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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is Mark Garger, formally head of Music

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Speaker 1: of w m E. All Around Music Here Mark, good

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Speaker 1: to have hi, Bob Okay. Drive in concerts gimmick, A

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Speaker 1: real gimmick. Tell me a little bit more. Why is

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Speaker 1: it a gimmick? Do I have to? I mean, um,

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Speaker 1: why is it a gimmick? Capacity is very small by

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Speaker 1: the time you actually put the cars in. Um pricing

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Speaker 1: with a disconnected experience is high. The audio I don't

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Speaker 1: think it can be very good yet in the car,

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Speaker 1: but hey, um, these are temporary stockcapt solutions. So for me, economically,

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Speaker 1: they're scale garth. That a very interesting thing, basically the

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Speaker 1: pay per view right to other drive ins. I think

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Speaker 1: there's a feeling that what I called during the what

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Speaker 1: I call the germophobia economy, that almost anything will sell

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Speaker 1: because they're saying it is dying to get out of

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Speaker 1: the house. So for me, it's not really a great experience.

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Speaker 1: Well that begs the question, uh, when the economics are broken,

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Speaker 1: so let's you know, let's get real. People are doing

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Speaker 1: things to do them, not to make a living, right,

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Speaker 1: So when do you think concerts returned. My guess is

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Speaker 1: late twenty one, more likely twenty two. I think that

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Speaker 1: this is going to be Look, the whole thing is

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Speaker 1: a ship show. You write about it, everybody knows whether

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Speaker 1: it's testing organ as a government that let's not. It's

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Speaker 1: too infinite of a well to go down. But in

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Speaker 1: my humble opinion, it's gonna be twenty two. It's gonna

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Speaker 1: take that long for what I call the germophobia economy

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Speaker 1: to be slowly killed off and be replaced by what

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Speaker 1: I call the claustrophobia economy, which is it really wants

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Speaker 1: to get out and go back to dinner and have

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Speaker 1: their life and go to festivals, go to shows. And

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Speaker 1: my instinct is that's just going to take a while

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Speaker 1: because as you can see, these super spreader events, sports shows,

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Speaker 1: anything classroom ain't gonna do too well. And while the

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Speaker 1: while the viruses this present. So my my instinct is

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Speaker 1: the world has a very long forced time out. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people see the positives in it, um, whether

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Speaker 1: it's climate, whether it's pollution, whether it's traffic, whether it's nature,

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Speaker 1: whether it's animals, whether it's our own beings, and taking

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Speaker 1: a pause, um, and I know it's frustrating, maddening and

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Speaker 1: um economically you know, destructive, but ah, you know this

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Speaker 1: is bigger than us. And if you study history, things

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Speaker 1: like this have happened in history and been super disruptive

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Speaker 1: to normal society. So here's a biggie for our lifetime.

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Speaker 1: Let's go drill down for those people are not experts

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Speaker 1: like you, to what degree is insurance and liability of

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Speaker 1: factor and restarting? Well, there is no insurance against COVID

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Speaker 1: currently offered, and even normal insurance policies are pretty scarce

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Speaker 1: and hard to come by. The insurers are sitting on

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Speaker 1: the sideline because there's infinite liability. I don't know what's

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Speaker 1: tested not tested. Luss Hey, I got COVID at this event,

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Speaker 1: how do you approve it? Etcetera. I think the biggest

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Speaker 1: companies can maybe self insure UM and they can start.

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Speaker 1: Everybody else has to wait till the insure industry feels good.

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Speaker 1: So that's one of many many roadblocks in the way

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Speaker 1: of restarting this vibrant economy that got put down right.

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Speaker 1: So there's probably twenty of them when you drill into

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Speaker 1: why can't you the virus and the illness being one,

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Speaker 1: you know, all the spacing. The density insurance is a

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Speaker 1: biggie and I don't know when that comes back either. Now,

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Speaker 1: needless to say you're no longer with wm ME, but uh,

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Speaker 1: certainly there's no live business. Mean, there's no income for

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Speaker 1: agents and agencies they work for. What we've learned over

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Speaker 1: the past week is a lot of these touring entities

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Speaker 1: got money, The Eagles got money for the road business,

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Speaker 1: ETCETERA question I'm asking is to what degree will sitting

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Speaker 1: on the sidelines for two years affect the economics of

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Speaker 1: the industry. Can these companies survived? Michael Rapino says he

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Speaker 1: can borrow money, there's no not an issue. But being

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Speaker 1: in the heart of an agency, can these agencies and

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Speaker 1: these other support elements survived two years off? Look um,

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Speaker 1: no matter what anybody says, it's economically devastating, Okay, So

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Speaker 1: I recognize that, and I don't think any excuse um

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Speaker 1: can be made. And there will be a huge amount

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Speaker 1: if I'm right on the timetable right, there's gonna be

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Speaker 1: a massive amount of blood shed and ankruptcies and it

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Speaker 1: will not be good for the majority industry. I think

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Speaker 1: Michael or Pino is right. You know, he's he's big,

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Speaker 1: he is great backing, people want to buy his stock, um,

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Speaker 1: he's got liberty, he has a great business. When it

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Speaker 1: comes back, so you can borrow against that and it's

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Speaker 1: not a great outcome. But your question is can they survive?

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Speaker 1: I think people who have access to really good financing

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Speaker 1: credit facilities can definitely survive. Right, I know, the costs

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Speaker 1: of carrying over some of these businesses agencies are actually

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Speaker 1: relatively cheap. Michael Orpine has got a much bigger issue

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Speaker 1: and a much bigger staff. The biggest agencies are again

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Speaker 1: the cheapest relative word. Right. But if something's gonna cost

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Speaker 1: fifty or a hundred million dollars to bridge for a

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Speaker 1: moment um, again, that sounds huge. But in today's world,

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Speaker 1: when you have access to capital, you can borrow against

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Speaker 1: that for a year or two, and the businesses were

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Speaker 1: quite profitable and they can pay down the debt service.

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Speaker 1: It's a short term mortgage, okay. And when it does

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Speaker 1: come back, how does the landscape change? Sure billion dollar question?

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, let me be specific. I think, Bob,

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Speaker 1: that's a really tough question to answer. I think if

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Speaker 1: the if we're in the second or third inning of

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Speaker 1: the ball game of destruction. UM, I don't know what

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Speaker 1: the game looks like at the end. I think the

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Speaker 1: next six months maybe more painful than the last batch,

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Speaker 1: and maybe the next six months after that might be

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Speaker 1: even more so. So I think one of the things

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Speaker 1: that happened for me after leaving was, UM, I was

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Speaker 1: able to look at the pandemic two ways. I was

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Speaker 1: overseeing or part of a team of industry people who oversee,

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Speaker 1: oversaw this destruction, this cancelation, postponement, etcetera, etcetera, tried to

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Speaker 1: have order out of it, but was sort of trapped

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Speaker 1: in that viewpoint. Um, now I get to look at

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Speaker 1: COVID is a bit of an opportunity. But the question

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Speaker 1: of where to exactly look and who's not gonna make

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Speaker 1: it and who's going to be under distress. You start

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Speaker 1: bottom up, small people with no access to capital, people

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Speaker 1: have high overheads, people who have staff that they can't

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Speaker 1: easily go into shutdown mode and they're gonna get the

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Speaker 1: viscerated and they're gonna need help. So in any event,

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Speaker 1: recapping here, Mark, you said, Uh, when we look at

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Speaker 1: the future, we're talking from the bottom up. People at

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Speaker 1: the bottom or squeeze for capital please continue. I think

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Speaker 1: that again, people with infrastructure and more overhead and lack

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Speaker 1: of access to capital, it's a perfect storm for them. Um.

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Speaker 1: When you start talking about the big companies of Live Nation,

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Speaker 1: eight g CTS, Ossessa and others, they have access to

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Speaker 1: facilities and credit and debt facilities. They're public companies. The investors.

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Speaker 1: A lot of investors look at them as value because

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Speaker 1: they think, oh, when the claustrophobia economy kicks in and

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Speaker 1: world restarts, everybody's gonna want to we participate in. These

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Speaker 1: companies will be in a good position to take advantage

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Speaker 1: of it. So I believe that is going to rule

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Speaker 1: the day and people will make smart investments into business

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Speaker 1: as they think they'll come back. But the bigger the

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Speaker 1: better there if you're small, if you're medium sized, it's

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Speaker 1: going to be tricky. If you know, like NIVA, the

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Speaker 1: organization who represents is a trade organization for the clubs

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Speaker 1: is trying to appeal to the government for money for

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Speaker 1: obviously a loan or a grant to the clubs. So

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Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, Um, the

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Speaker 1: economic devastation is going to be bigger than people think

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Speaker 1: they Reshaping is going to be bigger than people think,

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Speaker 1: and we all have to watch and conserve our capital

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Speaker 1: and just take a pause and try obviously not spend

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Speaker 1: just to get to the other side. I know that

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Speaker 1: sounds very basic, but I think it's true. Question becomes

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Speaker 1: when we come out the other side, do the big

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Speaker 1: get bigger? It depends how they act. They can. I

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Speaker 1: mean they have to get small. Larder worries is overhead.

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Speaker 1: But you know, people with real access to capital. Again,

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Speaker 1: if you think about it, like a bigger version of

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Speaker 1: two thousand eight in the real estate crash, if you

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Speaker 1: owned a bunch of office buildings or apartment buildings or

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Speaker 1: hotels or houses and you had to sell them, or

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Speaker 1: you had a cash crunch, you were screwed, right, you

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Speaker 1: were on the bad side. If you were a real

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Speaker 1: estate funder private equity a hundred billion in cash or

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Speaker 1: ten billion in cash, and you waited till all the

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Speaker 1: foreclosures showed up on your street, which we all saw

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Speaker 1: and you could swoop in. It was an unprecedented opportunity.

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Speaker 1: Um certain banks and others made a fortune during that time.

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Speaker 1: So I think it's how you look at the world

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Speaker 1: and if you have access to capital. But I do.

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Speaker 1: I do think there'll be a lot of different owners

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Speaker 1: uh and people who have equity in the music business

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Speaker 1: infrastructure when you come out of this, well, liberty is

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Speaker 1: capped in terms of how much they can own of

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Speaker 1: Live name. But if you look historically in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and eight, uh, they invested in Serious and ended up

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Speaker 1: with control of that company. So staying on this same tip,

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Speaker 1: we grew up in the pre internet era where you

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Speaker 1: were a band, you started in clubs, you worked your

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Speaker 1: way up, and in addition, the record company supported the clubs.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about what that was like prior to this crisis. Um, okay,

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Speaker 1: which part to you omans? The question is is that

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Speaker 1: paradigm broken? It's more important than ever. I think that

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Speaker 1: there's just because the world switched to streaming and there's

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Speaker 1: a different distribution system. Artist developments not that different. You

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Speaker 1: have more tools, all right, You have more connectivity, you

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Speaker 1: have more ability to be globally, use multiple platforms to

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Speaker 1: communicate with your audience, and your music can get distributed better.

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Speaker 1: You're not held out of a record store. But the

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Speaker 1: development process the same the touring press. Yeah, but it

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Speaker 1: But but as I say, if we go back to

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Speaker 1: the club are critical, they're more They're more packed today

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Speaker 1: than they were back in our club era by a lot.

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Speaker 1: But are there as many Yeah, there's more, many more clubs.

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Speaker 1: Music has infinitely more genres than the period you're talking about,

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Speaker 1: a right, popular genres. Kids have much more access kids,

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Speaker 1: everybody has much more access to music, and so music

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Speaker 1: is thriving. Um. You know, you can argue long tail,

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Speaker 1: but from a genre standpoint, you have much more access.

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Speaker 1: They're much deeper. I mean, the electronic nightclubs alone outnumbered

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Speaker 1: the amount of rock clubs than in total when we

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Speaker 1: were growing up. So I think it's a um and globally, um,

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Speaker 1: there's a ton more. So I think the supplies up

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Speaker 1: and the demand is up. Um, which ones last, how

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Speaker 1: they get transformed, that's all a big question. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think the development process is healthier than ever and

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Speaker 1: bigger than ever. And by the way, the upside is

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Speaker 1: bigger than ever. It's just there's more noise. It's a

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Speaker 1: signal noise, right, there's there's how many new releases, remember

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Speaker 1: what was back in the era you're talking about. There

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Speaker 1: is only x amount of music that could come out

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Speaker 1: that's dwarfed in a week Okay, let's let's go to

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Speaker 1: this specific issue. Hey, when you're working at William Morris,

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Speaker 1: would you sign an act, Let's assume the right act

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Speaker 1: had no record recording representation of any significance. Would you

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Speaker 1: sign an act that did not have a live head? Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, could not sell tickets by themselves already, So

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Speaker 1: how would you break an act like that? Okay? You

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Speaker 1: breaking an act would imply that we were that powerful.

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Speaker 1: You know, we're just team member, subcontractor on the team

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Speaker 1: of building a house. That's the way I look at

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Speaker 1: it all right, from any position. So part of it

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Speaker 1: is how well is the team and the work together.

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Speaker 1: How great is the manager obviously? How great is the artist?

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Speaker 1: How greatest in music? Um, Listen, when you sign an artist,

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Speaker 1: if you really love them and you believe in them,

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Speaker 1: it's not about breaking them in a record. It's about

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Speaker 1: laying a base so they grow, they happen to break,

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Speaker 1: they break. The industry wants. It's you know, immediacy, and

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Speaker 1: it's stadium this and so and so that, and it's

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Speaker 1: pop metaphor. I typically, you know, my taste is outside

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Speaker 1: pop metaphor. So you don't have a choice. You're five

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Speaker 1: ten years to grow and break artists over time, especially

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Speaker 1: depending on how they how they record, and how frequently.

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Speaker 1: So part of it is packed tour packaging. Part of

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Speaker 1: it is festivals, part of his getting great publicist. Part

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Speaker 1: of it is calling favors if you can to whoever

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Speaker 1: it might be that can promote stream etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: If you have that kind of leverage and and hope

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Speaker 1: that others are making the same calls. From our standpoint

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Speaker 1: when you were on the agency and by the way,

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Speaker 1: you work well with the manager and the manager had

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Speaker 1: how how's their social media? How are they on? Are

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Speaker 1: they are they frequent posters? Are they infrequent posters? Is it?

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Speaker 1: Are they creating content more frequently than the other There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of What changed was the ability to post

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Speaker 1: content in different places and different types. So if you

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Speaker 1: were not an artist that generates a lot of content,

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Speaker 1: you were a significant disadvantage in the digital area. If

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Speaker 1: you're somebody who could post a lot of content, assuming

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Speaker 1: you didn't turn into a commodity, you had a big advantage.

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Speaker 1: So you know, it's all different, and you have to

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Speaker 1: look at every artist, genre, level of interest, critical acclaim, uh,

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Speaker 1: all of it and create a custom strategy, just like

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Speaker 1: you know a good UM tutor or teacher does for

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Speaker 1: a student. Their all individuals, so part of his can

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Speaker 1: you get other artists to love them and recognize what

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Speaker 1: you love about him and and champion them. There's a

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Speaker 1: lady I signed before before I left, called Jensen McCrae,

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Speaker 1: and she is my favorite. She's Joni Mitchell meets Tracy Chapman,

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Speaker 1: and I think she's absolutely spectacular. A couple of songs

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Speaker 1: on Spotify, the albums should be Best New Album, Best

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Speaker 1: Artist on the Grammys. Um, she's a social media monster

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Speaker 1: and she's hyper genius. So she's very different than some

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Speaker 1: of the other people who don't post. They're not political,

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Speaker 1: they're not trying to build an audience that way, and

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Speaker 1: her music is more viral than others. So I think

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Speaker 1: there's a lot to all of this, and it's very

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Speaker 1: custom and there is no one. What we have now

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Speaker 1: as an open system like technology where everything getting an

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Speaker 1: app can be made for any platform because there are

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Speaker 1: open systems. Now leave Apple out of this for a minute. UM,

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Speaker 1: generally open systems. I think music is the same, and

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Speaker 1: so people who create more content know how to communicate

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Speaker 1: with their audience to do a little better. But that

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Speaker 1: was part of the job, was giving them opportunities, getting

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Speaker 1: the right slot on Coachella, lallapaos at this festival, that festival,

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Speaker 1: this opening slot, this so and so, this right night.

