Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Mark Garger, formally head of Music
Speaker 1: of w m E. All Around Music Here Mark, good
Speaker 1: to have hi, Bob Okay. Drive in concerts gimmick, A
Speaker 1: real gimmick. Tell me a little bit more. Why is
Speaker 1: it a gimmick? Do I have to? I mean, um,
Speaker 1: why is it a gimmick? Capacity is very small by
Speaker 1: the time you actually put the cars in. Um pricing
Speaker 1: with a disconnected experience is high. The audio I don't
Speaker 1: think it can be very good yet in the car,
Speaker 1: but hey, um, these are temporary stockcapt solutions. So for me, economically,
Speaker 1: they're scale garth. That a very interesting thing, basically the
Speaker 1: pay per view right to other drive ins. I think
Speaker 1: there's a feeling that what I called during the what
Speaker 1: I call the germophobia economy, that almost anything will sell
Speaker 1: because they're saying it is dying to get out of
Speaker 1: the house. So for me, it's not really a great experience.
Speaker 1: Well that begs the question, uh, when the economics are broken,
Speaker 1: so let's you know, let's get real. People are doing
Speaker 1: things to do them, not to make a living, right,
Speaker 1: So when do you think concerts returned. My guess is
Speaker 1: late twenty one, more likely twenty two. I think that
Speaker 1: this is going to be Look, the whole thing is
Speaker 1: a ship show. You write about it, everybody knows whether
Speaker 1: it's testing organ as a government that let's not. It's
Speaker 1: too infinite of a well to go down. But in
Speaker 1: my humble opinion, it's gonna be twenty two. It's gonna
Speaker 1: take that long for what I call the germophobia economy
Speaker 1: to be slowly killed off and be replaced by what
Speaker 1: I call the claustrophobia economy, which is it really wants
Speaker 1: to get out and go back to dinner and have
Speaker 1: their life and go to festivals, go to shows. And
Speaker 1: my instinct is that's just going to take a while
Speaker 1: because as you can see, these super spreader events, sports shows,
Speaker 1: anything classroom ain't gonna do too well. And while the
Speaker 1: while the viruses this present. So my my instinct is
Speaker 1: the world has a very long forced time out. A
Speaker 1: lot of people see the positives in it, um, whether
Speaker 1: it's climate, whether it's pollution, whether it's traffic, whether it's nature,
Speaker 1: whether it's animals, whether it's our own beings, and taking
Speaker 1: a pause, um, and I know it's frustrating, maddening and
Speaker 1: um economically you know, destructive, but ah, you know this
Speaker 1: is bigger than us. And if you study history, things
Speaker 1: like this have happened in history and been super disruptive
Speaker 1: to normal society. So here's a biggie for our lifetime.
Speaker 1: Let's go drill down for those people are not experts
Speaker 1: like you, to what degree is insurance and liability of
Speaker 1: factor and restarting? Well, there is no insurance against COVID
Speaker 1: currently offered, and even normal insurance policies are pretty scarce
Speaker 1: and hard to come by. The insurers are sitting on
Speaker 1: the sideline because there's infinite liability. I don't know what's
Speaker 1: tested not tested. Luss Hey, I got COVID at this event,
Speaker 1: how do you approve it? Etcetera. I think the biggest
Speaker 1: companies can maybe self insure UM and they can start.
Speaker 1: Everybody else has to wait till the insure industry feels good.
Speaker 1: So that's one of many many roadblocks in the way
Speaker 1: of restarting this vibrant economy that got put down right.
Speaker 1: So there's probably twenty of them when you drill into
Speaker 1: why can't you the virus and the illness being one,
Speaker 1: you know, all the spacing. The density insurance is a
Speaker 1: biggie and I don't know when that comes back either. Now,
Speaker 1: needless to say you're no longer with wm ME, but uh,
Speaker 1: certainly there's no live business. Mean, there's no income for
Speaker 1: agents and agencies they work for. What we've learned over
Speaker 1: the past week is a lot of these touring entities
Speaker 1: got money, The Eagles got money for the road business,
Speaker 1: ETCETERA question I'm asking is to what degree will sitting
Speaker 1: on the sidelines for two years affect the economics of
Speaker 1: the industry. Can these companies survived? Michael Rapino says he
Speaker 1: can borrow money, there's no not an issue. But being
Speaker 1: in the heart of an agency, can these agencies and
Speaker 1: these other support elements survived two years off? Look um,
Speaker 1: no matter what anybody says, it's economically devastating, Okay, So
Speaker 1: I recognize that, and I don't think any excuse um
Speaker 1: can be made. And there will be a huge amount
Speaker 1: if I'm right on the timetable right, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a massive amount of blood shed and ankruptcies and it
Speaker 1: will not be good for the majority industry. I think
Speaker 1: Michael or Pino is right. You know, he's he's big,
Speaker 1: he is great backing, people want to buy his stock, um,
Speaker 1: he's got liberty, he has a great business. When it
Speaker 1: comes back, so you can borrow against that and it's
Speaker 1: not a great outcome. But your question is can they survive?
Speaker 1: I think people who have access to really good financing
Speaker 1: credit facilities can definitely survive. Right, I know, the costs
Speaker 1: of carrying over some of these businesses agencies are actually
Speaker 1: relatively cheap. Michael Orpine has got a much bigger issue
Speaker 1: and a much bigger staff. The biggest agencies are again
Speaker 1: the cheapest relative word. Right. But if something's gonna cost
Speaker 1: fifty or a hundred million dollars to bridge for a
Speaker 1: moment um, again, that sounds huge. But in today's world,
Speaker 1: when you have access to capital, you can borrow against
Speaker 1: that for a year or two, and the businesses were
Speaker 1: quite profitable and they can pay down the debt service.
Speaker 1: It's a short term mortgage, okay. And when it does
Speaker 1: come back, how does the landscape change? Sure billion dollar question?
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, let me be specific. I think, Bob,
Speaker 1: that's a really tough question to answer. I think if
Speaker 1: the if we're in the second or third inning of
Speaker 1: the ball game of destruction. UM, I don't know what
Speaker 1: the game looks like at the end. I think the
Speaker 1: next six months maybe more painful than the last batch,
Speaker 1: and maybe the next six months after that might be
Speaker 1: even more so. So I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that happened for me after leaving was, UM, I was
Speaker 1: able to look at the pandemic two ways. I was
Speaker 1: overseeing or part of a team of industry people who oversee,
Speaker 1: oversaw this destruction, this cancelation, postponement, etcetera, etcetera, tried to
Speaker 1: have order out of it, but was sort of trapped
Speaker 1: in that viewpoint. Um, now I get to look at
Speaker 1: COVID is a bit of an opportunity. But the question
Speaker 1: of where to exactly look and who's not gonna make
Speaker 1: it and who's going to be under distress. You start
Speaker 1: bottom up, small people with no access to capital, people
Speaker 1: have high overheads, people who have staff that they can't
Speaker 1: easily go into shutdown mode and they're gonna get the
Speaker 1: viscerated and they're gonna need help. So in any event,
Speaker 1: recapping here, Mark, you said, Uh, when we look at
Speaker 1: the future, we're talking from the bottom up. People at
Speaker 1: the bottom or squeeze for capital please continue. I think
Speaker 1: that again, people with infrastructure and more overhead and lack
Speaker 1: of access to capital, it's a perfect storm for them. Um.
Speaker 1: When you start talking about the big companies of Live Nation,
Speaker 1: eight g CTS, Ossessa and others, they have access to
Speaker 1: facilities and credit and debt facilities. They're public companies. The investors.
Speaker 1: A lot of investors look at them as value because
Speaker 1: they think, oh, when the claustrophobia economy kicks in and
Speaker 1: world restarts, everybody's gonna want to we participate in. These
Speaker 1: companies will be in a good position to take advantage
Speaker 1: of it. So I believe that is going to rule
Speaker 1: the day and people will make smart investments into business
Speaker 1: as they think they'll come back. But the bigger the
Speaker 1: better there if you're small, if you're medium sized, it's
Speaker 1: going to be tricky. If you know, like NIVA, the
Speaker 1: organization who represents is a trade organization for the clubs
Speaker 1: is trying to appeal to the government for money for
Speaker 1: obviously a loan or a grant to the clubs. So
Speaker 1: I think at the end of the day, Um, the
Speaker 1: economic devastation is going to be bigger than people think
Speaker 1: they Reshaping is going to be bigger than people think,
Speaker 1: and we all have to watch and conserve our capital
Speaker 1: and just take a pause and try obviously not spend
Speaker 1: just to get to the other side. I know that
Speaker 1: sounds very basic, but I think it's true. Question becomes
Speaker 1: when we come out the other side, do the big
Speaker 1: get bigger? It depends how they act. They can. I
Speaker 1: mean they have to get small. Larder worries is overhead.
Speaker 1: But you know, people with real access to capital. Again,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, like a bigger version of
Speaker 1: two thousand eight in the real estate crash, if you
Speaker 1: owned a bunch of office buildings or apartment buildings or
Speaker 1: hotels or houses and you had to sell them, or
Speaker 1: you had a cash crunch, you were screwed, right, you
Speaker 1: were on the bad side. If you were a real
Speaker 1: estate funder private equity a hundred billion in cash or
Speaker 1: ten billion in cash, and you waited till all the
Speaker 1: foreclosures showed up on your street, which we all saw
Speaker 1: and you could swoop in. It was an unprecedented opportunity.
Speaker 1: Um certain banks and others made a fortune during that time.
Speaker 1: So I think it's how you look at the world
Speaker 1: and if you have access to capital. But I do.
Speaker 1: I do think there'll be a lot of different owners
Speaker 1: uh and people who have equity in the music business
Speaker 1: infrastructure when you come out of this, well, liberty is
Speaker 1: capped in terms of how much they can own of
Speaker 1: Live name. But if you look historically in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, uh, they invested in Serious and ended up
Speaker 1: with control of that company. So staying on this same tip,
Speaker 1: we grew up in the pre internet era where you
Speaker 1: were a band, you started in clubs, you worked your
Speaker 1: way up, and in addition, the record company supported the clubs.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about what that was like prior to this crisis. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: which part to you omans? The question is is that
Speaker 1: paradigm broken? It's more important than ever. I think that
Speaker 1: there's just because the world switched to streaming and there's
Speaker 1: a different distribution system. Artist developments not that different. You
Speaker 1: have more tools, all right, You have more connectivity, you
Speaker 1: have more ability to be globally, use multiple platforms to
Speaker 1: communicate with your audience, and your music can get distributed better.
Speaker 1: You're not held out of a record store. But the
Speaker 1: development process the same the touring press. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: But but as I say, if we go back to
Speaker 1: the club are critical, they're more They're more packed today
Speaker 1: than they were back in our club era by a lot.
Speaker 1: But are there as many Yeah, there's more, many more clubs.
Speaker 1: Music has infinitely more genres than the period you're talking about,
Speaker 1: a right, popular genres. Kids have much more access kids,
Speaker 1: everybody has much more access to music, and so music
Speaker 1: is thriving. Um. You know, you can argue long tail,
Speaker 1: but from a genre standpoint, you have much more access.
