Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets Podcast. We're
Speaker 1: just back from Santa Barbara, the second Annual Music Media Summit.
Speaker 1: My good friend Jake Gold is here to review the Shenanigans. There. Jake,
Speaker 1: good to have you here. Good to be back, Bob.
Speaker 1: I think we should call it the Bob Cast, not
Speaker 1: the podcast. I think it should be the Left Sets
Speaker 1: Bob Cast. That's a good idea. I'm open to change,
Speaker 1: right I Actually, Jeremiah and I were looking that up
Speaker 1: in Santa Barbara and we saw that there were some
Speaker 1: other Bobs that say Bob cat Cast, which means it's
Speaker 1: totally legit. It's wide open. So I don't see why
Speaker 1: we don't call it the Bob Cast. That's a good idea.
Speaker 1: I have to contemplate that, have to run that through
Speaker 1: the mental filtrations. I know, I know he likes it.
Speaker 1: I know he likes the idea of it. So, Jake
Speaker 1: as a manager, and once he gets on something, he's
Speaker 1: covered all three hundred sixty degrees, he's closing on you.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to trying to maintain a little bit of
Speaker 1: my own independence before I make a decision. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you know that's what that's what we do. We we
Speaker 1: surround the the artist with all the yes is before
Speaker 1: we actually approached the artist. That's all they can do
Speaker 1: is say yes. Correct, they'll because they'll have the what about?
Speaker 1: What about? And you already have the answers. That's your job.
Speaker 1: That's what experiences teaches you. That's correct, amundo um Santa Barbara.
Speaker 1: I had never been there before, So what do you
Speaker 1: think you want to move there? Uh? It may be
Speaker 1: a little sleepy for me, right, I sleeping for me too,
Speaker 1: But people really become infatuated with Santa Barbara and they
Speaker 1: want to move there. There are even some people. The
Speaker 1: guy ran Universal Studios for a long time, he used
Speaker 1: to commute to Universal City from Santa Barbara. Well, we
Speaker 1: left Wednesday morning and it took us maybe an hour
Speaker 1: and a half to get into West Hollywood. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't bad. I mean, people commute longer and living in
Speaker 1: New York. Let's be clear, if you go a typical
Speaker 1: commute time, you're never gonna be able to match that. No, no, not.
Speaker 1: If you're leaving at seven am, you're dealing with rush
Speaker 1: hour and the same on the way out. I remember
Speaker 1: I was mapping it from Toronto to see how long
Speaker 1: it was going to take. And at the time I
Speaker 1: was mapping it, it was five o'clock here. It was
Speaker 1: the last Friday I mapped it, and it said two
Speaker 1: hours and twenty minutes exactly. Yeah, so it could take
Speaker 1: a lot longer. But there is a train too that
Speaker 1: goes like Jeremiah producer podcast took the train. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we live in Los Angeles. Were addicted to
Speaker 1: our cars, I know, I know, although as you know,
Speaker 1: more and more people are getting into the car. Well
Speaker 1: that's another thing. I mean, we're not really discussing the
Speaker 1: conference here, but your car was unfortunately totaled. And you're
Speaker 1: a uber guy. We talked about that in the last party. Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing it all the time, you know, I love it.
Speaker 1: It's great, no responsibilities of a vehicle. I'm shirking all
Speaker 1: my responsibilities. It's wonderful at sixty. So we've you doing
Speaker 1: what happened in Santa Barbara. Well, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting that there was yet great speakers. First of all, um, uh,
Speaker 1: high level people, all at the top of their game. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm curious as to what do you think was the
Speaker 1: common thread amongst the five speakers that we had, they
Speaker 1: were available. No. Uh, the common thread was the personality.
Speaker 1: Someone else said that they were talking about the hustle.
Speaker 1: But um, music business is a very fluid business where
Speaker 1: your education and the typical uh notches in your belt
Speaker 1: don't really apply. So all of these people to a
Speaker 1: degree were self starters, and they found their way to
Speaker 1: the music business and had achieved success based on their
Speaker 1: personality and their smarts as opposed to coming up through
Speaker 1: the ranks of business or something else. I would agree
Speaker 1: with you, except in the case of Steve Boom from
Speaker 1: Amazon and Rob Glazer, who were academics, I mean Steve
Speaker 1: Booms and a lawyer, right and and and they all
Speaker 1: had jobs until until you know, as I say, in
Speaker 1: in the case of Rob Glazer whose chairman of Real Networks,
Speaker 1: he left college and he went to work for Microsoft. Okay,
Speaker 1: and that was before Microsoft was the monolith and it
Speaker 1: ultimately became. But then he went on his own and
Speaker 1: he started a business, and he ultimately bought the Pro
Speaker 1: Bowlers Association and he became a VC so he was
Speaker 1: really doing his own thing. And Steve Boom was a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but then he went to work for Yahoo and he
Speaker 1: ran looped. So these were people who were finding their
Speaker 1: own way, as opposed to someone working for Ge or Xerox,
Speaker 1: who just keeps on going up the ladder. I don't
Speaker 1: doubt that for a second, But I think those two
Speaker 1: chose Academia UM as their fallback because Boom was a lawyer,
Speaker 1: like he was a practicing lawyer. Well, let's start with raw.
Speaker 1: I mean, Rob is highly educated in computer reach. Even
Speaker 1: though he was not a coder at Microsoft or Real Networks,
Speaker 1: he was into computer programming against in high school and
Speaker 1: then he learned how to do that. You know, that's
Speaker 1: one of the great things about today's society. You know.
Speaker 1: They call the guy who just wrote what color is
Speaker 1: Your Parachute? Recently died? The Ultimate job Seekers Bible, and
Speaker 1: he talks about transferable skills. It's like even myself, I'm
Speaker 1: an attorney. I practice law very briefly, and then when
Speaker 1: the Naster thing came up in the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: I knew all the law. Suddenly my law background was relevant.
Speaker 1: So a lot of these people, their training comes back
Speaker 1: in certain ways they understand even though they don't use
Speaker 1: it directly. Like Rob Glazer, I found it interesting because uh,
Speaker 1: in the case of Daniel Glass, where he he wants
Speaker 1: everybody to have at least finished college to work for him,
Speaker 1: and and uh, and then you segue to someone like
Speaker 1: like Ethiopia who is president of Motown, who came from
Speaker 1: an academia family, uh, and didn't go to college. And
Speaker 1: it was interesting because Daniel Glass came up to me
Speaker 1: after that, that's Ethiopia have to have to marry him?
Speaker 1: Of whose head of Motown? And uh, he said, if
Speaker 1: you remember what she said, she said she was offered
Speaker 1: a gig at u M at Universal Music Publishing and
Speaker 1: she turned it down and stayed for two years with
Speaker 1: the publishing companies. Who was out in Atlanta, and he said,
Speaker 1: that was kind of like going to school. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a fudging of the concept. And you know,
Speaker 1: we both we both love Daniel and we both think
Speaker 1: the world of him. And he really is you know,
Speaker 1: you you had um, you had uh uh you had
Speaker 1: Superman schon a while back and and um, but Daniel
Speaker 1: Glass is as much Superman as anybody else. Like, the
Speaker 1: guy's a wonderful guy and you know, totally accommodating. He
Speaker 1: returns every email, he's that kind a guy, and I
Speaker 1: just find it funny that he'll fudget to fit his
Speaker 1: That may be true, But the interesting thing. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Daniel Glass is he trains all his people.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want anybody with bad habits. So I remember
Speaker 1: going the early days to Glass Note Records office in
Speaker 1: Manhattan and there's one big room with like fifteen He's
Speaker 1: got more people. Now he's got forty people. But fifteen
Speaker 1: people are not one over thirty, Okay, So he teaches
Speaker 1: them his style. He does have a couple of people
Speaker 1: who come from somewhere else. This is what people don't
Speaker 1: understand about the entertainment business, is you are working seven
Speaker 1: He has a couple of people in Los Angeles. These
Speaker 1: people are working around the clock. One of them came
Speaker 1: to the conference, and it takes that to make it,
Speaker 1: along with a lot of insights. I mean, Daniel Glass
Speaker 1: is very successful with his own company right now, but
Speaker 1: he had bumps in the road getting there. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: everybody does. I mean, that's the nature of entrepreneurship. I agree.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's a funny era in the music
Speaker 1: business because most of the people running the giant operations
Speaker 1: never had skin in the game. Now, if you look
Speaker 1: on the promotion side at a g J. Marciano was
Speaker 1: an independent promoter and Michael Ruppino had a limited amount
Speaker 1: of time as a promoter. But everybody running the record
Speaker 1: companies never had an independent company as a promoter. I know,
Speaker 1: a club promoter boss says, you've never really a promoter
Speaker 1: until you've gone to the A T M At two
Speaker 1: in the morning to withdraw cash to pay the act. Well,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing because I I personally have a
Speaker 1: bit of an issue. Maybe it's you know, because I've
Speaker 1: only ever done it on my own, never had a
Speaker 1: real job, like a job job, like with a paycheck.
Speaker 1: But you always see that most of these record company
Speaker 1: guys that have been at record companies all their lives,
Speaker 1: that go to try and become a manager, because you know,
Speaker 1: at some point there's attrition at all these record companies
Speaker 1: and they all lose their jobs because they're the staffs
Speaker 1: are shrinking, and they go, well, I'll guess I'll be
Speaker 1: a manager because they say they know artists or whatever
Speaker 1: they think they know, and then they have to pay
Speaker 1: their first career bill because they've never even seen one.
Speaker 1: They didn't even know what it looks like before. Uh,
Speaker 1: they've they've never you know, paid their own phone bill
Speaker 1: because it's been paid for like everything else has been
Speaker 1: paid for. And then they have to run a business
Speaker 1: and generate revenue at the same time, um, which they
Speaker 1: never had to do before, and most of them fail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and some of them go to work for management companies.
Speaker 1: And I've encountered a few of those people, you know,
Speaker 1: with dealing with other acts when your Access Support Act
Speaker 1: or their Access Support Act whatever. And most of them
Speaker 1: have no concept of management. They're they're just like their
Speaker 1: their job at a management company is almost like their
Speaker 1: job was at a record company. They're not real managers,
Speaker 1: They're just another person that works there. Well, that speaks
Speaker 1: to another issue which started having by ten years ago,
Speaker 1: which is the roll up of management companies. Do you
Speaker 1: believe managers should be independent? Well, I I think that
Speaker 1: it's a little different um in the United States than
Speaker 1: it is everywhere else. From talking to some of these
Speaker 1: managers that I know that became part of the bigger companies,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are basically running their own fiefdoms
Speaker 1: with a healthcare package. And and they they've kind of
Speaker 1: said to me, look, I take this I take. I
Speaker 1: become part of a bigger thing. There's a good healthcare package.