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Speaker 1: It's all of it. And if you do it all right,

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Speaker 1: you know, people think you do but that's okay. So,

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Speaker 1: speaking of the signal to noise, it also applies on

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Speaker 1: the agency level. There are more people making music, more

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Speaker 1: people looking for your time and your abilities to work

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Speaker 1: with them too. How does someone reach you or w

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Speaker 1: when you worked at or an agent at W M

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Speaker 1: E or do they have to be involved with someone

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Speaker 1: who knows you because there's just too much product? You know,

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Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing. First of all, everybody's reachable because

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty easy to get too, as there are most

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Speaker 1: people out there if you try, if you don't know

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Speaker 1: anybody and don't can't figure an email address or to

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Speaker 1: post or what to do. I understand that, but I

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Speaker 1: do think when you look at things that are income

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Speaker 1: and you have a lower hit rate than when you

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Speaker 1: look at things when you're proactive, so let's call them reactive.

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Speaker 1: I get twenty million artists coming at whether it's Wan

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Speaker 1: in the old you know, in my past, or any

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Speaker 1: other agency or any other label, or I'm trolling blogs, criticalist,

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Speaker 1: all music Guide, Consequences, sounds, stereogum, whatever it might be.

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Speaker 1: Other filters that I trust, and I proactively go after

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Speaker 1: the records, all right, or the the artists. That's the

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Speaker 1: difference between success rate and a ten percent success rate.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of times you don't want the incoming,

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Speaker 1: even though that story sounds good. Hey, somebody got to me,

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Speaker 1: they were fantastic, whatever, And I think that the bottom

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Speaker 1: line is to try to prioritize your trusted filters over

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Speaker 1: just incoming noise. Would be how I'd answered that question,

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Speaker 1: so I didn't care that much about that. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of like you, by the way, you're the one who writes, hey,

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Speaker 1: if you pitch me on a record, I'll never play it,

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Speaker 1: and then I have to read every way every three

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Speaker 1: letters and some random rant on a record you discovered,

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Speaker 1: and you wouldn't write it. If I told you to

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Speaker 1: listen to it, you wouldn't, absolutely, man, But there's so

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Speaker 1: much incoming. It affects the business so on so many levels.

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Speaker 1: Since you were in a different vertical than I am.

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Speaker 1: That's why I asked question. You know what the truth is,

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Speaker 1: we had to process more than you did. You could

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Speaker 1: be more selective because of what you did. We had

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Speaker 1: to process hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

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Speaker 1: artists and try and make intelligent decisions whoever you are

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Speaker 1: in any business thousands and what can I say? You

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Speaker 1: try to make you try to narrow down your decisions

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Speaker 1: over time and get more fine in your filtering. Well generally,

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Speaker 1: you know, I would say this is ninety nine percent.

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Speaker 1: I don't respond to email from people I do not

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Speaker 1: know unless they're famous, because ten percent of the public

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Speaker 1: is literally insane and you don't know what ten percent

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Speaker 1: it is. Have you had that issue where there are

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Speaker 1: people who relentless and coose problem for you to get

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Speaker 1: rid of what? Yes, but that's a few people. You know,

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Speaker 1: you didn't lose my music. You don't know what are

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Speaker 1: you're talking about it? So you get judged on ultimately,

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Speaker 1: get judged on the artists you work with, not the

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Speaker 1: failed attempts and the who wanted to get into the

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Speaker 1: party and you didn't sign them. It's did you find

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Speaker 1: were you able to identify good artists. Could you grow

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Speaker 1: them and develop them? Did others on your team do

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Speaker 1: the same? Could you be collaborative? Could you figure out

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Speaker 1: more intelligent filtering systems? Could you figure out more intelligent

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Speaker 1: marketing promotion systems or whatever it is or artists development

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Speaker 1: systems in our case, So you know that's what it is.

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Speaker 1: By the way, Debra Newman Hart South Side did a

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Speaker 1: great one and it was great for New Jersey. They're

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Speaker 1: just one off. But even though they're successful. Sorry, I'm

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Speaker 1: reading the chat high kids. Okay. Now, in the old days,

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Speaker 1: pre internet days, the developing act would essentially borrow money

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Speaker 1: from the record company to stay alive until hopefully they broke.

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Speaker 1: How do you how do you do it today if

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Speaker 1: there's no record company involvement. Well, here's the good news.

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Speaker 1: In the old days you needed a record company. Today

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Speaker 1: you don't, right, I mean you know that you write

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Speaker 1: about it all the time, of course. Okay, So there's now.

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Speaker 1: In the old days, there were two ways to get

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Speaker 1: on the freeway, right, record company or you had to

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Speaker 1: be allowed INDI right, and even the indies developed over time,

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Speaker 1: but they had them right back on the pop days.

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Speaker 1: You can a VJ. You could have this, you could

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Speaker 1: have that Concorde rounder, subpop, etcetera. And not it or

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Speaker 1: is There are many many of them. Those were your

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Speaker 1: two on ramps and the rest of the time you

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Speaker 1: were kind in the demo in Nowadays, there are multiple

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Speaker 1: platforms for all the way up to Spotify and artist

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Speaker 1: program from sound that that that, and you can break

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Speaker 1: on TikTok or something all right, so you have options

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Speaker 1: didn't happen before. You also have scale options, global scale options.

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Speaker 1: You also have CRM see rum technical term for identifying

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Speaker 1: your audience and figuring out how to keep them right

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Speaker 1: and keep them interested. And that is what record companies

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Speaker 1: tried to do without the actual communication directly with an individual.

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Speaker 1: So you can be a record company and there's a

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Speaker 1: billion indies. So the options are dramatically different. It's back

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Speaker 1: to how great is your art? How does it cut through?

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Speaker 1: You know? Is it Jensen McCrae one listen, holy shit?

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Speaker 1: Or is it something else? Right? Um? And I think

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Speaker 1: it's how intelligent how can you act given the new

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Speaker 1: tool set? Well, I'm plugging specifically about cash frequently it's

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Speaker 1: a it's make a bunch of videos, you get some traffic,

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Speaker 1: you get viral and you get some ad sense from YouTube,

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Speaker 1: and you know if people are if you read about it,

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Speaker 1: you can make money that way, you could. You need

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Speaker 1: a lot of you sift. What I understand. My point

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Speaker 1: is that there is ad revenue. There didn't used to be, Okay, ever,

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Speaker 1: there is ad revenue across a bunch of platforms if

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Speaker 1: you can generate traffic. If you were look, Bob, I

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Speaker 1: cannot answer you to tell you that all the two

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Speaker 1: trillion artists who want to make it in this world

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Speaker 1: are gonna make money. They're not. That's not how the

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Speaker 1: system works. Okay. No matter what system, and no matter

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Speaker 1: how open it is, there's a bunch that get through,

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Speaker 1: have traffic, listeners and fans that make money from the

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Speaker 1: bottom of the pyramids. Let me let me be very specific.

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Speaker 1: In all these days, you put a band on the road,

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Speaker 1: they need a van, they might need hotel rooms and usually,

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Speaker 1: and usually there was short full. In the old days,

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Speaker 1: it was the label, assuming there was a label, or

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Speaker 1: the manager. If there is not a label, is it

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Speaker 1: still the manager's taking care of that shortfall? Necessity is

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Speaker 1: the mother of invention. I know a lot of artists

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Speaker 1: to sleep on couches who make phone calls to work

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Speaker 1: the networks. I was talking to Jim Casey who came

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Speaker 1: out of defying his so far sounds. They do shows

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Speaker 1: in people's living rooms. People just scale down. They released records,

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Speaker 1: they put it on band camp. They sell twenty records

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Speaker 1: at ten dollars each and they make they make do,

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Speaker 1: and they make do with the costs they have. Like

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Speaker 1: everybody else, you can create a home to which you

399
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Speaker 1: couldn't use to. Yeah, they find a way. If you

400
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Speaker 1: talk to people who sell clubs, and of course clubs

401
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Speaker 1: have been redefined. It used to be really under four hundred,

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Speaker 1: but now you know you have the Wiltern that is

403
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Speaker 1: fifteen hundred. But if you talk to acts that consistently

404
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Speaker 1: go clean in those venues, they are bitching at infinitum

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Speaker 1: about the ticket master fee and they can't make money.

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Speaker 1: Needless to say, on the other end, the stars dictate.

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Speaker 1: Are they bitching? Do they have a legitimate point that

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Speaker 1: they cannot make enough in these buildings and they cannot

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Speaker 1: keep ticket prices low or they just you know, wankers

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Speaker 1: who were complaining. Hold on, are you saying the bands

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Speaker 1: are to air Live Nation at those relates to the

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Speaker 1: Weltern and you confuse me said the capacity. Let's not

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Speaker 1: make that specific. Let's just talk under five hundred capacities. Look,

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Speaker 1: ticket fees, you know what they are? You right about them,

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Speaker 1: all right? Right? Most people, most artists don't get ticket rebates.

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Speaker 1: That's wrong. You write about it all the time. You

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Speaker 1: write about the top few people who are have that

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Speaker 1: kind of leveraging cloud and you know, or grandfather deals.

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Speaker 1: Most people don't get them. I can tell you that, right,

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Speaker 1: and I know that world well, they don't. They don't.

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Speaker 1: So it's not the artist dictating ticket fees. Ticketing was

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Speaker 1: a profit center for a promoter that we're all promoters, frankly,

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Speaker 1: all promoters. They were lifelines and not just the big

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Speaker 1: ones took advances from et cetera. Because in world with

425
00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:56,120
Speaker 1: no downside, promoters can't make money. Okay, they can't. It's

426
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,480
Speaker 1: not a fair fight. So the reality is a little

427
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:05,040
Speaker 1: different than you write, okay, because there's a sensationalism. Um no, no,

428
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,720
Speaker 1: I agree with hold hold okay. You know you talk

429
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:10,280
Speaker 1: about the big people who are able to get a

430
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:16,040
Speaker 1: ticket rebate here and there that for the most part, okay,

431
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:20,879
Speaker 1: there weren't rebates, and ticketing is what helped promoting companies

432
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 1: grow as sad as it sounds. So in an all

433
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: in ticket it might be a more fair economic percentage.

434
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,040
Speaker 1: And then for whatever reason, people don't want it all

435
00:25:31,040 --> 00:25:34,680
Speaker 1: in ticket because the artists then thinks ticket brice to you. Whatever. Okay,

436
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,399
Speaker 1: this will find its feet at the end of the day,

437
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: no matter what have been. Anybody says there were more

438
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:42,520
Speaker 1: tickets selling in two thousand nineteen and there were going

439
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:44,680
Speaker 1: to be in two thousand twenty as a record year

440
00:25:45,040 --> 00:25:48,239
Speaker 1: than ever before in history. Buy a lot. So the

441
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:52,679
Speaker 1: ticketing fees as however you feel about them, and obviously

442
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:55,520
Speaker 1: I'm trying to answer you in a political fashion. Wait, wait,

443
00:25:55,680 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 1: didn't affect consumption. Let's talk about then you is it

444
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 1: are under five hundred, which is a complet There are

445
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:05,159
Speaker 1: acts that consistently sell those. They say, we want to

446
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 1: sell the ticket for it's forty and we're not making

447
00:26:08,560 --> 00:26:11,760
Speaker 1: enough money. That's true. That that's true, and they have

448
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: to negotiate a reduced ticketing deal, which is possible, especially

449
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:18,200
Speaker 1: if you have good connections. You can do it. If

450
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:20,159
Speaker 1: you can't, you might be a little screwed. There's some

451
00:26:20,200 --> 00:26:25,679
Speaker 1: truth there, Okay, So let's go to the future. What

452
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:29,480
Speaker 1: do we know which you which you illuminated, which essentially

453
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,199
Speaker 1: is the acts take all the revenue, and therefore the

454
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:34,880
Speaker 1: promoter and the biggest promoters you talk to them. Yes,

455
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:38,080
Speaker 1: they make their money on the ticketing. But also let's

456
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 1: get real the acts again. I'm not taking the pro

457
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:44,200
Speaker 1: artist pro anything here. I'll just try to be a realist.

458
00:26:45,040 --> 00:26:54,439
Speaker 1: The artists have expenses, forget commissions. That question. Okay, listen,

459
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:57,400
Speaker 1: if the promoter doesn't make money, you know, Live Nation

460
00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:01,359
Speaker 1: would be out of business, like question becomes when it

461
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:07,200
Speaker 1: comes back. Already, the promoters are trying to lower the percentages.

462
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:11,120
Speaker 1: They're trying to make deals a more advantageous to themselves.

463
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: Do you do you think those will stick? I think, Look,

464
00:27:17,520 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a prognosticator. My instinct is

465
00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:25,880
Speaker 1: is that the artists and their representatives have always had

466
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:30,120
Speaker 1: the leverage and they exact it as balanced as they

467
00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 1: can be. Okay, So I don't think any of this

468
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: stuff lasts to be fair to promoters to have additional

469
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:43,159
Speaker 1: risk when people are trying to reschedule dates when you

470
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: may be reschedulinguntil next May, which is going to get canceled?

471
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:51,080
Speaker 1: Okay or whatever? And the promoter can't get insurance and

472
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:55,000
Speaker 1: has to hire that more doctors, temperature checks and all

473
00:27:55,040 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: the other crap they have to put up with, let

474
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:01,000
Speaker 1: alone that they don't know. Which mayor governor county official

475
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: will say, you can only sell half the people half

476
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:06,440
Speaker 1: the capacity and they're supposed to be on the hook

477
00:28:06,480 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: for a guarantee is insane, all right, I'm just insane.

478
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:15,080
Speaker 1: The risk is infinite, So promoters are absolutely not wrong.

479
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: They should say everybody should share the risk. We don't

480
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:21,640
Speaker 1: know what the futures like, certainly in the immediate short term, right,

481
00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:25,560
Speaker 1: and everybody does need to pitch in UM. And I

482
00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: think for the most part before I got before I

483
00:28:29,560 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: exited UM, most people were and most people when you

484
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: really think about how much risk the promoter does carry

485
00:28:37,840 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: and what they have to deal with and the lack

486
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: of food and beverage or sponsorship and all the things

487
00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:45,360
Speaker 1: that canceled out of any of these people's lives. From

488
00:28:45,360 --> 00:28:49,920
Speaker 1: a nancialer revenue standpoint, they're getting pounded. So to just think, oh,

489
00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,200
Speaker 1: they should bridge their companies and then they should make

490
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:56,960
Speaker 1: minus minus dollars isn't really fair. So that was sort

491
00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: of in my two cents. What I would say back

492
00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 1: to you, I think it is needed in the short term,

493
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: like any help is needed for anybody, whether there's governmental

494
00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: assistance or whatever. Talent fees are high, and they'll find

495
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: their way back. It's like the stock market. You know,

496
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:13,479
Speaker 1: it goes way up, then it goes back down, then

497
00:29:13,480 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: it crawls back up, and if you're an investor, you're

498
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: kind of used to it. And I think artists, we'll

499
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:22,560
Speaker 1: have to play that way. And not every artist. Remember

500
00:29:22,600 --> 00:29:24,280
Speaker 1: this is too easy of an argument, because not every

501
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: artist sells the same amount of tickets and means the

502
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: same gross. So there's levels of risk just of promoting

503
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 1: artists in general. And maybe if the overall markets down

504
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:38,760
Speaker 1: and half the artist sold sixty, now they're down forty.

505
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: You know, there may be down to forty or something

506
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: like that, and so the promoter has to deal with

507
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:51,960
Speaker 1: that too. Let's let's go back to the agent used

508
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 1: to be for Historically the agent got a straight ten percent.

509
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 1: Assuming you have an agent, the people who can go

510
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:02,240
Speaker 1: clean the p selling the big buildings are not paying

511
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: ten percent, So give us the landscape there. Well, listen,

512
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: ten percent. Business is different if you're in theater books, acting, film, television, etcetera.