Speaker 1: They're much deeper. I mean, the electronic nightclubs alone outnumbered
Speaker 1: the amount of rock clubs than in total when we
Speaker 1: were growing up. So I think it's a um and globally, um,
Speaker 1: there's a ton more. So I think the supplies up
Speaker 1: and the demand is up. Um, which ones last, how
Speaker 1: they get transformed, that's all a big question. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the development process is healthier than ever and
Speaker 1: bigger than ever. And by the way, the upside is
Speaker 1: bigger than ever. It's just there's more noise. It's a
Speaker 1: signal noise, right, there's there's how many new releases, remember
Speaker 1: what was back in the era you're talking about. There
Speaker 1: is only x amount of music that could come out
Speaker 1: that's dwarfed in a week Okay, let's let's go to
Speaker 1: this specific issue. Hey, when you're working at William Morris,
Speaker 1: would you sign an act, Let's assume the right act
Speaker 1: had no record recording representation of any significance. Would you
Speaker 1: sign an act that did not have a live head? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, could not sell tickets by themselves already, So
Speaker 1: how would you break an act like that? Okay? You
Speaker 1: breaking an act would imply that we were that powerful.
Speaker 1: You know, we're just team member, subcontractor on the team
Speaker 1: of building a house. That's the way I look at
Speaker 1: it all right, from any position. So part of it
Speaker 1: is how well is the team and the work together.
Speaker 1: How great is the manager obviously? How great is the artist?
Speaker 1: How greatest in music? Um, Listen, when you sign an artist,
Speaker 1: if you really love them and you believe in them,
Speaker 1: it's not about breaking them in a record. It's about
Speaker 1: laying a base so they grow, they happen to break,
Speaker 1: they break. The industry wants. It's you know, immediacy, and
Speaker 1: it's stadium this and so and so that, and it's
Speaker 1: pop metaphor. I typically, you know, my taste is outside
Speaker 1: pop metaphor. So you don't have a choice. You're five
Speaker 1: ten years to grow and break artists over time, especially
Speaker 1: depending on how they how they record, and how frequently.
Speaker 1: So part of it is packed tour packaging. Part of
Speaker 1: it is festivals, part of his getting great publicist. Part
Speaker 1: of it is calling favors if you can to whoever
Speaker 1: it might be that can promote stream etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: If you have that kind of leverage and and hope
Speaker 1: that others are making the same calls. From our standpoint
Speaker 1: when you were on the agency and by the way,
Speaker 1: you work well with the manager and the manager had
Speaker 1: how how's their social media? How are they on? Are
Speaker 1: they are they frequent posters? Are they infrequent posters? Is it?
Speaker 1: Are they creating content more frequently than the other There's
Speaker 1: a lot of What changed was the ability to post
Speaker 1: content in different places and different types. So if you
Speaker 1: were not an artist that generates a lot of content,
Speaker 1: you were a significant disadvantage in the digital area. If
Speaker 1: you're somebody who could post a lot of content, assuming
Speaker 1: you didn't turn into a commodity, you had a big advantage.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's all different, and you have to
Speaker 1: look at every artist, genre, level of interest, critical acclaim, uh,
Speaker 1: all of it and create a custom strategy, just like
Speaker 1: you know a good UM tutor or teacher does for
Speaker 1: a student. Their all individuals, so part of his can
Speaker 1: you get other artists to love them and recognize what
Speaker 1: you love about him and and champion them. There's a
Speaker 1: lady I signed before before I left, called Jensen McCrae,
Speaker 1: and she is my favorite. She's Joni Mitchell meets Tracy Chapman,
Speaker 1: and I think she's absolutely spectacular. A couple of songs
Speaker 1: on Spotify, the albums should be Best New Album, Best
Speaker 1: Artist on the Grammys. Um, she's a social media monster
Speaker 1: and she's hyper genius. So she's very different than some
Speaker 1: of the other people who don't post. They're not political,
Speaker 1: they're not trying to build an audience that way, and
Speaker 1: her music is more viral than others. So I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot to all of this, and it's very
Speaker 1: custom and there is no one. What we have now
Speaker 1: as an open system like technology where everything getting an
Speaker 1: app can be made for any platform because there are
Speaker 1: open systems. Now leave Apple out of this for a minute. UM,
Speaker 1: generally open systems. I think music is the same, and
Speaker 1: so people who create more content know how to communicate
Speaker 1: with their audience to do a little better. But that
Speaker 1: was part of the job, was giving them opportunities, getting
Speaker 1: the right slot on Coachella, lallapaos at this festival, that festival,
Speaker 1: this opening slot, this so and so, this right night.
Speaker 1: It's all of it. And if you do it all right,
Speaker 1: you know, people think you do but that's okay. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of the signal to noise, it also applies on
Speaker 1: the agency level. There are more people making music, more
Speaker 1: people looking for your time and your abilities to work
Speaker 1: with them too. How does someone reach you or w
Speaker 1: when you worked at or an agent at W M
Speaker 1: E or do they have to be involved with someone
Speaker 1: who knows you because there's just too much product? You know,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing. First of all, everybody's reachable because
Speaker 1: I'm pretty easy to get too, as there are most
Speaker 1: people out there if you try, if you don't know
Speaker 1: anybody and don't can't figure an email address or to
Speaker 1: post or what to do. I understand that, but I
Speaker 1: do think when you look at things that are income
Speaker 1: and you have a lower hit rate than when you
Speaker 1: look at things when you're proactive, so let's call them reactive.
Speaker 1: I get twenty million artists coming at whether it's Wan
Speaker 1: in the old you know, in my past, or any
Speaker 1: other agency or any other label, or I'm trolling blogs, criticalist,
Speaker 1: all music Guide, Consequences, sounds, stereogum, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: Other filters that I trust, and I proactively go after
Speaker 1: the records, all right, or the the artists. That's the
Speaker 1: difference between success rate and a ten percent success rate.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times you don't want the incoming,
Speaker 1: even though that story sounds good. Hey, somebody got to me,
Speaker 1: they were fantastic, whatever, And I think that the bottom
Speaker 1: line is to try to prioritize your trusted filters over
Speaker 1: just incoming noise. Would be how I'd answered that question,
Speaker 1: so I didn't care that much about that. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like you, by the way, you're the one who writes, hey,
Speaker 1: if you pitch me on a record, I'll never play it,
Speaker 1: and then I have to read every way every three
Speaker 1: letters and some random rant on a record you discovered,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't write it. If I told you to
Speaker 1: listen to it, you wouldn't, absolutely, man, But there's so
Speaker 1: much incoming. It affects the business so on so many levels.
Speaker 1: Since you were in a different vertical than I am.
Speaker 1: That's why I asked question. You know what the truth is,
Speaker 1: we had to process more than you did. You could
Speaker 1: be more selective because of what you did. We had
Speaker 1: to process hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 1: artists and try and make intelligent decisions whoever you are
Speaker 1: in any business thousands and what can I say? You
Speaker 1: try to make you try to narrow down your decisions
Speaker 1: over time and get more fine in your filtering. Well generally,
Speaker 1: you know, I would say this is ninety nine percent.
Speaker 1: I don't respond to email from people I do not
Speaker 1: know unless they're famous, because ten percent of the public
Speaker 1: is literally insane and you don't know what ten percent
Speaker 1: it is. Have you had that issue where there are
Speaker 1: people who relentless and coose problem for you to get
Speaker 1: rid of what? Yes, but that's a few people. You know,
Speaker 1: you didn't lose my music. You don't know what are
Speaker 1: you're talking about it? So you get judged on ultimately,
Speaker 1: get judged on the artists you work with, not the
Speaker 1: failed attempts and the who wanted to get into the
Speaker 1: party and you didn't sign them. It's did you find
Speaker 1: were you able to identify good artists. Could you grow
Speaker 1: them and develop them? Did others on your team do
Speaker 1: the same? Could you be collaborative? Could you figure out
Speaker 1: more intelligent filtering systems? Could you figure out more intelligent
Speaker 1: marketing promotion systems or whatever it is or artists development
Speaker 1: systems in our case, So you know that's what it is.
Speaker 1: By the way, Debra Newman Hart South Side did a
Speaker 1: great one and it was great for New Jersey. They're
Speaker 1: just one off. But even though they're successful. Sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: reading the chat high kids. Okay. Now, in the old days,
Speaker 1: pre internet days, the developing act would essentially borrow money
Speaker 1: from the record company to stay alive until hopefully they broke.
Speaker 1: How do you how do you do it today if
Speaker 1: there's no record company involvement. Well, here's the good news.
Speaker 1: In the old days you needed a record company. Today
Speaker 1: you don't, right, I mean you know that you write
Speaker 1: about it all the time, of course. Okay, So there's now.
Speaker 1: In the old days, there were two ways to get
Speaker 1: on the freeway, right, record company or you had to
Speaker 1: be allowed INDI right, and even the indies developed over time,
Speaker 1: but they had them right back on the pop days.
Speaker 1: You can a VJ. You could have this, you could
Speaker 1: have that Concorde rounder, subpop, etcetera. And not it or
Speaker 1: is There are many many of them. Those were your
Speaker 1: two on ramps and the rest of the time you
Speaker 1: were kind in the demo in Nowadays, there are multiple
Speaker 1: platforms for all the way up to Spotify and artist
Speaker 1: program from sound that that that, and you can break
Speaker 1: on TikTok or something all right, so you have options
Speaker 1: didn't happen before. You also have scale options, global scale options.
Speaker 1: You also have CRM see rum technical term for identifying
Speaker 1: your audience and figuring out how to keep them right
Speaker 1: and keep them interested. And that is what record companies
Speaker 1: tried to do without the actual communication directly with an individual.
Speaker 1: So you can be a record company and there's a
Speaker 1: billion indies. So the options are dramatically different. It's back
Speaker 1: to how great is your art? How does it cut through?
Speaker 1: You know? Is it Jensen McCrae one listen, holy shit?
Speaker 1: Or is it something else? Right? Um? And I think
Speaker 1: it's how intelligent how can you act given the new
Speaker 1: tool set? Well, I'm plugging specifically about cash frequently it's
Speaker 1: a it's make a bunch of videos, you get some traffic,
Speaker 1: you get viral and you get some ad sense from YouTube,
Speaker 1: and you know if people are if you read about it,
Speaker 1: you can make money that way, you could. You need
Speaker 1: a lot of you sift. What I understand. My point
Speaker 1: is that there is ad revenue. There didn't used to be, Okay, ever,
Speaker 1: there is ad revenue across a bunch of platforms if
Speaker 1: you can generate traffic. If you were look, Bob, I
Speaker 1: cannot answer you to tell you that all the two
Speaker 1: trillion artists who want to make it in this world
Speaker 1: are gonna make money. They're not. That's not how the
Speaker 1: system works. Okay. No matter what system, and no matter
Speaker 1: how open it is, there's a bunch that get through,
Speaker 1: have traffic, listeners and fans that make money from the
Speaker 1: bottom of the pyramids. Let me let me be very specific.
Speaker 1: In all these days, you put a band on the road,
Speaker 1: they need a van, they might need hotel rooms and usually,
Speaker 1: and usually there was short full. In the old days,
Speaker 1: it was the label, assuming there was a label, or
Speaker 1: the manager. If there is not a label, is it
Speaker 1: still the manager's taking care of that shortfall? Necessity is
Speaker 1: the mother of invention. I know a lot of artists
Speaker 1: to sleep on couches who make phone calls to work
Speaker 1: the networks. I was talking to Jim Casey who came
Speaker 1: out of defying his so far sounds. They do shows
Speaker 1: in people's living rooms. People just scale down. They released records,
Speaker 1: they put it on band camp. They sell twenty records
Speaker 1: at ten dollars each and they make they make do,
Speaker 1: and they make do with the costs they have. Like
Speaker 1: everybody else, you can create a home to which you
Speaker 1: couldn't use to. Yeah, they find a way. If you
Speaker 1: talk to people who sell clubs, and of course clubs
Speaker 1: have been redefined. It used to be really under four hundred,
Speaker 1: but now you know you have the Wiltern that is
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred. But if you talk to acts that consistently
Speaker 1: go clean in those venues, they are bitching at infinitum
Speaker 1: about the ticket master fee and they can't make money.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, on the other end, the stars dictate.