Speaker 1: I have a family and I want to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm covered just in case the ship goes down. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, I have an infrastructure and have
Speaker 1: to worry about an infrastructure. But I still run my
Speaker 1: own company and I just do a split on the
Speaker 1: revenue that comes in. Do you think it hobbles them
Speaker 1: in some way having that that as opposed to being
Speaker 1: completely independent, Well, I I think there's I think there's
Speaker 1: something for everybody. I think if you're a hustler, you're
Speaker 1: a hustler. Um, Chris ru Is, He's He's the one
Speaker 1: that that became part of Chris was totally independent, it
Speaker 1: was motional easiest became part of red Light. I think
Speaker 1: I think probably you never know, and maybe down the
Speaker 1: road he'll either you know, moved to a higher position
Speaker 1: at red Light, or he may end up leaving on
Speaker 1: his own. Because at some point, I don't know what
Speaker 1: their their deals are, and I think some of them
Speaker 1: are doing probably really small deals back to the mother Ship. UM,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know, but I think for a while there,
Speaker 1: I think some of the companies were doing seventy thirty
Speaker 1: splits with with managers. Am I not right? You know
Speaker 1: most of these deals and I'm not privy to all
Speaker 1: of them. Certainly in the initial incarnation was they paid
Speaker 1: you a fee and then it was fifty fifty and
Speaker 1: you had to earn back against It was a versus commission,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like an agency deal. Right. But
Speaker 1: the interesting thing you reference, and this is a political
Speaker 1: football in the United States. I remember I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I was in Canada talking to a woman who was
Speaker 1: thinking of leaving her major label job to go with
Speaker 1: an independent and using my US lens, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: saying that that may not be a good idea because
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about healthcare. Where in this particular case, she
Speaker 1: goes to work for the independent, doesn't work out, She's
Speaker 1: still got her healthcare. That's always a concern in the
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, if you know, if I'm gonna leave,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do about my health care? You know,
Speaker 1: there's extended packages. I mean, we can get into that
Speaker 1: whole thing. Cobra is a limited time Ian healthcare is
Speaker 1: really a big thing. Certainly with Obamacare it was less threatening.
Speaker 1: That's being undercut at this particular point in time. But
Speaker 1: the real question is are you a self starter or
Speaker 1: are you someone who needs the team to function? Well?
Speaker 1: I think you you you're building your own team. Anyways,
Speaker 1: from my experience from talking to dealing with some of
Speaker 1: these managers that work within these these bigger management firms,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like, you know, they're getting all that
Speaker 1: extra stuff that they're really still running their own things
Speaker 1: with not being a specific about different ones, uh, some
Speaker 1: are different. Some give you a lot more autonomy and
Speaker 1: less support than others. And by the I guess for me,
Speaker 1: when there's no net, you have a heightened anxiety, whereas
Speaker 1: if you have a contract with the management company, you
Speaker 1: might at least say, well, things are not working. I
Speaker 1: got six months and it's always in the distance. Where
Speaker 1: if you're working for yourself every day you're waking up
Speaker 1: and you're thinking, okay, what's next. Is this gonna work? Well?
Speaker 1: In fact, I think that's kind of how it works.
Speaker 1: And if let's go back to to Santa Barbara is
Speaker 1: most of the people that um that we're there, I
Speaker 1: think have that attitude. It's like you you live and
Speaker 1: breathe what you're doing because it's all yours. Well. I
Speaker 1: mean one of the great stories was Troy Carter who
Speaker 1: said before he signed uh Lady Gaga, he was Rooke
Speaker 1: and he was you know, uh, you know, selling or
Speaker 1: painting his wife's engagement ring in order to make the bills.
Speaker 1: And he took Lady Gaga out of the spaghetti warehouse
Speaker 1: to celebrate. People have no that's where they met. That
Speaker 1: was their big meeting, he said. He took her out
Speaker 1: to meet at I thought it was a celebration. But
Speaker 1: but in any event, the point being, people have the
Speaker 1: impression that it's a constant upward trend and that is
Speaker 1: not true. No, And I've been doing it now. I
Speaker 1: started full time November eighty one, so I'm like thirty. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now is it easier or less easy? It's the same.
Speaker 1: It's like it's a funny thing. You know. People talk
Speaker 1: about about how much the business has changed, and for
Speaker 1: everything that has changed, nothing has changed. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: we had to talk, uh, And I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: this because I knew, you know, we were going to
Speaker 1: be sitting down doing this. But people were talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, you continually bring up um and by Spotify
Speaker 1: standards rightly, so hip hop strive is the dominant force,
Speaker 1: and pop is the dominant force. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you think back to when um, you know, we
Speaker 1: had pop radio and rock radio. Uh if it it
Speaker 1: just went strictly on plays. Pop records were spun fifty
Speaker 1: sixty times a week and rock records were spun times
Speaker 1: a week, and so pop and those kind of that
Speaker 1: kind of music was always sort of more popular, which
Speaker 1: is why it was called pop. You know, we're all
Speaker 1: victims of our own experience, did you may we grew
Speaker 1: up in a major market with multiple stations. You grew
Speaker 1: up in the hinterlands with only one station, But certainly
Speaker 1: if you grew up in the metropolis, and you know,
Speaker 1: and you're but at my age, baby boomer, Um, there
Speaker 1: was a switch certainly in sixty eight in the New
Speaker 1: York radio market, which was my radio market, uh, to
Speaker 1: the FM band. And it wasn't until seventy three that
Speaker 1: Lie Abrahams came along and codified and turned FM into
Speaker 1: a kind of top forty format and then tracks with
Speaker 1: then crossover in the early seventies to AM four people
Speaker 1: at FM and the cars at FM ruled and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, MTV came in and it was
Speaker 1: what MTV played, and there was a resurgence of Top
Speaker 1: forty radio. So in Top forty moved to FM at
Speaker 1: that point to excellent point. I remember, you know, uh
Speaker 1: one point one Here in Los Angeles, they used to
Speaker 1: be they used to be a divide. And I had
Speaker 1: a very funny story about that that happened to me
Speaker 1: when I was about fourteen, fifteen years old, as I
Speaker 1: had been at one of these ben are retreat things
Speaker 1: and I met this girl and and um, she was
Speaker 1: a year older than me, and she lived in St.
Speaker 1: Catharine's and she invited me to come spend the weekend
Speaker 1: in St. Catherine's with her and her family, which was,
Speaker 1: when you think back on it now, kind of weird.
Speaker 1: Your fourteen, you're four you're fourteen years old, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and so I took the bus to St. Catherine.
Speaker 1: It's like an hour an hour and a half by bus,
Speaker 1: probably about an hour and a half two hours depending
Speaker 1: on the stops. St. Catherine's near Niagara Falls, so it's
Speaker 1: and if you drive it, it's like an hour fifteen
Speaker 1: with no traffic back to traffic. And I remember it
Speaker 1: was the it was a Saturday night, and we were
Speaker 1: listening to the radio and I hadn't crossed over into
Speaker 1: FM yet and I was still listening to pop music
Speaker 1: on AM. But she was a year older and she
Speaker 1: was already listening to FM, and and it was like
Speaker 1: a moment where she kind of realized that I was
Speaker 1: too young for her because I wasn't cool because I
Speaker 1: wasn't listening to FM and she was listening to FM.
Speaker 1: And then you know, within six months, I was now
Speaker 1: listening to FM and listening too much cooler music as
Speaker 1: a result. But after that weekend, she was like, she
Speaker 1: basically said, oh yeah, like we can't. We can't hang
Speaker 1: out anymore because I wasn't cool enough because I was
Speaker 1: like still listening to a M music. Well, the funny
Speaker 1: thing is, I don't think today your friends would be
Speaker 1: decided Capulli on music. That just illustrates how important music
Speaker 1: was back then. We'll take a quick break and come
Speaker 1: back with more of my conversation with Jake Gold, recorded
Speaker 1: live at the tune In Studios in Venice Beach as
Speaker 1: we recap the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, California.
Speaker 1: This week. I'm speaking with Jake Gold in the last
Speaker 1: couple of months, Paul Rodgers from Free and Bad Company
Speaker 1: joined me in the studio, as well as Oscar winner
Speaker 1: Brian Fogel created the documentary Chorus here next week's episode.
Speaker 1: First by subscribing to the podcast on tune in, Apple
Speaker 1: Podcast or your podcast player of choice. Check out the
Speaker 1: first thirty interviews, and please rate and review the podcast. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get back to my conversation with Jake Gold getting
Speaker 1: back to the dominant and you make you bring up
Speaker 1: an excellent point with the analogy of uh Spotify streams
Speaker 1: to radio spins. But for those of us who investigate
Speaker 1: the market, whether it be media base which is the
Speaker 1: radio charts or the varying charts on Spotify, I'm a
Speaker 1: huge rock fan and I cannot sit here and champion
Speaker 1: all these rock acts that are deserve attention or not
Speaker 1: getting it. But some of them are doing okay. You know,
Speaker 1: the War on Drugs is doing well, and there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of rock acts that are actually doing well. And
Speaker 1: you know, I brought it up at the conference and
Speaker 1: even when when you were talking to Ethiopia and she agreed,
Speaker 1: is that Spotify doesn't do an album chart, and if
Speaker 1: they did an album chart maybe be different because all
Speaker 1: we see is is a song consumption chart, and by
Speaker 1: seeing a song consumption consumption chart, what we're getting is
Speaker 1: we're getting And because the chart kind of and the
Speaker 1: way they're algorithm works, it kind of becomes a self
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy, so one begets the other. I think that
Speaker 1: will drive more plays over and over and again again
Speaker 1: and being put on more playlists. Plus, you know, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. I have this band Common Deary. We've
Speaker 1: brought it up before. Um they got on to CBC
Speaker 1: Radio two. Now CBC Radio two has their own playlists
Speaker 1: on Spotify and it's got a decent amount of followers. Now.
Speaker 1: I saw our plays go up on those tracks because
Speaker 1: partly was on some other playlists, but also because it
Speaker 1: was on the radio to play. One of the things
Speaker 1: I you know, which I wish, which I wish is
Speaker 1: that they had the media based charts, which are radio
Speaker 1: charts on Spotify. So far, none of the main streaming
Speaker 1: outlets Apple, Spotify, etcetera. Have put the radio charts on that.
Speaker 1: I would like that. It's great that they have that Canada.
Speaker 1: But you can put your own chart up. There's nothing
Speaker 1: to stop few a station can actually create their own
Speaker 1: playlist and put it up there, just like there can
Speaker 1: be a Bob Left Sets playlist. But I asked about
Speaker 1: the you know I have. We'd have to get Troy
Speaker 1: here to find out what the real stories. In any event,
Speaker 1: they're not dominant there, and there's the lag. But you know,
Speaker 1: you bring up a lot of things. Although the acts
Speaker 1: you mentioned, the rock acts are successful, they're not culturally
Speaker 1: dominant the way the hip hop acts are. But I
Speaker 1: don't think we're in a heyday of rock music. Okay,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say we're I don't think. The fact is
Speaker 1: is that, you know, knowing, look, I managed the biggest
Speaker 1: rock rock act in the country for many many years,
Speaker 1: and you know we got we never got played on
Speaker 1: pop radio. We only got played on rock radio. And
Speaker 1: I can only tell you that our our check royalty
Speaker 1: checks for airplay, compared to some of the pop acts
Speaker 1: who weren't selling nearly the amount of ticket and doing
Speaker 1: nearly the amount of business, or even for that matter,
Speaker 1: selling nearly amount of records. We were selling um albums, um.