513
00:30:14,840 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: Let's talk about music. I got it, but I want

514
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 1: to explain it because it's important for people to realize

515
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 1: it's about effective margin, Okay. And I tried to explain

516
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: this to a lot of people in Hollywood so they

517
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: understood it because a lot of people in Hollywood felt

518
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,840
Speaker 1: that music people were disruptive and disrespectful of a commission system,

519
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: which is not true. It is totally different. Okay. If

520
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:37,200
Speaker 1: you're a director or an artist, you get or an

521
00:30:37,240 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 1: actor or whatever it is, writer, you get paid your fee,

522
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 1: and you pay either an attorney or an agent or both,

523
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:48,240
Speaker 1: and you keep roughly of the hall. If you're an

524
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 1: artist and you get a gig, you may be thirty

525
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:58,360
Speaker 1: thirty five percent, maybe forty of the net. Okay, that's

526
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:01,760
Speaker 1: your net of a guarantee. So commission off the top,

527
00:31:01,800 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: which is a gross number, is a big number to that.

528
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: It can vary the net by a good amount, and

529
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:11,040
Speaker 1: when you have million dollar guarantees or higher, commissions can

530
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 1: be very high at ten. So there's been a natural

531
00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:18,160
Speaker 1: arc I should say um over time in the music

532
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: industry because of this, and arc is as the artist

533
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:24,600
Speaker 1: gets bigger, they pay less commission, right, and they make

534
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:27,960
Speaker 1: it a more digestible piece of their fee structure. And

535
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 1: I think they do that with a lot of the

536
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: professionals on their team as they have more leverage. And

537
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: I think that's historic. Okay, when you get to the

538
00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 1: level we're making a touring deal with Torpedo and certainly

539
00:31:38,920 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: Rapino or Concerts West under age you want to do that?

540
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: Why does an act need an age? By the way,

541
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:50,080
Speaker 1: did want to do that? Right now? You're you're the

542
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: one who mentioned that they have all this money out. Yeah,

543
00:31:52,400 --> 00:31:54,240
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would like to have a lot of

544
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: it back right now and keep some employees, uh and

545
00:31:57,760 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: some other infrastructure, versus having it sitting an artist bank

546
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:04,680
Speaker 1: account that can't be recouped at the moment, so that

547
00:32:04,760 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: will find it's it's day two, right, and who has

548
00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: that much advanced capital and sitting out and for how long?

549
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 1: And thought that all? Right? Back to your question because

550
00:32:13,920 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: I I took a side road, Okay, it was the agency's.

551
00:32:19,760 --> 00:32:21,880
Speaker 1: The question is if you're making a touring deal with

552
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: like just simplify there, why do you need an agent?

553
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't A lot of a lot

554
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: of the lot of the managers do those deals directly? Um?

555
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:38,600
Speaker 1: And look, there's a whole bunch of reasons. Uh, you

556
00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,720
Speaker 1: don't know what you don't know. So are you paying

557
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:46,520
Speaker 1: for professional advice? Paying for people that know the market?

558
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: Why don't people list their houses more on their own?

559
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,360
Speaker 1: Tell me why it's cost five or whatever it is?

560
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,200
Speaker 1: Do they think they know the price? Do they think

561
00:32:57,240 --> 00:32:58,920
Speaker 1: they know the deals? Do they know the comps? Do

562
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:01,440
Speaker 1: they know how to do it? Um? Can they market?

563
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: Can they get well? Hang on? No? No, no, these

564
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 1: are specific answers to the same thing in music And

565
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:11,400
Speaker 1: can they get on that festival? Oh, they make a

566
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:13,520
Speaker 1: deal with Ropino and now they want to play glaston Barrier,

567
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:16,040
Speaker 1: they want to play Coachella and that's a e g.

568
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:20,720
Speaker 1: Then how do you manage all of that stuff? Right? Um?

569
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:24,120
Speaker 1: And the truth is there's loyalty in this. People grow

570
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:28,959
Speaker 1: bands from inception and here's a big deal and you're

571
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,600
Speaker 1: gonna cut people out there. There's a lot in this.

572
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: It's not one answer, all right. Sometimes when it whether

573
00:33:36,640 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: it's reading your articles or other um people's take on

574
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:44,800
Speaker 1: the industry, it's very simple and black and white. And

575
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:47,400
Speaker 1: I don't think any of these answers are okay, because

576
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 1: there are millions of artists, or at least tens and

577
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:51,880
Speaker 1: tens of thousands, and they're all different. So I would

578
00:33:51,880 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 1: say you should. If you ask ten managers that question,

579
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: they would give you ten different answers, including I don't

580
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: need an agent, or I would only pay them a

581
00:33:58,560 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: reduced amount, or you know what, they deserved it and

582
00:34:00,600 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 1: they earned it, or I think they got me double

583
00:34:03,520 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 1: the money, or they got rid of an earnout provision

584
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:10,040
Speaker 1: in the deal that would have lengthened you know, wouldn't

585
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:12,040
Speaker 1: make it a fine ideal. There's a lot of answers

586
00:34:12,080 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 1: there or there or you know what, I don't need

587
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 1: to pay them on this, But the private corporates and

588
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: the college gigs or the fair dates or the festivals

589
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 1: outside of so and so are we're so much to

590
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:25,839
Speaker 1: me and that's where I make the money I'll pay

591
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: them are reduced on it. Again, it's there's a lot

592
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 1: of answers here. Okay, let's say you're an act. A

593
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 1: lot of these festivals have three to five stages. If

594
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:37,759
Speaker 1: it act plays with two in the if they played

595
00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 1: two in the afternoon. Other than saying I played that gig, okay,

596
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,719
Speaker 1: I played Lollapaloosa. Is there a benefit to them? Can

597
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 1: they break? I think so. I mean, listen, I've said

598
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 1: for years and made it a real point to say

599
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:55,959
Speaker 1: festivals or the new record stores. All right, when those poet,

600
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,480
Speaker 1: when that gets announced, most people that are going and others,

601
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:04,080
Speaker 1: because there's such a massive cultural force, go do research

602
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,560
Speaker 1: like you would up anything back in the day, all right,

603
00:35:07,640 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: on all the people playing the festival, including who knows

604
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: what band, what artists, what friend of theirs? Who? Why

605
00:35:13,239 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 1: are they not know that band? They're not hip enough?

606
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 1: And so there there's a hastened discovery process on the announced.

607
00:35:19,760 --> 00:35:22,800
Speaker 1: Then the app comes out and you're making your schedule

608
00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,239
Speaker 1: of where to go and what to do, and you're

609
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: basically continually sifting through a lineup whether it's a hundred X,

610
00:35:30,560 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: and you are making choices and you're in it. Okay,

611
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 1: it's like what party do I go to? It's like

612
00:35:35,640 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 1: your school um day, all right? What classes do I take?

613
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:40,920
Speaker 1: And where do I go and win to my lunch?

614
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:44,440
Speaker 1: So I think festivals are infinitely more than that. And

615
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,040
Speaker 1: I think the one o'clock and two o'clock slots I've

616
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 1: I've been involved with fifty acts that are breaking broken

617
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:55,320
Speaker 1: starting there. In fact, as it relates to signal to noise, Bob,

618
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:57,280
Speaker 1: if you have a big show at two in the afternoon,

619
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: you own that period. By seven, the whole festivals rocking,

620
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: and you don't, you might not make a sound, right,

621
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:10,359
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure it's a disadvantage. We've purposely put

622
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: artists in the old days early in the slots to

623
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 1: avoid competition, so they got all the attention, Amy Winehouse

624
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:20,280
Speaker 1: is four o'clock on purpose. Okay, let's to what degree

625
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 1: you've talked about this over the last fifteen years or so,

626
00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: expanding the purview of the agency into advances into promotion

627
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: of concerts. Are these venues that agencies will continue to

628
00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: forage in or will they ultimately just be arbiters of gigs? Listen,

629
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:43,439
Speaker 1: I can't I don't want to tell you what other

630
00:36:43,560 --> 00:36:48,160
Speaker 1: people are gonna do moving forward post COVID. What I

631
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: would tell you is the market's going to get and

632
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: when that happens, typically things can be more formless and

633
00:36:58,600 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: opportunity drives. Nobody's going to be worrying about regulation at

634
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:04,960
Speaker 1: the moment, you know, if not for years until this

635
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 1: thing comes back. So the answer really is where do

636
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,840
Speaker 1: people see opportunities and where they're willing to go and do,

637
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: including the agencies, right, labels could go start agencies or

638
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:19,400
Speaker 1: management companies. Michael Ropino is all and and a g

639
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 1: of invested in management companies and other things and venues.

640
00:37:23,840 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: I know, Core and cap Show. He went and spent

641
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,200
Speaker 1: or went and invested in a lot of different um

642
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,440
Speaker 1: vertical markets around touring. A lot of people have, so

643
00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:37,120
Speaker 1: I think it's a The one thing that everybody's learning

644
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: through this is how complex ecosystem is and how many

645
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 1: pieces get affected right when the revenue stops and artists

646
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: can't play, including even labels. Right people think labels are okay, Well,

647
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:49,160
Speaker 1: really all the indies depend on the artist touring getting

648
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: pressed putting out records in order for they don't spend

649
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:55,080
Speaker 1: that much in marketing promotion. They don't have it. So

650
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:57,919
Speaker 1: UM and the major says you know, have reduced their

651
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 1: flow of new releases in it because people don't want

652
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: to just lose the record in a week for the

653
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 1: most part. Again, so I think everything is on the table.

654
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 1: Everybody is going to make some choices where they think

655
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: the opportunities are best and where they should invest and

656
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:21,680
Speaker 1: what they should grow. The great news unlike past disasters.

657
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,480
Speaker 1: I don't know there's everyone like this, but but is

658
00:38:25,520 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: that the music economy is way bigger and way more

659
00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 1: healthy than people know. So wherever you invest, you've got

660
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 1: a good chance of making money or striking gold because,

661
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,200
Speaker 1: as you know, value copyrights is going up. Look at

662
00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 1: the Warner I P O Spotify price. Everything in the

663
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: copyright I P business is skyrocketing. Look at merk mercuriotis

664
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:51,280
Speaker 1: is multiples on its publishing. That world is going nuts.

665
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 1: You read the Goldman Report, it's how you four to

666
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:55,880
Speaker 1: six times and you're talking a hundred billion dollar recorded

667
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 1: music industry minimum, and then the touring industry and how

668
00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:03,320
Speaker 1: vast it is, and it was just really growing, especially globally.

669
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:05,320
Speaker 1: You know it's gonna go through at least a double

670
00:39:05,440 --> 00:39:07,760
Speaker 1: could be fifty billion a year, bigger than the movie

671
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 1: business and all the associated pieces. I think it will

672
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:14,720
Speaker 1: come back, will come back big, and it will be healthy.

673
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: The questions can people get through and then where they

674
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:21,760
Speaker 1: spend their time agencies? Yeah, everybody can remake themselves. Now, okay,

675
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:25,440
Speaker 1: let's go into genre. You were saying that generally speaking,

676
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 1: you are not personally into what is on the chart,

677
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 1: so to speak, how strong hip which charts we're talking

678
00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: about Spotify, Spotify Top fifty, which okay, the Spotify Top fifty,

679
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: which is basically hip hop and pop. Does that do

680
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:49,920
Speaker 1: as well as the top fifty of your live They've

681
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: always been disconnected. I mean I remember reading poll Star

682
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:58,080
Speaker 1: in the eighties and looking at Pink, Floyd, The Grateful Dead,

683
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:02,319
Speaker 1: Bob Seeger. You know, they weren't on any chart of

684
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:07,120
Speaker 1: recording music ever, right, Pink, etcetera, etcetera. And the same

685
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 1: was true later in the all rock, you know, grunge revolution.

686
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 1: There's a lot of it. Look, I think pop and

687
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 1: ticket sales can converge and do probably more today than ever.

688
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: And saying with hip hop hip hop, it was part

689
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 1: of the development period for people to really take the

690
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:29,319
Speaker 1: touring infrastructures um and invest in it as as the

691
00:40:29,360 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: rap and hip hop community grew. And that took a

692
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 1: lot of time. I was part of it and I

693
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: watched it um. I think the same is true for

694
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 1: the electronic music industry. Took a while for people to

695
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 1: really shake their metaphor of what being a DJ was

696
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,160
Speaker 1: and put it into a live you know, Greena or

697
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: other conte festival context, and I think over time all

698
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: of them grow and that's why I have such a

699
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:54,200
Speaker 1: robust business at the moment um. So the chart is

700
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:58,200
Speaker 1: the charts. The recorded charts are again not today when

701
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:02,239
Speaker 1: the touring market is shut, but it's more in line

702
00:41:02,280 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 1: than it was in the past in my opinion, and

703
00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:09,360
Speaker 1: there's more surprises than ever because there are touring surprises

704
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 1: that are not on the chart, and there's huge recording

705
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 1: artists that don't really affect the touring, but I would

706
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,759
Speaker 1: say a large percentage of it. The holy grail is

707
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: people to switch on all the revenue streams, okay, and

708
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 1: they understand what they are today. So whether it is

709
00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 1: the ad rev ad share that you discounted but I

710
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: think is bigger than you do, or direct e commerce

711
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: or merchandise which is an all time high, publishing and

712
00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:39,279
Speaker 1: sinks and you know all the different uses of publishing

713
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 1: and splits and remixes and data touring and all the

714
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: touring besides merch all the touring ancillaries. I think today

715
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: people realize there's ten revenue streams in the music history.

716
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:53,839
Speaker 1: I gotta turn at least six to ten of them

717
00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,400
Speaker 1: to to really be in the game. So I think

718
00:41:56,440 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to learn. So you have history in different areas,

719
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: you have history at a record company. Let's just assume

720
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: there's not my best one. It's like, okay, but I'm

721
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:09,680
Speaker 1: going to give you a liberty here. There are three

722
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:12,960
Speaker 1: major record companies at this point in time. If I

723
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 1: were to put you in charge of one of them,

724
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 1: forget which one, what would you do besides take it public? Yes, okay,

725
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 1: well that's the first thing, all right, um, and I

726
00:42:29,760 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: think that will be happening. Well, really, Sony is part

727
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,280
Speaker 1: of a Sony Music is part of Sony International, Warner

728
00:42:36,360 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 1: just Win Public and right now it used to be that,

729
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:42,320
Speaker 1: you know, if you were content, you're driving the machine.

730
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:46,400
Speaker 1: There's an argument to be made that Sony Music's valuation

731
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 1: is getting crushed by being part of the bigger But

732
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 1: you have to but you have to assume that. Okay, Now,

733
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:56,799
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I think that you

734
00:42:56,840 --> 00:43:00,360
Speaker 1: know it's a separate stock. Um. Universal obviously is under Vendy,

735
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: and I think Universal at some point goes public and

736
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:05,120
Speaker 1: will be massive and good for all of them. They've

737
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: done a ridiculously great job building look I think record

738
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 1: companies have the next eighteen months where they have a

739
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 1: lot more staying power. They have the market with them.

740
00:43:17,239 --> 00:43:19,320
Speaker 1: If you're public and a lot of capital, they could

741
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:21,880
Speaker 1: be the great consolidators right now. If I were driving one,

742
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:25,600
Speaker 1: I would be really building out my tentacles of infrastructure

743
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 1: to have more pieces of the music industry and the

744
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: what I'll call the supply value chain. If you if

745
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: you call Spotify pipeline and the label is oil will supply.

746
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 1: I would be um doing a lot around the oil

747
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: supply and the healthy parts of the music industry. Because

748
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:47,239
Speaker 1: I have capital on flush, I can do artists felt

749
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 1: you could buy clubs, you could be a label, you

750
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 1: could do a lot right They started merged companies, they

751
00:43:51,040 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: started agencies, They've invested in managing companies. I know Vivendi

752
00:43:55,760 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: is doing a ton in Africa. I saw a presentation

753
00:43:58,040 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: that was fascinating there in like fifteen cities and Africa.