Speaker 1: Are they bitching? Do they have a legitimate point that
Speaker 1: they cannot make enough in these buildings and they cannot
Speaker 1: keep ticket prices low or they just you know, wankers
Speaker 1: who were complaining. Hold on, are you saying the bands
Speaker 1: are to air Live Nation at those relates to the
Speaker 1: Weltern and you confuse me said the capacity. Let's not
Speaker 1: make that specific. Let's just talk under five hundred capacities. Look,
Speaker 1: ticket fees, you know what they are? You right about them,
Speaker 1: all right? Right? Most people, most artists don't get ticket rebates.
Speaker 1: That's wrong. You write about it all the time. You
Speaker 1: write about the top few people who are have that
Speaker 1: kind of leveraging cloud and you know, or grandfather deals.
Speaker 1: Most people don't get them. I can tell you that, right,
Speaker 1: and I know that world well, they don't. They don't.
Speaker 1: So it's not the artist dictating ticket fees. Ticketing was
Speaker 1: a profit center for a promoter that we're all promoters, frankly,
Speaker 1: all promoters. They were lifelines and not just the big
Speaker 1: ones took advances from et cetera. Because in world with
Speaker 1: no downside, promoters can't make money. Okay, they can't. It's
Speaker 1: not a fair fight. So the reality is a little
Speaker 1: different than you write, okay, because there's a sensationalism. Um no, no,
Speaker 1: I agree with hold hold okay. You know you talk
Speaker 1: about the big people who are able to get a
Speaker 1: ticket rebate here and there that for the most part, okay,
Speaker 1: there weren't rebates, and ticketing is what helped promoting companies
Speaker 1: grow as sad as it sounds. So in an all
Speaker 1: in ticket it might be a more fair economic percentage.
Speaker 1: And then for whatever reason, people don't want it all
Speaker 1: in ticket because the artists then thinks ticket brice to you. Whatever. Okay,
Speaker 1: this will find its feet at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: no matter what have been. Anybody says there were more
Speaker 1: tickets selling in two thousand nineteen and there were going
Speaker 1: to be in two thousand twenty as a record year
Speaker 1: than ever before in history. Buy a lot. So the
Speaker 1: ticketing fees as however you feel about them, and obviously
Speaker 1: I'm trying to answer you in a political fashion. Wait, wait,
Speaker 1: didn't affect consumption. Let's talk about then you is it
Speaker 1: are under five hundred, which is a complet There are
Speaker 1: acts that consistently sell those. They say, we want to
Speaker 1: sell the ticket for it's forty and we're not making
Speaker 1: enough money. That's true. That that's true, and they have
Speaker 1: to negotiate a reduced ticketing deal, which is possible, especially
Speaker 1: if you have good connections. You can do it. If
Speaker 1: you can't, you might be a little screwed. There's some
Speaker 1: truth there, Okay, So let's go to the future. What
Speaker 1: do we know which you which you illuminated, which essentially
Speaker 1: is the acts take all the revenue, and therefore the
Speaker 1: promoter and the biggest promoters you talk to them. Yes,
Speaker 1: they make their money on the ticketing. But also let's
Speaker 1: get real the acts again. I'm not taking the pro
Speaker 1: artist pro anything here. I'll just try to be a realist.
Speaker 1: The artists have expenses, forget commissions. That question. Okay, listen,
Speaker 1: if the promoter doesn't make money, you know, Live Nation
Speaker 1: would be out of business, like question becomes when it
Speaker 1: comes back. Already, the promoters are trying to lower the percentages.
Speaker 1: They're trying to make deals a more advantageous to themselves.
Speaker 1: Do you do you think those will stick? I think, Look,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a prognosticator. My instinct is
Speaker 1: is that the artists and their representatives have always had
Speaker 1: the leverage and they exact it as balanced as they
Speaker 1: can be. Okay, So I don't think any of this
Speaker 1: stuff lasts to be fair to promoters to have additional
Speaker 1: risk when people are trying to reschedule dates when you
Speaker 1: may be reschedulinguntil next May, which is going to get canceled?
Speaker 1: Okay or whatever? And the promoter can't get insurance and
Speaker 1: has to hire that more doctors, temperature checks and all
Speaker 1: the other crap they have to put up with, let
Speaker 1: alone that they don't know. Which mayor governor county official
Speaker 1: will say, you can only sell half the people half
Speaker 1: the capacity and they're supposed to be on the hook
Speaker 1: for a guarantee is insane, all right, I'm just insane.
Speaker 1: The risk is infinite, So promoters are absolutely not wrong.
Speaker 1: They should say everybody should share the risk. We don't
Speaker 1: know what the futures like, certainly in the immediate short term, right,
Speaker 1: and everybody does need to pitch in UM. And I
Speaker 1: think for the most part before I got before I
Speaker 1: exited UM, most people were and most people when you
Speaker 1: really think about how much risk the promoter does carry
Speaker 1: and what they have to deal with and the lack
Speaker 1: of food and beverage or sponsorship and all the things
Speaker 1: that canceled out of any of these people's lives. From
Speaker 1: a nancialer revenue standpoint, they're getting pounded. So to just think, oh,
Speaker 1: they should bridge their companies and then they should make
Speaker 1: minus minus dollars isn't really fair. So that was sort
Speaker 1: of in my two cents. What I would say back
Speaker 1: to you, I think it is needed in the short term,
Speaker 1: like any help is needed for anybody, whether there's governmental
Speaker 1: assistance or whatever. Talent fees are high, and they'll find
Speaker 1: their way back. It's like the stock market. You know,
Speaker 1: it goes way up, then it goes back down, then
Speaker 1: it crawls back up, and if you're an investor, you're
Speaker 1: kind of used to it. And I think artists, we'll
Speaker 1: have to play that way. And not every artist. Remember
Speaker 1: this is too easy of an argument, because not every
Speaker 1: artist sells the same amount of tickets and means the
Speaker 1: same gross. So there's levels of risk just of promoting
Speaker 1: artists in general. And maybe if the overall markets down
Speaker 1: and half the artist sold sixty, now they're down forty.
Speaker 1: You know, there may be down to forty or something
Speaker 1: like that, and so the promoter has to deal with
Speaker 1: that too. Let's let's go back to the agent used
Speaker 1: to be for Historically the agent got a straight ten percent.
Speaker 1: Assuming you have an agent, the people who can go
Speaker 1: clean the p selling the big buildings are not paying
Speaker 1: ten percent, So give us the landscape there. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: ten percent. Business is different if you're in theater books, acting, film, television, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about music. I got it, but I want
Speaker 1: to explain it because it's important for people to realize
Speaker 1: it's about effective margin, Okay. And I tried to explain
Speaker 1: this to a lot of people in Hollywood so they
Speaker 1: understood it because a lot of people in Hollywood felt
Speaker 1: that music people were disruptive and disrespectful of a commission system,
Speaker 1: which is not true. It is totally different. Okay. If
Speaker 1: you're a director or an artist, you get or an
Speaker 1: actor or whatever it is, writer, you get paid your fee,
Speaker 1: and you pay either an attorney or an agent or both,
Speaker 1: and you keep roughly of the hall. If you're an
Speaker 1: artist and you get a gig, you may be thirty
Speaker 1: thirty five percent, maybe forty of the net. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: your net of a guarantee. So commission off the top,
Speaker 1: which is a gross number, is a big number to that.
Speaker 1: It can vary the net by a good amount, and
Speaker 1: when you have million dollar guarantees or higher, commissions can
Speaker 1: be very high at ten. So there's been a natural
Speaker 1: arc I should say um over time in the music
Speaker 1: industry because of this, and arc is as the artist
Speaker 1: gets bigger, they pay less commission, right, and they make
Speaker 1: it a more digestible piece of their fee structure. And
Speaker 1: I think they do that with a lot of the
Speaker 1: professionals on their team as they have more leverage. And
Speaker 1: I think that's historic. Okay, when you get to the
Speaker 1: level we're making a touring deal with Torpedo and certainly
Speaker 1: Rapino or Concerts West under age you want to do that?
Speaker 1: Why does an act need an age? By the way,
Speaker 1: did want to do that? Right now? You're you're the
Speaker 1: one who mentioned that they have all this money out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would like to have a lot of
Speaker 1: it back right now and keep some employees, uh and
Speaker 1: some other infrastructure, versus having it sitting an artist bank
Speaker 1: account that can't be recouped at the moment, so that
Speaker 1: will find it's it's day two, right, and who has
Speaker 1: that much advanced capital and sitting out and for how long?
Speaker 1: And thought that all? Right? Back to your question because
Speaker 1: I I took a side road, Okay, it was the agency's.
Speaker 1: The question is if you're making a touring deal with
Speaker 1: like just simplify there, why do you need an agent?
Speaker 1: A lot of people don't A lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of the lot of the managers do those deals directly? Um?
Speaker 1: And look, there's a whole bunch of reasons. Uh, you
Speaker 1: don't know what you don't know. So are you paying
Speaker 1: for professional advice? Paying for people that know the market?
Speaker 1: Why don't people list their houses more on their own?
Speaker 1: Tell me why it's cost five or whatever it is?
Speaker 1: Do they think they know the price? Do they think
Speaker 1: they know the deals? Do they know the comps? Do
Speaker 1: they know how to do it? Um? Can they market?
Speaker 1: Can they get well? Hang on? No? No, no, these
Speaker 1: are specific answers to the same thing in music And
Speaker 1: can they get on that festival? Oh, they make a
Speaker 1: deal with Ropino and now they want to play glaston Barrier,
Speaker 1: they want to play Coachella and that's a e g.
Speaker 1: Then how do you manage all of that stuff? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: And the truth is there's loyalty in this. People grow
Speaker 1: bands from inception and here's a big deal and you're
Speaker 1: gonna cut people out there. There's a lot in this.
Speaker 1: It's not one answer, all right. Sometimes when it whether
Speaker 1: it's reading your articles or other um people's take on
Speaker 1: the industry, it's very simple and black and white. And
Speaker 1: I don't think any of these answers are okay, because
Speaker 1: there are millions of artists, or at least tens and
Speaker 1: tens of thousands, and they're all different. So I would
Speaker 1: say you should. If you ask ten managers that question,
Speaker 1: they would give you ten different answers, including I don't
Speaker 1: need an agent, or I would only pay them a
Speaker 1: reduced amount, or you know what, they deserved it and
Speaker 1: they earned it, or I think they got me double
Speaker 1: the money, or they got rid of an earnout provision
Speaker 1: in the deal that would have lengthened you know, wouldn't
Speaker 1: make it a fine ideal. There's a lot of answers
Speaker 1: there or there or you know what, I don't need
Speaker 1: to pay them on this, But the private corporates and
Speaker 1: the college gigs or the fair dates or the festivals
Speaker 1: outside of so and so are we're so much to
Speaker 1: me and that's where I make the money I'll pay
Speaker 1: them are reduced on it. Again, it's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of answers here. Okay, let's say you're an act. A
Speaker 1: lot of these festivals have three to five stages. If
Speaker 1: it act plays with two in the if they played
Speaker 1: two in the afternoon. Other than saying I played that gig, okay,
Speaker 1: I played Lollapaloosa. Is there a benefit to them? Can
Speaker 1: they break? I think so. I mean, listen, I've said
Speaker 1: for years and made it a real point to say
Speaker 1: festivals or the new record stores. All right, when those poet,
Speaker 1: when that gets announced, most people that are going and others,
Speaker 1: because there's such a massive cultural force, go do research
Speaker 1: like you would up anything back in the day, all right,
Speaker 1: on all the people playing the festival, including who knows
Speaker 1: what band, what artists, what friend of theirs? Who? Why
Speaker 1: are they not know that band? They're not hip enough?