Speaker 1: Their checks were probably bigger than ours because of airplay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that was a different era and a different paradigm.
Speaker 1: Everything is different now. Now you bring up a number
Speaker 1: of things. One thing that some of the label people
Speaker 1: brought up in Santa Barbara that I've patently disagree with
Speaker 1: is the concept of the album. Okay, I believe that
Speaker 1: fans want a body of work. If I find a
Speaker 1: track I like on Spotify, immediately go on and see
Speaker 1: what else has got the most streams on Spotify. I
Speaker 1: don't care what album it is. I might check whether
Speaker 1: it's from the most recent album. I might triangulate that way,
Speaker 1: but you know, I'm getting it. On a business level,
Speaker 1: I want to hear good music. You need a continuous,
Speaker 1: uh drip of product. Now, maybe you record it all
Speaker 1: at once and you drip it out. I mean, but
Speaker 1: the concept of a once you know, once a year,
Speaker 1: once every couple of years, and then I think it's
Speaker 1: incredibly dequated and based on issues that people say, well,
Speaker 1: it has to be an album so we get publicity, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So so let's let's back up. Let's back up fifty years. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how the Beatles put out records exactly. Well, so
Speaker 1: what has changed is what I'm trying to say now.
Speaker 1: But the irony here is the public is leading and
Speaker 1: it is the producers and the business infrastructure who are behind. Okay,
Speaker 1: the public is jumping genres and listening to singles. So
Speaker 1: so what happened when the when the Beatles put out records,
Speaker 1: they put out a bunch of singles, and then they
Speaker 1: put out an album, and then they put out another
Speaker 1: bunch of singles, and then they put on an album,
Speaker 1: and they were putting them out every six months. Well,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is, like any business, it's like the
Speaker 1: computer business in the last twenty years and music business
Speaker 1: then they were constantly pushing the envelope. And when you
Speaker 1: when before a business is mature, it's very exciting. Like
Speaker 1: ten years ago, we'd be sitting here talk it about
Speaker 1: our devices. Did you get the iPod? What size you have,
Speaker 1: flash memory, etcetera. People don't talk. People don't even talk
Speaker 1: about their phones that way at this particular know, they
Speaker 1: may be talking about the cameras. That's the biggest thing
Speaker 1: on the So so the point and then you saw,
Speaker 1: because I know, Jake, you're not gonna be able the
Speaker 1: next year. The camera's gonna have three lenses, so you
Speaker 1: may have to get a new one. Contract to be
Speaker 1: up in another year and I'll get anot of you
Speaker 1: get another photo. So in any event, Uh, the problem
Speaker 1: is we don't have enough innovation in the non hip
Speaker 1: hop world. I remember when you got a vinyl record.
Speaker 1: Vinyl record held between eight and thirty six minutes of music.
Speaker 1: Once you got below beyond like four, you had a
Speaker 1: sound degradation issue. You can push the forty. These days
Speaker 1: you can push. Most people don't because of the high
Speaker 1: quality pressings. I'll put it on two discs, but that's
Speaker 1: not even my point. People stretched to fill that limit.
Speaker 1: And on vinyl records there were essentially four key cuts. Oh,
Speaker 1: putting track on each side, closing track on each side.
Speaker 1: You knew that acts put their best stuff there, and
Speaker 1: you checked it out. When we went to the CD.
Speaker 1: It was every It was too much to begin when
Speaker 1: you knew the opening track was supposed to be good,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the CD era they would say,
Speaker 1: well what about the fourth track? Fourtra I didn't even
Speaker 1: get there. But at this point in time and for
Speaker 1: a long time, UH CD holds almost eighty minutes, So artistically,
Speaker 1: an album which was under forty minutes suddenly jumped to
Speaker 1: sixty minutes because of the format, not because anybody had
Speaker 1: anything specially new to say. And I think we have
Speaker 1: this new format of streaming, but the artists or lunites
Speaker 1: and kept in the old paradigm. As I say, not
Speaker 1: the hip hop acts, not Drake putting up missed mix tapes,
Speaker 1: you know, other people starting with mixed tapes and SoundCloud, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But all the other acts can't stop complaining that we
Speaker 1: will not go back to where we once were. So
Speaker 1: even my own acts and I any act I talked to,
Speaker 1: when they asked me about, oh, we're gonna make an
Speaker 1: album and we're gonna do this, I say, fine, you
Speaker 1: can go in and record an album, but don't release
Speaker 1: it that way. There's no reason to release three tracks
Speaker 1: at a time. Release two tracks at a time and
Speaker 1: keep the flow going. Part of it is also that
Speaker 1: you know, every time you release a new track, you
Speaker 1: can get another hit from the blogs, you can get
Speaker 1: more media attention. You put out ten songs, you get
Speaker 1: your media attention once and then it disappears. If you
Speaker 1: if you put out a track a month, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get media attention every month, and there's more to talk
Speaker 1: about because there's something new all the time. This is
Speaker 1: interesting to what degree it will affect the visual business.
Speaker 1: Like I'm reading the newspaper before I come here, and
Speaker 1: it happens to be a Friday. They must have reviewed
Speaker 1: in excess of twenty movies. Yes, and I'm laughing. I said,
Speaker 1: some of these movies are interesting. I'm never going to
Speaker 1: the theater to see these movies. And when they hit
Speaker 1: UH TV services, I'll forget they existed. First of all,
Speaker 1: the newspapers out of touch. They should be reviewing television. Secondly,
Speaker 1: there should be day and date so there could be
Speaker 1: ongoing word of mouth. Get this publicity on television shows. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a funny thing. I was. I knew you were
Speaker 1: going to bring up movies and culture, but you know,
Speaker 1: May the fourth be with you Today is May the
Speaker 1: fourth when we're recording this and Star Wars is out
Speaker 1: and they they finally timed it to put out the
Speaker 1: new Star Wars with UH with UM with May the
Speaker 1: fourth and last year. Right, No, it's there's a new
Speaker 1: Solo Star Wars today. Solo. Isn't that the new Solo movie?
Speaker 1: I can't even And it's actually it's my brother's birthday
Speaker 1: and he's like a big girlfriend's I know it is
Speaker 1: and and and he's a big tech nerd, and and
Speaker 1: he loves Star Wars. It's just so happening. Born on
Speaker 1: May the fourth, it's so weird and uh and uh
Speaker 1: because he's you want to talk about technology, He got
Speaker 1: a new sixty five inch four K TV and he
Speaker 1: loves it. He just can't stop talking about the only thing.
Speaker 1: I have a five K Mac. And it used to
Speaker 1: be YouTube showed four K videos on all browsers. Now
Speaker 1: they switched it only to their own browser, which is Chrome.
Speaker 1: And I was watching a video yesterday and granted only
Speaker 1: like you know, eight inches from the screen, and I
Speaker 1: was watching in four K's just great. Yeah, well he's
Speaker 1: watching sports and he's upgraded his Netflix to four K
Speaker 1: and Amazon Prime and like you know, he literally has
Speaker 1: his house set up like he's he's uh Captain Kirk
Speaker 1: and he's running the Starship Enterprise. You know, where was
Speaker 1: I and somewhere and we're talking about no, no, But
Speaker 1: I was somewhere in the in the last week, maybe
Speaker 1: in a hotel where they had a TV so big
Speaker 1: that I said, this is almost as big as some
Speaker 1: of the small theaters of the seventies. Well, but but
Speaker 1: that's what it feels like. Um, the hotel I'm in
Speaker 1: has two giant TVs, one in the living room area
Speaker 1: and one in the bedroom area. And when you think
Speaker 1: about the distance you are away from the TV in
Speaker 1: in in in comparison to being in a theater, it's
Speaker 1: it's probably almost as big. And I was at a
Speaker 1: hotel in Vancouver, was the first time I've ever experienced
Speaker 1: this for the junos, and they had Netflix on the
Speaker 1: TV and you just logged in your account. I've heard
Speaker 1: about that. I know a lot of people travel with
Speaker 1: a firestick. Not to get in legal issues here, but
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people travel with a jail
Speaker 1: broken firestick, and you know, they watched their own things.
Speaker 1: The other thing you can do is we're getting to
Speaker 1: this technical stuff. I had a flatter rio a little
Speaker 1: while back, and now Netflix is downloadable, so I downloaded
Speaker 1: to my iPad like twenty hours worth of stuff, so
Speaker 1: you're never shut Now. They really upgraded the plane, especially
Speaker 1: the one to Miami. We're really deep into this travel talk.
Speaker 1: And it used to be that was the old seven
Speaker 1: thirties seven and you know, with the old seats, and
Speaker 1: you know you couldn't see anything. But it's better now. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, and all the airlines have their own thing,
Speaker 1: but but they're gonna take out all the visual entertainment
Speaker 1: because they think people. I mean, I would rather not
Speaker 1: travel with the iPad because I'm traveling with so much
Speaker 1: crapple already. And I got the laptop, I got the Kindle,
Speaker 1: I got the bows, headphones, etcetera. I don't really want
Speaker 1: to add something to the pile. But by the same token,
Speaker 1: I tend not to watch the movies on the plane anyway.
Speaker 1: That's where I watched the movies that you're talking about
Speaker 1: that you'll never watch those that I call them plane movies.
Speaker 1: That's a good plane movie. Yeah, Like when you see
Speaker 1: the ad for do you read the review, Oh, that
Speaker 1: will be on a plane soon, and that's a plane movie.
Speaker 1: To me. Those are there's certain movies there it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll watch that on the plane. But when you're flying here, Cannon,
Speaker 1: if you're upfront, it's it's a nineteen inch screen. Wow.
Speaker 1: Like especially this flight Toronto l A. It's it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's life flats, it's it's a whole other thing. So
Speaker 1: I did that flight to Sydney. UM from Toronto. You
Speaker 1: flight Toronto Vancouver, Vancouver City. That's sixteen hours. You're up front,
Speaker 1: you're you're in your own pod, and there's like it's
Speaker 1: a nice way to let's not get too class oriented.
Speaker 1: Not everybody listening to but listen, listen. Like I I
Speaker 1: paid for that ticket, and it was like I was
Speaker 1: treating myself. It was like I'm gonna do this, Like, um,
Speaker 1: if you're flying for sixteen hours and I'm a big guy,
Speaker 1: I'm not. And I was with a manager for dinner
Speaker 1: last Friday night, and he travels an unbelievable amount. If
Speaker 1: I mentioned the acts, you'd know who he is, and
Speaker 1: I'd rather not do that. UH. But he got deep
Speaker 1: vein thrombosis, and he suddenly realized that's what Richard Nixon had,
Speaker 1: where you get a blood clot from flying so much
Speaker 1: and not moving. And he was supposed to fly to
Speaker 1: UH on a one hour flight. He said, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna cancel. Went to the doctor said, if you've taken
Speaker 1: that flight, you would have died. Is that you would
Speaker 1: have been fine on the flight, but walking around thereafter
Speaker 1: it would have gone to your heart. At the blood
Speaker 1: clot that would have been it. So now he has to.
Speaker 1: Now he's on blood thinners and he has to get
Speaker 1: up on the plane and walk every four hours. And
Speaker 1: I'm always thinking about that myself walking on the plane.