754
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:04,960
Speaker 1: Why is there not They're investing in the music industry, infrastructure,

755
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: their French company, there's a lot of French territories and

756
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 1: so it's sort of fascinating. I think they are. They

757
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:15,480
Speaker 1: have the most opportunity right now. My two cents and

758
00:44:15,520 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: they have publishing, so they're already covered two ways to Sunday, right, okay,

759
00:44:19,120 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 1: but what do we know about major labels today. They

760
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: are releasing fewer records and fewer genres than ever before

761
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 1: in an arrow where there's more music and more genres

762
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,120
Speaker 1: both being distributed in that type of music. So they're

763
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:33,319
Speaker 1: pausing the new release piece to but remember, the new

764
00:44:33,320 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 1: release pieces at least profitable for them. So in some ways,

765
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:39,960
Speaker 1: by cutting that all right and getting more catalog revenue

766
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 1: as a blend, they're actually profitability is going to go

767
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:46,040
Speaker 1: up in some ways, okay, and the valuations are skyrocketing

768
00:44:46,080 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 1: at the same time. I think they will be fine.

769
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:51,560
Speaker 1: I don't think that their DIP is going to be

770
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:55,479
Speaker 1: bad invested. Let me put it slightly different way. Uh,

771
00:44:55,520 --> 00:44:58,759
Speaker 1: they are missing out on genres uh that don't do

772
00:44:58,840 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: well on the Spotify quickly because certainly you get paid

773
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 1: on consumption. This could ultimately the be the bane of

774
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,200
Speaker 1: their existence. I don't think, because they certainly want to

775
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:09,880
Speaker 1: take a big piece, I don't agree. I think what

776
00:45:10,000 --> 00:45:12,399
Speaker 1: happens is after every format change, the majors just buy

777
00:45:12,480 --> 00:45:15,560
Speaker 1: up what they don't have. Historically, they've started labels, bought labels,

778
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:19,560
Speaker 1: consolidated labels, because when there's a new profitable model and

779
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: streaming is the most profitable and the best one, they

780
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,360
Speaker 1: just buy more of the Spotify. It's a it's a

781
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: math formula. Okay, it doesn't stream as much as a

782
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 1: hip hop record maybe or a pop record. But you

783
00:45:30,800 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: know these labels are they have very smart people in

784
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:40,840
Speaker 1: there who know the value of an indie record, electronic record,

785
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:43,600
Speaker 1: hip hop, hop, pop record. They have a different value

786
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:45,520
Speaker 1: and multiple assigence, and they still want to buy them.

787
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 1: The end of the day, the game is going to

788
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 1: be buying up as much as the Spotify streaming revenue

789
00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:53,160
Speaker 1: as you can get, and the majors will be able

790
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 1: to do that. So I think that's gonna be unprecedented

791
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: in the next five to ten years because they're losing

792
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: market share, you know of that, because the exactly, yeah,

793
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: they're gonna buy it up. They're gonna be flushed cash

794
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:07,640
Speaker 1: like a lot bo bob sixty billion dollars the Universe

795
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 1: I said forty, they're gonna go out at sixty. Okay,

796
00:46:10,280 --> 00:46:13,600
Speaker 1: if anybody's listening from Universal, I'm sure you whatever, you'll

797
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: say something, but it's good what do we know if

798
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:19,960
Speaker 1: you have good what do you think they could do

799
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 1: with five billion dollars in cash with indies a rabbit hole.

800
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,120
Speaker 1: Now he's got a side because let me go to

801
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:30,320
Speaker 1: a slightly different point. Okay, if you have incredible traction,

802
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:33,000
Speaker 1: if you're a little naz X, you can write your

803
00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:36,040
Speaker 1: ticket at the label. But if you're not someone with

804
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 1: incredible streaming numbers, at first, the record company, the traditional

805
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:42,759
Speaker 1: label is not going to give you a good deal.

806
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:45,279
Speaker 1: Whereas you go to direct to spotify the others and

807
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,399
Speaker 1: get it more than of the recording revenue. Someone who

808
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:52,319
Speaker 1: is young and leverages that, why do they need the

809
00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: major labels? The major label is a great percentage of

810
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: their distribution market share is based on they distribute all

811
00:46:58,600 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: these little labs to them. Signal to noise, you don't

812
00:47:02,680 --> 00:47:05,080
Speaker 1: first of all, you have efficient back ends and systems.

813
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: If usually because you get a cash advance, because you

814
00:47:09,040 --> 00:47:11,880
Speaker 1: get bought out, and you don't get a cash advance otherwise.

815
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:14,920
Speaker 1: So that's the majority of why people do this, right.

816
00:47:14,960 --> 00:47:17,400
Speaker 1: It's not like they take your records of the store

817
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,919
Speaker 1: and rebrand them with a label on it and sent

818
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: in as a nice price that no longer happens, so

819
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 1: nobody knows what happens because the I P stays in

820
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:29,800
Speaker 1: Spotify or Apple Music. It never changes. It's always accessible

821
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: to customer. There's no label there anyway, So it's just

822
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: who gets paid the royalties, right, that's it. It's an

823
00:47:35,600 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 1: invisible transaction. So if somebody's wait, so if somebody's gonna

824
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:40,799
Speaker 1: make a margin on it, they're gonna buy more of it.

825
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 1: It's like factoring. So if I think that you know,

826
00:47:43,840 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: the indie label deal is this, and I'm gonna pay

827
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:47,360
Speaker 1: him a million dollars to take over this, and I

828
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:49,359
Speaker 1: get thirty nine cents and might pay out to them,

829
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:51,879
Speaker 1: was factor to thirty three cents and I make six cents.

830
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: They're gonna do it all day long. It's just math. Okay,

831
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,760
Speaker 1: let's go to the other side of the equation. The artist.

832
00:47:58,480 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 1: Of course, there's a decision whether it take that deal.

833
00:48:01,440 --> 00:48:04,840
Speaker 1: But in the heyday of classic rock, when this business

834
00:48:04,920 --> 00:48:08,560
Speaker 1: was built, artists were worried about their credibility. They did

835
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:11,919
Speaker 1: not want to do endorsement, sponsorships. There were very few

836
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:15,920
Speaker 1: private To what degree is that a factor it acts today?

837
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: It feels very like an old topic from back from

838
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. To me, I think that that

839
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:23,839
Speaker 1: that ship sailed. There are a few people that still

840
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 1: feel that way. My good friend Paul to Let feels

841
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: that way about Coachella, and more power to him. Um. Look,

842
00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: my view is this, Uh, sponsorship is one revenue stream

843
00:48:35,520 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 1: most people can't get. Okay, it's easy to say, oh,

844
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:42,160
Speaker 1: you're selling out, and a lot of people feel that way.

845
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means anymore. I mean, Trump's

846
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: using people's music without authorization for his ship, and artists

847
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: are fucking freaking out over that. You think they should

848
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:56,320
Speaker 1: care about a commercial they got paid for. That's much worse.

849
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,799
Speaker 1: So anyway, Look, here's what I say. It's a it's

850
00:48:59,840 --> 00:49:04,479
Speaker 1: an older, overblown topic. Of the artists I think would

851
00:49:04,520 --> 00:49:06,759
Speaker 1: take it and think it's no hit to their credibility.

852
00:49:06,800 --> 00:49:10,560
Speaker 1: The truth is that in their Instagram feeds there's advertising everywhere.

853
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:12,760
Speaker 1: Just like when MTV played their videos there was ads

854
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:14,880
Speaker 1: before and afterwards they couldn't do anything about it. The

855
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:16,680
Speaker 1: same was true on radio, the same is true on

856
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 1: social media, and I think it's an overblown topic. Music

857
00:49:19,800 --> 00:49:23,240
Speaker 1: is surrounded by advertising almost no matter what platform. Again,

858
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 1: you know Pandora and streaming services aside their concerts. They

859
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: go play a venue where they don't take a sponsor,

860
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:33,839
Speaker 1: and there's a spot three sponsors at the venue. Who

861
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: the funk knows? You think the consumers like, Nope, that

862
00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: band has credibility because they're playing the Chevy Concert Series.

863
00:49:39,640 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: It's not them. I don't buy it. I think we're

864
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:45,759
Speaker 1: way past that. But sell by date. Sorry, Okay, let's

865
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:49,040
Speaker 1: talk about you for so people get where you're coming from.

866
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,880
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up near you, buddy Stanford? I

867
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 1: know all your history this Connecticut. Okay? And uh, were

868
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:01,600
Speaker 1: you the type a kid who was the straw that

869
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 1: s uh stirred the drink? Or were you alone? Or

870
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: what kind of kid were you? What is the straw

871
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:09,239
Speaker 1: that started to drink social? No, yes, that's someone. When

872
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 1: uh Reggie Jackson came to the New York Yankees, he says,

873
00:50:12,239 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 1: I'm the straw that stirs the drink, the leader of

874
00:50:14,960 --> 00:50:18,920
Speaker 1: the band. I try not to have that kind of

875
00:50:18,960 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: a thought about myself. I think I was a normal,

876
00:50:21,560 --> 00:50:26,040
Speaker 1: you know, first generation immigrant kid who was a jock

877
00:50:26,320 --> 00:50:28,200
Speaker 1: and I was into music. I was I used to

878
00:50:28,200 --> 00:50:30,800
Speaker 1: call myself a geek jock because my dad is an engineer,

879
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:33,920
Speaker 1: and I was pretty mad, and I was into genetics

880
00:50:33,920 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: and immune therapy and gene there. You know, I'm a

881
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:37,960
Speaker 1: bit of a geek and I'm a computer nerd. Was

882
00:50:38,400 --> 00:50:42,279
Speaker 1: gonna be a here science miner. In college, I was

883
00:50:42,280 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: writing compilers. That was probably the first guy in the

884
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:47,040
Speaker 1: industry use a computer or spreadsheet. Most people know that.

885
00:50:47,160 --> 00:50:48,480
Speaker 1: And I was one of the first people to talk

886
00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:51,759
Speaker 1: about online services the Internet before the Internet, right when

887
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: it's commercial online services. So I don't know. I'm a geek,

888
00:50:56,320 --> 00:51:00,480
Speaker 1: music freak, you know, jock, kind of normal, normal guy

889
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:03,400
Speaker 1: that doesn't it isn't any I don't want to be

890
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:13,520
Speaker 1: one of the big personalities in perfect Okay. So we're okay, okay,

891
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: I know this, But from my audience, where do you

892
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:21,280
Speaker 1: go to college? You see San Diego? Why pre med only?

893
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: And I was gonna go to Berkeley. Sere used to

894
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: buy records on telegraphic Leopold's and rescuing. It was my nirvana. Right,

895
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:30,719
Speaker 1: I'd be shopping for C. T. I Jazz all the

896
00:51:30,719 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 1: way through the latest indie whatever. I was a freak,

897
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:38,080
Speaker 1: and um Berkeley had a ship med school and no

898
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:41,240
Speaker 1: housing In nineteen eighty and you had to pick three

899
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: schools if you were in the UC and I looked online. Still,

900
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:46,440
Speaker 1: UCSD was beautiful and at the best med school. I

901
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,680
Speaker 1: flew down there and it was out of control, gorgeous. Okay,

902
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 1: just at what point do you at what point do

903
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 1: you move from Connecticut to San Francisoto junior junior year? Okay,

904
00:51:58,920 --> 00:52:01,359
Speaker 1: that must have been very hard and social. No, no,

905
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:03,400
Speaker 1: I was. I was a baseball player, so it was easy.

906
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: What happened? You got? How good a base that was

907
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:09,480
Speaker 1: pretty good? My kid's good too. But here's the bottom line.

908
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:14,040
Speaker 1: You get accepted. I wasn't an outcast athletics or other

909
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:19,680
Speaker 1: special interests. Uh allow you acceptance in ways that you know,

910
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:24,319
Speaker 1: the normal outcast slash. I don't know, anybody doesn't. And

911
00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:27,400
Speaker 1: you know I tried to be so much social. Okay,

912
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:29,840
Speaker 1: So to go to UCSD, how do you get involved

913
00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:33,920
Speaker 1: in the music program? There's a fun story. So um,

914
00:52:34,080 --> 00:52:36,479
Speaker 1: it's some fun fun dormates by the way, my judge

915
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 1: with the dormate was at the time, So they had

916
00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:42,359
Speaker 1: a campus record store and I signed up to work

917
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:45,080
Speaker 1: at it. It started the year before and once again,

918
00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 1: what once you get what ye're we in And I

919
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,279
Speaker 1: ended up running the record store within two months, I

920
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 1: think maybe a month, and that was really fun. I

921
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:56,920
Speaker 1: had I managed a band out of the record store.

922
00:52:57,080 --> 00:52:58,799
Speaker 1: I called their number on the back of the vinyl.

923
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:02,120
Speaker 1: What was called the church, so what I was at

924
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:04,640
Speaker 1: that point. Then the campus radio station came calling. I

925
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: joined the campus radio station and I took that over. Um.

926
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: I then joined the concert committee and that went really

927
00:53:13,719 --> 00:53:17,000
Speaker 1: really well, and I end up promoting shows on campus

928
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 1: and then a little bit slower because usually there's a

929
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:23,800
Speaker 1: hierarchy in college. You're the newbie and there's not a

930
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:29,719
Speaker 1: UCSD everybody. It's a nerd school. It was you know, yeah, no,

931
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:35,320
Speaker 1: and I kind of I don't. I don't want to

932
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:37,360
Speaker 1: say anything here, but let's just put it this way.

933
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to have an idea of what

934
00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:44,160
Speaker 1: to go do and that led the day. So what

935
00:53:44,200 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 1: did you say to do well in the concert area?

936
00:53:47,480 --> 00:53:49,799
Speaker 1: Buy more shows and put on more shows. And I

937
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: convinced the administration then call just did enough fear calling

938
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:56,760
Speaker 1: agents back in the day. I remember this day calling

939
00:53:56,760 --> 00:53:59,200
Speaker 1: Andy Waters and my first show and Joel Harrisman on

940
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 1: the second show. I promoted and trying to remember who

941
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:04,880
Speaker 1: did spyro Gyra at the time, Paul la Monica on

942
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:08,359
Speaker 1: bb King, you know, Joel Parrisman on King, Crimson, Andy

943
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:11,840
Speaker 1: Waters and Ian Hunter, and it just rolled. I I

944
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,040
Speaker 1: don't even know what to say. My friends said to me, Yeah,

945
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:17,280
Speaker 1: this is what you're always destined to funk that doctor ship.

946
00:54:17,320 --> 00:54:19,160
Speaker 1: That was a bunch of bullshit cover for your mother,

947
00:54:19,760 --> 00:54:21,839
Speaker 1: and this is what you were going to do. But

948
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:24,400
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So it just went and I

949
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:26,520
Speaker 1: ended up having a lot of success down there, and

950
00:54:26,560 --> 00:54:29,040
Speaker 1: I was on ninety one excellent Radio. I started humphreezing.

951
00:54:29,040 --> 00:54:33,000
Speaker 1: It blew up and I a little bit slower. How

952
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:37,160
Speaker 1: many shows did you do at ucsday four to start?

953
00:54:37,200 --> 00:54:39,759
Speaker 1: Then started a company, did four more and then got

954
00:54:39,840 --> 00:54:43,640
Speaker 1: hired by what is was Avalon Attractions Mark Berman that

955
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: then got bought and is now Live Nation. But and

956
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: then hundreds of shows the junior and senior year. Hundreds. Okay,

957
00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:54,239
Speaker 1: so we say you started home Free. You tell us

958
00:54:54,239 --> 00:54:58,279
Speaker 1: about that um To venue in San Diego. It's been

959
00:54:58,320 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: going thirty something thirty up thirty seven years probably the

960
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:03,120
Speaker 1: Potters Venum say, do you get one of them? But

961
00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:08,360
Speaker 1: what happened was we were. I promoted Carla Bonoff, Bonnie

962
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 1: Rait and John Anderson from Yes at the old Globe

963
00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:15,799
Speaker 1: Theaters in San Diego and which are gorgeous, all right,

964
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:19,440
Speaker 1: lar theaters, but they were union houses and you couldn't

965
00:55:19,440 --> 00:55:22,480
Speaker 1: make any money, okay, and no, Bob, I did not

966
00:55:22,560 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 1: church twenty dollars a ticket to make money on top

967
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: ticket fees. But uh, you couldn't. So we were looking

968
00:55:28,040 --> 00:55:30,520
Speaker 1: for a cheaper venue. And I happened to go with

969
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:35,560
Speaker 1: the production manager to a radio station um event where

970
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 1: they were giving out drinks and promoting some advertiser, and

971
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 1: it was at a hotel and they laid it out well,

972
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:44,720
Speaker 1: Jasmine was playing on this lawn, and I said, Hey,

973
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:47,439
Speaker 1: I bet you this looks cheap. We could do shows here.