Speaker 1: And so there there's a hastened discovery process on the announced.
Speaker 1: Then the app comes out and you're making your schedule
Speaker 1: of where to go and what to do, and you're
Speaker 1: basically continually sifting through a lineup whether it's a hundred X,
Speaker 1: and you are making choices and you're in it. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like what party do I go to? It's like
Speaker 1: your school um day, all right? What classes do I take?
Speaker 1: And where do I go and win to my lunch?
Speaker 1: So I think festivals are infinitely more than that. And
Speaker 1: I think the one o'clock and two o'clock slots I've
Speaker 1: I've been involved with fifty acts that are breaking broken
Speaker 1: starting there. In fact, as it relates to signal to noise, Bob,
Speaker 1: if you have a big show at two in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: you own that period. By seven, the whole festivals rocking,
Speaker 1: and you don't, you might not make a sound, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure it's a disadvantage. We've purposely put
Speaker 1: artists in the old days early in the slots to
Speaker 1: avoid competition, so they got all the attention, Amy Winehouse
Speaker 1: is four o'clock on purpose. Okay, let's to what degree
Speaker 1: you've talked about this over the last fifteen years or so,
Speaker 1: expanding the purview of the agency into advances into promotion
Speaker 1: of concerts. Are these venues that agencies will continue to
Speaker 1: forage in or will they ultimately just be arbiters of gigs? Listen,
Speaker 1: I can't I don't want to tell you what other
Speaker 1: people are gonna do moving forward post COVID. What I
Speaker 1: would tell you is the market's going to get and
Speaker 1: when that happens, typically things can be more formless and
Speaker 1: opportunity drives. Nobody's going to be worrying about regulation at
Speaker 1: the moment, you know, if not for years until this
Speaker 1: thing comes back. So the answer really is where do
Speaker 1: people see opportunities and where they're willing to go and do,
Speaker 1: including the agencies, right, labels could go start agencies or
Speaker 1: management companies. Michael Ropino is all and and a g
Speaker 1: of invested in management companies and other things and venues.
Speaker 1: I know, Core and cap Show. He went and spent
Speaker 1: or went and invested in a lot of different um
Speaker 1: vertical markets around touring. A lot of people have, so
Speaker 1: I think it's a The one thing that everybody's learning
Speaker 1: through this is how complex ecosystem is and how many
Speaker 1: pieces get affected right when the revenue stops and artists
Speaker 1: can't play, including even labels. Right people think labels are okay, Well,
Speaker 1: really all the indies depend on the artist touring getting
Speaker 1: pressed putting out records in order for they don't spend
Speaker 1: that much in marketing promotion. They don't have it. So
Speaker 1: UM and the major says you know, have reduced their
Speaker 1: flow of new releases in it because people don't want
Speaker 1: to just lose the record in a week for the
Speaker 1: most part. Again, so I think everything is on the table.
Speaker 1: Everybody is going to make some choices where they think
Speaker 1: the opportunities are best and where they should invest and
Speaker 1: what they should grow. The great news unlike past disasters.
Speaker 1: I don't know there's everyone like this, but but is
Speaker 1: that the music economy is way bigger and way more
Speaker 1: healthy than people know. So wherever you invest, you've got
Speaker 1: a good chance of making money or striking gold because,
Speaker 1: as you know, value copyrights is going up. Look at
Speaker 1: the Warner I P O Spotify price. Everything in the
Speaker 1: copyright I P business is skyrocketing. Look at merk mercuriotis
Speaker 1: is multiples on its publishing. That world is going nuts.
Speaker 1: You read the Goldman Report, it's how you four to
Speaker 1: six times and you're talking a hundred billion dollar recorded
Speaker 1: music industry minimum, and then the touring industry and how
Speaker 1: vast it is, and it was just really growing, especially globally.
Speaker 1: You know it's gonna go through at least a double
Speaker 1: could be fifty billion a year, bigger than the movie
Speaker 1: business and all the associated pieces. I think it will
Speaker 1: come back, will come back big, and it will be healthy.
Speaker 1: The questions can people get through and then where they
Speaker 1: spend their time agencies? Yeah, everybody can remake themselves. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go into genre. You were saying that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you are not personally into what is on the chart,
Speaker 1: so to speak, how strong hip which charts we're talking
Speaker 1: about Spotify, Spotify Top fifty, which okay, the Spotify Top fifty,
Speaker 1: which is basically hip hop and pop. Does that do
Speaker 1: as well as the top fifty of your live They've
Speaker 1: always been disconnected. I mean I remember reading poll Star
Speaker 1: in the eighties and looking at Pink, Floyd, The Grateful Dead,
Speaker 1: Bob Seeger. You know, they weren't on any chart of
Speaker 1: recording music ever, right, Pink, etcetera, etcetera. And the same
Speaker 1: was true later in the all rock, you know, grunge revolution.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of it. Look, I think pop and
Speaker 1: ticket sales can converge and do probably more today than ever.
Speaker 1: And saying with hip hop hip hop, it was part
Speaker 1: of the development period for people to really take the
Speaker 1: touring infrastructures um and invest in it as as the
Speaker 1: rap and hip hop community grew. And that took a
Speaker 1: lot of time. I was part of it and I
Speaker 1: watched it um. I think the same is true for
Speaker 1: the electronic music industry. Took a while for people to
Speaker 1: really shake their metaphor of what being a DJ was
Speaker 1: and put it into a live you know, Greena or
Speaker 1: other conte festival context, and I think over time all
Speaker 1: of them grow and that's why I have such a
Speaker 1: robust business at the moment um. So the chart is
Speaker 1: the charts. The recorded charts are again not today when
Speaker 1: the touring market is shut, but it's more in line
Speaker 1: than it was in the past in my opinion, and
Speaker 1: there's more surprises than ever because there are touring surprises
Speaker 1: that are not on the chart, and there's huge recording
Speaker 1: artists that don't really affect the touring, but I would
Speaker 1: say a large percentage of it. The holy grail is
Speaker 1: people to switch on all the revenue streams, okay, and
Speaker 1: they understand what they are today. So whether it is
Speaker 1: the ad rev ad share that you discounted but I
Speaker 1: think is bigger than you do, or direct e commerce
Speaker 1: or merchandise which is an all time high, publishing and
Speaker 1: sinks and you know all the different uses of publishing
Speaker 1: and splits and remixes and data touring and all the
Speaker 1: touring besides merch all the touring ancillaries. I think today
Speaker 1: people realize there's ten revenue streams in the music history.
Speaker 1: I gotta turn at least six to ten of them
Speaker 1: to to really be in the game. So I think
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to learn. So you have history in different areas,
Speaker 1: you have history at a record company. Let's just assume
Speaker 1: there's not my best one. It's like, okay, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a liberty here. There are three
Speaker 1: major record companies at this point in time. If I
Speaker 1: were to put you in charge of one of them,
Speaker 1: forget which one, what would you do besides take it public? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: well that's the first thing, all right, um, and I
Speaker 1: think that will be happening. Well, really, Sony is part
Speaker 1: of a Sony Music is part of Sony International, Warner
Speaker 1: just Win Public and right now it used to be that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you were content, you're driving the machine.
Speaker 1: There's an argument to be made that Sony Music's valuation
Speaker 1: is getting crushed by being part of the bigger But
Speaker 1: you have to but you have to assume that. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I think that you
Speaker 1: know it's a separate stock. Um. Universal obviously is under Vendy,
Speaker 1: and I think Universal at some point goes public and
Speaker 1: will be massive and good for all of them. They've
Speaker 1: done a ridiculously great job building look I think record
Speaker 1: companies have the next eighteen months where they have a
Speaker 1: lot more staying power. They have the market with them.
Speaker 1: If you're public and a lot of capital, they could
Speaker 1: be the great consolidators right now. If I were driving one,
Speaker 1: I would be really building out my tentacles of infrastructure
Speaker 1: to have more pieces of the music industry and the
Speaker 1: what I'll call the supply value chain. If you if
Speaker 1: you call Spotify pipeline and the label is oil will supply.
Speaker 1: I would be um doing a lot around the oil
Speaker 1: supply and the healthy parts of the music industry. Because
Speaker 1: I have capital on flush, I can do artists felt
Speaker 1: you could buy clubs, you could be a label, you
Speaker 1: could do a lot right They started merged companies, they
Speaker 1: started agencies, They've invested in managing companies. I know Vivendi
Speaker 1: is doing a ton in Africa. I saw a presentation
Speaker 1: that was fascinating there in like fifteen cities and Africa.
Speaker 1: Why is there not They're investing in the music industry, infrastructure,
Speaker 1: their French company, there's a lot of French territories and
Speaker 1: so it's sort of fascinating. I think they are. They
Speaker 1: have the most opportunity right now. My two cents and
Speaker 1: they have publishing, so they're already covered two ways to Sunday, right, okay,
Speaker 1: but what do we know about major labels today. They
Speaker 1: are releasing fewer records and fewer genres than ever before
Speaker 1: in an arrow where there's more music and more genres
Speaker 1: both being distributed in that type of music. So they're
Speaker 1: pausing the new release piece to but remember, the new
Speaker 1: release pieces at least profitable for them. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: by cutting that all right and getting more catalog revenue
Speaker 1: as a blend, they're actually profitability is going to go
Speaker 1: up in some ways, okay, and the valuations are skyrocketing
Speaker 1: at the same time. I think they will be fine.
Speaker 1: I don't think that their DIP is going to be
Speaker 1: bad invested. Let me put it slightly different way. Uh,
Speaker 1: they are missing out on genres uh that don't do
Speaker 1: well on the Spotify quickly because certainly you get paid
Speaker 1: on consumption. This could ultimately the be the bane of
Speaker 1: their existence. I don't think, because they certainly want to
Speaker 1: take a big piece, I don't agree. I think what
Speaker 1: happens is after every format change, the majors just buy
Speaker 1: up what they don't have. Historically, they've started labels, bought labels,
Speaker 1: consolidated labels, because when there's a new profitable model and
Speaker 1: streaming is the most profitable and the best one, they
Speaker 1: just buy more of the Spotify. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: math formula. Okay, it doesn't stream as much as a
Speaker 1: hip hop record maybe or a pop record. But you
Speaker 1: know these labels are they have very smart people in
Speaker 1: there who know the value of an indie record, electronic record,
Speaker 1: hip hop, hop, pop record. They have a different value
Speaker 1: and multiple assigence, and they still want to buy them.
