GaGa? More like MehMeh, says Lefsetz

Bob Lefsetz has an interesting take on the smidge-over-a-million that GaGa sold:

Yes, by conventional SoundScan standards a tick over a million copies in a week is a significant sum.

But is there anybody in the U.S. who did not know GaGa had a new album out? Was there a problem finding a place to buy it?

What we’ve learned here is most people just don’t care. They don’t want GaGa at any price.

He reckons the problem is that there's no longer a mainstream; that once GaGa had sold to her sizeable fanbase, there isn't anyone who is that bothered.

Oh, the mainstream media tells us Lady GaGa is a superstar. But she’s not, not by the standards of yore. How many people actually went to her show? How many people have purchased her music? If she were a network TV show, they’d cancel her. And network TV shows have a fraction of the audience they once had. Three networks used to have 90% of the audience. Now four and a half networks have less than 30%. The rest is made up of endless cable channels, endless niches. Many of them quite profitable, in some cases more profitable than the networks, because costs are watched and a premium is charged for their audience.

In other words, maybe you can’t afford to spend so much making your album. And if you’ve got hard core fans you can get a lot of money from them. That’s the game.

There's a thread missing from his argument, though - that a lot of people who lap up Lady GaGa don't react to her as a musician. Lady GaGa is the Sarah Palin of politics - a lot of people will come and look, and enjoy the sideshow, and either enjoy the meat dresses and moose shoots, or enjoy not liking them; but the fascination is one of watching a sideshow. Enjoying reading about GaGa wearing a hat made of seashells doesn't mean you're going to buy her record, any more than those people who enjoy Palin's disruption of Republican politics would actually want her to be signing the budget off in the White House.

Letters - one

Bob Lefsetz has a leaked letter from an annoyed Nas. He's got an album ready to roll, but Island Def Jam don't want to release it.

Annoyed? He's livid:

I won’t even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist @ the end of the day, they don’t connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situation

He ends his letter with a plea to Def Jam that we should "make money". But the labels don't really know how any more.

Josh Groban doesn't think you should expect value for money in a charity gig

The Lefsetz Letter picks up some comments from Josh Groban, apparently tweeted after complaints about a lacklustre charity show:

"I really don’t feel that charity performances should be subject to reviews in the same light as other performances…."

"people give their time, energy and voices, for free and with little to no rehearsal and critics should put away the snot-o-meter."

"just a thought. night!"

This was after a gig where some people had paid over a grand for their tickets. Is it really okay to suggest that because Groban's not pocketing the cash for himself that nobody should complain if a show is a bit rubbish?

Then why bother playing the show at all?

Would Groban feel alright with going to a charity night at a restaurant only to discover that the chef had spat in the spaghetti - but, hey, it's for charity so why should anyone complain?

Mika's no need for a mic-ah

Bob Lefzetz went to see Mika play Hollywood yesterday. I say 'play'; his review makes it clear any actual playing had taken place at another time and place:

Mika would move his head away from the mic, but his vocal would remain perfect. But when he spoke, there was distortion, a distinct lack of clarity. That’s what live sounds like. Most of the time tonight, it was Memorex.

I’ve been to so many shows, and I’ve never heard sound like this. So perfect, it doesn’t sound like the record, it IS the record!

I’m not saying everybody’s mic was turned off, that no one was plugged in. But I don’t think Jeff Pevar could get that acoustic guitar sound live. And, who are all these Mikas doing the backup vocals if he’s singing the lead?

Lefsetz does concede that there wasn't much need for Mika to bother singing, as his audience weren't really interested in music anyway - they had a good time.

And, indeed, provides a measure of exactly who the audience were:

People were lining up to pay for balloon hats.

If you're shoveling over cash for a balloon hat, who would be bothered what's happening on stage?

Twittergem: Bob Lefsetz

Just joining Twitter is Bob Lefsetz, with what presumably is the Lefsetz 140 letters:

Prince #1 with 185,000 units. Big box paradigm rules! (U2 still not platinum, 36,000 this week, hasn't even broken 800,000).

Its worth pointing out in 11 hours, he's already picked up over 500 followers.