974
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: And I went and met with the hotel manager and

975
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:51,759
Speaker 1: he said sure, and I cut a deal with him

976
00:55:51,840 --> 00:55:55,239
Speaker 1: on the spot. And I think the first show we

977
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:58,319
Speaker 1: did there was David Lindley and El rayo X and

978
00:55:58,400 --> 00:56:00,879
Speaker 1: I think we did The Crusaders and then four nights

979
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:04,360
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Buffett, and Jimmy Buffett sold that in ten minutes.

980
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:07,160
Speaker 1: There were three thousand boats trying to watch the show.

981
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 1: From next to Humphries and it broke and it never

982
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:14,799
Speaker 1: looked back, so okay, And whose money was it? It

983
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 1: was the company I worked for at the time, which

984
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:22,040
Speaker 1: was the promoter who part of it before. It was

985
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:24,600
Speaker 1: a partnership between a San Diego promoter named Mark Burman

986
00:56:24,719 --> 00:56:27,400
Speaker 1: and Avalon Attractions, so it was both of their money's.

987
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:30,720
Speaker 1: I think Avalon was floating the cash and Mark Berman

988
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:33,440
Speaker 1: had done some stuff and Avalanche it wasn't nice, and

989
00:56:33,520 --> 00:56:36,239
Speaker 1: Avalone said, we're gonna throw you out and take our

990
00:56:36,280 --> 00:56:39,000
Speaker 1: money back. So there was a big show that they

991
00:56:39,800 --> 00:56:43,480
Speaker 1: captured the entire box office and settled the score. And

992
00:56:43,480 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 1: then I was asked to choose which one was I

993
00:56:45,520 --> 00:56:47,600
Speaker 1: going to work for, and I and I was still

994
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:50,279
Speaker 1: in school and Humphries was my baby at the time,

995
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:53,040
Speaker 1: so I stayed with the Mark Burman guy for a moment.

996
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: It's a whole funny story. He was funded by a

997
00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 1: drug dealer and it was just wacky. And I lasted

998
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:01,200
Speaker 1: there about another nine months, and then I made a

999
00:57:01,200 --> 00:57:03,200
Speaker 1: decision to go to l A and become an agent.

1000
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,880
Speaker 1: I was pursued. Funny story, the guys who were triad

1001
00:57:06,920 --> 00:57:09,560
Speaker 1: than William Morris, Richard Rosenberg and Peterboroughs like great guys,

1002
00:57:10,360 --> 00:57:14,800
Speaker 1: dear friends and great people. God rest, Peter salt Um.

1003
00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 1: I sold out a Sergio Mendez date. I think ine

1004
00:57:19,240 --> 00:57:22,200
Speaker 1: and Richard Rosenberger was one of Sergio Mendez his best

1005
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:26,120
Speaker 1: friends at Bellafante, and all these people had loved del Mar,

1006
00:57:26,160 --> 00:57:28,080
Speaker 1: who's a horse guy, so he would go down to

1007
00:57:28,080 --> 00:57:30,600
Speaker 1: Delmar all the time. So here's this excuse, Sergio Amende

1008
00:57:30,680 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: is actually selling out somewhere, which never happened. He's like,

1009
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:36,280
Speaker 1: I gotta meet the guy that's selling out, Sergeion Amendez,

1010
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 1: And I got to go to del Mar. He came down,

1011
00:57:38,480 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: we became friends, and I went to work for him

1012
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:42,800
Speaker 1: after that. And and it's, uh, you know, that was

1013
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:45,560
Speaker 1: the start of post college and what point do you

1014
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 1: decide you're not going to be a doctor. And what

1015
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:52,640
Speaker 1: do your parents say about that? She's still pissed. Um.

1016
00:57:52,760 --> 00:57:54,400
Speaker 1: I don't know that my parents ever figured out what

1017
00:57:54,440 --> 00:57:59,160
Speaker 1: I actually did or do truly, they're ritchen press, but

1018
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 1: I don't know if they know. Um. I was really

1019
00:58:02,520 --> 00:58:05,000
Speaker 1: getting my ass handed to me into sophomore year in

1020
00:58:05,120 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 1: Kem classes and down there, Okam and Pekem were really

1021
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: really hard there, and I just got killed. I was distracted,

1022
00:58:11,640 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 1: so that made it made my choice easy. Then management

1023
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 1: science became came calling, which is a joke, but whatever. Okay,

1024
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:21,640
Speaker 1: So you you moved to l A. You work for

1025
00:58:21,720 --> 00:58:26,360
Speaker 1: Triad Agency at the time, got merged into Triad, went

1026
00:58:26,960 --> 00:58:30,280
Speaker 1: to nine one, okay, and in ninety one you go

1027
00:58:30,920 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, here's here's here's a fun story. So incredible years.

1028
00:58:38,200 --> 00:58:40,440
Speaker 1: They were all incredible years. So those are incredible. I

1029
00:58:40,480 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: mean the music that was coming out, whether it was

1030
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: beginning hip hop, where it was grunge, all rock, it

1031
00:58:45,720 --> 00:58:48,479
Speaker 1: didn't matter whatever you call it, you know, indie data

1032
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:51,200
Speaker 1: da da. But it culminated kind of in Lollapalus and

1033
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: I left and I was really upset. I got a

1034
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:55,919
Speaker 1: shitty bonus one year and it really bummed me out.

1035
00:58:55,960 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that bumped me out was

1036
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:01,080
Speaker 1: product manager and Electra Record just had all the say

1037
00:59:01,120 --> 00:59:03,120
Speaker 1: and the promotion people over the Pixies, who are one

1038
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 1: of my favorites, and I was a Pixies fanatic, and

1039
00:59:06,680 --> 00:59:08,800
Speaker 1: they were putting out I think it was Trump Lamont

1040
00:59:09,920 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: and they picked the wrong single and you should appreciate this.

1041
00:59:14,120 --> 00:59:16,320
Speaker 1: You mass was the hit, and they never put out

1042
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:18,680
Speaker 1: as a single and I went crazy. I was like,

1043
00:59:18,680 --> 00:59:20,760
Speaker 1: the Pixie are finally gonna have a huge hit. They

1044
00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:23,120
Speaker 1: get something they deserve in the world, and the record

1045
00:59:23,200 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 1: is gonna suck it all up because some radio programs

1046
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 1: like the of this record I was living. So I

1047
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:29,520
Speaker 1: realized right then and there, between the bonus and that

1048
00:59:30,200 --> 00:59:32,160
Speaker 1: I gotta go on the record business. That's what the

1049
00:59:32,200 --> 00:59:34,800
Speaker 1: power is. Every agents are nothing, live business on the

1050
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:36,880
Speaker 1: bottom of somebody's shoot, which is no longer the case.

1051
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:38,680
Speaker 1: And you've written about that too, but it was at

1052
00:59:38,680 --> 00:59:43,680
Speaker 1: the time. So Irving had offered a job to me,

1053
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 1: and um somebody worked in me and said, you know,

1054
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:49,720
Speaker 1: instead of you being reactive, you should be proactive. How

1055
00:59:49,760 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 1: did you know? How did you know Rick Rubin? Well,

1056
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:56,680
Speaker 1: I worked as Dan's exagent and we were friends. We

1057
00:59:56,680 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 1: were friends from before that. Um and I wrote down

1058
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:03,320
Speaker 1: my three heroes at the time and the record business.

1059
01:00:04,080 --> 01:00:06,040
Speaker 1: One was Iva Watch Russell for a d but it

1060
01:00:06,040 --> 01:00:10,880
Speaker 1: couldn't work for him, um Rick, Reuben, Gary Kerr First

1061
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:13,480
Speaker 1: and Seymour Stein and they were when when when this

1062
01:00:13,600 --> 01:00:18,640
Speaker 1: person said be proactive, you gotta work your your mark, Igor,

1063
01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:21,800
Speaker 1: you gotta don't take the first whatever, go work where

1064
01:00:21,800 --> 01:00:23,800
Speaker 1: you want to work. And I went and met with

1065
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: all of them. I was they were heroes to me.

1066
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:31,160
Speaker 1: And Rick felt the best and I spent five years

1067
01:00:31,160 --> 01:00:34,040
Speaker 1: with him. That we're amazing. I learned a ton he was,

1068
01:00:34,120 --> 01:00:39,240
Speaker 1: He's amazing. Uh too much for the podcast. But I

1069
01:00:39,280 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 1: watched him and George de Culius and Brendan O'Brien and

1070
01:00:43,520 --> 01:00:46,360
Speaker 1: Dave Sarrty and all these people make records, and I

1071
01:00:46,400 --> 01:00:48,000
Speaker 1: didn't know how to make a record. I'm watching recruit

1072
01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:50,120
Speaker 1: and make records. I helped them sign Johnny Cash and

1073
01:00:50,160 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 1: Mr Funt Delly Kind. I'm the guy that flew down

1074
01:00:52,000 --> 01:00:55,480
Speaker 1: to sign Johnny. You know on behalf of Rick It's huge, Branson,

1075
01:00:55,520 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 1: Miss Already and Nata It's ridiculous. Chili Peppers, Bloodshirt, Sex mensh,

1076
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 1: Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic, Wildflowers, Tom Petty. All made during

1077
01:01:03,120 --> 01:01:05,919
Speaker 1: that time, Mick Jagger, plus plus plus, Plus, Plus plus

1078
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:08,760
Speaker 1: plus plus, Slayer, this that. In the next I signed

1079
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 1: fifteen bands that I loved. All failed, but you know,

1080
01:01:11,720 --> 01:01:15,440
Speaker 1: not failed great records. Mary Jane, I'm Sea, Jesus Medicine,

1081
01:01:15,480 --> 01:01:18,760
Speaker 1: Julian Cope, Frank Black, just artists that people didn't care

1082
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 1: about commercially but I loved but I learned a lot

1083
01:01:21,640 --> 01:01:23,640
Speaker 1: and then I bought a couple of websites when I

1084
01:01:23,680 --> 01:01:25,160
Speaker 1: was with him that I had a real vision for

1085
01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:27,240
Speaker 1: and he became a partner and artist Direct. So that

1086
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:30,600
Speaker 1: was kind of so tell us when Artists Direct started.

1087
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:35,080
Speaker 1: What the viewpoint was in the development thereof the viewpoint

1088
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:37,880
Speaker 1: was pretty simple. It's funny. Okay, So here's a funny story.

1089
01:01:37,920 --> 01:01:41,280
Speaker 1: I saw Mark cats Is somewhere here, but um so

1090
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:45,240
Speaker 1: this is relevant. If you haven't seen the Beastie Boys

1091
01:01:46,040 --> 01:01:49,800
Speaker 1: documentary on Apple TV, I highly recommended watch Linda run

1092
01:01:49,840 --> 01:01:52,800
Speaker 1: Stats too. It's amazing. But the Beastis brought me back

1093
01:01:53,400 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 1: to um a story. Ian Rodgers and I met in

1094
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:01,880
Speaker 1: Detroit at Pine Knob I think was a beast show.

1095
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 1: It wasn't La La it was Beast Show and John

1096
01:02:05,520 --> 01:02:09,760
Speaker 1: Silva was there and I was freaking out at that

1097
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:11,840
Speaker 1: period over the Internet and what it meant. And I

1098
01:02:12,280 --> 01:02:14,000
Speaker 1: just to be clear, what what year are we in?

1099
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:22,360
Speaker 1: Do you remember? Ninety? True? Good question? It was not.

1100
01:02:22,400 --> 01:02:24,640
Speaker 1: The Internet was commercial online services, so it must have

1101
01:02:24,640 --> 01:02:29,560
Speaker 1: been earlier two okay okay? And Ian and I were

1102
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:32,160
Speaker 1: explaining the Beasts and Silva what was going to change

1103
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 1: about the world and fast forward. I was in the

1104
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 1: car with Rick explain maybe it was when the browser

1105
01:02:42,360 --> 01:02:48,720
Speaker 1: came out, uh, explaining that right now, I didn't understand

1106
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:51,760
Speaker 1: how if I was a fan and I used the

1107
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:56,920
Speaker 1: best boys with Rick obviously because he was instrumental there. Um,

1108
01:02:57,120 --> 01:02:59,440
Speaker 1: why I have to go to a concert to buy

1109
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:02,760
Speaker 1: the band's T shirt? And why when I want to

1110
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:05,640
Speaker 1: find out what they're doing on their new album, I

1111
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:08,320
Speaker 1: have to wait and buy ten magazines to see who's

1112
01:03:08,320 --> 01:03:12,560
Speaker 1: going to write about them. And I want to buy

1113
01:03:12,960 --> 01:03:15,440
Speaker 1: go to the records from buy their records, but I

1114
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:18,000
Speaker 1: can't buy their ticket there. I have to go somewhere else.

1115
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:20,480
Speaker 1: And so what the fund is that? It's like the

1116
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:24,400
Speaker 1: worst organization system you could even think about. It makes

1117
01:03:24,400 --> 01:03:27,800
Speaker 1: a scavenger hunt look good, right because it's random. I said,

1118
01:03:27,840 --> 01:03:32,440
Speaker 1: it's impossible to be a fan. What terrible? So again,

1119
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:35,640
Speaker 1: I've been in commercial online services, a well compy serve Prodigy.

1120
01:03:35,720 --> 01:03:38,640
Speaker 1: You know Delfi, my buddy from college, was one, was

1121
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:40,959
Speaker 1: probably number two in siliconality. They made a movie about

1122
01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:44,800
Speaker 1: him because it was such a forward thinker, uh, in

1123
01:03:44,880 --> 01:03:50,400
Speaker 1: terms of home automation and networking. And I said to Rick.

1124
01:03:50,480 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 1: When the browser hit, I said, the world has to

1125
01:03:53,360 --> 01:03:56,120
Speaker 1: be reshaped. Everybody has to go to the artist for everything,

1126
01:03:56,320 --> 01:03:59,600
Speaker 1: their tickets, their t shirts, their information, their tour dates,

1127
01:03:59,680 --> 01:04:02,479
Speaker 1: their music, their videos, and it should be in one place.

1128
01:04:02,520 --> 01:04:05,600
Speaker 1: Why do you have to fucking jump around the digital

1129
01:04:06,080 --> 01:04:08,080
Speaker 1: This internet thing is going to allow for that to happen.

1130
01:04:08,120 --> 01:04:10,960
Speaker 1: I want to build a company that builds the home

1131
01:04:11,040 --> 01:04:14,040
Speaker 1: base where everything is at, so when people go there

1132
01:04:14,080 --> 01:04:17,160
Speaker 1: they get everything. It's a stupid organizational system. This is

1133
01:04:17,160 --> 01:04:21,000
Speaker 1: a reorgan okay, with the artist around the center. This

1134
01:04:21,240 --> 01:04:25,479
Speaker 1: is before the concept of commercial online streaming services, which

1135
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:28,840
Speaker 1: then is a platform where you have a lot of artists, right,

1136
01:04:28,840 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: but then hopefully you link to these centers and now

1137
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:33,440
Speaker 1: there's multiple centers, multiple channels. But at the time it

1138
01:04:33,560 --> 01:04:35,280
Speaker 1: was built trying to build the first one. So the

1139
01:04:35,320 --> 01:04:37,560
Speaker 1: real thought behind it was trying to centralize the artist

1140
01:04:37,680 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 1: content and their goods right and their information and not

1141
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:45,120
Speaker 1: make it, you know, a road trip to have to

1142
01:04:45,120 --> 01:04:47,400
Speaker 1: figure out how to get that ship. It was. It

1143
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:51,520
Speaker 1: was maddening and for me, who was a super fan

1144
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 1: of Indian underground music, um, it was double bad because

1145
01:04:57,640 --> 01:05:01,360
Speaker 1: those artists didn't get enrolling stuff or on MTV or

1146
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:04,000
Speaker 1: on the radio. So now you had to dig and wait.