Speaker 1: Well that if you're flying big enough planes, his plenty room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but usually you don't want to get to be if
Speaker 1: you're sleeping on the plane, you don't want to the
Speaker 1: guy I want to get up every four hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we're on a sixteen hour flight. You're sleeping like
Speaker 1: you would at home anyway, So you you do, you're sleeping.
Speaker 1: We'll pause here for a brief moment and come back
Speaker 1: with more of my conversation with Jake Cole. For those
Speaker 1: who attended the Music Media Summit in Santa Barbara, where
Speaker 1: a conversation with leaders in their industries. We have Jake
Speaker 1: Gold here this week, Canadian manager extraordinaire, to help put
Speaker 1: all the conversations into context. But if you missed any
Speaker 1: of them from Troy Carter at Spotify or Ethiope at
Speaker 1: Motown or Steve at Amazon Music, listen to them all
Speaker 1: on the Bob Left Sets podcast and please join us
Speaker 1: next year in Santa Barbara. Now we're with Jake gold. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back Amazon. Amazon. Do you think it really
Speaker 1: is the sleeping giant? That? Absolutely? I mean, just like
Speaker 1: people to this date don't know that you can sink
Speaker 1: tracks to your phone via Spotify, such that if you're
Speaker 1: out of cell range, you will have music as long
Speaker 1: as your device has juice. Uh. You know. I've discussed
Speaker 1: this with Steve Boom ahead of Amazon Music previously, but
Speaker 1: he went into further depth in Santa Barbara. How they
Speaker 1: do it, there's what's called metadata, metadata, or the identifying
Speaker 1: factors about a record. A track, you know what label,
Speaker 1: who the artist is, and you know who wrote it.
Speaker 1: But they have developed much more or have entered much
Speaker 1: more metadata at Amazon. And what this allows you to
Speaker 1: do is ask your Echo to play playlists, which it
Speaker 1: then creates on the fly, which is much more granular.
Speaker 1: You can say, uh, Alexa, hopefully it's not Alexa. This
Speaker 1: room is going to go off. Alexa play rock tracks
Speaker 1: from nineteen. It can do that so on other services
Speaker 1: where the playlists already has to exist. List here it
Speaker 1: is making the playlist on the fly. I like to
Speaker 1: I like when you when he said play sad songs,
Speaker 1: sad rock songs from x Y specific. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this sounds complicated, but if you're in
Speaker 1: the ecosystem, it's not. If you have Amazon Prime, which
Speaker 1: over a hundred million people have, and you have an
Speaker 1: electa device, you can you have music built in. It's
Speaker 1: just you can't call out the specific track. And if
Speaker 1: you pay three echo you can call out the specific track.
Speaker 1: And if you pay ten bucks a month, you can
Speaker 1: have an app, just like Apple Music and Spotify, and
Speaker 1: I have all those apps. And I noticed in the
Speaker 1: past week that Spotify went to voice control, but Amazon
Speaker 1: has electra control on their app on the phone. So
Speaker 1: I'm there with the engineer from Amazon Music and I say,
Speaker 1: he says, play happy fun music from the sixties, and
Speaker 1: it did. So then I say, play the pressed songs
Speaker 1: from the eighties and and then of course you know,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to tell Morrissey. It was just
Speaker 1: a list. But the funny thing was two things. You're
Speaker 1: not say ALEXA to the app. You can just say it,
Speaker 1: and although you push the button and you can see
Speaker 1: the little circles, you know it's ready. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is it said, you know, I forget the exact lingo.
Speaker 1: What it does you know, Sorry, we don't have that yet,
Speaker 1: and he said, say depressing. Then it came up and
Speaker 1: not depressed. They're still working, but they're doing all these things.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have not heard that Apple and the
Speaker 1: Amazon are doing. But just last night for this morning,
Speaker 1: I got this song stuck in my head and I
Speaker 1: called out to the Echo show to play it, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, how I've listened to that song a
Speaker 1: lot recently. It's an old song called back where I've
Speaker 1: Come From by mac Mcinally there's a famous hit version
Speaker 1: by Kenny Chesney. I even liked the live version even better.
Speaker 1: And so I've listened a lot on Disraeli, which is
Speaker 1: you know, CD quality, And so I'm listening on the
Speaker 1: Echo and a good enough for me even though I
Speaker 1: have all the high end equipment. It's just amazing. It's
Speaker 1: just the convenience of it, like you're already there and okay,
Speaker 1: so let's let's talk about because you and I have
Speaker 1: had this conversation a couple of times and and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not sure what my stances on it yet,
Speaker 1: but i'd like to get your opinion on it. Is
Speaker 1: the only one that offers a free tier is Spotify,
Speaker 1: and Spotify is the predominant um streaming service right now
Speaker 1: and half of their half of their subscribers are free tier.
Speaker 1: So do you think, first of all, that's skewing the
Speaker 1: data data on on the most streams. So no, I
Speaker 1: mean at this point in time, they just released their
Speaker 1: numbers a couple of days ago and they added four
Speaker 1: million subscribers since they paid or free paid. So the
Speaker 1: paid subscribers as we speak here is bubbling under eighty
Speaker 1: million that's paid, whereas Apple has forty million and Amazon
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you, so there's another fifty plus million there
Speaker 1: were free, but they break it down. No, but there
Speaker 1: I think as many free on Spotify as there is.
Speaker 1: There may be, but I thought I read like hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty millions. I don't know. But the thing is
Speaker 1: they're the only ones that offer free and now they've
Speaker 1: they've they've done all these upgrades to the to the
Speaker 1: mobile app to allow you more access on the free
Speaker 1: tier than they did before. So is the movement because
Speaker 1: they've gone public to go to drive more revenue on
Speaker 1: the ad side, or they trying to get more conversion.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're obviously conversion. There's a lot of issues.
Speaker 1: They're starting with the ad side. Historically, the ad side
Speaker 1: has not generated that much revenue. One might argue that
Speaker 1: they're not sophisticated enough in that area. Spotify, and they're
Speaker 1: making progress. Let's go back to the history of Spotify.
Speaker 1: When Spotify originally came to this country, even when it
Speaker 1: was in other countries, it was free on the desktop
Speaker 1: and you had to pay on the mobile. Correct. And
Speaker 1: I try to be fear in my assessments. I haven't
Speaker 1: written any songs. I'm not getting paid at all. I
Speaker 1: don't have the stock at any of these companies. But
Speaker 1: that seemed a fair demarcation. And then Daniel X said
Speaker 1: it was going they were gonna have a free tier
Speaker 1: on the mobile device. That seemed to step over the
Speaker 1: line to me, but he showed me the statistics that
Speaker 1: it caused conversion. Okay, which is the ultimate goal. Going
Speaker 1: back to the beginning more, let me stay there. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: have to go back in time. One cannot forget how
Speaker 1: big a problem piracy was before Spotify, and the free
Speaker 1: tier essentially eradicates piracy. Is Michael Eisner one said ten
Speaker 1: percent of the people will never pay forget about that
Speaker 1: ten percent, But other people because I can venience, they
Speaker 1: won't do that. So this is pretty much eradicated piracy
Speaker 1: along with YouTube. And I believe the free tier Spotify
Speaker 1: would have had even greater penetration if it had launched
Speaker 1: two years previous when it did in America. It didn't
Speaker 1: launch the two thousand eleven and wanted to launch earlier,
Speaker 1: but one of the major companies would not get on board,
Speaker 1: and it was in that window that YouTube became so
Speaker 1: popular for music. However, at this point in time, a
Speaker 1: lot of tracks have more streams on Spotify than they
Speaker 1: do on YouTube. But if you go now, so what
Speaker 1: people don't realize is the free tier on Spotify is hobbled.
Speaker 1: You can't go in and pick one track. You might
Speaker 1: be able to pick an album, you might be able
Speaker 1: to pick a playlist. It's ultimately frustrating. So you have
Speaker 1: the ability, but it's also an incentive to pay well.
Speaker 1: This announcement recently about enhanced free tier stuff, I mean
Speaker 1: on the mobile. I think at the conference Troy put
Speaker 1: it well, they want to personalize as such, the you
Speaker 1: feel welcome, so that when you turn on the app,
Speaker 1: the songs and the identity you have you want to
Speaker 1: hear this is deep into the Spotify ecosystem, which most
Speaker 1: people are aware of this point, but having brought a company,
Speaker 1: I think it's driven by the echo nest. Every week
Speaker 1: they put out these personalized playlists, and they want the
Speaker 1: people who are non paying customers get a taste of
Speaker 1: that so they'll feel comfortab when they want to pay.
Speaker 1: You know, we can't say what the results are of
Speaker 1: this latest change because it's too new, but everything they
Speaker 1: have done has increased conversion. It's just like Steve Boom
Speaker 1: talking about Amazon. Once they get people using the product
Speaker 1: and they hit up against the wall, they then pay well.
Speaker 1: But their first earnings came out Spotify, and everyone took
Speaker 1: a look at it and to stop drop ten that day,
Speaker 1: And I think partially because now everyone's seeing how this
Speaker 1: company's run and they're still losing losing money. Now revenues up,
Speaker 1: but they're still losing money. And you know, and you've
Speaker 1: written about this, that the more subscribers they get because
Speaker 1: of the payout, the more money they lose. And and
Speaker 1: I guess we even had to talk about it in
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara. At what point does that turn? What's the
Speaker 1: line where they go from paid subscribers actually pay for
Speaker 1: the business to run or or or is are they
Speaker 1: getting so big that eventually they're gonna have way more
Speaker 1: leverage with the labels and the label they're gonna end
Speaker 1: up paying less because the labels are gonna need them
Speaker 1: more than ever. You've got a lot of things going
Speaker 1: on there. Let's start with Uh. The issue is that
Speaker 1: if you listen to Spotify, they are in a lost
Speaker 1: position because they're investing so much in growth. That is
Speaker 1: a kin to Netflix, Okay, because you want to double
Speaker 1: down now to win the war at the end, and
Speaker 1: there's certainly a war and streaming although an Amazon did
Speaker 1: that too exactly and then but in the sales earnings call,
Speaker 1: Daniel lex said it was not a zero sum game.
Speaker 1: I don't really agree with him. I believe one force
Speaker 1: will one of the streaming services will be dominant. Your
Speaker 1: point about scale is a huge one. The more people subscribe,
Speaker 1: the more costs go up. That is why I believe
Speaker 1: that Spotify is best as part of another company. Who
Speaker 1: might that company be? Amazon does not have a long
Speaker 1: history of buying other companies. Apple should have bought Spotify
Speaker 1: long ago. The only one who can really afford it
Speaker 1: is Google, and Google has had one after another non
Speaker 1: starting streaming services. They're just starting a new one that
Speaker 1: they will always talk about the telcost with telcos have
Speaker 1: hit a wall. I don't really see that now. The
Speaker 1: other thing they have said in the investor Day and
Speaker 1: Troy did say in Santa Barbara, okay, if you follow this, uh,
Speaker 1: when Spotify launch, essentially seventy page really sixty nine points
Speaker 1: something of revenues went to rights soldiers in renegotiations over
Speaker 1: the last two years, most of them were completed about
Speaker 1: a year ago. UM, they have lowered the percentage they
Speaker 1: pay to the labels. They labels are agreeing to that
Speaker 1: because they want Spotify to succeed. As we've seen in
Speaker 1: the last two years. At this point, the majority of
Speaker 1: revenue comes from streaming services. So if you hurt your
Speaker 1: number one distributor in trouble now, Spotify will also say
Speaker 1: they will gain advantage by being such a large distributor.