Speaker 1: The end of the day, the game is going to
Speaker 1: be buying up as much as the Spotify streaming revenue
Speaker 1: as you can get, and the majors will be able
Speaker 1: to do that. So I think that's gonna be unprecedented
Speaker 1: in the next five to ten years because they're losing
Speaker 1: market share, you know of that, because the exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gonna buy it up. They're gonna be flushed cash
Speaker 1: like a lot bo bob sixty billion dollars the Universe
Speaker 1: I said forty, they're gonna go out at sixty. Okay,
Speaker 1: if anybody's listening from Universal, I'm sure you whatever, you'll
Speaker 1: say something, but it's good what do we know if
Speaker 1: you have good what do you think they could do
Speaker 1: with five billion dollars in cash with indies a rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: Now he's got a side because let me go to
Speaker 1: a slightly different point. Okay, if you have incredible traction,
Speaker 1: if you're a little naz X, you can write your
Speaker 1: ticket at the label. But if you're not someone with
Speaker 1: incredible streaming numbers, at first, the record company, the traditional
Speaker 1: label is not going to give you a good deal.
Speaker 1: Whereas you go to direct to spotify the others and
Speaker 1: get it more than of the recording revenue. Someone who
Speaker 1: is young and leverages that, why do they need the
Speaker 1: major labels? The major label is a great percentage of
Speaker 1: their distribution market share is based on they distribute all
Speaker 1: these little labs to them. Signal to noise, you don't
Speaker 1: first of all, you have efficient back ends and systems.
Speaker 1: If usually because you get a cash advance, because you
Speaker 1: get bought out, and you don't get a cash advance otherwise.
Speaker 1: So that's the majority of why people do this, right.
Speaker 1: It's not like they take your records of the store
Speaker 1: and rebrand them with a label on it and sent
Speaker 1: in as a nice price that no longer happens, so
Speaker 1: nobody knows what happens because the I P stays in
Speaker 1: Spotify or Apple Music. It never changes. It's always accessible
Speaker 1: to customer. There's no label there anyway, So it's just
Speaker 1: who gets paid the royalties, right, that's it. It's an
Speaker 1: invisible transaction. So if somebody's wait, so if somebody's gonna
Speaker 1: make a margin on it, they're gonna buy more of it.
Speaker 1: It's like factoring. So if I think that you know,
Speaker 1: the indie label deal is this, and I'm gonna pay
Speaker 1: him a million dollars to take over this, and I
Speaker 1: get thirty nine cents and might pay out to them,
Speaker 1: was factor to thirty three cents and I make six cents.
Speaker 1: They're gonna do it all day long. It's just math. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to the other side of the equation. The artist.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's a decision whether it take that deal.
Speaker 1: But in the heyday of classic rock, when this business
Speaker 1: was built, artists were worried about their credibility. They did
Speaker 1: not want to do endorsement, sponsorships. There were very few
Speaker 1: private To what degree is that a factor it acts today?
Speaker 1: It feels very like an old topic from back from
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. To me, I think that that
Speaker 1: that ship sailed. There are a few people that still
Speaker 1: feel that way. My good friend Paul to Let feels
Speaker 1: that way about Coachella, and more power to him. Um. Look,
Speaker 1: my view is this, Uh, sponsorship is one revenue stream
Speaker 1: most people can't get. Okay, it's easy to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're selling out, and a lot of people feel that way.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means anymore. I mean, Trump's
Speaker 1: using people's music without authorization for his ship, and artists
Speaker 1: are fucking freaking out over that. You think they should
Speaker 1: care about a commercial they got paid for. That's much worse.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Look, here's what I say. It's a it's
Speaker 1: an older, overblown topic. Of the artists I think would
Speaker 1: take it and think it's no hit to their credibility.
Speaker 1: The truth is that in their Instagram feeds there's advertising everywhere.
Speaker 1: Just like when MTV played their videos there was ads
Speaker 1: before and afterwards they couldn't do anything about it. The
Speaker 1: same was true on radio, the same is true on
Speaker 1: social media, and I think it's an overblown topic. Music
Speaker 1: is surrounded by advertising almost no matter what platform. Again,
Speaker 1: you know Pandora and streaming services aside their concerts. They
Speaker 1: go play a venue where they don't take a sponsor,
Speaker 1: and there's a spot three sponsors at the venue. Who
Speaker 1: the funk knows? You think the consumers like, Nope, that
Speaker 1: band has credibility because they're playing the Chevy Concert Series.
Speaker 1: It's not them. I don't buy it. I think we're
Speaker 1: way past that. But sell by date. Sorry, Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk about you for so people get where you're coming from.
Speaker 1: Where did you grow up near you, buddy Stanford? I
Speaker 1: know all your history this Connecticut. Okay? And uh, were
Speaker 1: you the type a kid who was the straw that
Speaker 1: s uh stirred the drink? Or were you alone? Or
Speaker 1: what kind of kid were you? What is the straw
Speaker 1: that started to drink social? No, yes, that's someone. When
Speaker 1: uh Reggie Jackson came to the New York Yankees, he says,
Speaker 1: I'm the straw that stirs the drink, the leader of
Speaker 1: the band. I try not to have that kind of
Speaker 1: a thought about myself. I think I was a normal,
Speaker 1: you know, first generation immigrant kid who was a jock
Speaker 1: and I was into music. I was I used to
Speaker 1: call myself a geek jock because my dad is an engineer,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty mad, and I was into genetics
Speaker 1: and immune therapy and gene there. You know, I'm a
Speaker 1: bit of a geek and I'm a computer nerd. Was
Speaker 1: gonna be a here science miner. In college, I was
Speaker 1: writing compilers. That was probably the first guy in the
Speaker 1: industry use a computer or spreadsheet. Most people know that.
Speaker 1: And I was one of the first people to talk
Speaker 1: about online services the Internet before the Internet, right when
Speaker 1: it's commercial online services. So I don't know. I'm a geek,
Speaker 1: music freak, you know, jock, kind of normal, normal guy
Speaker 1: that doesn't it isn't any I don't want to be
Speaker 1: one of the big personalities in perfect Okay. So we're okay, okay,
Speaker 1: I know this, But from my audience, where do you
Speaker 1: go to college? You see San Diego? Why pre med only?
Speaker 1: And I was gonna go to Berkeley. Sere used to
Speaker 1: buy records on telegraphic Leopold's and rescuing. It was my nirvana. Right,
Speaker 1: I'd be shopping for C. T. I Jazz all the
Speaker 1: way through the latest indie whatever. I was a freak,
Speaker 1: and um Berkeley had a ship med school and no
Speaker 1: housing In nineteen eighty and you had to pick three
Speaker 1: schools if you were in the UC and I looked online. Still,
Speaker 1: UCSD was beautiful and at the best med school. I
Speaker 1: flew down there and it was out of control, gorgeous. Okay,
Speaker 1: just at what point do you at what point do
Speaker 1: you move from Connecticut to San Francisoto junior junior year? Okay,
Speaker 1: that must have been very hard and social. No, no,
Speaker 1: I was. I was a baseball player, so it was easy.
Speaker 1: What happened? You got? How good a base that was
Speaker 1: pretty good? My kid's good too. But here's the bottom line.
Speaker 1: You get accepted. I wasn't an outcast athletics or other
Speaker 1: special interests. Uh allow you acceptance in ways that you know,
Speaker 1: the normal outcast slash. I don't know, anybody doesn't. And
Speaker 1: you know I tried to be so much social. Okay,
Speaker 1: So to go to UCSD, how do you get involved
Speaker 1: in the music program? There's a fun story. So um,
Speaker 1: it's some fun fun dormates by the way, my judge
Speaker 1: with the dormate was at the time, So they had
Speaker 1: a campus record store and I signed up to work
Speaker 1: at it. It started the year before and once again,
Speaker 1: what once you get what ye're we in And I
Speaker 1: ended up running the record store within two months, I
Speaker 1: think maybe a month, and that was really fun. I
Speaker 1: had I managed a band out of the record store.
Speaker 1: I called their number on the back of the vinyl.
Speaker 1: What was called the church, so what I was at
Speaker 1: that point. Then the campus radio station came calling. I
Speaker 1: joined the campus radio station and I took that over. Um.
Speaker 1: I then joined the concert committee and that went really
Speaker 1: really well, and I end up promoting shows on campus
Speaker 1: and then a little bit slower because usually there's a
Speaker 1: hierarchy in college. You're the newbie and there's not a
Speaker 1: UCSD everybody. It's a nerd school. It was you know, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and I kind of I don't. I don't want to
Speaker 1: say anything here, but let's just put it this way.
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to have an idea of what
Speaker 1: to go do and that led the day. So what
Speaker 1: did you say to do well in the concert area?
Speaker 1: Buy more shows and put on more shows. And I
Speaker 1: convinced the administration then call just did enough fear calling
Speaker 1: agents back in the day. I remember this day calling
Speaker 1: Andy Waters and my first show and Joel Harrisman on
Speaker 1: the second show. I promoted and trying to remember who
Speaker 1: did spyro Gyra at the time, Paul la Monica on
Speaker 1: bb King, you know, Joel Parrisman on King, Crimson, Andy
Speaker 1: Waters and Ian Hunter, and it just rolled. I I
Speaker 1: don't even know what to say. My friends said to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what you're always destined to funk that doctor ship.
Speaker 1: That was a bunch of bullshit cover for your mother,
Speaker 1: and this is what you were going to do. But
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. So it just went and I
Speaker 1: ended up having a lot of success down there, and
Speaker 1: I was on ninety one excellent Radio. I started humphreezing.
Speaker 1: It blew up and I a little bit slower. How
Speaker 1: many shows did you do at ucsday four to start?
Speaker 1: Then started a company, did four more and then got
Speaker 1: hired by what is was Avalon Attractions Mark Berman that
Speaker 1: then got bought and is now Live Nation. But and
Speaker 1: then hundreds of shows the junior and senior year. Hundreds. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we say you started home Free. You tell us
Speaker 1: about that um To venue in San Diego. It's been
Speaker 1: going thirty something thirty up thirty seven years probably the
Speaker 1: Potters Venum say, do you get one of them? But
Speaker 1: what happened was we were. I promoted Carla Bonoff, Bonnie
Speaker 1: Rait and John Anderson from Yes at the old Globe
Speaker 1: Theaters in San Diego and which are gorgeous, all right,
Speaker 1: lar theaters, but they were union houses and you couldn't
Speaker 1: make any money, okay, and no, Bob, I did not
Speaker 1: church twenty dollars a ticket to make money on top
Speaker 1: ticket fees. But uh, you couldn't. So we were looking
Speaker 1: for a cheaper venue. And I happened to go with
Speaker 1: the production manager to a radio station um event where
Speaker 1: they were giving out drinks and promoting some advertiser, and
Speaker 1: it was at a hotel and they laid it out well,
Speaker 1: Jasmine was playing on this lawn, and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I bet you this looks cheap. We could do shows here.
Speaker 1: And I went and met with the hotel manager and
Speaker 1: he said sure, and I cut a deal with him
Speaker 1: on the spot. And I think the first show we
Speaker 1: did there was David Lindley and El rayo X and
Speaker 1: I think we did The Crusaders and then four nights
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Buffett, and Jimmy Buffett sold that in ten minutes.
Speaker 1: There were three thousand boats trying to watch the show.
Speaker 1: From next to Humphries and it broke and it never
Speaker 1: looked back, so okay, And whose money was it? It
Speaker 1: was the company I worked for at the time, which
Speaker 1: was the promoter who part of it before. It was
Speaker 1: a partnership between a San Diego promoter named Mark Burman
Speaker 1: and Avalon Attractions, so it was both of their money's.