1147
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:07,400
Speaker 1: For god, it was written in a musician magazine, or

1148
01:05:07,440 --> 01:05:09,840
Speaker 1: did option to a story or trouser pressed do something

1149
01:05:09,960 --> 01:05:12,200
Speaker 1: or cream or this or that, or depending what you

1150
01:05:12,240 --> 01:05:14,120
Speaker 1: were doing, or oh, I gotta wait till the enemy

1151
01:05:14,240 --> 01:05:16,760
Speaker 1: comes in three weeks late and Sounds and Melody Maker

1152
01:05:16,800 --> 01:05:18,960
Speaker 1: to see if they write about them right. And I'm

1153
01:05:19,000 --> 01:05:22,280
Speaker 1: representing the Order and the Bunnymen, and you know, Smith's

1154
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:25,480
Speaker 1: for a moment and cocked out Twins, the Pixies and

1155
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:27,400
Speaker 1: Dead Can Dance and nobody's did They're not on the

1156
01:05:27,440 --> 01:05:32,640
Speaker 1: fucking radio, kay rock whatever some of them, And how

1157
01:05:32,640 --> 01:05:35,320
Speaker 1: are you going to find out about that? And then

1158
01:05:35,840 --> 01:05:39,120
Speaker 1: what really bothered me was I said, Okay, now I'm

1159
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:43,080
Speaker 1: an agent. I'm working with these bands. I'm in New

1160
01:05:43,160 --> 01:05:45,960
Speaker 1: York for the bunny Man. They sell out Roseland and

1161
01:05:46,040 --> 01:05:50,760
Speaker 1: Radio City ten thousand freak Bunnymen fans, and after the

1162
01:05:50,760 --> 01:05:53,840
Speaker 1: show's over, nobody knows who they are and how to

1163
01:05:53,880 --> 01:05:57,720
Speaker 1: get to them again. And I go, that's the dumbest

1164
01:05:57,720 --> 01:05:59,160
Speaker 1: thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I have

1165
01:05:59,240 --> 01:06:01,600
Speaker 1: to fix this. This is so stupid that things with

1166
01:06:01,760 --> 01:06:04,800
Speaker 1: this kind of fandom where those fans would kill to

1167
01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:07,560
Speaker 1: have Ian McCulloch say here's a new song or anything right,

1168
01:06:07,640 --> 01:06:11,640
Speaker 1: kill crush, and there's no system for that. So those

1169
01:06:11,680 --> 01:06:16,280
Speaker 1: two thoughts is what I went to try to do. Okay,

1170
01:06:16,440 --> 01:06:20,480
Speaker 1: so you leave deaf American, which becomes American at some

1171
01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:25,280
Speaker 1: point what year beginning of what do you? What do

1172
01:06:25,320 --> 01:06:28,360
Speaker 1: you do for cash? On this startup? Start an agency?

1173
01:06:28,400 --> 01:06:33,440
Speaker 1: We made cash right away, had chili peppers, rage, pearl

1174
01:06:33,520 --> 01:06:36,680
Speaker 1: jam b York, you know, ninety we had a lot

1175
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:39,720
Speaker 1: of them. Okay, Well, just to be clear, was the

1176
01:06:39,800 --> 01:06:43,240
Speaker 1: agency part of artists to direct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the

1177
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:45,680
Speaker 1: whole way. That was the concept. We didn't take financing

1178
01:06:45,680 --> 01:06:46,919
Speaker 1: for a year and a half and then we raised

1179
01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:50,680
Speaker 1: very little. We didn't need it, and we built. I

1180
01:06:50,800 --> 01:06:53,640
Speaker 1: built the first system and FileMaker e commerce. Both the

1181
01:06:53,640 --> 01:06:56,200
Speaker 1: booking system and the e commerce system was built in FileMaker.

1182
01:06:56,280 --> 01:06:58,479
Speaker 1: I wrote it, I coded it. So we were doing

1183
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:02,320
Speaker 1: FileMaker transactions and what happened. Here's a funny story. So

1184
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:06,560
Speaker 1: I was good friends with Norman Perry from Periscope Vancouver promoter,

1185
01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:10,280
Speaker 1: great guy, hyper smart, dear friend. He went to work

1186
01:07:11,320 --> 01:07:14,400
Speaker 1: I think in Toronto for Michael Cole and then he

1187
01:07:14,520 --> 01:07:17,120
Speaker 1: opened up one of the merchant companies called Brockham with

1188
01:07:17,200 --> 01:07:20,479
Speaker 1: Peter Lubin and got sold that got pushed out whatever,

1189
01:07:20,480 --> 01:07:24,320
Speaker 1: and then started a new company and he had David Bowie,

1190
01:07:24,560 --> 01:07:27,360
Speaker 1: he had the Rolling Stones, you know, he had some

1191
01:07:27,840 --> 01:07:33,000
Speaker 1: real heavyweight folks and he was a big friend and

1192
01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:35,479
Speaker 1: fan for another mutual friend. But we were dear friends.

1193
01:07:35,480 --> 01:07:37,520
Speaker 1: We still are to this day. And when we were

1194
01:07:37,560 --> 01:07:40,200
Speaker 1: opening Artists Direct, the Rolling Stones are a huge business

1195
01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:42,520
Speaker 1: for him, but he couldn't sell anything online and this

1196
01:07:42,680 --> 01:07:46,000
Speaker 1: e commerce thing was new, and I called him up.

1197
01:07:46,040 --> 01:07:47,800
Speaker 1: In fact, my Frankie said you should call Norman see

1198
01:07:47,800 --> 01:07:49,240
Speaker 1: if you can get the Stones. And I actually the

1199
01:07:49,240 --> 01:07:52,320
Speaker 1: first band Artist Direct ever signed with the Stones ever.

1200
01:07:52,720 --> 01:07:56,360
Speaker 1: Norman is like, I'm gonna set you with Mick bless you.

1201
01:07:56,480 --> 01:07:58,360
Speaker 1: You go meet with Mick if you can convince him,

1202
01:07:58,360 --> 01:08:03,040
Speaker 1: and he's an online freak. O you go. And I

1203
01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:05,880
Speaker 1: went back with Mick in the Four Seas Hotel in

1204
01:08:05,960 --> 01:08:10,680
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills one morning, came out the bathrobe. He's the

1205
01:08:10,720 --> 01:08:14,800
Speaker 1: smartest motherfucker anyway. He understands understood the Internet. He's like,

1206
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:17,000
Speaker 1: I'll give you this, but you gotta get me my cricket.

1207
01:08:17,560 --> 01:08:19,720
Speaker 1: I want my cricket every city I'm in. Now, this

1208
01:08:19,760 --> 01:08:22,080
Speaker 1: was in nineties six or ninety seven. There's no cricket

1209
01:08:22,120 --> 01:08:24,960
Speaker 1: online being streamed anywhere when most streaming and his bandwidth

1210
01:08:25,040 --> 01:08:28,439
Speaker 1: was terribly You couldn't a well, graphics are still downloading slow, right,

1211
01:08:28,479 --> 01:08:31,519
Speaker 1: so forget songs. And he wanted to watch cricket everywhere

1212
01:08:31,520 --> 01:08:33,519
Speaker 1: he went. And he was furious that he wasn't running.

1213
01:08:33,600 --> 01:08:35,120
Speaker 1: He was like, that's what the Internet is gonna be.

1214
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:39,360
Speaker 1: Fast forward. He was right, um, and he said absolutely,

1215
01:08:39,479 --> 01:08:42,120
Speaker 1: And we built the Stone Store and it, you know,

1216
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:44,360
Speaker 1: did a million dollars of e commerce pretty quickly. And

1217
01:08:44,400 --> 01:08:47,439
Speaker 1: then we went from there and it was a hell

1218
01:08:47,479 --> 01:08:51,480
Speaker 1: of woy to start. Um sort of proved the concept.

1219
01:08:51,520 --> 01:08:53,599
Speaker 1: Although it was early. There weren't banner ads. I mean,

1220
01:08:55,400 --> 01:08:57,920
Speaker 1: we're the very first implementation of s A P RP

1221
01:08:58,080 --> 01:09:00,240
Speaker 1: system on the whole internet. So you just think about

1222
01:09:00,240 --> 01:09:02,679
Speaker 1: what area you were in. There was no programming languages.

1223
01:09:02,720 --> 01:09:05,040
Speaker 1: You couldn't program a database. Everything is in Tickle, which

1224
01:09:05,120 --> 01:09:08,000
Speaker 1: ran CEN that and you had to hire Tickle engineers

1225
01:09:08,240 --> 01:09:10,120
Speaker 1: T I C L. And there were none of them.

1226
01:09:10,479 --> 01:09:13,880
Speaker 1: So it was you know, today it's everything's plug and playing.

1227
01:09:13,880 --> 01:09:15,640
Speaker 1: You could do anything on multiple platforms. So it was

1228
01:09:15,680 --> 01:09:20,120
Speaker 1: a very different era. Okay, now we know the end

1229
01:09:20,160 --> 01:09:23,120
Speaker 1: of artists directors, It goes public and it goes bus

1230
01:09:23,120 --> 01:09:27,160
Speaker 1: But what happens between what happened to be in siding

1231
01:09:27,200 --> 01:09:29,880
Speaker 1: the stones and then built like we built like motherfuckers.

1232
01:09:29,880 --> 01:09:32,240
Speaker 1: We signed a hundred twenty five artists, did their websites,

1233
01:09:32,280 --> 01:09:35,559
Speaker 1: their e commerce, their direct marketing, their email, you know,

1234
01:09:35,760 --> 01:09:39,200
Speaker 1: marketing to their fans. We ended up selling tickets, We

1235
01:09:39,280 --> 01:09:42,560
Speaker 1: ended up selling albums. So whether it was beck or

1236
01:09:42,640 --> 01:09:44,519
Speaker 1: share or it didn't. You know, we worked with a

1237
01:09:44,600 --> 01:09:48,160
Speaker 1: number of brilliant artists and they had records that didn't

1238
01:09:48,240 --> 01:09:50,200
Speaker 1: that the labels didn't want to count a commitment records,

1239
01:09:50,240 --> 01:09:53,200
Speaker 1: so we sold them direct a fan and we'd sell

1240
01:09:53,280 --> 01:09:57,000
Speaker 1: fifty twenty thousand direct a fan of a record that

1241
01:09:57,080 --> 01:09:59,479
Speaker 1: you never heard of. Now, this is before digital, so

1242
01:09:59,520 --> 01:10:02,080
Speaker 1: it's still C D S or whatever, vinyl or whatever

1243
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:06,400
Speaker 1: um at the time. And obviously then the file business

1244
01:10:06,479 --> 01:10:11,200
Speaker 1: changed things. Um it's kind of gone or close to

1245
01:10:11,240 --> 01:10:14,599
Speaker 1: gone by then. But we grew, we built, we grew bigger,

1246
01:10:14,720 --> 01:10:18,479
Speaker 1: we built bigger, we did more stuff. Um. We failed

1247
01:10:18,479 --> 01:10:21,200
Speaker 1: on a couple of record labels, which weren't really a

1248
01:10:21,240 --> 01:10:23,280
Speaker 1: big part of the business. We had a couple of

1249
01:10:23,320 --> 01:10:25,720
Speaker 1: other websites, the Ultimate Band List, which was the first one,

1250
01:10:25,920 --> 01:10:28,719
Speaker 1: UBL dot Com, which was you know, we were trying

1251
01:10:28,760 --> 01:10:31,760
Speaker 1: to grow the traffic. But you know, at that point

1252
01:10:31,800 --> 01:10:35,479
Speaker 1: you had MP through dot Com, then Napster, you know,

1253
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:38,759
Speaker 1: prior to that music Boulevard CD now than the introduction

1254
01:10:38,800 --> 01:10:41,400
Speaker 1: of Amazon. So for historical sake, that's what you were

1255
01:10:41,400 --> 01:10:45,640
Speaker 1: dealing with. And nobody knew the difference between Napster and

1256
01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:49,320
Speaker 1: MP through dot Com and US or Launch, poor David Goldberg,

1257
01:10:49,400 --> 01:10:52,160
Speaker 1: and they didn't know, and they were all radically different.

1258
01:10:52,360 --> 01:10:54,960
Speaker 1: And but it was version one point of the Internet

1259
01:10:55,000 --> 01:10:57,600
Speaker 1: with Ultivist and asked Jeeves an Excite and Yahoo and

1260
01:10:58,200 --> 01:11:02,439
Speaker 1: Infoseek and micos and not many people made it past

1261
01:11:02,520 --> 01:11:06,320
Speaker 1: wave one. And you know, our story was legendary because

1262
01:11:06,360 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 1: I went We went public the week of the market crash,

1263
01:11:08,920 --> 01:11:12,880
Speaker 1: which was interesting and Starbanes Oxley and I had to

1264
01:11:12,920 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 1: be a public company CEO for you know a couple

1265
01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:20,040
Speaker 1: of years after getting completely beaten up and not knowing

1266
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:24,519
Speaker 1: what to do. So I can I feel for public

1267
01:11:24,560 --> 01:11:28,479
Speaker 1: executives right now? Um, you know, twenty years later they

1268
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:33,160
Speaker 1: have to face a version of a completely decimated business

1269
01:11:33,160 --> 01:11:36,719
Speaker 1: and market. But listen, it was the greatest learning experience

1270
01:11:36,760 --> 01:11:38,599
Speaker 1: of my life. So I don't know what else to say.

1271
01:11:38,680 --> 01:11:42,599
Speaker 1: You know, it happened, it's history, and we built a company.

1272
01:11:42,800 --> 01:11:46,680
Speaker 1: We were doing million dollars in internet revenue, which you know,

1273
01:11:46,720 --> 01:11:50,320
Speaker 1: in today's numbers, who knows what they'd be mostly e

1274
01:11:50,360 --> 01:11:53,559
Speaker 1: commerce we started. We were one of the first people,

1275
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:56,479
Speaker 1: Mark Whites and a few others in the internet advertising business.

1276
01:11:56,479 --> 01:11:58,200
Speaker 1: People figure out what's a bann or how does it work?

1277
01:11:58,200 --> 01:12:00,960
Speaker 1: What's a mouse over? What's you know when flash doesn't

1278
01:12:01,000 --> 01:12:02,720
Speaker 1: work here? So and so there. You know, I think

1279
01:12:02,800 --> 01:12:04,200
Speaker 1: we took a lot of blues and built one of

1280
01:12:04,240 --> 01:12:06,800
Speaker 1: the first websites ever for a festival. It was really fun.

1281
01:12:07,360 --> 01:12:10,479
Speaker 1: Remember his little carnival. Okay, you're painting such a positive picture.

1282
01:12:10,520 --> 01:12:16,280
Speaker 1: Why did it fail? There's a bunch of reasons. Number one,

1283
01:12:16,320 --> 01:12:20,880
Speaker 1: I fucked up number two fifteen years early, probably for

1284
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:24,880
Speaker 1: the real market. Number three, I fucked up number four.

1285
01:12:26,000 --> 01:12:30,760
Speaker 1: What do you mean terrible market? Meaning you had to

1286
01:12:31,439 --> 01:12:33,960
Speaker 1: for me to be an inexperienced public company executive when

1287
01:12:33,960 --> 01:12:36,480
Speaker 1: the markets closed for three years and run and Starvings

1288
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:38,240
Speaker 1: Oxley and me trying to figure out what the fuck

1289
01:12:38,320 --> 01:12:41,840
Speaker 1: to do. I should have just shut down and thought

1290
01:12:41,880 --> 01:12:44,800
Speaker 1: about it and waited. I it was too when I

1291
01:12:44,800 --> 01:12:48,720
Speaker 1: say fucked up, Bob, it was ship was swirling in

1292
01:12:48,800 --> 01:12:51,439
Speaker 1: my head. People were happy the internet was over. It

1293
01:12:51,600 --> 01:12:57,960
Speaker 1: wasn't you know who old media's see all you young upstarts.