[@Lefsetz]

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet: Lefsetz, Bono and Obama

Bob Lefsetz posts a scorching response to the underperforming U2 album:

I saw U2 on Letterman, and what struck me was it was Dave’s show. It was like U2 were members of the peanut gallery, brought up on stage at the end of the telecast to perform for the children. How the fuck did we get here? How the fuck did rock and roll as renegade become I’m gonna do whatever the fuck it takes to try and sell my album. And STILL it doesn’t sell!

Are you stunned that U2 is predicted to sell 450,000 copies of "No Line On The Horizon" this week? You should be. Because despite all the exposure, despite all the banging on people’s heads, most members of the public have shrugged their collective shoulders and moved on, they just don’t care.

U2 is BEGGING us to buy their album. As did Bruce Springsteen a month ago. But it’s not working. Bruce’s album still isn’t gold. Marketing is dead. Because people see it for what it is, a push to close you so the perpetrator can get rich. There’s no message, no hope, no reward, just a coin in the pocket of the "artist".

Where in the Springsteen hype was the declaration that listening to his new album was gonna change your life? U2 moves their corporation out of Ireland to save taxes and President Obama says the rich must pay their share, so that our country can get back on its feet. Who does the rank and file support?

It ain’t Bono and the Edge, no fucking way.

If albums sales in December hit 60 million, Bob Lefsetz is going to look a little silly

Bob Lefsetz has a deliciously waspish commentary on the 100 best-selling albums this year:

33. Madonna "Hard Candy" 673,475

I bet she’s pissed. She did everything in her power to make this record a hit. Worked with the flavors of the day… But she’s an oldies act, who’s overcharging and playing venues too big and not selling out.

Love to see her squirm.

That less than three quarters of a million figure, by the way, is sales in the US. Not the UK. Presumably she's hoping that if Guy is no longer her husband, he'll have to buy the next record and she needs every sale she can get.

The best seller so far this year in the US?

1. Lil Wayne "Tha Carter III" 2,671,816

Do we want to focus on the Internet marketing campaign (i.e. the steady release of free product), the discounts/free goods to retail, the fact that a hip-hop album is number one or the low total gross. I choose to look at this final fact. There’s not a lot of road business. A 360 deal with most rappers won’t help your bottom line. Lil Wayne’s the king, but it’s not the domain it used to be.

Calling him a king is a bit much - the US albums market is barely a Dukedom right now.

The takeaway fact?

[E]asy riches are out of the industry’s grasp. The nineties are history. The golden age of pigs at the trough are done. You’d better make good music that appeals to an audience that is willing to listen to you for years. You’d better be willing to get your money on the installment plan instead of all up front. You’d better realize this is no longer the lottery, but a business based on bunts and singles instead of grand slams.

Nobody is buying albums any more, because nobody needs to. The public have been freed from subsidising filler.

Is SXSW mired in the past?

What with its shiny Interactive curtain-raiser and everyone twittering and blogging and uploading to YouTube, SXSW seems like the very model of a modern music festival.

Is it, though? Bob Lefsetz isn't so sure:

Can an unsigned band get noticed? And, do we even bother to use that term anymore, "unsigned". Do you want to get signed?

I mean what are the chances that the cognoscenti are going to care about your band when R.E.M. and even Van Morrison are shilling for attention. Oh, it makes you feel good, to rent a U-Haul, sleep four to a room and perform a set no one cares about. The same way it makes you feel good to send a CD to me! It’s amazing what people will do to make themselves feel good, make them believe they’re making progress.

The new music business isn’t at SXSW. Why should it be?

It's a fair point - we were reading something about SXSW which pointed out that it was being used to try and restart A Flock of Seagulls' stalled career twenty years ago. But SXSW has adapted itself beautifully to the modern world. Perhaps this has lessons for the incumbent major labels about how to make yourself seem a little less tatty in the internet age - after all, if you can make a Music Industry Showcase seize the attention of half the internet for a week, you must know what you're doing. The embrace of the possibilities of the the web has helped - the massive bundles of free mp3s and the encouragement of streaming gigs and sponsorship of blogging-related activities has all helped. The key word, of course, is "embrace", compared with the label's stiff, reluctant courtship.