Speaker 1: I think Avalon was floating the cash and Mark Berman
Speaker 1: had done some stuff and Avalanche it wasn't nice, and
Speaker 1: Avalone said, we're gonna throw you out and take our
Speaker 1: money back. So there was a big show that they
Speaker 1: captured the entire box office and settled the score. And
Speaker 1: then I was asked to choose which one was I
Speaker 1: going to work for, and I and I was still
Speaker 1: in school and Humphries was my baby at the time,
Speaker 1: so I stayed with the Mark Burman guy for a moment.
Speaker 1: It's a whole funny story. He was funded by a
Speaker 1: drug dealer and it was just wacky. And I lasted
Speaker 1: there about another nine months, and then I made a
Speaker 1: decision to go to l A and become an agent.
Speaker 1: I was pursued. Funny story, the guys who were triad
Speaker 1: than William Morris, Richard Rosenberg and Peterboroughs like great guys,
Speaker 1: dear friends and great people. God rest, Peter salt Um.
Speaker 1: I sold out a Sergio Mendez date. I think ine
Speaker 1: and Richard Rosenberger was one of Sergio Mendez his best
Speaker 1: friends at Bellafante, and all these people had loved del Mar,
Speaker 1: who's a horse guy, so he would go down to
Speaker 1: Delmar all the time. So here's this excuse, Sergio Amende
Speaker 1: is actually selling out somewhere, which never happened. He's like,
Speaker 1: I gotta meet the guy that's selling out, Sergeion Amendez,
Speaker 1: And I got to go to del Mar. He came down,
Speaker 1: we became friends, and I went to work for him
Speaker 1: after that. And and it's, uh, you know, that was
Speaker 1: the start of post college and what point do you
Speaker 1: decide you're not going to be a doctor. And what
Speaker 1: do your parents say about that? She's still pissed. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know that my parents ever figured out what
Speaker 1: I actually did or do truly, they're ritchen press, but
Speaker 1: I don't know if they know. Um. I was really
Speaker 1: getting my ass handed to me into sophomore year in
Speaker 1: Kem classes and down there, Okam and Pekem were really
Speaker 1: really hard there, and I just got killed. I was distracted,
Speaker 1: so that made it made my choice easy. Then management
Speaker 1: science became came calling, which is a joke, but whatever. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you you moved to l A. You work for
Speaker 1: Triad Agency at the time, got merged into Triad, went
Speaker 1: to nine one, okay, and in ninety one you go
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, here's here's here's a fun story. So incredible years.
Speaker 1: They were all incredible years. So those are incredible. I
Speaker 1: mean the music that was coming out, whether it was
Speaker 1: beginning hip hop, where it was grunge, all rock, it
Speaker 1: didn't matter whatever you call it, you know, indie data
Speaker 1: da da. But it culminated kind of in Lollapalus and
Speaker 1: I left and I was really upset. I got a
Speaker 1: shitty bonus one year and it really bummed me out.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing that bumped me out was
Speaker 1: product manager and Electra Record just had all the say
Speaker 1: and the promotion people over the Pixies, who are one
Speaker 1: of my favorites, and I was a Pixies fanatic, and
Speaker 1: they were putting out I think it was Trump Lamont
Speaker 1: and they picked the wrong single and you should appreciate this.
Speaker 1: You mass was the hit, and they never put out
Speaker 1: as a single and I went crazy. I was like,
Speaker 1: the Pixie are finally gonna have a huge hit. They
Speaker 1: get something they deserve in the world, and the record
Speaker 1: is gonna suck it all up because some radio programs
Speaker 1: like the of this record I was living. So I
Speaker 1: realized right then and there, between the bonus and that
Speaker 1: I gotta go on the record business. That's what the
Speaker 1: power is. Every agents are nothing, live business on the
Speaker 1: bottom of somebody's shoot, which is no longer the case.
Speaker 1: And you've written about that too, but it was at
Speaker 1: the time. So Irving had offered a job to me,
Speaker 1: and um somebody worked in me and said, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of you being reactive, you should be proactive. How
Speaker 1: did you know? How did you know Rick Rubin? Well,
Speaker 1: I worked as Dan's exagent and we were friends. We
Speaker 1: were friends from before that. Um and I wrote down
Speaker 1: my three heroes at the time and the record business.
Speaker 1: One was Iva Watch Russell for a d but it
Speaker 1: couldn't work for him, um Rick, Reuben, Gary Kerr First
Speaker 1: and Seymour Stein and they were when when when this
Speaker 1: person said be proactive, you gotta work your your mark, Igor,
Speaker 1: you gotta don't take the first whatever, go work where
Speaker 1: you want to work. And I went and met with
Speaker 1: all of them. I was they were heroes to me.
Speaker 1: And Rick felt the best and I spent five years
Speaker 1: with him. That we're amazing. I learned a ton he was,
Speaker 1: He's amazing. Uh too much for the podcast. But I
Speaker 1: watched him and George de Culius and Brendan O'Brien and
Speaker 1: Dave Sarrty and all these people make records, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to make a record. I'm watching recruit
Speaker 1: and make records. I helped them sign Johnny Cash and
Speaker 1: Mr Funt Delly Kind. I'm the guy that flew down
Speaker 1: to sign Johnny. You know on behalf of Rick It's huge, Branson,
Speaker 1: Miss Already and Nata It's ridiculous. Chili Peppers, Bloodshirt, Sex mensh,
Speaker 1: Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic, Wildflowers, Tom Petty. All made during
Speaker 1: that time, Mick Jagger, plus plus plus, Plus, Plus plus
Speaker 1: plus plus, Slayer, this that. In the next I signed
Speaker 1: fifteen bands that I loved. All failed, but you know,
Speaker 1: not failed great records. Mary Jane, I'm Sea, Jesus Medicine,
Speaker 1: Julian Cope, Frank Black, just artists that people didn't care
Speaker 1: about commercially but I loved but I learned a lot
Speaker 1: and then I bought a couple of websites when I
Speaker 1: was with him that I had a real vision for
Speaker 1: and he became a partner and artist Direct. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of so tell us when Artists Direct started.
Speaker 1: What the viewpoint was in the development thereof the viewpoint
Speaker 1: was pretty simple. It's funny. Okay, So here's a funny story.
Speaker 1: I saw Mark cats Is somewhere here, but um so
Speaker 1: this is relevant. If you haven't seen the Beastie Boys
Speaker 1: documentary on Apple TV, I highly recommended watch Linda run
Speaker 1: Stats too. It's amazing. But the Beastis brought me back
Speaker 1: to um a story. Ian Rodgers and I met in
Speaker 1: Detroit at Pine Knob I think was a beast show.
Speaker 1: It wasn't La La it was Beast Show and John
Speaker 1: Silva was there and I was freaking out at that
Speaker 1: period over the Internet and what it meant. And I
Speaker 1: just to be clear, what what year are we in?
Speaker 1: Do you remember? Ninety? True? Good question? It was not.
Speaker 1: The Internet was commercial online services, so it must have
Speaker 1: been earlier two okay okay? And Ian and I were
Speaker 1: explaining the Beasts and Silva what was going to change
Speaker 1: about the world and fast forward. I was in the
Speaker 1: car with Rick explain maybe it was when the browser
Speaker 1: came out, uh, explaining that right now, I didn't understand
Speaker 1: how if I was a fan and I used the
Speaker 1: best boys with Rick obviously because he was instrumental there. Um,
Speaker 1: why I have to go to a concert to buy
Speaker 1: the band's T shirt? And why when I want to
Speaker 1: find out what they're doing on their new album, I
Speaker 1: have to wait and buy ten magazines to see who's
Speaker 1: going to write about them. And I want to buy
Speaker 1: go to the records from buy their records, but I
Speaker 1: can't buy their ticket there. I have to go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And so what the fund is that? It's like the
Speaker 1: worst organization system you could even think about. It makes
Speaker 1: a scavenger hunt look good, right because it's random. I said,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to be a fan. What terrible? So again,
Speaker 1: I've been in commercial online services, a well compy serve Prodigy.
Speaker 1: You know Delfi, my buddy from college, was one, was
Speaker 1: probably number two in siliconality. They made a movie about
Speaker 1: him because it was such a forward thinker, uh, in
Speaker 1: terms of home automation and networking. And I said to Rick.
Speaker 1: When the browser hit, I said, the world has to
Speaker 1: be reshaped. Everybody has to go to the artist for everything,
Speaker 1: their tickets, their t shirts, their information, their tour dates,
Speaker 1: their music, their videos, and it should be in one place.
Speaker 1: Why do you have to fucking jump around the digital
Speaker 1: This internet thing is going to allow for that to happen.
Speaker 1: I want to build a company that builds the home
Speaker 1: base where everything is at, so when people go there
Speaker 1: they get everything. It's a stupid organizational system. This is
Speaker 1: a reorgan okay, with the artist around the center. This
Speaker 1: is before the concept of commercial online streaming services, which
Speaker 1: then is a platform where you have a lot of artists, right,
Speaker 1: but then hopefully you link to these centers and now
Speaker 1: there's multiple centers, multiple channels. But at the time it
Speaker 1: was built trying to build the first one. So the
Speaker 1: real thought behind it was trying to centralize the artist
Speaker 1: content and their goods right and their information and not
Speaker 1: make it, you know, a road trip to have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get that ship. It was. It
Speaker 1: was maddening and for me, who was a super fan
Speaker 1: of Indian underground music, um, it was double bad because
Speaker 1: those artists didn't get enrolling stuff or on MTV or
Speaker 1: on the radio. So now you had to dig and wait.
Speaker 1: For god, it was written in a musician magazine, or
Speaker 1: did option to a story or trouser pressed do something
Speaker 1: or cream or this or that, or depending what you
Speaker 1: were doing, or oh, I gotta wait till the enemy
Speaker 1: comes in three weeks late and Sounds and Melody Maker
Speaker 1: to see if they write about them right. And I'm
Speaker 1: representing the Order and the Bunnymen, and you know, Smith's
Speaker 1: for a moment and cocked out Twins, the Pixies and
Speaker 1: Dead Can Dance and nobody's did They're not on the
Speaker 1: fucking radio, kay rock whatever some of them, And how
Speaker 1: are you going to find out about that? And then
Speaker 1: what really bothered me was I said, Okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: an agent. I'm working with these bands. I'm in New
Speaker 1: York for the bunny Man. They sell out Roseland and
Speaker 1: Radio City ten thousand freak Bunnymen fans, and after the
Speaker 1: show's over, nobody knows who they are and how to
Speaker 1: get to them again. And I go, that's the dumbest
Speaker 1: thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I have
Speaker 1: to fix this. This is so stupid that things with
Speaker 1: this kind of fandom where those fans would kill to
Speaker 1: have Ian McCulloch say here's a new song or anything right,
Speaker 1: kill crush, and there's no system for that. So those
Speaker 1: two thoughts is what I went to try to do. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you leave deaf American, which becomes American at some
Speaker 1: point what year beginning of what do you? What do
Speaker 1: you do for cash? On this startup? Start an agency?
Speaker 1: We made cash right away, had chili peppers, rage, pearl
Speaker 1: jam b York, you know, ninety we had a lot
Speaker 1: of them. Okay, Well, just to be clear, was the
Speaker 1: agency part of artists to direct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole way. That was the concept. We didn't take financing
Speaker 1: for a year and a half and then we raised
Speaker 1: very little. We didn't need it, and we built. I
Speaker 1: built the first system and FileMaker e commerce. Both the
Speaker 1: booking system and the e commerce system was built in FileMaker.