1294
01:12:58,479 --> 01:13:01,200
Speaker 1: You you were in a hard as you thought. You know,

1295
01:13:01,240 --> 01:13:03,320
Speaker 1: you're dealing a lot of crap. I didn't know what

1296
01:13:03,400 --> 01:13:06,400
Speaker 1: to do, and I was lost. I went and met

1297
01:13:06,400 --> 01:13:08,000
Speaker 1: with everybody or trying to sell our companies had a

1298
01:13:08,040 --> 01:13:10,439
Speaker 1: lot of cash. I was still lost, but I was

1299
01:13:10,439 --> 01:13:12,000
Speaker 1: an idiot. I should have held out in my cash

1300
01:13:12,360 --> 01:13:15,880
Speaker 1: and just got through it. Definitively, Were you too early

1301
01:13:15,960 --> 01:13:19,720
Speaker 1: and it could never work? Or was there something I

1302
01:13:19,760 --> 01:13:22,280
Speaker 1: don't wait at the bust up son for fifteen years,

1303
01:13:22,320 --> 01:13:28,600
Speaker 1: you'll do better? And that was a cutting, fucking blow. Um.

1304
01:13:28,680 --> 01:13:33,920
Speaker 1: You know, I was so into being in the next

1305
01:13:33,960 --> 01:13:37,599
Speaker 1: system that I forgot that people have to transition into

1306
01:13:37,600 --> 01:13:39,840
Speaker 1: the next system. It was all about what I thought

1307
01:13:39,880 --> 01:13:42,439
Speaker 1: was possible, not what was gonna happen all right, or

1308
01:13:42,560 --> 01:13:45,720
Speaker 1: or consumer habits hadn't evolved, or technology hadn't been laid

1309
01:13:45,720 --> 01:13:47,519
Speaker 1: in or the waves of the Internet had to happen.

1310
01:13:48,800 --> 01:13:53,080
Speaker 1: I was enamored by this idea, and I just imagine

1311
01:13:53,160 --> 01:13:55,680
Speaker 1: time didn't exist and everybody's going to convert like they

1312
01:13:55,720 --> 01:13:58,920
Speaker 1: have today. Right, So now that I'm supposed to be

1313
01:13:58,960 --> 01:14:01,120
Speaker 1: older and wiser, definitely older. Whether I'm wiser and that's

1314
01:14:01,120 --> 01:14:05,840
Speaker 1: a different story. But once you look back pindeslight being,

1315
01:14:06,680 --> 01:14:10,280
Speaker 1: you go schmuck. There were massive societal changes that had

1316
01:14:10,320 --> 01:14:13,160
Speaker 1: to take place before your vision could come through. Who

1317
01:14:13,200 --> 01:14:17,240
Speaker 1: the funk are you? And what were you thinking? Asshole? Right, Like,

1318
01:14:17,280 --> 01:14:20,320
Speaker 1: everybody's just gonna, you know, have their browsers handle this

1319
01:14:20,520 --> 01:14:23,000
Speaker 1: kind of add thing, or they're gonna feel comfortable with

1320
01:14:23,000 --> 01:14:25,760
Speaker 1: their credit cards on the internet or any of that stuff. Right,

1321
01:14:25,760 --> 01:14:30,040
Speaker 1: those are all hurdles society has to get through or

1322
01:14:30,080 --> 01:14:32,120
Speaker 1: people will go to the web. There were no mobile devices.

1323
01:14:32,120 --> 01:14:36,760
Speaker 1: Is fucking blackberries? Right? I mean the bricks so um

1324
01:14:36,800 --> 01:14:41,320
Speaker 1: and is an air of palm pilots. So I was

1325
01:14:41,439 --> 01:14:45,439
Speaker 1: a moron that way, and today I try to think,

1326
01:14:46,360 --> 01:14:50,320
Speaker 1: am I doing something that takes massive societal adoption? Is

1327
01:14:50,320 --> 01:14:52,800
Speaker 1: there technology that has to get laid in place? Oh?

1328
01:14:52,920 --> 01:14:56,519
Speaker 1: Do they have to lay in bandwidth for the ship

1329
01:14:56,560 --> 01:14:59,280
Speaker 1: to work, you know what, like I should be the

1330
01:14:59,320 --> 01:15:02,120
Speaker 1: one that's out they're experimenting. So that was a lot

1331
01:15:02,160 --> 01:15:05,960
Speaker 1: of it. The answers, Yeah, it's a schmuck. Okay, so

1332
01:15:06,400 --> 01:15:10,800
Speaker 1: ay when it crashes, how does that affect you emotionally?

1333
01:15:10,920 --> 01:15:14,040
Speaker 1: Be how long does it? How long does it take

1334
01:15:14,080 --> 01:15:16,760
Speaker 1: you ultimately to segue back into the business, and how

1335
01:15:16,760 --> 01:15:19,760
Speaker 1: do you decide to go back into the agency? Three

1336
01:15:19,840 --> 01:15:22,000
Speaker 1: years I was bloodied in bankrupt and had to get

1337
01:15:22,000 --> 01:15:23,760
Speaker 1: a job that paid me a salary. I was paying

1338
01:15:23,800 --> 01:15:25,800
Speaker 1: myself a hundred and fifty grand a year as a

1339
01:15:25,840 --> 01:15:28,800
Speaker 1: public executive because I Don Muller and I were very

1340
01:15:28,800 --> 01:15:31,680
Speaker 1: worried about that that we were we wanted to be

1341
01:15:31,720 --> 01:15:34,680
Speaker 1: looked at ethically. We're taking the public's money, investors. We

1342
01:15:34,680 --> 01:15:36,479
Speaker 1: weren't going to get ourselves rich. We weren't gonna do this,

1343
01:15:36,560 --> 01:15:40,200
Speaker 1: do that. And I was crushed. Had some kids during

1344
01:15:40,200 --> 01:15:43,599
Speaker 1: that time, two boys, and you know, ah, so I

1345
01:15:43,640 --> 01:15:46,240
Speaker 1: was going personally bankrupt. You know, I lost sixty three

1346
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:49,080
Speaker 1: million on paper and two million in cash, and thank

1347
01:15:49,120 --> 01:15:52,880
Speaker 1: god for a couple banker friend of mine who basically

1348
01:15:52,920 --> 01:15:55,040
Speaker 1: got me credit and helped me work my way out

1349
01:15:55,040 --> 01:15:57,720
Speaker 1: of it. And then Peters hired me back. I went

1350
01:15:57,760 --> 01:15:59,680
Speaker 1: to see we had sold the talent agency to see

1351
01:15:59,720 --> 01:16:01,519
Speaker 1: a done wanted to go. We wanted to get off

1352
01:16:01,520 --> 01:16:04,320
Speaker 1: the scary ride. I don't blame him at that time.

1353
01:16:05,040 --> 01:16:07,040
Speaker 1: And we had a great staff and most of those

1354
01:16:07,040 --> 01:16:09,160
Speaker 1: people went to see a lot of me stayed there

1355
01:16:09,560 --> 01:16:11,479
Speaker 1: and the artist want We closed that piece down and

1356
01:16:11,520 --> 01:16:14,320
Speaker 1: I kind of high. I made a mistake and I

1357
01:16:14,400 --> 01:16:17,040
Speaker 1: hired ted Field because I was beaten. I was a

1358
01:16:17,080 --> 01:16:20,000
Speaker 1: beaten man, and he basically turned into the label for

1359
01:16:20,040 --> 01:16:22,599
Speaker 1: the last gap and it wasn't great. It was terrible, actually,

1360
01:16:22,600 --> 01:16:24,760
Speaker 1: but whatever it is what it is. Mistakes made, and

1361
01:16:26,400 --> 01:16:28,160
Speaker 1: I put myself to bid to the agency because they

1362
01:16:28,160 --> 01:16:29,280
Speaker 1: were the only people who are gonna pay me. I

1363
01:16:29,320 --> 01:16:30,720
Speaker 1: didn't want to go back and be an agent. I

1364
01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:33,840
Speaker 1: went to go run a tech company. But nobody's gonna

1365
01:16:33,880 --> 01:16:35,559
Speaker 1: hire me and run a tech company. I just got

1366
01:16:35,640 --> 01:16:38,000
Speaker 1: beaten up. They didn't pay. It was all back end.

1367
01:16:38,720 --> 01:16:40,479
Speaker 1: The record label was gonna have me. I was a

1368
01:16:40,520 --> 01:16:46,200
Speaker 1: failure there uh and wasn't proven manager. I didn't have clients.

1369
01:16:46,240 --> 01:16:48,360
Speaker 1: They didn't really want to do that. I tried to

1370
01:16:48,360 --> 01:16:51,600
Speaker 1: go back to be an agent, totally bummed out. At

1371
01:16:51,640 --> 01:16:53,840
Speaker 1: the time, and Peter said, Geiger, come on back, I'll

1372
01:16:53,840 --> 01:16:56,439
Speaker 1: pay you, and that's what as I started. Okay, so

1373
01:16:56,520 --> 01:17:00,960
Speaker 1: that episode at the agency business which turned into w

1374
01:17:01,280 --> 01:17:03,479
Speaker 1: m ME is now over and needles to say, there's

1375
01:17:03,479 --> 01:17:05,040
Speaker 1: a little bit of a pause, but certainly in the

1376
01:17:05,080 --> 01:17:08,480
Speaker 1: live business. But what do you see for yourself personally

1377
01:17:08,520 --> 01:17:15,960
Speaker 1: going forward? Business was Um, I'll be honest, um, curly,

1378
01:17:16,600 --> 01:17:20,200
Speaker 1: somebody should read that comment. Damn straight good good left midfielder. Sorry,

1379
01:17:20,200 --> 01:17:25,400
Speaker 1: I'm reading the text. Um. I think it's the best

1380
01:17:25,479 --> 01:17:27,639
Speaker 1: time in history to start something. So I think I'm

1381
01:17:27,640 --> 01:17:30,040
Speaker 1: going to start something. I mean, listen, there were some

1382
01:17:30,120 --> 01:17:32,600
Speaker 1: rumors planted out there about what I was doing, and this,

1383
01:17:32,720 --> 01:17:35,799
Speaker 1: that and the next thing weren't true. You know, well

1384
01:17:35,840 --> 01:17:37,800
Speaker 1: I never got a call from Daniel Ack. He's a

1385
01:17:37,840 --> 01:17:40,559
Speaker 1: friend of mine, so uh, you know, I don't have

1386
01:17:40,600 --> 01:17:44,040
Speaker 1: a job to be a mocker at YouTuber, Apple Music,

1387
01:17:44,080 --> 01:17:46,439
Speaker 1: Amazon or Spotify or any of those places, and they

1388
01:17:46,439 --> 01:17:50,759
Speaker 1: don't or anything close. If you were offered those gigs,

1389
01:17:50,800 --> 01:17:53,200
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, but I don't have them,

1390
01:17:53,240 --> 01:17:55,320
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter, and it depends what the gig is.

1391
01:17:55,760 --> 01:17:58,080
Speaker 1: I got inquired about a position at SoundCloud that wasn't

1392
01:17:58,160 --> 01:18:02,320
Speaker 1: very interesting, but still, um, there's nothing really there. There's

1393
01:18:02,320 --> 01:18:05,160
Speaker 1: a few other big jobs I might consider in the

1394
01:18:05,200 --> 01:18:07,599
Speaker 1: rest of the traditional music industry, and they're not there.

1395
01:18:08,960 --> 01:18:12,559
Speaker 1: And and that's so, that's okay. But the truth is,

1396
01:18:12,560 --> 01:18:15,280
Speaker 1: when I sat out here over the last four months

1397
01:18:15,520 --> 01:18:18,160
Speaker 1: and thought about what made me happy because I'm getting older,

1398
01:18:18,200 --> 01:18:19,880
Speaker 1: what do I want to do? Damn on this old

1399
01:18:19,920 --> 01:18:24,519
Speaker 1: what do I really want to do? It came to

1400
01:18:24,560 --> 01:18:27,519
Speaker 1: a couple of fun conclusions. One is I am what

1401
01:18:27,640 --> 01:18:30,000
Speaker 1: I am. I love tech, but there's no Roman tech

1402
01:18:30,080 --> 01:18:31,720
Speaker 1: right now. I don't see it. Everything that I talked

1403
01:18:31,720 --> 01:18:34,519
Speaker 1: about happened, and it's big, big I've said it, You've

1404
01:18:34,560 --> 01:18:38,840
Speaker 1: seen my speeches. It's the big player time, the very

1405
01:18:38,840 --> 01:18:41,799
Speaker 1: little room for disruption right now. Okay, it's hard. Everything

1406
01:18:41,840 --> 01:18:45,320
Speaker 1: is being built onto the big platforms, and new media

1407
01:18:45,680 --> 01:18:48,720
Speaker 1: is in some way. It's not the same becoming old

1408
01:18:48,760 --> 01:18:51,439
Speaker 1: media again, right They just is and it's bound to

1409
01:18:51,520 --> 01:18:54,320
Speaker 1: be that way. Um, systems don't change that much, even

1410
01:18:54,320 --> 01:18:59,639
Speaker 1: though the distribution of pricing changed. Um. So I looked

1411
01:18:59,640 --> 01:19:02,240
Speaker 1: in I said, what turns me on another in tech

1412
01:19:02,400 --> 01:19:08,680
Speaker 1: and being forward is artist development and discovering music and

1413
01:19:08,720 --> 01:19:13,120
Speaker 1: I'm a music freak, and the underbelly of the industry,

1414
01:19:13,120 --> 01:19:16,759
Speaker 1: the ground up golden voice, you know, clubs, indie labels,

1415
01:19:17,439 --> 01:19:22,360
Speaker 1: developing artists. You know, Jenson McCrae is an example, right,

1416
01:19:22,800 --> 01:19:26,519
Speaker 1: So that's what gets me the most excited and gives

1417
01:19:26,520 --> 01:19:29,599
Speaker 1: me some purpose. And I could and and there's some

1418
01:19:29,760 --> 01:19:32,240
Speaker 1: part of me and my friends know this, and I

1419
01:19:32,280 --> 01:19:36,800
Speaker 1: think they're the same that feels young by staying very

1420
01:19:36,840 --> 01:19:41,479
Speaker 1: current in music and the music business and tech. Okay,

1421
01:19:41,479 --> 01:19:44,200
Speaker 1: if you're sort of I'm into e sports, my son's

1422
01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:46,240
Speaker 1: and the sports, I'm very on top of that. I'm

1423
01:19:46,240 --> 01:19:48,880
Speaker 1: deep in the digital world, so kind of keeps you young,

1424
01:19:49,720 --> 01:19:51,200
Speaker 1: and so I want to stay there. So I'm probably

1425
01:19:51,200 --> 01:19:55,360
Speaker 1: gonna start up focused in those areas. Okay, just looking

1426
01:19:55,360 --> 01:19:57,680
Speaker 1: at the business and large. Once we get to the

1427
01:19:57,760 --> 01:20:00,920
Speaker 1: end of this pandemic, Uh, what do we know? The

1428
01:20:01,040 --> 01:20:05,000
Speaker 1: record companies ruled until the internet. The Internet came along

1429
01:20:05,120 --> 01:20:09,120
Speaker 1: a great percent Other than the tippity top tier of

1430
01:20:09,200 --> 01:20:13,360
Speaker 1: streaming artists, most artists make the majority of their income live,

1431
01:20:13,840 --> 01:20:16,719
Speaker 1: which has changed the paradigm, and that the live business

1432
01:20:17,360 --> 01:20:21,639
Speaker 1: A funds these acts and B can break these acts.

