
memories?

There’s a cost to high priced tickets and the inability of the regular fan
to get good seats.  Career momentum is dashed.  And now that the recession
has hit, people aren’t lining up to pony up the big bucks.

Concerts have to return to the people.  Concertgoing needs to be cheaper and
a regular activity.  Now, except for a distinct minority, a concert is a big
bucks affair you attend once a year.  That’s what Michael Rapino says, Live
Nation patrons average fewer than two shows per annum.  How do you grow a
healthy business when almost no one can partake?

Greed not only decimated Wall Street, it’s hurt the concert business too.
We’ve been crowing about grosses not noting that they’re propped up by
ever-increasing ticket prices.  We haven’t been developing new acts.  And
Live Nation has to report to Wall Street and AEG is perching itself at the
absolute top of the market.  Take a look at the three rows of luxury boxes
at Staples Center for illustration.  No, look at the rafter seats above
these boxes to see how bad it is to be poor in America.

But now everybody’s poor.  And a machine has been constructed that doesn’t
comport with reality.  Concerts used to be just one step above movies.
Reasonably priced nights out.  I went to the movies last Saturday, the
multiplex was packed.  Unless it’s a superstar, the concert venue is not
sold out.  And this is not good for our business.

We need new acts.  We have to stop living in a winner take all world.  New,
innovative tours, akin to Warped, have to criss-cross this nation.  At a
fair price.  With ticketing fees low and included.  Stars must realize that
hard core fans must be able to get tickets and that a certain percentage of
them must be good, up close and personal.  The fat cats with thick wallets
only come to tell everybody else they were there.  They’re not interested in
your career.  If they’ve got any cash left, they’ll spend it at the gig of
the next flavor of the moment.  Meanwhile, you’ve alienated the fan and
burned your career.

Labels care about radio, acts care about capturing the secondary market and
no one cares about the fan.  Fuck the fan.  He’s got nowhere else to go.
Well, that was true before the advent of video games and a plethora of other
diversions.  And people used to want to come, because there were seemingly
endless headliners, that’s where it was happening, at the music venue.  But
music’s been whored out to such a degree that you’ll only go to hear your
favorite.  Other than that, the average punter is giving the middle finger
to the business.  Sick of being ripped off and unsatiated.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/partone/081121

 
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Maybe we do.

The hoopla surrounding the sales of AC/DC’s “Black Ice” at Wal-Mart has superseded the scary underlying fact. That even including digital downloads, album sales last week were down 25% from the equivalent week in 2007. And 2007 SUCKED!

If the major labels didn’t have the power known as their catalogs, we’d have a different music business today. They’ve been using this asset, along with their publishing companies, to generate leverage and collect revenue, insisting time and again that they’re just about to turn the corner. I’d love a referendum, I’d love to vote Doug Morris out. Because he and his consigliere Zach Horowitz are holding back the future of the music business.

How about a competition between Doug Morris and Steve Jobs. Let the public vote. It’s winner take all. If Doug wins, he gets the iTunes Store. He can bundle tracks as albums, raise the price, he gets free reign. And if Steve is victorious, he gets to purvey Universal music however he sees fit. And as goes Universal, so goes the music business.

The labels don’t have Hilary Rosen to protect them anymore. She was paid beaucoup bucks to take the heat. But when she was finally gone, scooting off to punditland, she said the labels’ failure to license Napster was their downfall. And to this day the labels refuse to license P2P in the U.S.A. And Mitch Bainwol cannot protect the arrows of the public shooting straight for the heads of the labels.

To the degree the public still cares. Jimmy Iovine may no longer go on record, doing his best to fly under the radar, but Nine Inch Nails leaving Interscope is a bigger story than any band the label has “broken”. All the money’s in live because the labels won’t authorize sales in a form that the public desires. A lot for a little.

It’s like the labels are landlines holding out against cellular. Losing connections along the way. With the public desiring mobility, the labels are selling physical discs, trumpeting their superiority, which is akin to stating that sex can only be had in the bedroom. Whereas where you do it, sometimes even in the great outdoors and office buildings, is frequently the special sauce that makes coitus exciting.

In the seventies, to work at a label was the ultimate goal, and you sometimes got there through the farm team known as retail. And a job at a record store was only marginally easier to get than one at Warner Brothers. But today everybody under the age of thirty has been laid off at the label, or is working for bupkes with no upward mobility. And Tower Records has closed and the geek at Best Buy knows less about CDs than you do about LCDs, and you’re not even working there.

