Lefsetz: ‘U2’s Manager Responds to Backlash: If You Don’t Like This Gift, Delete It’ 

1410262160130Speaking of tone deaf scumbags…

The spam problem is all over the news – I have to delete hundreds of messages a day – but when U2 does it it’s legitimate.

Ugh.

It’s almost like the band doesn’t live in the real world, like they think their crap doesn’t stink, like since their intentions are good, we can’t question their actions.

Ever think of the consequences?

Meanwhile, they’re spinning plates at warp speed. They get Rolling Stone to write about old U2 music climbing the iTunes charts and then trumpet this b.s. all over the Internet.

Give me the volume, not the chart number.

If you think being on a sales chart counts today, you probably don’t have a Spotify account, never mind children addicted to YouTube.

But there you have America in a nutshell. If I just say something long enough and loud enough I win.

Used to be our favorite acts were part of the solution, not part of the problem. But that was back before they were all emulating Silicon Valley titans and their main goal was to get enough money to get away from their fans.

Meanwhile, at least Apple got the message:

“Apple Lets You Preserve Your Musical Taste With A U2 Album Removal Tool”

Make a mistake and correct it, don’t double down and say it’s the user’s fault.

Screen Shot 2014-09-16 at 1.54.34 AMThen again, tech is about improvement, tweaking while you go along. U2 is about making a full-length album in an era where no one has time to listen and trumpeting they’re getting paid, as if they didn’t have a rich enough deal with Live Nation and weren’t rolling in dough.

Come on, is that the big issue here? That no one will pay for art?

The truth is they are, via both YouTube and Spotify and its clones. And with the Internet, distribution is cheaper and there are more ways to reach people and monetize. Because in every revolution something is gained and something is lost, but what’s gained is more important. Like my ability to speak back to the machine.

And don’t tell me you love U2, I could give a flying…

Every band has fans, but does that give us them the right to demand our attention, to invade our devices? When President Obama speaks is it illegal to tune out? Does he push his words to our devices,?

HELL NO!

Djuna_Barnes_ClippingBut I want to thank U2 manager Guy Oseary and the band. Because the result of their stunt will be that no one will ever do it again. Yup, it took an act this big for the public to raise its head and complain in unison that we don’t like push, that we want to pull the content we want when we want it and it’s the responsibility of distributors to heed our wishes.

So we’ve got power, rejoice in that.

And know that the issue is bigger than U2.

But it’s representative of the music business at large. Which has doubled down on its old paradigm, turning up the hype machine to a level so high most of us laugh. Every week they trumpet something new and desirable that we’ve got no problem living without. We don’t care about U2, we don’t care about Tom Petty, and we don’t want to hear their new music.

Most of us, that is.

And these ancient acts can’t get over the fact that the game has changed, that they used to have most people’s attention but now they don’t. It’s like they’re lost in the ’80s and refuse to remove their blinders.

So either live in your niche or create something the rest of us want to pull from obscurity, that we want to luxuriate in and tell everybody about.

But viral is too hard for these people. Stunt videos no longer work. Buckling down and putting it all into the music is a challenge, especially when your lawyer is calling about your real estate or you want to buy an NFL team.

So now we’re in a game of who can shout the loudest. My inbox will fill up with naysayers, believers in U2. Bono’s team will keep the spin machine humming.

But they’re no match against the army of millions. Yes, the public that truly runs this world. Once distribution is flattened, once everybody can play, it’s truly a race not to the bottom, but of quality. And Guy Oseary and U2 just don’t get it.

miley-cyrus-led-zepplin-cover-leadMake a track that speaks for itself. Cut YouTube covers.

Hell, I’ve gotten more e-mail about Miley Cyrus covering Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” than I have about U2’s new music.

Come down off your throne and interact with us.

It’s a whole new ball game.

And it requires a hell of a lot of work. There are no shortcuts. And too many old people just want to cry in their beer and lament that the game has changed.

The game certainly has. And someday someone will harness this Internet and deliver something that speaks to everybody and means something.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to give props to Madonna. She needs a hit. So she’s working with Avicii and Diplo and the rest of those who understand the modern game.

4d42807a-51ec-4a4f-ac78-11d245a3de04-ourStoryImgTo live outside the law you must be honest. U2 forgot this mantra.

They want to straddle the fence, live on both sides. But either you sell your soul for a hit or you do it your way.

Then again, McDonald’s is floundering, because they thought burgers were for everyone, recession and trend-proof, just like Coca-Cola. However today’s young consumers have rejected both, just like they’ve done with U2’s new music.

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6 Responses to Lefsetz: ‘U2’s Manager Responds to Backlash: If You Don’t Like This Gift, Delete It’ 

  1. Nick says:

    Far prefer Pink’s cover of “Babe…”; that woman can actually sing.

    • admin says:

      I was pleasantly surprised how good Miley’s version was though, Nick.

      Although I did see the video of Pink doing it with Robert Plant

  2. Blake Fallin says:

    For starters, McDonald’s and Coke are trading near all time highs. They ain’t foundering. Coke’s stock split a ways back and the price dropped but it’s back up again, meaning if you held on to your stock when it split, you just doubled your money.