Speaker 1: I wrote it, I coded it. So we were doing
Speaker 1: FileMaker transactions and what happened. Here's a funny story. So
Speaker 1: I was good friends with Norman Perry from Periscope Vancouver promoter,
Speaker 1: great guy, hyper smart, dear friend. He went to work
Speaker 1: I think in Toronto for Michael Cole and then he
Speaker 1: opened up one of the merchant companies called Brockham with
Speaker 1: Peter Lubin and got sold that got pushed out whatever,
Speaker 1: and then started a new company and he had David Bowie,
Speaker 1: he had the Rolling Stones, you know, he had some
Speaker 1: real heavyweight folks and he was a big friend and
Speaker 1: fan for another mutual friend. But we were dear friends.
Speaker 1: We still are to this day. And when we were
Speaker 1: opening Artists Direct, the Rolling Stones are a huge business
Speaker 1: for him, but he couldn't sell anything online and this
Speaker 1: e commerce thing was new, and I called him up.
Speaker 1: In fact, my Frankie said you should call Norman see
Speaker 1: if you can get the Stones. And I actually the
Speaker 1: first band Artist Direct ever signed with the Stones ever.
Speaker 1: Norman is like, I'm gonna set you with Mick bless you.
Speaker 1: You go meet with Mick if you can convince him,
Speaker 1: and he's an online freak. O you go. And I
Speaker 1: went back with Mick in the Four Seas Hotel in
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills one morning, came out the bathrobe. He's the
Speaker 1: smartest motherfucker anyway. He understands understood the Internet. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'll give you this, but you gotta get me my cricket.
Speaker 1: I want my cricket every city I'm in. Now, this
Speaker 1: was in nineties six or ninety seven. There's no cricket
Speaker 1: online being streamed anywhere when most streaming and his bandwidth
Speaker 1: was terribly You couldn't a well, graphics are still downloading slow, right,
Speaker 1: so forget songs. And he wanted to watch cricket everywhere
Speaker 1: he went. And he was furious that he wasn't running.
Speaker 1: He was like, that's what the Internet is gonna be.
Speaker 1: Fast forward. He was right, um, and he said absolutely,
Speaker 1: And we built the Stone Store and it, you know,
Speaker 1: did a million dollars of e commerce pretty quickly. And
Speaker 1: then we went from there and it was a hell
Speaker 1: of woy to start. Um sort of proved the concept.
Speaker 1: Although it was early. There weren't banner ads. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're the very first implementation of s A P RP
Speaker 1: system on the whole internet. So you just think about
Speaker 1: what area you were in. There was no programming languages.
Speaker 1: You couldn't program a database. Everything is in Tickle, which
Speaker 1: ran CEN that and you had to hire Tickle engineers
Speaker 1: T I C L. And there were none of them.
Speaker 1: So it was you know, today it's everything's plug and playing.
Speaker 1: You could do anything on multiple platforms. So it was
Speaker 1: a very different era. Okay, now we know the end
Speaker 1: of artists directors, It goes public and it goes bus
Speaker 1: But what happens between what happened to be in siding
Speaker 1: the stones and then built like we built like motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: We signed a hundred twenty five artists, did their websites,
Speaker 1: their e commerce, their direct marketing, their email, you know,
Speaker 1: marketing to their fans. We ended up selling tickets, We
Speaker 1: ended up selling albums. So whether it was beck or
Speaker 1: share or it didn't. You know, we worked with a
Speaker 1: number of brilliant artists and they had records that didn't
Speaker 1: that the labels didn't want to count a commitment records,
Speaker 1: so we sold them direct a fan and we'd sell
Speaker 1: fifty twenty thousand direct a fan of a record that
Speaker 1: you never heard of. Now, this is before digital, so
Speaker 1: it's still C D S or whatever, vinyl or whatever
Speaker 1: um at the time. And obviously then the file business
Speaker 1: changed things. Um it's kind of gone or close to
Speaker 1: gone by then. But we grew, we built, we grew bigger,
Speaker 1: we built bigger, we did more stuff. Um. We failed
Speaker 1: on a couple of record labels, which weren't really a
Speaker 1: big part of the business. We had a couple of
Speaker 1: other websites, the Ultimate Band List, which was the first one,
Speaker 1: UBL dot Com, which was you know, we were trying
Speaker 1: to grow the traffic. But you know, at that point
Speaker 1: you had MP through dot Com, then Napster, you know,
Speaker 1: prior to that music Boulevard CD now than the introduction
Speaker 1: of Amazon. So for historical sake, that's what you were
Speaker 1: dealing with. And nobody knew the difference between Napster and
Speaker 1: MP through dot Com and US or Launch, poor David Goldberg,
Speaker 1: and they didn't know, and they were all radically different.
Speaker 1: And but it was version one point of the Internet
Speaker 1: with Ultivist and asked Jeeves an Excite and Yahoo and
Speaker 1: Infoseek and micos and not many people made it past
Speaker 1: wave one. And you know, our story was legendary because
Speaker 1: I went We went public the week of the market crash,
Speaker 1: which was interesting and Starbanes Oxley and I had to
Speaker 1: be a public company CEO for you know a couple
Speaker 1: of years after getting completely beaten up and not knowing
Speaker 1: what to do. So I can I feel for public
Speaker 1: executives right now? Um, you know, twenty years later they
Speaker 1: have to face a version of a completely decimated business
Speaker 1: and market. But listen, it was the greatest learning experience
Speaker 1: of my life. So I don't know what else to say.
Speaker 1: You know, it happened, it's history, and we built a company.
Speaker 1: We were doing million dollars in internet revenue, which you know,
Speaker 1: in today's numbers, who knows what they'd be mostly e
Speaker 1: commerce we started. We were one of the first people,
Speaker 1: Mark Whites and a few others in the internet advertising business.
Speaker 1: People figure out what's a bann or how does it work?
Speaker 1: What's a mouse over? What's you know when flash doesn't
Speaker 1: work here? So and so there. You know, I think
Speaker 1: we took a lot of blues and built one of
Speaker 1: the first websites ever for a festival. It was really fun.
Speaker 1: Remember his little carnival. Okay, you're painting such a positive picture.
Speaker 1: Why did it fail? There's a bunch of reasons. Number one,
Speaker 1: I fucked up number two fifteen years early, probably for
Speaker 1: the real market. Number three, I fucked up number four.
Speaker 1: What do you mean terrible market? Meaning you had to
Speaker 1: for me to be an inexperienced public company executive when
Speaker 1: the markets closed for three years and run and Starvings
Speaker 1: Oxley and me trying to figure out what the fuck
Speaker 1: to do. I should have just shut down and thought
Speaker 1: about it and waited. I it was too when I
Speaker 1: say fucked up, Bob, it was ship was swirling in
Speaker 1: my head. People were happy the internet was over. It
Speaker 1: wasn't you know who old media's see all you young upstarts.
Speaker 1: You you were in a hard as you thought. You know,
Speaker 1: you're dealing a lot of crap. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do, and I was lost. I went and met
Speaker 1: with everybody or trying to sell our companies had a
Speaker 1: lot of cash. I was still lost, but I was
Speaker 1: an idiot. I should have held out in my cash
Speaker 1: and just got through it. Definitively, Were you too early
Speaker 1: and it could never work? Or was there something I
Speaker 1: don't wait at the bust up son for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: you'll do better? And that was a cutting, fucking blow. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I was so into being in the next
Speaker 1: system that I forgot that people have to transition into
Speaker 1: the next system. It was all about what I thought
Speaker 1: was possible, not what was gonna happen all right, or
Speaker 1: or consumer habits hadn't evolved, or technology hadn't been laid
Speaker 1: in or the waves of the Internet had to happen.
Speaker 1: I was enamored by this idea, and I just imagine
Speaker 1: time didn't exist and everybody's going to convert like they
Speaker 1: have today. Right, So now that I'm supposed to be
Speaker 1: older and wiser, definitely older. Whether I'm wiser and that's
Speaker 1: a different story. But once you look back pindeslight being,
Speaker 1: you go schmuck. There were massive societal changes that had
Speaker 1: to take place before your vision could come through. Who
Speaker 1: the funk are you? And what were you thinking? Asshole? Right, Like,
Speaker 1: everybody's just gonna, you know, have their browsers handle this
Speaker 1: kind of add thing, or they're gonna feel comfortable with
Speaker 1: their credit cards on the internet or any of that stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: those are all hurdles society has to get through or
Speaker 1: people will go to the web. There were no mobile devices.
Speaker 1: Is fucking blackberries? Right? I mean the bricks so um
Speaker 1: and is an air of palm pilots. So I was
Speaker 1: a moron that way, and today I try to think,
Speaker 1: am I doing something that takes massive societal adoption? Is
Speaker 1: there technology that has to get laid in place? Oh?
Speaker 1: Do they have to lay in bandwidth for the ship
Speaker 1: to work, you know what, like I should be the
Speaker 1: one that's out they're experimenting. So that was a lot
Speaker 1: of it. The answers, Yeah, it's a schmuck. Okay, so
Speaker 1: ay when it crashes, how does that affect you emotionally?
Speaker 1: Be how long does it? How long does it take
Speaker 1: you ultimately to segue back into the business, and how
Speaker 1: do you decide to go back into the agency? Three
Speaker 1: years I was bloodied in bankrupt and had to get
Speaker 1: a job that paid me a salary. I was paying
Speaker 1: myself a hundred and fifty grand a year as a
Speaker 1: public executive because I Don Muller and I were very
Speaker 1: worried about that that we were we wanted to be
Speaker 1: looked at ethically. We're taking the public's money, investors. We
Speaker 1: weren't going to get ourselves rich. We weren't gonna do this,
Speaker 1: do that. And I was crushed. Had some kids during
Speaker 1: that time, two boys, and you know, ah, so I
Speaker 1: was going personally bankrupt. You know, I lost sixty three
Speaker 1: million on paper and two million in cash, and thank
Speaker 1: god for a couple banker friend of mine who basically
Speaker 1: got me credit and helped me work my way out
Speaker 1: of it. And then Peters hired me back. I went
Speaker 1: to see we had sold the talent agency to see
Speaker 1: a done wanted to go. We wanted to get off
Speaker 1: the scary ride. I don't blame him at that time.
Speaker 1: And we had a great staff and most of those
Speaker 1: people went to see a lot of me stayed there
Speaker 1: and the artist want We closed that piece down and
Speaker 1: I kind of high. I made a mistake and I
Speaker 1: hired ted Field because I was beaten. I was a
Speaker 1: beaten man, and he basically turned into the label for
Speaker 1: the last gap and it wasn't great. It was terrible, actually,
Speaker 1: but whatever it is what it is. Mistakes made, and
Speaker 1: I put myself to bid to the agency because they
Speaker 1: were the only people who are gonna pay me. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go back and be an agent. I
Speaker 1: went to go run a tech company. But nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: hire me and run a tech company. I just got
Speaker 1: beaten up. They didn't pay. It was all back end.
Speaker 1: The record label was gonna have me. I was a
Speaker 1: failure there uh and wasn't proven manager. I didn't have clients.