If America can elect a black President, we can have a nation where music files are easily acquired, sans copy protection, and easily transferred. Don’t say “No way”, instead cheer YES WE CAN!

The record business is mired in a quagmire as sticky and without future as Iraq. And its recipe for success is to double down, the equivalent of a surge. Suing more people.

But suing people didn’t work in the first place. The army wasn’t big enough. The insurgents would not let go.

This war against consumers is unwinnable. And it’s ruining the business’ economics. The only people who won’t admit this are those with the power, trying so desperately to hold on to it.

But holding on to the old ways, aligning with despised power, got the Republicans neutralized in Congress, going from the majority to the minority. And caused them to lose the Presidency.

John McCain tried to throw the long ball. He signed Sarah Palin. Just like the labels made a deal with MySpace. But just like Sarah was the wrong female, MySpace is the wrong social networking site. And Sarah may be a female, but she was not the woman the female electorate was clamoring for. Women wanted Hillary. They wanted intelligence and experience. Someone who’d fought her battles not by her looks, or through flirting, but hard work. To the degree MySpace is shiny, it’s definitely not what the public wants.

Nor is the music being purveyed. All those simpleton Top Forty hits? If not being tuned out in droves, all that’s selling is the track. Labels lamenting single track sales on iTunes is like the Republicans decrying early voting. The tide has turned. Change has come.

Power is being bled by the old powers at the labels as we speak. Bookers no longer focus on SoundScan, but ticket sales. They don’t care if there’s a record on the chart, just whether fannies will fill the seats. And the best way to get people to pay is to have a career act, that doesn’t focus on extravaganzas, scorched earth publicity campaigns, but their long term viability. People want to believe in acts, but the labels keep selling singles.

It will take a while for new behemoths to rise. Developing and selling music. But one thing’s for sure, the day of the major label dinosaur chairman is dead. Overpaid as his staff gets laid off. Selling what most people cannot relate to or don’t want ninety days after its peak. New executives will put their heads to the ground, listen to the audience and build a new coalition between acts and the public. That’s where the nexus is. Contrary to the majors labels’ belief that it’s between them and radio.

Radio is dying. Barack Obama’s campaign would not have been victorious without the Web. Obama used the Internet both to get his message out and raise funds. Knowing that a little from a lot is better than a lot from a little. Anybody who hopes to thrive in the recorded music sphere in the future needs to learn these lessons. YouTube is your friend. As are blogs and iTunes. You don’t battle the masses, spread into nooks and crannies, you entice them, you bring them in. Music should not be free, but a fair and equitable sales proposition must be proffered.

We need unity in the music world. We don’t have it today. And we must blame the old white men, wedded to antique business models which haven’t worked in the twenty first century. It’s a new dawn. Only when we all come together will our great national nightmare of declining revenues at record labels and traders’ lives being ruined by lawsuits end. We need leadership. Right now we’ve got none. But it’s coming. Because the public DEMANDS it!

–
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What we have is an asshole candidate for President with an inadequate running mate beating up on the press, telling reporters they’ve got the story wrong and the candidates should be left alone.

Utterfuckinghogwash.

But it’s not too different in the music business.

Unable to sleep last night, I started checking my e-mail. Every day I get this missive from England entitled “Record Of The Day”. It’s got an exhaustive series of links. And scanning through them, I found this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/09/25/bmitunes125.xml

My blood started to boil when I read the quotes. Because these rich motherfuckers, who happen to have made some great music, are living in the nineties and ONLY care about money. There’s this lip service to creating albums that must be heard this way, but if that’s the case, why don’t they put out records that are one giant cut, so we’re FORCED to listen to the whole damn record. Like everybody’s got an hour to sit down and listen to your irrelevant opus. Yes, the band hasn’t done anything phenomenal, hasn’t made an album worth listening to from beginning to end since “Back In Black”, begging the question whether what I heard was true… That Bon Scott had a hand in writing that material just before he died. Seems like it to me, because they haven’t come CLOSE since. Even working with Mutt Lange, the best record producer in the world, “For Those About To Rock” was a huge bringdown. I know, because I bought it. And was incredibly disappointed.