Speaker 1: Just like anybody, whether it be Best Buyer, Amazon or Walmart,
Speaker 1: you can drive down costs because of your volume. But
Speaker 1: baked into all the statements is they put it in English.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily say in English. I don't mean not
Speaker 1: in Swedish, but in a comprehensible fashion. They are anticipate
Speaker 1: painting there will be a growth of independent unaffiliated acts.
Speaker 1: Those acts get all of the revenue. So if you
Speaker 1: sign a deal with a major label of the sixty
Speaker 1: odd percent, you might be getting ten, which is on
Speaker 1: a dollar six cents. So are you well, let me
Speaker 1: let me just fens one second. Whereas if you're an
Speaker 1: independent act, you're essentially getting all sixty. You know, you
Speaker 1: have to pay a small fee of tune Core CD
Speaker 1: baby to get up there an aggregator, right, but they want,
Speaker 1: they expect and they want to drive more of that
Speaker 1: business and pay them less. They haven't made it a
Speaker 1: put on an exact number. Whereas right now they're paying
Speaker 1: sixty percent to the independent act. They'd like to pay
Speaker 1: less of that, increasing their margin, and they are thinking
Speaker 1: there's going to be more chance the rapper type acts.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree. I think that's that's already starting to happen.
Speaker 1: You're seeing that all the time. There's tons of people
Speaker 1: like me who are working with with young bands who
Speaker 1: don't want to do a deal or don't think the
Speaker 1: deal is to right time because there's no leverage and
Speaker 1: we're able to get our stuff out there and hiring.
Speaker 1: But if they're paying you sixty five now and they
Speaker 1: start paying you sixty, which is huge on their end,
Speaker 1: I don't think you're gonna be freaking out. Probably not.
Speaker 1: But as I say, so, that's all the margin they
Speaker 1: have to deal with. As I say, five percent on
Speaker 1: their end is gigantius right right now. And I agree,
Speaker 1: But I also think that that um so, maybe there's
Speaker 1: an argument that says we should all be investing in
Speaker 1: the CD babies and the aggregators because you know, if
Speaker 1: the independence is moving in that direction. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of someone I know sent out an
Speaker 1: email to a list of other managers um and said
Speaker 1: I'm about to do something digital. Who's who's your best
Speaker 1: digital distributor? And every single one of us on the list,
Speaker 1: it was ten of us responded and we all named
Speaker 1: a different company. Yeah, that's also a business doesn't scale
Speaker 1: that well. I mean, it's just distribution and it's a
Speaker 1: small piece. And say, but you know, don't if those
Speaker 1: people don't know. With aggregators, they charge at one time
Speaker 1: fee or an the annual fee as opposed to the
Speaker 1: number of times there are some that charge of Some
Speaker 1: of those offer more services though, so they offer they
Speaker 1: charge a percentage, and then maybe they'll offer some marketing
Speaker 1: or whatever. But most of them, you're right, it's a
Speaker 1: flat fee and it's an easy access and they get
Speaker 1: it up fast. You used to Ingestion used to take forever,
Speaker 1: you know, when you were with the label, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: we need all the metadata three months in advance, and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. Now you go on to
Speaker 1: c D Baby or tune Car and it's like in
Speaker 1: two weeks, less than two weeks, I've had stuff up
Speaker 1: in five days. Well, I had this experience last week.
Speaker 1: I was writing about an album, Open Skies, which came
Speaker 1: out r c A, was not on any streaming service.
Speaker 1: You know. Two days later, somebody emails me it's on
Speaker 1: Apple Music. You know. It just just blew my mind.
Speaker 1: And then I heard from the label they added it
Speaker 1: just that fast. Well, it's it's interesting you say that,
Speaker 1: because I was looking for a record the other day
Speaker 1: on Spotify and on Deezer and it wasn't on either
Speaker 1: of them. What record was it? Mad Man Across the Water?
Speaker 1: I could not find it on Spotify, and there it
Speaker 1: was on Apple Music. Unfortunately, when you can't find something,
Speaker 1: especially on Spotify, the search is not fantastic, and maybe
Speaker 1: that was you have to search in a different way.
Speaker 1: I've had this happen again and again. I have this
Speaker 1: happen with open Skies on Apple. Somebody send me the link.
Speaker 1: I click the link. I could listen on Apple, okay,
Speaker 1: but if I searched on Apple, it wasn't there. Well,
Speaker 1: I searched on Spotify and and every other out in
Speaker 1: John record was there. And in fact, they had the
Speaker 1: track Madman Across the Water on another record. Well, I
Speaker 1: might say, without pulling my Modify, without pull him up
Speaker 1: my device. Right now, I think that's probably a search issue.
Speaker 1: I run into that all the time. Where did I
Speaker 1: search on a track and I don't get it? Searching
Speaker 1: on the band's name, I don't get it. And then
Speaker 1: I put the two together. It's is. It's better than
Speaker 1: it used to be, but it ain't perfect. But it
Speaker 1: was right there on Apple Music. It was. It was
Speaker 1: a weird to Apple Music. The other thing that they're
Speaker 1: doing is they've just rolled out in beta the Apple
Speaker 1: Music for Artists, which is what Spotify has had for
Speaker 1: a while. That is a data program just just for
Speaker 1: the audience is not that sophisticated. So so one of
Speaker 1: the bigger complaints that the business side had, the artists
Speaker 1: and the labels, was that Spotify was wonderful in supplying
Speaker 1: us with back end data. And it was the agents
Speaker 1: love that you could see where your spins, where you
Speaker 1: could look at the different markets city by city, country
Speaker 1: by country, You could look in the twenty four hour basis,
Speaker 1: a seven day basis, a twenty eight day basis, and
Speaker 1: a since inception basis, and you could get all this
Speaker 1: information from them. Apple gave you no information. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the reasons that the labels were really,
Speaker 1: you know, gearing towards Spotify so much, is because they
Speaker 1: were providing back marketing data that that everyone could use.
Speaker 1: Apples decided um, and I think I saw it at
Speaker 1: Pole Star. In fact, was the last time I was
Speaker 1: here where Apples said they were going to roll it
Speaker 1: out in April, and now they were going it out
Speaker 1: in data for artists to be able to access their data,
Speaker 1: and the labels are going to be able to access
Speaker 1: the data, which Apple never gave us before ever. On
Speaker 1: sales on CD sales or downloads of of albums and
Speaker 1: we never got that information. They would report it to
Speaker 1: sound scan and you could sort of extrapulate it at
Speaker 1: a sound scan, but you couldn't get that granular, granular
Speaker 1: data that Spotify has, and I think they're trying. They're
Speaker 1: basically saying, Okay, if we're gonna play this game, the
Speaker 1: streaming game, and work with our partners, meaning the people
Speaker 1: that are supplying us the content, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: uh start supplying the data and uh we'll see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I it's funny because they gave me, uh for for
Speaker 1: my tune two acts. They gave me uh log in,
Speaker 1: and I logged in and looked at everything and nothing
Speaker 1: came up. It was like page So it's still in
Speaker 1: data and it'll probably they're probably working all the bugs out,
Speaker 1: but when that data starts to come through, it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1: On another note, Um, there was a bit of discussion
Speaker 1: about it. I forget who you were talking to. Wasn't Boom.
Speaker 1: You were talking to Boom about this, Steve Boom about
Speaker 1: how different genres are doing different services. That's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1: The manager of Garth Brooks was at the conference, and
Speaker 1: I know him, and I've previously discussed you know why
Speaker 1: is in Garth brook On Garth Brooks on other streaming
Speaker 1: services and they have an overall deal with the Amazon
Speaker 1: which benefits Garth and Garth has been on the road
Speaker 1: and uh, but they alerted me to the number of
Speaker 1: streams they were getting. And then it begs the question
Speaker 1: what is the audience for these varying services? Once again,
Speaker 1: there's a free if you have Prime, there's essentially a
Speaker 1: free tier for Amazon, so certainly prior to Apple Music's
Speaker 1: getting the king for Prime. Yeah, but it's it doesn't feel,
Speaker 1: you know, the old cliche, doesn't feel like you're pick okay,
Speaker 1: And is Spotify for at one point early adopters in
Speaker 1: hardcore music fans and as Steve mentioned, you know all
Speaker 1: as we sit here, he didn't say that hip hop
Speaker 1: was strong there, but a lot of other genres are
Speaker 1: much stronger on Amazon. That's an interesting question. Is it
Speaker 1: a self selecting slice of the populace? It is a
Speaker 1: is it a better representation of the populace. I don't
Speaker 1: really know, but I do know we are going to
Speaker 1: an era where all your music will be voice controlled
Speaker 1: and they are the leaders on this now The interesting
Speaker 1: thing is they do not have a closed door policy
Speaker 1: like Apple. If you have an Echo, you can make
Speaker 1: Spotify the default service. It doesn't have to be Amazon Music, okay,
Speaker 1: And they allow Sonos to bake in the Alexa chip
Speaker 1: into their one product. I mean that's the son has
Speaker 1: a speaker there, they have they have a speaker right,
Speaker 1: and Apples coming out with their speaker Apple speakers here,
Speaker 1: but it does not work with any other music format
Speaker 1: other than Apple Music. Now. Uh so nos wants to
Speaker 1: be flatform independent, and they will also get to the
Speaker 1: point where they'll speak with Apple Music, but the services don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, it ultimately comes down to who's got the
Speaker 1: most stuff. We get an email every Friday if you
Speaker 1: have an Alexa talking about all the new things that
Speaker 1: you can say or ask ask Alexa. Whereas I don't
Speaker 1: use Syria on my phone. Do you use Siri? I
Speaker 1: have by have friends that use it when you when
Speaker 1: they're driving. Right, it's just too inaccurate. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to retype every email. And everyone who's got
Speaker 1: a home pod says the same thing. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot of reviews of the home Pod. The initial reviews
Speaker 1: of the home pod said it was the best device.
Speaker 1: Then there were issues of weather in terms of audio quality.
Speaker 1: Then there were issues of what was the test set up,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people read other tests where they
Speaker 1: said the Sons product, which is significantly cheaper, UH, sounded better.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that, you know, none of these
Speaker 1: devices sound so good. It's not like a BMW Zeppelin
Speaker 1: or anything. No one's gonna pay that price. I think
Speaker 1: Apple has missed the market here. I always go back
Speaker 1: to the UH, the example of the nineties when a
Speaker 1: well was burgeoning. Microsoft said they were gonna have a
Speaker 1: new product call the MSN network, and everyone said, oh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna come kill a O L didn't at all.