Speaker 1: They didn't really want to do that. I tried to
Speaker 1: go back to be an agent, totally bummed out. At
Speaker 1: the time, and Peter said, Geiger, come on back, I'll
Speaker 1: pay you, and that's what as I started. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that episode at the agency business which turned into w
Speaker 1: m ME is now over and needles to say, there's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a pause, but certainly in the
Speaker 1: live business. But what do you see for yourself personally
Speaker 1: going forward? Business was Um, I'll be honest, um, curly,
Speaker 1: somebody should read that comment. Damn straight good good left midfielder. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm reading the text. Um. I think it's the best
Speaker 1: time in history to start something. So I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to start something. I mean, listen, there were some
Speaker 1: rumors planted out there about what I was doing, and this,
Speaker 1: that and the next thing weren't true. You know, well
Speaker 1: I never got a call from Daniel Ack. He's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, so uh, you know, I don't have
Speaker 1: a job to be a mocker at YouTuber, Apple Music,
Speaker 1: Amazon or Spotify or any of those places, and they
Speaker 1: don't or anything close. If you were offered those gigs,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, but I don't have them,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter, and it depends what the gig is.
Speaker 1: I got inquired about a position at SoundCloud that wasn't
Speaker 1: very interesting, but still, um, there's nothing really there. There's
Speaker 1: a few other big jobs I might consider in the
Speaker 1: rest of the traditional music industry, and they're not there.
Speaker 1: And and that's so, that's okay. But the truth is,
Speaker 1: when I sat out here over the last four months
Speaker 1: and thought about what made me happy because I'm getting older,
Speaker 1: what do I want to do? Damn on this old
Speaker 1: what do I really want to do? It came to
Speaker 1: a couple of fun conclusions. One is I am what
Speaker 1: I am. I love tech, but there's no Roman tech
Speaker 1: right now. I don't see it. Everything that I talked
Speaker 1: about happened, and it's big, big I've said it, You've
Speaker 1: seen my speeches. It's the big player time, the very
Speaker 1: little room for disruption right now. Okay, it's hard. Everything
Speaker 1: is being built onto the big platforms, and new media
Speaker 1: is in some way. It's not the same becoming old
Speaker 1: media again, right They just is and it's bound to
Speaker 1: be that way. Um, systems don't change that much, even
Speaker 1: though the distribution of pricing changed. Um. So I looked
Speaker 1: in I said, what turns me on another in tech
Speaker 1: and being forward is artist development and discovering music and
Speaker 1: I'm a music freak, and the underbelly of the industry,
Speaker 1: the ground up golden voice, you know, clubs, indie labels,
Speaker 1: developing artists. You know, Jenson McCrae is an example, right,
Speaker 1: So that's what gets me the most excited and gives
Speaker 1: me some purpose. And I could and and there's some
Speaker 1: part of me and my friends know this, and I
Speaker 1: think they're the same that feels young by staying very
Speaker 1: current in music and the music business and tech. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're sort of I'm into e sports, my son's
Speaker 1: and the sports, I'm very on top of that. I'm
Speaker 1: deep in the digital world, so kind of keeps you young,
Speaker 1: and so I want to stay there. So I'm probably
Speaker 1: gonna start up focused in those areas. Okay, just looking
Speaker 1: at the business and large. Once we get to the
Speaker 1: end of this pandemic, Uh, what do we know? The
Speaker 1: record companies ruled until the internet. The Internet came along
Speaker 1: a great percent Other than the tippity top tier of
Speaker 1: streaming artists, most artists make the majority of their income live,
Speaker 1: which has changed the paradigm, and that the live business
Speaker 1: A funds these acts and B can break these acts.
Speaker 1: Do what do you see going forward in terms of
Speaker 1: where the power lies. Well, this is gonna be not
Speaker 1: that sexy and answer. I think building an artist's career
Speaker 1: is like building a house. The reason I use the
Speaker 1: housing metaphor is because the manager is really like a
Speaker 1: general contractor to me. They have to manage the owner
Speaker 1: i e. The artist, right, and they have to look
Speaker 1: after all the subs, the record company, the publishing, the agency, touring,
Speaker 1: the merchandise that this that you know, everything right, advertising,
Speaker 1: the content creation, and they have to do all those
Speaker 1: deals or manage all of those things. So I think
Speaker 1: it's similar to a g C. And then I think
Speaker 1: all of the other pieces of the building the house,
Speaker 1: I either the artist is um actually important so in
Speaker 1: a weird way, you know, can the electrician do the
Speaker 1: roof and the hardscape? You know, I eat, can the
Speaker 1: promoter do this that in the next short in certain cases.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of artists and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of specialized pieces to all of this. So as much
Speaker 1: as people want to label me a disruptor, I've never
Speaker 1: actually been a disruptor. I have tried to identify disruptive disruption,
Speaker 1: but from a disruptor, either dropped price or you collapse
Speaker 1: and consolidate people into or companies and jobs into into
Speaker 1: you know, you consolidate them. Do you disintermediate? Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: I was searching for the word. And I actually think
Speaker 1: that when the business comes back, every piece of the
Speaker 1: subcontracting universe and general contractor will be more needed than
Speaker 1: ever because every artist will be hurting for money or success.
Speaker 1: Every club will, every venue will, every promoter will, every
Speaker 1: agency will, every label will want to get back to
Speaker 1: where it was, and I think it will be all
Speaker 1: hands on deck and more activity than ever before. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I see there's consolidation opportunities, Like
Speaker 1: I talked about, if Universal or Warner went on a
Speaker 1: tear and wanted to do some stuff and got really
Speaker 1: smart about it. I can see that, um. I can
Speaker 1: see new money coming in like that real estate investry
Speaker 1: doesn't have office buildings during the crash, but they have
Speaker 1: new capital and and and buying things. But I think
Speaker 1: every part of the industry is gonna be vibrant. I
Speaker 1: think agents are gonna be more vibrant than ever and needed.
Speaker 1: I think promoters are going to be very high on
Speaker 1: the on the value chain. I think labels will continue
Speaker 1: to be high on the value chain only increase because again,
Speaker 1: everybody wants success, Bob, and they want money, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a very powerful mental force to look at big
Speaker 1: artists and go who works on their team? And they don't.
Speaker 1: They're not devoid of a manager and ageent or a
Speaker 1: record company. There's not that many of those stories. So
Speaker 1: I think when you look at the most successful artis
Speaker 1: in the world, is who's on who is their team?
Speaker 1: And I want to be with them. So I think
Speaker 1: the aspirational you know called Lemming theory. Aspiration drives the business.
Speaker 1: So I think every piece of the industry is going
Speaker 1: to be there and healthy and not disrupted. Weirdly, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about radio or or record stores or those
Speaker 1: pieces which get wiped out. I'm talking about professional services.
Speaker 1: I don't see it. I think it actually got more complex.
Speaker 1: I don't think promoters know how to break you worldwide
Speaker 1: for the most part. I've national Age a little different.
Speaker 1: They are worldwide, and they have tentacles. They can keep
Speaker 1: them for the most part, and with good players, so
Speaker 1: they are as close and the labels have similar that
Speaker 1: they are as close to filled out networks is as
Speaker 1: you can find now whether they give a funk about
Speaker 1: your little artist or not, and would give you the
Speaker 1: You know, this is where the theory is different, interacting
Speaker 1: for the superstar and then for anybody else. But there
Speaker 1: you go, Okay for getting the pandemic. What how do
Speaker 1: you do that? Sorry, it's not that hard when the
Speaker 1: question is ultimately reviewed. What what advice would you give
Speaker 1: to a new artist today just starting out? Number one,
Speaker 1: make a lot of content. I mean, the one thing
Speaker 1: I would say to artists starting out or not is
Speaker 1: right now, okay, here's the left SIPs. You know, back
Speaker 1: in the day, the Rolling Stones made three albums a year,
Speaker 1: The Beatles made three albums a year, The Beach Boys
Speaker 1: made three whatever. Okay, you know what I'm saying about
Speaker 1: two albums with a minimum relief. Steely Dan. I remember
Speaker 1: we went on Steely Dan listening binge. First three albums
Speaker 1: came out in like a year and a half. It
Speaker 1: was crazy, right, and they were genius. So you sit
Speaker 1: there and go, what the funk? Weren't they touring? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they actually Steely Danton, But for the most part they did. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Michael McDonald was in Steely Dan.
Speaker 1: I just learned that and Jeff Baxter, and that's how
Speaker 1: they do. Jeff Baxter was a regular member. You know,
Speaker 1: Michael even more than you think. But anyway, pre dubies anyway.
Speaker 1: I think artists to do that again right now, right create.
Speaker 1: I think that the elongation of the marketing period where
Speaker 1: you can tour the world for two or three years,
Speaker 1: you know, and not put out a record and come
Speaker 1: back and then have to spend a year making a
Speaker 1: record discycles too long. So I think the number one
Speaker 1: thing people need to do is make a lot of
Speaker 1: content right now. I don't care what it is, but
Speaker 1: store it up for winter and don't release it all
Speaker 1: because the distribution systems give you credit for constantly releasing,
Speaker 1: whether it's YouTube or Spotify. The way the new releases
Speaker 1: are set up, the way the playlist work. You know,
Speaker 1: you have your one week to one month honeymoon period
Speaker 1: and if and then it's gone up in the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress in the FOURT floor, nobody know you wrote
Speaker 1: the book. So to me is okay, how do I switch?
Speaker 1: I may still put out albums, maybe it's the end
Speaker 1: for whatever, but how do I consistently work the system
Speaker 1: in the way the system works which just have new
Speaker 1: releases on a constant basis. So that's my answer. Okay,
Speaker 1: And what advice would you give to someone once again
Speaker 1: forgetting the pandemic disruption? What advice would you give to
Speaker 1: someone wanting to get into the music business? Not the
Speaker 1: greatest time. Um, Look, there's so many people that are
Speaker 1: getting laid off by the music business. Yet I gotta
Speaker 1: I won't get there. I just right now? Is I
Speaker 1: just I can't? It's a ship time, Um, manage the band?
Speaker 1: No barrier to entry. I mean you want to learn
Speaker 1: how to build a house. Start on the smallest house
Speaker 1: and build it. Figure out how to you know, that'd
Speaker 1: be one thing you know is no getting on the radio,
Speaker 1: you know, put together play list for your friends. Uh,
Speaker 1: but managing man is the lowest barrier to entry if
Speaker 1: you think about it. You can't get a job at
Speaker 1: a record company or an agency. It's not that easy.
Speaker 1: You can, by the way, you can try agencies were
Speaker 1: an easy point of entry. You go in milrone. Uh,
Speaker 1: gonna be somebody's assistant that you respect, UM and write
Speaker 1: him a personal note. Do some research. You know. The
Speaker 1: biggest thing I found about young people is they don't
Speaker 1: do much research. I read everything coming up. I read
Speaker 1: every Rolling Stone Guide cover to cover, fifteen times, Trouser Press,
Speaker 1: Gude fifteen times, Option magazine. Fucking print was six point
Speaker 1: font and I would read Option magazine reviews. If you
Speaker 1: remember Scott Becker and every bit of it. I was
Speaker 1: just a freak. I listened to everything. I the way
Speaker 1: I used to sign artists. I go to England, I
Speaker 1: talked and talked to the indie label head and they
Speaker 1: would say to me, Wow, you know more about my
Speaker 1: artists in my label than I do. And you're a
Speaker 1: kid from America, right, So do your research. Figure out
Speaker 1: who's your favorite. Write him a note. Nobody ever does that.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ways to enter, but find somebody
Speaker 1: and manage them. Mark. This has been wonderful, Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for your insight by pleasure until next time. This
Speaker 1: has been the Bob Left Sets Podcast