And it's that reluctance that Lefestz points to when suggesting that, however web 2.o compliant the organisers of SXSW might be, they're still running an event which relies for its existence on businesses that don't get it, still, yet, perhaps never, and bands who hope that leaping into bed with them might be an easy route:

All you bands playing SXSW, you abhor Top Forty radio, but that’s all the majors are interested in. And chances are if you’re a good-looking automaton, ready to go the Jessica/Paris/Lindsay route, you’ve already got handlers in New York or L.A. with a pipeline to the old guard, you don’t have to go to SXSW to get noticed.

Or you could go to the panels at SXSW. To learn that fewer people have jobs at less money. I’ve debated Net monetization at these conventions for NINE YEARS and nothing has happened. Everybody’s just reacted to what some college student, not in attendance, ultimately has done.

Everyone’s looking for a shortcut. Everyone’s looking for answers. Everybody wants to get PAID!

The big threat to SXSW is not that people will listen the Lefsetz, but that they'll come to a similar conclusion from their own calculations - if you're going to go somewhere to get noticed, the chances of standing out are somewhat decreased when you're heading there with half the bands currently existing.

It's not that albums aren't selling - only big albums

There's an interesting perspective on the Lefsetz Letter, looking at the drop in physical CD sales in the US. Bob points out that the main drop is taking place at the top end of the charts - the top ten are selling only about a half the number of copies the chart toppers were managing in 2000:

People still want music. In prodigious amounts. They just don’t all want the same thing.

In other words: majors' desperate search for the next big thing is misguided - people don't want a big thing at all.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

The Creative Review Blog transcribes a conversation between Peter Saville and Dan Fox:

DF: But in a sense you had the autonomous space of an artist for ten years – a degree of liberty that is very similar to that of an artist.

PS: Complete liberty… Strangely out of disinterest. It was New Order’s disinterest and agreed policy of disagreement that allowed it. When Ian died, the natural hierarchy which would have naturally formed in Joy Division… because that’s what happens in bands, at the beginning everyone’s equal, y‘know, if you’ve got a van you can be the manager… that’s how it is. But once they enter the music business, a proper manager is put in place and it’s, “The drummer’s not very good, is he?” and “We’ve got someone else with a drum kit…” The natural hierarchy crystallises around the central figure which is usually the writer/singer and that’s what would have happened had Joy Division signed to a record label or a proper record company, and had Ian survived. He would have gradually, even against his own free will, turned into a Jim Morrison-type character and that’s who you would be working for if you were doing a sleeve or taking a photo or whatever… you’d be working for that person.

Wired's Listening Post carries a lengthy email from MP3Tune's Michael Robertson, placing the lawsuit against his service in the context of the RIAA battle:

While the lawsuit says "EMI" I think the RIAA is advocating this legal fight
as much as any individual label or entity. The RIAA is the music industry's
association with a focus honed on suing seemingly every new technology that
comes along (this last decade at least) . This is what happens when you have
a staff of attorneys -- they want big, long legal fights so they can bill
their clients. The problem with suing every new technology and/or company is
the opportunity to use that new technology in a positive manner is lost. For
example the RIAA sued the first portable MP3 players. The RIAA lost -- not
just the lawsuits, but the chance to leverage an exciting new technology
(MP3 players). It also lost the ability to partner with innovative companies
for increased sales and revenues. By suing every new technology, the music
industry is missing the opportunity to use innovation to dramatically grow
its business in exciting new ways.

... while the Lefsetz Letter responds to Jay-Z's insistence that iTunes doesn't sell his album because he's selling albums, not tracks:

Why does the music industry want to exclude the casual user? We need the people scared away from trading to consume. We need the people who want legal files to be able to pay for them.

Instead of this hissy fit.

Where IS your album available Jay? We’ve got to go to our nearest physical retailer? Where exactly is that? There’s no record store in my neighborhood. And I’m not going to Best Buy for one disc, my life’s too short and I don’t need a refrigerator.

Oh, I get it, I’m supposed to go on Amazon, where you’re breaking Apple’s monopoly. By selling unprotected MP3s.

Is this about money or art? Is this about the whole album or getting people to pay for the entire album?