    You raise a bunch of killer points but they get lost in your Sarah Palin-esque embodiment of self definition through hatred. No one wants to hear another Tom Petty album? No one wants to hear another U2 album? That’s ageist crap. No one wants to hear another lousy album, no matter who made it. Anyone should be up for a good one, regardless if the artist is obscure. The idea that good music is only found in obscurity is just categorical nonsense suggesting nothing was good that predates your discovery of it (I direct you to Mozart, Robert Johnson, The Beatles and 99.99 percent of any other artists in the history of the world). I never liked much of anything Madonna did until I heard Ray of Light, 15 years after “Borderline.” Radiohead didn’t make Kid A until more than 15 years after they formed and Thom Yorke was in his 30s. I simply would have preferred U2’s album be better.

    However, you are ABSOLUTELY right that the world has changed and I’m sick to death of hearing people like Gene Simmons bitch about digital downloading. What year is it? It’s now about the hustle and connecting with fans. However, it’s also about the experiment, which is what U2 did. In this revolution, you are no more free from inconvenience or flat-out harassment than anymore than U2 is free from being pilloried from a strategic mistake (and if you don’t think strategy is part of the hustle, you are nuts). I also have to laugh my a** off at the idea of the “Age of the Album,” as if every freaking EP in the 70s was Dark Side of the Moon. The vast majority had three good songs and a whole bunch of barking dogs. In this day and age, if you are going to put out an album, it better have 10 great songs on it and the whole had better exceed the sum of the parts (but again, you say no one has time to listen to an album — a categorical statement again, to describe a day when people have plenty of time to post 1,000 photos of their cat on social media). If your album doesn’t do that, just release singles or an EP,

    You might also want to point out that the reason artists don’t get paid these days is because record labels insist on screwing artists hard as their business model, when that model is dying. Artists can and should make much larger royalty rates, and do so without massive debt to a label or the servitude that accompanies it. WHY does Sony get 80 to 85 percent of iTune sales when they have no cost involved in providing the music on line? Because screwing the artist is the business model that labels have depended on. Bands could do a better job, too, if their web sites were better. I’m STUNNED by how many of them are so freaking weak and have so little SEO. A wikipedia page should never be above a band’s web site on google. It just requires attention. Maybe it’s selling out. I don’t know.

    To me, this was Apple’s massive mistake and not U2’s. I get that U2 didn’t know the culture of iTunes but APPLE DIDN’T grasp it to the point where they paid $100 million? U2 probably figured if Apple vouched … The Dubliners biggest miscalculation, I think, is not recognizing that the folks who don’t wait for their albums were in any way undecided. You sell 150 million records and people love or hate you. Moreover, they didn’t get the degree to which critics and music writers who did get this had to side with the haters just to protect their own street cred, inasumuch as Rolling Stone gave the album five stars to protect the larger “classic rock” brand.

    Final point: You can dislike a band or artist without loathing them to your bones. It is possible. A fair-to-midlands album by an outsized band is not an atrocity, nor is giving it to people for free. It’s rock and roll, not genocide.

  3. admin says:

    Not so fast…

    For starters the reason McDonald’s and Coke are trading near all time highs has a ton to do with the fact that the stock market has exploded these past five years and is trading way above and beyond all-time highs.

    A more careful look however reveals the following Wall Street Journal headline:

    “McDonald’s Sales Woes Continue in August”

    McDonald’s posted “its weakest monthly sales results in more than a decade” last month and “the chain has been losing traction with a key group of consumers—millennials, or those in their mid teens to mid-30s—to fast casual restaurants that offer fresher fare.”
    So Lefsetz is on target looking to younger consumers and the future.

    As for Tom Petty, his new album debuted at No. 1 in July but on sales of only 131,000 copies. The reason Petty “soared” to No. 1 is that album sales are so meager – the lowest in history – that an older artist like Petty who appeals to oldsters who still buy albums can do quite well as far as the rankings.

    Again, mainly because hardly anybody is buying albums these days.

    Even Johnny Winter’s new album debuted this past week at No. 17.

    How unusual is that? Very. Looking back on Wikipedia at some of Winter’s biggest albums when his career was at its peak, none so much as mention having achieved a chart position.

    However his current album “Step Back” totally gloats over its No. 17 debut on Billboard. The Point being, it takes far, far fewer sales to chart now because that’s no longer the true measure of a recording musician’s success. Not like it once was.

    I looked back 20 years to July 1994 when Hootie and the Blowfish’s album debuted and sold 10 million copies!

    As for Petty, his chart topping was ultra short-lived. It went from No. 1 to No. 33 in six weeks. Whereas Sam Smith’s album hit No. 2 but is still holding at No. 8 after 12 weeks. And Ed Sheeran hot No. 1 and was at No. 11 after 11 weeks.

    The bottom line: Lefsetz knows what he’s talking about. He may paint with broad strokes at times, but his points are well taken.

    BTW, I agree that this was a huge mistake for Apple. Here Tim Cook is, finally stepping out from behind the shadow of Steve Jobs with his first potentially big product and he bellyflops into an empty pool by hitching the company’s star to a has been band and then fawning over them embarrassingly and executing the queerest, most forced promotional skit ever.

    • rkcal says:

      Petty’s release topped the charts because it was packaged with purchase of concert tickets on his website. A good marketing trick.

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