In the days since, they’ve put out a few good cuts. Like “Who Made Who”. And this new album they’re releasing is better than anything they’ve done since “Back In Black”. But it’s not “Back In Black”. But it’s a big deal. Because AC/DC has exploded this decade… AS A RESULT OF FILE-TRADING!

They’re the second biggest catalog seller. Behind the Beatles. WHY? Because kids have traded their songs and found out how great their classics are. But now they want to fuck these same kids in the ass and make them buy their new album at Wal-Mart. So they can make fuckloads of money. The whole world is listening to files, shuffling their tracks, but these ignorant musicians from Down Under don’t seem to have gotten the message. Why don’t they tell everybody to give up their computers and use typewriters while they’re at it.

The joke is illegal acquisition will dwarf CD sales. Whatever is sold legitimately will be distributed online INSTANTLY! Which is great for the band ultimately. Breeding new fans. But, like the rest of the industry, the band wants to ignore this. Even though without the aforementioned trading of the past decade their tour would not instantly sell out.

At least throw kids a bone. Let them buy tracks legitimately. But just like the inane industry they’re part of, AC/DC doesn’t want fans to have it their way. They must have never been to a Burger King…

The number one music market is not Wal-Mart, but iTunes, which is just a click away. But no, we’re supposed to drive to the heinous mass marketer who only made this deal so they could sell more crap that puts American workers and small towns out of business.

Who gives a shit about AC/DC. I’m fighting this battle against an industry that doesn’t only refuse to change, but won’t acknowledge REALITY! Shit, I didn’t listen to “Back In Black” all the way through every time when I only had the VINYL! Oftentimes, I’d drop the needle on “You Shook Me All Night Long”. The band is just interested in a price point. Otherwise, I want them to explain to me how ANYBODY getting a taste is gonna fuck them up. Why don’t they ban singles from the radio too!

FURTHERMORE, all this bullshit about not making stuff available on iTunes, how it kills catalog sales… I met with Warner Brothers, the cume of both Zeppelin and Metallica WENT UP after they were available on iTunes, IT DID NOT KILL THEIR SALES!

Wake up and live in the twenty first century.

But it gets worse. I wake up to a phone call from the head of the band’s label. I tell him about the aforementioned article in the “Telegraph”. And what does he tell me? ANGUS DOESN’T TALK LIKE THAT, ANGUS WOULDN’T USE THE WORD “STAGGERING”, HE DOESN’T BELIEVE THE QUOTES ARE REAL!

But it gets worse. When I don’t buy that, this guy calls up the publicity guy in the U.K. and gets back to me and says the interview never happened. So I ask him, ARE YOU GOING TO SUE THE TELEGRAPH???

Then they get the indie publicity guy to call me. He says the interview wasn’t on the schedule. He asks me to hold off while they do research. ULTIMATELY, this same bloke gets back to me and tells me the interview did happen, but in Germany…

WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK??

It’s AC/DC. They’ll sell a shitload of albums. Every concert ticket. It’s not brain surgery. The fucking financial system is melting down and these guys act like AC/DC is just as important. IT’S NOT!

But they’re working me. Lying to me. All in service OF THIS?

This is how America works. Worldbeaters with all the money, forces of nature, create their own reality and try to sell it to us.

DON’T BELIEVE THE NEWSPAPER? Isn’t this just what the Republicans have been telling us for YEARS? If we don’t believe the newspaper, who are we supposed to believe? YOU? Iraq has weapons of mass destruction? I’m not saying the press always has it right, but it’s independent and trying to nail down the truth. That’s its job. Not lying, cheating and stealing so it can make more money. At least the press sans Fox News.

We live in a fucked up country. If they’re even tracking down me to spread their lies, you know things have gotten out of hand.

AC/DC is wrong. Their album should be available digitally, track by track. Otherwise, it’s like saying you can’t fuck without being in love, that you can only drive with a full tank of gas, THAT ONLY REPUBLICANS HAVE THE ANSWERS!

This will all blow over. AC/DC will release their irrelevant album, make their money and go home. But someone’s got to blow the whistle here. And reveal how these fucks, both the labels and the acts, want to create their own version of the truth and force people to buy it.

We live in a track world. You can either admit it, or get run over by the future. AC/DC’s album will be available track by track. And that’s how it will be listened to. The only difference is, THEY’RE NOT GOING TO GET PAID!

Bob Lefsetz

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