Speaker 1: So Apple where it's been late to the market, certainly
Speaker 1: with products that are not significantly better, also at a
Speaker 1: higher price, they're nonstarters. Well, I don't think you know,
Speaker 1: you talked about who would buy Spotify. I don't think
Speaker 1: Apple will ever will because because I don't think, I
Speaker 1: don't think, and I trust certainly in Europel. I also
Speaker 1: think that you know, in light of you know how
Speaker 1: they operate. You know, Spotify operates where everyone has can
Speaker 1: can access Spotify, So nos controller, all of those other things.
Speaker 1: If Apple gets to the point where they buy Spotify
Speaker 1: and try and mold you know, blend it in with
Speaker 1: and folded into Apple Music, They're gonna have subscribers. But
Speaker 1: because the way they operate, where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: everything has to be through Apple, it would hurt them,
Speaker 1: I think. I don't think they get the benefit of
Speaker 1: it the same way. I'm not exactly sure where you're going,
Speaker 1: But at this point in time, if a pre existing
Speaker 1: service were to buy Spotify, it would be less for
Speaker 1: technology and more for the raw subscribers. Would it would
Speaker 1: be strictly for the subscribers, you know. Um, but let's
Speaker 1: go back to Santa Barbara for a second. Um do
Speaker 1: you think that, um that Real Networks? I mean I
Speaker 1: use Neil Real Networks sometimes because I'm have a PC,
Speaker 1: a desktop PC, but everything else I have as Apple. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know where that's going. Like, what what is
Speaker 1: the for those people who have not listened to Rob
Speaker 1: Glazer's podcast? Uh, you know, yes, he admits in the
Speaker 1: late nineties, Uh, real Player was the default player on
Speaker 1: audio and video for your desktop computer. They were ultimately
Speaker 1: undercut by Microsoft and Apple and ultimately Adobe et cetera
Speaker 1: now and we're going to a new generation. But he
Speaker 1: did say they have a very strong presence in China
Speaker 1: and they do have other products. Okay, So to sit
Speaker 1: here and evaluate the value and the road map of
Speaker 1: real networks, I don't think I'm qualified without having Robb
Speaker 1: here to literally say every product, which I knew you
Speaker 1: were gonna say, which is why I'm gonna let's talk
Speaker 1: about China. Okay. I knew you were gonna talk. I
Speaker 1: knew you were going to mention and I actually sent
Speaker 1: you an email today about the biggest app being downloaded
Speaker 1: off the app store form, which is a music driven
Speaker 1: app called TikTok is that what it's called. And that's China,
Speaker 1: and and it's it's got more downloads off the App
Speaker 1: Store than any other app. And it's a music based app,
Speaker 1: music and video based app. And that's the company that
Speaker 1: owns that is the same company that bought Musically And
Speaker 1: so are we all just pretending right now that they're
Speaker 1: all gonna be this dominant, But you know this one's
Speaker 1: gonna be dominant in Amazon is gonna be dominant, and
Speaker 1: then someone from China is just gonna come in and
Speaker 1: just just gonna be this tidal wave, excuse the pun,
Speaker 1: that's gonna just take it all over at some point.
Speaker 1: This is a much larger issue. You know, you have
Speaker 1: the benefit of living in Canada, but we have turmoil
Speaker 1: in the United States. And I was watching Bill Maher
Speaker 1: show on HBO last night and they were discussing the
Speaker 1: fact that Germany is the most respect acted country in
Speaker 1: the world right now. We can argue about that, but
Speaker 1: what do we know about China. China makes all our products.
Speaker 1: If you've got an Apple, aptops made in China, maybe
Speaker 1: made in Taiwan. Is most of the clothes you're wearing.
Speaker 1: And they have a vast population. And if you look
Speaker 1: at what's going on and the days of dominance in
Speaker 1: the United States seem to be in the rear view mirror, okay,
Speaker 1: and we don't attack the underlying problems. Yes, we have
Speaker 1: innovation in Silicon Valley and it's about intellectual property. By
Speaker 1: the same token, we have visa issues where we don't
Speaker 1: allow foreign engineers to come here and live such that
Speaker 1: India is becoming a hotbed of technology. Uh, innovation. This
Speaker 1: is dangerous stuff to talk about in America, especially since
Speaker 1: the culture changed. Are you saying we can't talk about
Speaker 1: this today. No no, no, no no, we can definitely
Speaker 1: talk No. Nine with the Iranian says bom bomb I ran.
Speaker 1: Now it's like the sixties, but it's flipped. Are you
Speaker 1: with us or you against us? So we have a
Speaker 1: great divide in America economically and people wanting to jet
Speaker 1: back to a past that doesn't exist, whereas China is
Speaker 1: all about pushing the envelope of the future. So the
Speaker 1: question is is they're gonna be a music service coming
Speaker 1: in there is? I mean this did come up. John
Speaker 1: Boil did bring this up. But if you've been following
Speaker 1: ten Cent, which is the biggest music service, ten percent
Speaker 1: of off Spotify, they that is on the verge of
Speaker 1: going public and evaluation approximately the same as Spotify. That
Speaker 1: is something to watch for. That is not a short
Speaker 1: term thing. It's like Ali Baba versus Amazon. Okay, Ali
Speaker 1: Baba when public, Ali Baba is much vaster than Amazon,
Speaker 1: although Amazon makes a very significant proportion of their profits
Speaker 1: from their web services division, which is not something they're
Speaker 1: selling to the you know, not something the average cloud
Speaker 1: stories and uh, this is going to play out. I
Speaker 1: mean you have to ask Americans Okay, are you willing
Speaker 1: to pay more for a flat screen? Okay, so at
Speaker 1: this point in time, because if terrorists they're talking ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen dollars to fIF no hanging here, hanging fifty
Speaker 1: dollars more for American I'm just talking in general the
Speaker 1: American mentality, which then impacts Spotify to the point being,
Speaker 1: are we going to play for the future. It is
Speaker 1: a globally economy, and therefore if we pull back from
Speaker 1: a global economy, it's only going to hurt us. One
Speaker 1: of the benefits of Spotify and one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why they've been in a negative position all these years,
Speaker 1: and Daniel like has told me, is they're so busy
Speaker 1: investing around the world at this point in time. China
Speaker 1: is still dealing with piracy. Okay, for a long time.
Speaker 1: China is the new performance market. We're all gonna go
Speaker 1: to China. Then the government seemed to crack down on
Speaker 1: what could be sung and needing playlists in advance, and
Speaker 1: people kind of backed off from that, just like investment
Speaker 1: from China. Okay, they were they were gonna be sales
Speaker 1: of movie theaters. Now China said no. So China maybe
Speaker 1: a self contained market with a vast population. But whether
Speaker 1: ten cents or Ali Baba expand to the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, I'm not sure that's going to happen. Well,
Speaker 1: and remember no I said it earlier while you were talking.
Speaker 1: But you know, Spotify is a Swedish company. It's not
Speaker 1: an American company. So you want to talk about um,
Speaker 1: you know, American companies and and you know, you know what,
Speaker 1: what's happening in America that's not an American company. And
Speaker 1: then wait a second. It was in a lot of
Speaker 1: other markets before it came into the United Eights. Like
Speaker 1: I was dealing with Spotify in the UK and in
Speaker 1: Europe with clients before it was even launched in the
Speaker 1: United stuff. But they listed in on the stock market
Speaker 1: in New York. So yes, there's still the majority of
Speaker 1: technological innovation in the United States, but it's not the
Speaker 1: only place, right So back to Glacier. Maybe he knows
Speaker 1: something we don't know. Maybe there's something going on where
Speaker 1: but China. You know, this is like you talked to
Speaker 1: certain acts. It is not glamorous to go to a
Speaker 1: lot of these countries, but it pays huge economic dividends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had a client. I had a client go to China.
Speaker 1: He was fortunate because they asked for lyrics and he did.
Speaker 1: He did instrumental music, so he had no issues with lyrics. Um.
Speaker 1: And he had a great time and he said the
Speaker 1: audiences were amazing, like amazing um. And you know, but
Speaker 1: you know, forgetting China, which is a market onto itself,
Speaker 1: just going to Europe, Okay, it's costly South America and
Speaker 1: you have to go multiple times to establish a beach
Speaker 1: chat it you can say it's costly, Okay. The difference
Speaker 1: between you know, okay, let's look at geography. You live
Speaker 1: in New York or Toronto where I live on the
Speaker 1: East Coast. You know, it's takes almost as long to
Speaker 1: fly to l A as it does to London. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: so once you're there, then touring through Europe, you can
Speaker 1: go to a lot of countries the same as you
Speaker 1: can tour America. And so the the initial cost is
Speaker 1: the flight, but after that the concert. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not cheaper, it's I wouldn't say it's cheaper, but
Speaker 1: you're also earning euros as opposed to you know, you
Speaker 1: you're more familiar with this. I certainly know talking to
Speaker 1: major acts that they talk about the cost relative to
Speaker 1: income that you can take home is less, but that's
Speaker 1: also there's a human cost. The act actually has to
Speaker 1: go there, Okay, and especially when you're an established act
Speaker 1: in America, we're already too busy with your recording, live dates, etcetera.
Speaker 1: To go develop these markets where you're essentially nobody is.
Speaker 1: Although now because of these worldwide services you can have
Speaker 1: a greater chance, but you're really building from a small base.
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't want to do it well,
Speaker 1: but you're always building from a small base. And the
Speaker 1: fact is is what happens is is a lot of
Speaker 1: them don't want to do it because they're fucking lazy.
Speaker 1: And here's what happens is they forgot that if you
Speaker 1: were a band from upstate New York, you worked Rochester
Speaker 1: and Buffalo and Albany and in those places, and then
Speaker 1: you gradually spread your base out and then you were
Speaker 1: a Northeast band, and then you were a Northeast and
Speaker 1: a Southeast band, and then you moved into the Midwest,
Speaker 1: and gradually you work your way across the country. And
Speaker 1: if you did it right, it took you a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time to get there. It's no different than
Speaker 1: the manager. We're not sitting here the act. You have
Speaker 1: to convince the act. I mean, I I know, And
Speaker 1: let me tell you something. I had plenty of acts
Speaker 1: that said they'd rather be in Brussels then in cans
Speaker 1: A city. And anybody who's gone to Europe and spend
Speaker 1: time in some of the most beautiful places in the
Speaker 1: world and culture and people and how how people, how
Speaker 1: people love music there and it's way different than sort
Speaker 1: of this. It's it's not necessarily the glam thing. But
Speaker 1: when you go to those places and you experience that
Speaker 1: kind of life, at some point you say, well, I'd
Speaker 1: much rather build my audience in Europe than than go
Speaker 1: through certain parts of Well you're not. You're although you're
Speaker 1: a dual passport holder holder, you're living in Toronto with
Speaker 1: a much more worldwide view. You're listening to my conversation
Speaker 1: with Jake Gold, manager The Tragically Him and former judge
Speaker 1: on Canadian Idol, recorded live in the tune in studios
Speaker 1: in Venice, California. I hope you're enjoying listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want
Speaker 1: to hear sound bites, you check out videos and photos
Speaker 1: of our guests go to at tune in on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Now more of Jake Gold as we discussed
Speaker 1: the music industry today on the Bob Left Sets podcast. Okay,
Speaker 1: before we get to the end, any more things you
Speaker 1: want to bring up about Santa Barbara? Well, um, did
Speaker 1: you did you feel that you got to ask all
Speaker 1: the questions that you wanted to evolved a lot of
Speaker 1: these people. These interviews were very lengthy, but I still
Speaker 1: had questions, not because I was afraid to ask him,
Speaker 1: but just because you can't ask everybody everything. It's very important.
