I blame it on the Rolling Stones…

Why can’t you get a good seat at a concert or a sporting event at a reasonable price?  The famously-curmudgeonly– and equally-famously-insightful– music business insider Bob Lefsetz explains:

Concert tickets are so expensive because of income inequality.

Yes, the Internet allows scalpers and StubHub (the same thing?) to reach a national audience, but in the old days supply exceeded demand to an even greater extent and despite the presence of scalpers, prices were never this high.

The difference is now there’s a whole class of people who can afford these high prices. They don’t really care what the price is, they just want to be inside, separating themselves from the hoi polloi. Not just anybody can be inside!

So we’ve got a dividing line. Between rich and poor. And there’s not much territory in between. Which is why everybody’s fighting to be on the right side, the wealthy side…

But event tickets are simply a symptom, Lefsetz suggests, of something broader and deeper…

We’ve got a dividing line. Between rich and poor. And there’s not much territory in between. Which is why everybody’s fighting to be on the right side, the wealthy side… The rich can buy Senate seats; poor people can’t afford to go to college.  Meanwhile, we’re fighting amongst ourselves, while those in charge are laughing behind the scenes.  And since it all comes down to money, the rich have been embellished with all kinds of characteristics that are in many cases inaccurate. Rich doesn’t always mean intelligent and insightful, oftentimes it just means lucky.  So, I ask you, how does it feel, to get such a raw deal?  Only you can change it, because no one else cares, they don’t want to lose their place in line, they’re gonna kick and scream and refuse to fall back.  America is not the land of giving, but taking.  And you can’t take away that which someone already has.  They’re protecting that turf, while they’re trying to take even more.

Read Bob’s post in it’s entirety (and subscribe to his eminently-worthy newsletter) here.

The phenomena Bob describes have, seemingly, crept up on us over the last few decades; only in the last few years have the polarization of wealth and income in the U.S., and their myriad follow-on effects, become topics of broad conversation.  Even then, that dialogue has focused largely on issues of fairness (or on the hardship caused in its absence)– which is, of course, appropriate enough, but misses the devastating dampening effects that this inequality has on our national economic prospects (see, for example, here).

There’s work to do if we’re to stop the American Dream from becoming the American Nightmare.  A good place to start: Rootstrikers.

image: Sold Out Events

The Art of the Overreach…

Back in May of 2010, the popular file-sharing service Limewire was found guilty of copyright infringement in a federal court; Limewire closed last October.  Still, the plaintiff, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), is seeking damages– $75 Trillion in damages.

Perhaps noting that $75 Trillion is roughly five times the GDP of the U.S. (and more than the world’s combined GDP), and materially more than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877, Judge Kimba Wood has ruled the request “absurd.”

But while this is good news for the forces of common sense, it’s a limited victory.  Under current IP laws, the defunct company could still owe more than $1 Billion.

[Read more at PCWorld.com]

Meantime, back at the ranch, RIAA members are presiding over the implosion of their business…

 larger image at source: “Online vs. Offline in the U.S.: Are the Media Shrinking?“ 

 … and it ain’t piracy that’s doing the damage.

Facing the Music…

A guest post from (Roughly) Daily…

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’

- Bob Dylan

Rebecca Black’s “Friday” has become a runaway sensation. As Kevin Rutherford, a columnist for Billboard, explained, “Black’s video for ‘Friday’ is one of those rare occurrences where even the most seasoned critics of Internet culture don’t know where to begin. From the singing straight out of Auto-Tuned hell to lyrics such as ‘Tomorrow is Saturday / And Sunday comes afterwards / I don’t want this weekend to end’ and a hilariously bad rap about passing school buses, ‘Friday’ is something that simply must be seen and heard to be fully appreciated.”

And “seen and heard” it has been, closing in on 34 million YouTube views at this writing– not counting the scores of parodies floating across the web.

Music industry exec Jay Frank captures the impact of a performance that has been called “bizarre,” “inept,” and “hilariously dreadful” with a set of a simple comparisons that illustrate the upending of the music business:

WINNER: REBECCA BLACK
As she’s shown on her Good Morning America interview, she is making lemons out of lemonades. Make no bones about it, this song is selling (reached Top 20 on iTunes) and is going to be a valuable copyright for years to come.

LOSER: EVERY SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST BAND
At my SxSW panel on Saturday, I did the math. If you combined every view of “Friday” and its parody videos, approximately 62 Million minutes were spent on this song. That’s presuming that, on average, the viewers only watched half the video. In the meantime, if the approximately 15,000 SxSW attendees watched 12 hours of music a day for all 5 days, that would only add up to 54 Million minutes spent watching music. All hopes of fame from Austin got upstaged by a 13 year old.

…

WINNER: YOUTUBE
Their ability for anyone to upload anything produces overnight successes like this. This attracts even more people to their platform. Also, this firmly makes them a broadcaster, probably more than any previous video. 21 million views in a week? That’s more than nearly EVERY show on TV (cable or broadcast) receives in a week INCLUDING the DVR play. The fact that they have also successfully conquered with mobile apps and IPTV just increases their reach.

LOSER: VEVO
The music industry’s supposed white knight got upstaged in a big way. Turns out quality (of the song or HD transmission) doesn’t matter. The viewer goes to what they want to see. Also, Rebecca Black got more views in 9 days of “Friday” than Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” did in 3x the days. Lady Gaga’s a huge star. Her new video got massive blog pickup like “Friday.” It was also hugely promoted as an “exclusive” on the Vevo site. If “Friday” can beat all that, something is wrong with Vevo and there’s some explainin’ to do.

WINNER: NEW CHART METHODOLOGY
In Austin, I discussed with Eric Charland of Ultimate Chart about how high Rebecca Black will debut next week. With the numbers she’s had, it’s painfully obvious that this dominated the entire conversation. Quality of the song was irrelevant. Since it wasn’t in heavy rotation on pop radio, it likely won’t be at #1 on their chart, but it’ll properly debut high. This will give Ultimate Chart even more credibility on truly leading in identifying a song’s true popularity.

LOSER: THE ALBUM CHART
When the Soundscan Top 200 album chart is released on Wednesday, Adele will be battling a new album by Rise Against. Nothing against either artist, but this week the battle was Rebecca Black vs. everything else. If you use Google search as a gauge, there’s just no competition. The album chart has been irrelevant for quite some time. It no longer reflects our time. This should end the discussion and let’s focus on singles where the business IS rather than albums where the business WAS.

[TotH to Bob Lefsetz]

 

As we recall that unit sales of the best selling album of 2010 wouldn’t have made the Top Ten in 2000, we might recall that it was on this date in 1973 that U.S. Immigration authorities ordered John Lennon to leave the US within 60 days… thus beginning Lennon’s fight to acquire permanent residency, which he received in July of 1976.

John Lennon’s Green Card (source)