1433
01:20:22,080 --> 01:20:25,320
Speaker 1: Do what do you see going forward in terms of

1434
01:20:25,560 --> 01:20:34,400
Speaker 1: where the power lies. Well, this is gonna be not

1435
01:20:34,600 --> 01:20:40,280
Speaker 1: that sexy and answer. I think building an artist's career

1436
01:20:41,040 --> 01:20:44,080
Speaker 1: is like building a house. The reason I use the

1437
01:20:44,160 --> 01:20:47,439
Speaker 1: housing metaphor is because the manager is really like a

1438
01:20:47,479 --> 01:20:50,200
Speaker 1: general contractor to me. They have to manage the owner

1439
01:20:50,280 --> 01:20:52,920
Speaker 1: i e. The artist, right, and they have to look

1440
01:20:52,920 --> 01:20:56,479
Speaker 1: after all the subs, the record company, the publishing, the agency, touring,

1441
01:20:56,520 --> 01:20:59,560
Speaker 1: the merchandise that this that you know, everything right, advertising,

1442
01:20:59,600 --> 01:21:02,800
Speaker 1: the content creation, and they have to do all those

1443
01:21:02,800 --> 01:21:04,639
Speaker 1: deals or manage all of those things. So I think

1444
01:21:04,680 --> 01:21:06,479
Speaker 1: it's similar to a g C. And then I think

1445
01:21:06,479 --> 01:21:10,040
Speaker 1: all of the other pieces of the building the house,

1446
01:21:10,120 --> 01:21:16,000
Speaker 1: I either the artist is um actually important so in

1447
01:21:16,040 --> 01:21:18,040
Speaker 1: a weird way, you know, can the electrician do the

1448
01:21:18,120 --> 01:21:20,320
Speaker 1: roof and the hardscape? You know, I eat, can the

1449
01:21:20,360 --> 01:21:23,400
Speaker 1: promoter do this that in the next short in certain cases.

1450
01:21:23,880 --> 01:21:25,720
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of artists and there's a lot

1451
01:21:25,720 --> 01:21:30,559
Speaker 1: of specialized pieces to all of this. So as much

1452
01:21:30,600 --> 01:21:34,120
Speaker 1: as people want to label me a disruptor, I've never

1453
01:21:34,160 --> 01:21:39,560
Speaker 1: actually been a disruptor. I have tried to identify disruptive disruption,

1454
01:21:40,800 --> 01:21:45,920
Speaker 1: but from a disruptor, either dropped price or you collapse

1455
01:21:46,040 --> 01:21:50,080
Speaker 1: and consolidate people into or companies and jobs into into

1456
01:21:51,640 --> 01:21:55,559
Speaker 1: you know, you consolidate them. Do you disintermediate? Okay, sorry,

1457
01:21:55,520 --> 01:21:59,200
Speaker 1: I was searching for the word. And I actually think

1458
01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:03,000
Speaker 1: that when the business comes back, every piece of the

1459
01:22:03,040 --> 01:22:07,840
Speaker 1: subcontracting universe and general contractor will be more needed than

1460
01:22:08,000 --> 01:22:13,200
Speaker 1: ever because every artist will be hurting for money or success.

1461
01:22:13,760 --> 01:22:17,040
Speaker 1: Every club will, every venue will, every promoter will, every

1462
01:22:17,040 --> 01:22:20,600
Speaker 1: agency will, every label will want to get back to

1463
01:22:20,640 --> 01:22:22,479
Speaker 1: where it was, and I think it will be all

1464
01:22:22,560 --> 01:22:26,479
Speaker 1: hands on deck and more activity than ever before. So

1465
01:22:26,560 --> 01:22:31,320
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I see there's consolidation opportunities, Like

1466
01:22:31,360 --> 01:22:33,840
Speaker 1: I talked about, if Universal or Warner went on a

1467
01:22:33,920 --> 01:22:36,760
Speaker 1: tear and wanted to do some stuff and got really

1468
01:22:36,840 --> 01:22:40,680
Speaker 1: smart about it. I can see that, um. I can

1469
01:22:40,720 --> 01:22:44,360
Speaker 1: see new money coming in like that real estate investry

1470
01:22:44,400 --> 01:22:46,519
Speaker 1: doesn't have office buildings during the crash, but they have

1471
01:22:46,600 --> 01:22:49,559
Speaker 1: new capital and and and buying things. But I think

1472
01:22:49,640 --> 01:22:52,640
Speaker 1: every part of the industry is gonna be vibrant. I

1473
01:22:52,640 --> 01:22:55,040
Speaker 1: think agents are gonna be more vibrant than ever and needed.

1474
01:22:56,960 --> 01:22:58,880
Speaker 1: I think promoters are going to be very high on

1475
01:22:58,920 --> 01:23:02,240
Speaker 1: the on the value chain. I think labels will continue

1476
01:23:02,240 --> 01:23:05,719
Speaker 1: to be high on the value chain only increase because again,

1477
01:23:05,800 --> 01:23:09,800
Speaker 1: everybody wants success, Bob, and they want money, and so yeah,

1478
01:23:09,800 --> 01:23:12,960
Speaker 1: there's a very powerful mental force to look at big

1479
01:23:13,040 --> 01:23:15,320
Speaker 1: artists and go who works on their team? And they don't.

1480
01:23:15,680 --> 01:23:19,000
Speaker 1: They're not devoid of a manager and ageent or a

1481
01:23:19,040 --> 01:23:21,400
Speaker 1: record company. There's not that many of those stories. So

1482
01:23:21,800 --> 01:23:23,479
Speaker 1: I think when you look at the most successful artis

1483
01:23:23,520 --> 01:23:25,960
Speaker 1: in the world, is who's on who is their team?

1484
01:23:25,960 --> 01:23:28,200
Speaker 1: And I want to be with them. So I think

1485
01:23:28,240 --> 01:23:34,280
Speaker 1: the aspirational you know called Lemming theory. Aspiration drives the business.

1486
01:23:34,280 --> 01:23:36,400
Speaker 1: So I think every piece of the industry is going

1487
01:23:36,439 --> 01:23:39,920
Speaker 1: to be there and healthy and not disrupted. Weirdly, I'm

1488
01:23:39,920 --> 01:23:44,439
Speaker 1: not talking about radio or or record stores or those

1489
01:23:44,520 --> 01:23:47,480
Speaker 1: pieces which get wiped out. I'm talking about professional services.

1490
01:23:48,200 --> 01:23:50,600
Speaker 1: I don't see it. I think it actually got more complex.

1491
01:23:50,880 --> 01:23:53,240
Speaker 1: I don't think promoters know how to break you worldwide

1492
01:23:53,280 --> 01:23:56,040
Speaker 1: for the most part. I've national Age a little different.

1493
01:23:56,040 --> 01:23:58,800
Speaker 1: They are worldwide, and they have tentacles. They can keep

1494
01:23:58,840 --> 01:24:01,680
Speaker 1: them for the most part, and with good players, so

1495
01:24:02,240 --> 01:24:04,680
Speaker 1: they are as close and the labels have similar that

1496
01:24:04,760 --> 01:24:07,000
Speaker 1: they are as close to filled out networks is as

1497
01:24:07,040 --> 01:24:09,400
Speaker 1: you can find now whether they give a funk about

1498
01:24:09,439 --> 01:24:12,120
Speaker 1: your little artist or not, and would give you the

1499
01:24:12,840 --> 01:24:15,000
Speaker 1: You know, this is where the theory is different, interacting

1500
01:24:15,040 --> 01:24:17,160
Speaker 1: for the superstar and then for anybody else. But there

1501
01:24:17,160 --> 01:24:21,519
Speaker 1: you go, Okay for getting the pandemic. What how do

1502
01:24:21,560 --> 01:24:23,880
Speaker 1: you do that? Sorry, it's not that hard when the

1503
01:24:23,920 --> 01:24:27,759
Speaker 1: question is ultimately reviewed. What what advice would you give

1504
01:24:28,240 --> 01:24:32,880
Speaker 1: to a new artist today just starting out? Number one,

1505
01:24:32,960 --> 01:24:35,519
Speaker 1: make a lot of content. I mean, the one thing

1506
01:24:35,520 --> 01:24:38,200
Speaker 1: I would say to artists starting out or not is

1507
01:24:38,360 --> 01:24:44,000
Speaker 1: right now, okay, here's the left SIPs. You know, back

1508
01:24:44,000 --> 01:24:46,920
Speaker 1: in the day, the Rolling Stones made three albums a year,

1509
01:24:47,600 --> 01:24:50,080
Speaker 1: The Beatles made three albums a year, The Beach Boys

1510
01:24:50,080 --> 01:24:52,000
Speaker 1: made three whatever. Okay, you know what I'm saying about

1511
01:24:52,000 --> 01:24:54,120
Speaker 1: two albums with a minimum relief. Steely Dan. I remember

1512
01:24:54,120 --> 01:24:57,000
Speaker 1: we went on Steely Dan listening binge. First three albums

1513
01:24:57,000 --> 01:24:58,479
Speaker 1: came out in like a year and a half. It

1514
01:24:58,520 --> 01:25:00,960
Speaker 1: was crazy, right, and they were genius. So you sit

1515
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:04,320
Speaker 1: there and go, what the funk? Weren't they touring? Oh yeah,

1516
01:25:04,360 --> 01:25:09,440
Speaker 1: they actually Steely Danton, But for the most part they did. Actually, um,

1517
01:25:09,479 --> 01:25:11,519
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Michael McDonald was in Steely Dan.

1518
01:25:11,600 --> 01:25:14,240
Speaker 1: I just learned that and Jeff Baxter, and that's how

1519
01:25:14,240 --> 01:25:16,680
Speaker 1: they do. Jeff Baxter was a regular member. You know,

1520
01:25:16,760 --> 01:25:21,720
Speaker 1: Michael even more than you think. But anyway, pre dubies anyway.

1521
01:25:23,120 --> 01:25:26,360
Speaker 1: I think artists to do that again right now, right create.

1522
01:25:26,520 --> 01:25:30,960
Speaker 1: I think that the elongation of the marketing period where

1523
01:25:31,000 --> 01:25:32,880
Speaker 1: you can tour the world for two or three years,

1524
01:25:33,520 --> 01:25:36,040
Speaker 1: you know, and not put out a record and come

1525
01:25:36,080 --> 01:25:37,600
Speaker 1: back and then have to spend a year making a

1526
01:25:37,720 --> 01:25:40,479
Speaker 1: record discycles too long. So I think the number one

1527
01:25:40,520 --> 01:25:41,800
Speaker 1: thing people need to do is make a lot of

1528
01:25:41,800 --> 01:25:43,680
Speaker 1: content right now. I don't care what it is, but

1529
01:25:43,800 --> 01:25:45,559
Speaker 1: store it up for winter and don't release it all

1530
01:25:46,000 --> 01:25:51,640
Speaker 1: because the distribution systems give you credit for constantly releasing,

1531
01:25:51,920 --> 01:25:55,360
Speaker 1: whether it's YouTube or Spotify. The way the new releases

1532
01:25:55,400 --> 01:25:59,040
Speaker 1: are set up, the way the playlist work. You know,

1533
01:25:59,120 --> 01:26:02,719
Speaker 1: you have your one week to one month honeymoon period

1534
01:26:02,760 --> 01:26:05,040
Speaker 1: and if and then it's gone up in the Library

1535
01:26:05,000 --> 01:26:06,960
Speaker 1: of Congress in the FOURT floor, nobody know you wrote

1536
01:26:06,960 --> 01:26:11,160
Speaker 1: the book. So to me is okay, how do I switch?

1537
01:26:11,640 --> 01:26:13,920
Speaker 1: I may still put out albums, maybe it's the end

1538
01:26:13,960 --> 01:26:17,639
Speaker 1: for whatever, but how do I consistently work the system

1539
01:26:17,640 --> 01:26:19,080
Speaker 1: in the way the system works which just have new

1540
01:26:19,120 --> 01:26:22,120
Speaker 1: releases on a constant basis. So that's my answer. Okay,

1541
01:26:22,160 --> 01:26:24,439
Speaker 1: And what advice would you give to someone once again

1542
01:26:24,479 --> 01:26:27,800
Speaker 1: forgetting the pandemic disruption? What advice would you give to

1543
01:26:27,840 --> 01:26:33,680
Speaker 1: someone wanting to get into the music business? Not the

1544
01:26:33,720 --> 01:26:37,080
Speaker 1: greatest time. Um, Look, there's so many people that are

1545
01:26:37,080 --> 01:26:42,360
Speaker 1: getting laid off by the music business. Yet I gotta

1546
01:26:42,400 --> 01:26:44,320
Speaker 1: I won't get there. I just right now? Is I

1547
01:26:44,400 --> 01:26:48,840
Speaker 1: just I can't? It's a ship time, Um, manage the band?

1548
01:26:49,000 --> 01:26:53,320
Speaker 1: No barrier to entry. I mean you want to learn

1549
01:26:53,360 --> 01:26:55,920
Speaker 1: how to build a house. Start on the smallest house

1550
01:26:55,960 --> 01:26:58,080
Speaker 1: and build it. Figure out how to you know, that'd

1551
01:26:58,080 --> 01:27:01,280
Speaker 1: be one thing you know is no getting on the radio,

1552
01:27:01,560 --> 01:27:04,600
Speaker 1: you know, put together play list for your friends. Uh,

1553
01:27:04,640 --> 01:27:06,920
Speaker 1: but managing man is the lowest barrier to entry if

1554
01:27:06,960 --> 01:27:08,519
Speaker 1: you think about it. You can't get a job at

1555
01:27:08,520 --> 01:27:10,960
Speaker 1: a record company or an agency. It's not that easy.

1556
01:27:11,000 --> 01:27:13,160
Speaker 1: You can, by the way, you can try agencies were

1557
01:27:13,200 --> 01:27:16,840
Speaker 1: an easy point of entry. You go in milrone. Uh,

1558
01:27:17,120 --> 01:27:20,519
Speaker 1: gonna be somebody's assistant that you respect, UM and write

1559
01:27:20,560 --> 01:27:23,200
Speaker 1: him a personal note. Do some research. You know. The

1560
01:27:23,200 --> 01:27:25,280
Speaker 1: biggest thing I found about young people is they don't

1561
01:27:25,280 --> 01:27:28,760
Speaker 1: do much research. I read everything coming up. I read

1562
01:27:28,840 --> 01:27:31,880
Speaker 1: every Rolling Stone Guide cover to cover, fifteen times, Trouser Press,

1563
01:27:31,880 --> 01:27:35,920
Speaker 1: Gude fifteen times, Option magazine. Fucking print was six point

1564
01:27:36,000 --> 01:27:38,080
Speaker 1: font and I would read Option magazine reviews. If you

1565
01:27:38,120 --> 01:27:41,519
Speaker 1: remember Scott Becker and every bit of it. I was

1566
01:27:41,560 --> 01:27:45,439
Speaker 1: just a freak. I listened to everything. I the way

1567
01:27:45,520 --> 01:27:47,719
Speaker 1: I used to sign artists. I go to England, I

1568
01:27:47,760 --> 01:27:50,880
Speaker 1: talked and talked to the indie label head and they

1569
01:27:50,920 --> 01:27:53,360
Speaker 1: would say to me, Wow, you know more about my

1570
01:27:53,439 --> 01:27:55,120
Speaker 1: artists in my label than I do. And you're a

1571
01:27:55,160 --> 01:27:59,080
Speaker 1: kid from America, right, So do your research. Figure out

1572
01:27:59,120 --> 01:28:01,720
Speaker 1: who's your favorite. Write him a note. Nobody ever does that.

1573
01:28:01,800 --> 01:28:04,599
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ways to enter, but find somebody

1574
01:28:04,640 --> 01:28:08,920
Speaker 1: and manage them. Mark. This has been wonderful, Thanks so

1575
01:28:09,000 --> 01:28:12,920
Speaker 1: much for your insight by pleasure until next time. This

1576
01:28:13,000 --> 01:28:14,960
Speaker 1: has been the Bob Left Sets Podcast