Speaker 1: Give me give me a question for each of them
Speaker 1: that you oh god, I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go through each of them, but give me give me
Speaker 1: a couple that you felt. I mean, I really don't,
Speaker 1: just because I don't want to tax my brain at
Speaker 1: this particular point, because I don't think the information will
Speaker 1: be that relevant when you get down deep into the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole. The most of the questions I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask these people were more technical questions. I don't mean
Speaker 1: literally technology, but they're enterprises. How do things work? They
Speaker 1: talk and you get stimulated and go, okay, well, if
Speaker 1: I'm in this situation, what about this and one of
Speaker 1: the number as opposed to the essence. I believe I
Speaker 1: got to the essence of all these people. I think
Speaker 1: you got to the essence of all the people. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what I missed. Okay, what I missed is
Speaker 1: um and less less the Steve and Rob, but more Daniel,
Speaker 1: Ethiopia and Troy is the now. It's like, you know, Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna launch an act today, what's your what
Speaker 1: do you do? How do you roll it out? What
Speaker 1: do you do? Saying with Daniel, what are you looking for?
Speaker 1: He touched on it here and there what we try
Speaker 1: to build with these players, But there wasn't any kind
Speaker 1: of if I'm gonna launch an act today, these are
Speaker 1: the steps we take. These are the people on the
Speaker 1: team that I think are the most important. UM questions
Speaker 1: like how important is pressed these days? Is it that important?
Speaker 1: Are the blogs more important than the press? Are blogs?
Speaker 1: You know? I read a piece the other day that said,
Speaker 1: you know, blogs are less important than ever because the
Speaker 1: playlists are the new blogs. Um, those are the kind
Speaker 1: of things I think all those are excellent questions. I
Speaker 1: wanted I wanted to learn those kinds of things and
Speaker 1: then when it came time to ask the questions, and
Speaker 1: you know, I asked a question to every single one
Speaker 1: of them because I'm definitely not shy um uh. When
Speaker 1: I was asking those questions, there was I could have
Speaker 1: sat there and asked them five more questions, um. But
Speaker 1: nobody asked those questions in the room. Nobody asked like, well,
Speaker 1: how are you going to roll an act out today?
Speaker 1: When I asked Ethiopia about would you rather have an
Speaker 1: act like um, a logic that's already something happening, or
Speaker 1: a chance to rapper then starting from scratch, she didn't
Speaker 1: really give me a good answer. I think she said, well,
Speaker 1: it would be good to have both like it was.
Speaker 1: That also usually depends on economics. You know, sometimes the
Speaker 1: acts already established, they want deals. But on the side,
Speaker 1: when I was talking to Daniel about a couple of
Speaker 1: acts out there that we're indie that we're now being
Speaker 1: trying to be signed, he mentioned me, he goes, now
Speaker 1: there's bidding wars for those acts, and he goes and
Speaker 1: some of them have gone up to like six and
Speaker 1: eight and ten million and fifteen million dollar deals. Now
Speaker 1: he said, the bidding wars are back in again because
Speaker 1: of the ability for artists to do it on their
Speaker 1: own now, which is a really interesting dynamic, very much so.
Speaker 1: But the other thing about it is it is harder
Speaker 1: to break an act than ever. So Daniel touched upon
Speaker 1: this in his presentation. We've discussed it previously. If the
Speaker 1: act delivers a record without a hit, and I don't
Speaker 1: mean a hit that's necessarily something's gonna run up the
Speaker 1: top forty chart, but something that's reacting in the marketplace.
Speaker 1: If they don't give him something to work with, he
Speaker 1: sends them back to the studio, and if it gets
Speaker 1: to the point where the act is frustrated, he says,
Speaker 1: you can walk. I'll release you because it's so much
Speaker 1: effort on behalf of my team that I cannot work
Speaker 1: with something that won't make it right. So everyone needs
Speaker 1: needs that one track, that um is a traveler that
Speaker 1: travels the world on their behalf without them and that.
Speaker 1: But it hasn't that always been the case, hasn't it been? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that band is one hit away from being huge, wasn't
Speaker 1: That wasn't the used to in the eighties and the nineties,
Speaker 1: in the seventies, you know, But the problem is before
Speaker 1: they had that one track. They were somewhere now before
Speaker 1: that one track, they're kind of nowhere, yes and no,
Speaker 1: yes and no. I I think nowhere is a is
Speaker 1: a relative term. You know, you live in Canada. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of benefits of Canada. Less population makes it
Speaker 1: easier to spread than the thing you have to We
Speaker 1: have a huge country. No I'm talking about in terms
Speaker 1: of mind share. You have government help in the radio
Speaker 1: and production whatever. That gives a leg of some size up,
Speaker 1: whereas in the country of three hundred million in America,
Speaker 1: we have none of that government help. Radio is harder
Speaker 1: than ever to get on. It is very hard to
Speaker 1: get started. It's really hard to get on the radio,
Speaker 1: and Canada these days as hard as anything. And they're
Speaker 1: all looking to see how you're doing on the streaming
Speaker 1: services before they take a shot. So now it's like
Speaker 1: like they're set. You've said it many times where their
Speaker 1: second Now they're looking at the streaming services because that's
Speaker 1: their new call out research. They don't need to do
Speaker 1: call a research anymore, you know, And Chris Ruth said
Speaker 1: this in the Logic podcast. You know, the Logic was
Speaker 1: on the Grammy Awards and there was no bounce on
Speaker 1: streaming services, the audiences on streaming, and it would behoove
Speaker 1: radio to get closer in time. That's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's killing it. Who wants to listen to four
Speaker 1: month old music? I don't think. But that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think there would be a bounce on the
Speaker 1: streaming services after um because most of the people have
Speaker 1: already heard the songs that used to be. If you
Speaker 1: play the Grammys, you got a big thing. You've got
Speaker 1: a sales bounce. But streaming is not the same. And
Speaker 1: that's a stream is it's a different thing because the
Speaker 1: stuffs available. So any other topics we haven't covered, I see,
Speaker 1: I think we're pretty good. I mean, anything you want
Speaker 1: to talk about that happened there that you felt there
Speaker 1: was the social aspect that had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the speakers, which is, you know, in a world where
Speaker 1: we can communicate so easily on our devices, people underestimate
Speaker 1: face to face contact. And one thing I knew describe
Speaker 1: interviewing these people, a couple of whom I'd only met briefly,
Speaker 1: and uh that you have a preconception who people are
Speaker 1: and then you start talking to they're really somebody different.
Speaker 1: And how many, and I think all of them though
Speaker 1: was a pleasant surprise. Everybody certainly was was good some
Speaker 1: of them. You know, as I as I say, you
Speaker 1: know Rob Glazer, you talked to him for about a
Speaker 1: minute and a half to say, this is a really
Speaker 1: smart guy person and you don't talk to Ethiopia along
Speaker 1: to be in transpire personality. One of the things she said,
Speaker 1: if you know, we talked about the me too moment
Speaker 1: shows if a guy you know starts uh pushing the hope,
Speaker 1: she checks them. And I had to say this, she
Speaker 1: knows how to be sass. It was funny when she
Speaker 1: was talking about that time where they're in the hotel
Speaker 1: room and she started taking all the knives and putting
Speaker 1: them underneath the pillows just in case, like she's she's
Speaker 1: a listening to. Really impressive. Thirty eight years old, already
Speaker 1: been the president of Motown for four years. Um so
Speaker 1: at thirty four years old being the president of Motown Records,
Speaker 1: I always wonder where something like that is going now.
Speaker 1: She very much comes from the creative side. While she
Speaker 1: was a publisher for a long time, write Jody Gerson
Speaker 1: came from the creative side. She's now ahead of Universal
Speaker 1: Music publishing, but you you wonder what the next role
Speaker 1: is for Ethiopia. You know, they're famous people going back
Speaker 1: in history. John kalodn Are one of the most famous
Speaker 1: A and R people, never wanted to be a president.
Speaker 1: One of his contemporaries, Gary Gersh now works at a
Speaker 1: G in the promotion game, but he wanted to be president.
Speaker 1: Became president of Capital Records. So I got into a
Speaker 1: little bit that with the Ethiopia we didn't really uh
Speaker 1: plummet too great depths. But you know, what is the
Speaker 1: upward mobility? Begging the question less about Ethiopia than women
Speaker 1: in general in that what is the upward mobility of
Speaker 1: the path for women in the music business which has
Speaker 1: traditionally been a male dominated business with rough edges. Well,
Speaker 1: we touched on that the last time, and I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know if we need to go there again.
Speaker 1: Um not that I don't want to go there. I
Speaker 1: just think we already kind of touched on that. And
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we know that there's big movements
Speaker 1: in Canada. There's these fifty fifty movements where it's like
Speaker 1: all boards across across all the different organizations in Canada
Speaker 1: are being pushed to have women. It is artificial on
Speaker 1: the surface. But if you go to America to title nine,
Speaker 1: which is about many things, but primarily in the eye
Speaker 1: of the public, about sports teams in college. Okay, we
Speaker 1: have professional women's hockey, we have professional women's basketball. We
Speaker 1: pay attention all things because the change of the law.
Speaker 1: So even though people might say, oh, let it be organic,
Speaker 1: sometimes you need the pressure of the law. You yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to push well. Um, And remember Bi Billy
Speaker 1: jen King started in tennis that movie Battle of This
Speaker 1: of the Sexes. Regardless of the the whole idea of
Speaker 1: that movie, which was her and Bobby Riggs and that
Speaker 1: crazy exhibition, the thing about that movie was how she
Speaker 1: created a w t A and took on That shows
Speaker 1: the power of the individual. And we see that especially
Speaker 1: in the arts, but also with Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Bezos, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I'm waiting for that, not only business in business,
Speaker 1: in music business, but artistically, I'm waiting for someone who's
Speaker 1: gonna go against the grain, gonna say no as opposed
Speaker 1: to yes the sponsorship, gonna stand up for their identity,
Speaker 1: create music that doesn't sound like everybody to say Gaga
Speaker 1: did that kind of I would say Gaga broke electronics
Speaker 1: ounds on top forty, but that's already a different era. Okay.
Speaker 1: So the question becomes, especially now streaming is amped up
Speaker 1: the importance and popularity of hip hop, what is the
Speaker 1: new sound? What will it sound like and how will
Speaker 1: it infiltrate? The other thing which people don't realize with
Speaker 1: the barrier to entry music so low that the quality
Speaker 1: has to be increased. So if you are a great
Speaker 1: lyricist and you're a great player and a bad singer,
Speaker 1: things are gonna be really tough for you right now.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to find some of those things. Well.
Speaker 1: The barrier to you know, the bearer to success used
Speaker 1: to be lower. People don't like to hear this. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't play in the NBA. I'm not tall enough.
Speaker 1: I accept that. Used to be if you couldn't sing,
Speaker 1: you had to accept you wouldn't be a singer in
Speaker 1: the music business. Plenty of plenty of people out there
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't call them singers that do fairly well well.
Speaker 1: Most of them, though, broke in a different era. I
Speaker 1: mean today, I mean this is you know, dicey territory. Okay.
Speaker 1: One but Bob Dylan, he did make it originally as
Speaker 1: a writer, but it'd be very hard for him to
Speaker 1: make it as a singer today. The breakthrough was when
Speaker 1: they started to play his records on Top forty radio,
Speaker 1: which was years after he started. Leonard Cohen wins Male
Speaker 1: Vocalist of the Year at the Juno Awards and says,
Speaker 1: only in Canada could I win Male Vocalist of the Year.
Speaker 1: And that kind of says it all. One more thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about, which was how
Speaker 1: did you feel? Because I know you like being the spotlight,
Speaker 1: but you really are reluctant person in the spotlight. About
Speaker 1: those guys that came from Australia and Sweden and that
Speaker 1: because they're big time readers and they knew they'd have
Speaker 1: a chance to actually meet you, they flew thousands of
Speaker 1: miles to come and have a chance to be one
Speaker 1: of the guy the guy from Sweden was complained to
Speaker 1: me that he's written to you so many times, You've
Speaker 1: never used any of his stuff in mail bag, and
Speaker 1: he thought, forget it. I'm just gonna show up and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk. And he was the guy that kept
Speaker 1: asking the question, Peter really nice guy, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was really funny that these guys had flown in
Speaker 1: from all kinds of places just to be able to
Speaker 1: sit there and say they met you and talk to you.
Speaker 1: How did that make you feel? Well, First, that's the
Speaker 1: power of the internet. Second, I'm still metabolizing it. I
Speaker 1: really have a hard time finding a place because my
Speaker 1: parents always told me I was a ship head. So
Speaker 1: it's hard to be a ship head and have these
Speaker 1: people do this spend time, money, devotion. I I'm still
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to you know, accept it. Well,
Speaker 1: remember we went around the room and everyone got to
Speaker 1: say who they were and where they're from, and how
Speaker 1: many of them said I'm just a big, big fan
Speaker 1: of Bob's a big reader, and I thought I needed
Speaker 1: to be here. Well, the other thing about it is
Speaker 1: the nature of what you're going to be the next
Speaker 1: Coachella won't matter who the guests are. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have a good ray like anythink. I think
Speaker 1: there'll be a better one. But when you think about
Speaker 1: like Glastonbury and Coachell and the festival, I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: we know Coachella took over, the didn't take over, but
Speaker 1: took their lead from Glastonbury, where you know, you could
Speaker 1: go on sale without the acts and it would sell
Speaker 1: out because of the event. You know, we hope, you
Speaker 1: hope to get the Music Media Summit to that point
Speaker 1: and it won't matter who the who the speakers are
Speaker 1: as long as you're they're doing the d I certainly
Speaker 1: hope that. I mean, one of the luxuries we have
Speaker 1: at this point in time is the group is not
Speaker 1: so large that we all can't connect. But this is
Speaker 1: kind of like my newsletter. I continue to march in
Speaker 1: my own direction, even though it's against the grain. I
Speaker 1: announced the conference, I heard from all the usual suspects.
Speaker 1: Let me run a panel, and I said, there, you
Speaker 1: can come, but there are no panels. Okay, I'm interviewing.
Speaker 1: In addition, I'm interviewing differently from everybody else. I mean,
Speaker 1: Barbara Walters was classically she had limited time for him.
Speaker 1: She was classically gotcha, Okay. Other people posit questions based
Speaker 1: on their research. My goal is a to get the
Speaker 1: person's story, because I believe unless you know where someone
Speaker 1: is coming from, you don't really know who they are.
Speaker 1: And to make them feel comfortable enough that they'll tell stories.
Speaker 1: This is you know, this is not why I do it,
Speaker 1: but it's something I've noticed. They'll tell stories that they
Speaker 1: haven't told previously. It's like, um, Troy Carter saying he
Speaker 1: was briefly unwelfare the one check and then he realized,
Speaker 1: I can't do this. This is insane. And those are
Speaker 1: the things you want as opposed to the usual stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm reading the newspaper today and it's all
Speaker 1: about hype. Oh, the movies coming out, so we'll have
Speaker 1: a story on the person who acted or made them.
Speaker 1: Who gives a funk and they're and they're also media
Speaker 1: trained up the ying yang and then that's all. That's
Speaker 1: a whole other thing. So I'm with you ad there.
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought that the stuff you got out
Speaker 1: of Troy was great. The stuff you got out of
Speaker 1: Ethiopia was great. I think you got their stories and
Speaker 1: I think that's why one of the one of my
Speaker 1: favorite interviews you ever did was an Aspen when you
Speaker 1: interviewed Rapino. And I've known Michael Rapino since like I've
Speaker 1: known him a long long time and I've spent time
Speaker 1: with him and talked to him. But there was stuff
Speaker 1: that I found out that day that I did not
Speaker 1: know about the guy. Well, you know, I got an
Speaker 1: email at the Chef Gordon Post podcast. Same thing. People
Speaker 1: who work with Sheep said, I never knew that. But
Speaker 1: as I say, with Rapino, everything is so confrontational. They
Speaker 1: expect you to go there. What do you know in
Speaker 1: these conferences, these public company CEOs, they're not going to
Speaker 1: make news. They literally can't because of all these filings, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So you can't focus on that. So most of these conferences,
Speaker 1: the foremost thing is how can we make money? I mean,
Speaker 1: in terms of music conferences outside of America, a lot
Speaker 1: of them supported by the government. This is something different,
Speaker 1: you know, the way you're talking, I would certainly like
Speaker 1: to blow it up bigger. But what I liked about
Speaker 1: it is, as I say, every day I get email
Speaker 1: from people. Every day I turn on my computer, I
Speaker 1: find out I'm God and I'm a ship heead okay,
Speaker 1: But going to Santa better to be loved and hated
Speaker 1: than ignored. We know that true. But we're going to
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara. I'm anxious. I'm in front of the group,
Speaker 1: I'm interviewing people. I don't get a grade after I'm
Speaker 1: and I can see in today's era, you're talking, people
Speaker 1: are on their devices, etcetera. You're worried whether you're getting
Speaker 1: people's attention. So the last night, when everybody was ultra
Speaker 1: positive and loving, that shocked me. It really did shock me.
Speaker 1: And it made me realize that a vast majority of
Speaker 1: the people who emailed it on the ship head really
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with me and everything to do
Speaker 1: with them. But that's always been the case, I know,
Speaker 1: but it's when it's personalized it is difficult. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have a guy who emails but that, but that's
Speaker 1: the Internet in general. I mean, you go on Twitter,
Speaker 1: you see what Twitter, but you know that this that
Speaker 1: same person that says you're a ship head wouldn't sit
Speaker 1: across the desk like we're sitting right here and say
Speaker 1: you're a ship head. I agree. But if you are insecure,
Speaker 1: and most people in this world who were playing heavily
Speaker 1: in terms of visible your age, you're still feeling that
Speaker 1: way like you haven't. You haven't is not thick enough.
Speaker 1: But my my skin is thicker than anybody I know
Speaker 1: in the music business. I can't speak to acts, so
Speaker 1: the acts are traditionally thin skin. But as you continue
Speaker 1: to I remember at you know, in the nineties, I
Speaker 1: would go into the psychiatrist and talk about the bizarre
Speaker 1: things that happened online. People would have no idea what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Okay, Now, even Jimmy Kimmel does mean tweets. Okay,
Speaker 1: but there's still stuff at the end of the envelope.
Speaker 1: And there is stuff, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say that it's politically incorrect, but you know that you're
Speaker 1: gonna get pushed back on just from writing. You know,
Speaker 1: when when you're watching Bill Maher, he immirely shuts the
Speaker 1: audience stuff. There was some moments in in Anna Barber
Speaker 1: that I think made a few people uncomfortable, right, And
Speaker 1: as I say, and it's funny, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking And one of those moments, I said, if we
Speaker 1: were here across the table, I am I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: probing to open someone up so they might tell you
Speaker 1: something you don't know. I'm not looking for an answer
Speaker 1: that I can be trumpeting on TMZ. It's okay, but
Speaker 1: if you as you know, to give these specific example,
Speaker 1: I had a car, this car I still have this
Speaker 1: relatively new and I was talking to a friend in
Speaker 1: the car and I pulled a U turn and it
Speaker 1: hits some branches. Little did I know. I thought it
Speaker 1: was just a bush, but it was a very They
Speaker 1: chopped the bush down so that the branches were very stiff,
Speaker 1: and it scratched my car. Now, let's be care if
Speaker 1: you get a big clear, if you get a big den,
Speaker 1: your car gonna get it. Appeared in this case there
Speaker 1: were a ton of scratches, but they didn't all go
Speaker 1: through the paint. I was upset b I went to
Speaker 1: get an estimate twelve dollars. I wasn't gonna get it
Speaker 1: by that stuff they sell on TV in Okay. I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna pay twelve. So I once again, I go
Speaker 1: to the therapist and I'm upset about this, and he goes,
Speaker 1: if you don't go up to the edge, up to
Speaker 1: the line, you'll have no idea where it is. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you go over. But if you're so anxious that you're
Speaker 1: not going to go to the line, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: live your life fully. So that's a great lesson. And
Speaker 1: my car was scratched. But the same thing when you
Speaker 1: talk to people, if you don't ask some probing questions,
Speaker 1: you won't find the good stuff the new guy. And
Speaker 1: let me ask you a question about the car being scratched.
Speaker 1: Why does it matter? Do you think people are gonna
Speaker 1: look at your car and say, oh, Bob left Sets
Speaker 1: drives a scratched car, Like, does anybody really give? I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever drove a car that I didn't scratch.
Speaker 1: Believe me. It has nothing to do with a third
Speaker 1: party opinion. That's not it. This is a whole another
Speaker 1: podcast in order to explain it. It has to do
Speaker 1: with my identity and O C D and you know,
Speaker 1: and other things. And as I say that that that's
Speaker 1: very interesting stuff to get into. But and it's not
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna louctant. We'd have to do at least
Speaker 1: another twenty minutes. Okay, well then I think we're almost
Speaker 1: done here. I think, you know, I think we could
Speaker 1: go on forever. It's been very productive for those people listening.
Speaker 1: I think you've gotten the full story. But we're off
Speaker 1: the high of a three day conference in Santa Barbara,
Speaker 1: reviewing the speakers in the experience. I have to thank
Speaker 1: Jake who came in for the conference and came in
Speaker 1: to do this podcast. To an update to do an update.
Speaker 1: Until next time you're listening to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jake, Thank you Bob, the Bob Left Sets
Speaker 1: Bob Cast. There you have it. That wraps up this
Speaker 1: week's episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast, recorded live
Speaker 1: at the tune In Studios in Venice, California. I hope
Speaker 1: you liked this conversation with Jake Gold. As always, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in your feedback, positive or negative. You can reach
Speaker 1: me at Bob at left sense dot com. Until next time,
Speaker 1: I'm Bob. Left Sense can think of and me reason,
Speaker 1: and I don't know me exactly