Marc Geiger

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Mark Garger, formally head of Music
of w m E. All Around Music Here Mark, good
to have hi, Bob Okay. Drive in concerts gimmick, A
real gimmick. Tell me a little bit more. Why is

(00:29):
it a gimmick? Do I have to? I mean, um,
why is it a gimmick? Capacity is very small by
the time you actually put the cars in. Um pricing
with a disconnected experience is high. The audio I don't

(00:50):
think it can be very good yet in the car,
but hey, um, these are temporary stockcapt solutions. So for me, economically,
they're scale garth. That a very interesting thing, basically the
pay per view right to other drive ins. I think
there's a feeling that what I called during the what
I call the germophobia economy, that almost anything will sell

(01:12):
because they're saying it is dying to get out of
the house. So for me, it's not really a great experience.
Well that begs the question, uh, when the economics are broken,
so let's you know, let's get real. People are doing
things to do them, not to make a living, right,
So when do you think concerts returned. My guess is

(01:32):
late twenty one, more likely twenty two. I think that
this is going to be Look, the whole thing is
a ship show. You write about it, everybody knows whether
it's testing organ as a government that let's not. It's
too infinite of a well to go down. But in
my humble opinion, it's gonna be twenty two. It's gonna

(01:53):
take that long for what I call the germophobia economy
to be slowly killed off and be replaced by what
I call the claustrophobia economy, which is it really wants
to get out and go back to dinner and have
their life and go to festivals, go to shows. And
my instinct is that's just going to take a while
because as you can see, these super spreader events, sports shows,

(02:15):
anything classroom ain't gonna do too well. And while the
while the viruses this present. So my my instinct is
the world has a very long forced time out. A
lot of people see the positives in it, um, whether
it's climate, whether it's pollution, whether it's traffic, whether it's nature,

(02:37):
whether it's animals, whether it's our own beings, and taking
a pause, um, and I know it's frustrating, maddening and
um economically you know, destructive, but ah, you know this
is bigger than us. And if you study history, things
like this have happened in history and been super disruptive

(02:58):
to normal society. So here's a biggie for our lifetime.
Let's go drill down for those people are not experts
like you, to what degree is insurance and liability of
factor and restarting? Well, there is no insurance against COVID
currently offered, and even normal insurance policies are pretty scarce

(03:19):
and hard to come by. The insurers are sitting on
the sideline because there's infinite liability. I don't know what's
tested not tested. Luss Hey, I got COVID at this event,
how do you approve it? Etcetera. I think the biggest
companies can maybe self insure UM and they can start.
Everybody else has to wait till the insure industry feels good.
So that's one of many many roadblocks in the way

(03:42):
of restarting this vibrant economy that got put down right.
So there's probably twenty of them when you drill into
why can't you the virus and the illness being one,
you know, all the spacing. The density insurance is a
biggie and I don't know when that comes back either. Now,
needless to say you're no longer with wm ME, but uh,

(04:05):
certainly there's no live business. Mean, there's no income for
agents and agencies they work for. What we've learned over
the past week is a lot of these touring entities
got money, The Eagles got money for the road business,
ETCETERA question I'm asking is to what degree will sitting
on the sidelines for two years affect the economics of

(04:28):
the industry. Can these companies survived? Michael Rapino says he
can borrow money, there's no not an issue. But being
in the heart of an agency, can these agencies and
these other support elements survived two years off? Look um,
no matter what anybody says, it's economically devastating, Okay, So
I recognize that, and I don't think any excuse um

(04:53):
can be made. And there will be a huge amount
if I'm right on the timetable right, there's gonna be
a massive amount of blood shed and ankruptcies and it
will not be good for the majority industry. I think
Michael or Pino is right. You know, he's he's big,
he is great backing, people want to buy his stock, um,
he's got liberty, he has a great business. When it

(05:15):
comes back, so you can borrow against that and it's
not a great outcome. But your question is can they survive?
I think people who have access to really good financing
credit facilities can definitely survive. Right, I know, the costs
of carrying over some of these businesses agencies are actually
relatively cheap. Michael Orpine has got a much bigger issue
and a much bigger staff. The biggest agencies are again

(05:38):
the cheapest relative word. Right. But if something's gonna cost
fifty or a hundred million dollars to bridge for a
moment um, again, that sounds huge. But in today's world,
when you have access to capital, you can borrow against
that for a year or two, and the businesses were
quite profitable and they can pay down the debt service.

(05:58):
It's a short term mortgage, okay. And when it does
come back, how does the landscape change? Sure billion dollar question?
I mean, I guess, let me be specific. I think, Bob,
that's a really tough question to answer. I think if
the if we're in the second or third inning of
the ball game of destruction. UM, I don't know what

(06:23):
the game looks like at the end. I think the
next six months maybe more painful than the last batch,
and maybe the next six months after that might be
even more so. So I think one of the things
that happened for me after leaving was, UM, I was
able to look at the pandemic two ways. I was
overseeing or part of a team of industry people who oversee,

(06:47):
oversaw this destruction, this cancelation, postponement, etcetera, etcetera, tried to
have order out of it, but was sort of trapped
in that viewpoint. Um, now I get to look at
COVID is a bit of an opportunity. But the question
of where to exactly look and who's not gonna make
it and who's going to be under distress. You start

(07:08):
bottom up, small people with no access to capital, people
have high overheads, people who have staff that they can't
easily go into shutdown mode and they're gonna get the
viscerated and they're gonna need help. So in any event,
recapping here, Mark, you said, Uh, when we look at
the future, we're talking from the bottom up. People at
the bottom or squeeze for capital please continue. I think

(07:30):
that again, people with infrastructure and more overhead and lack
of access to capital, it's a perfect storm for them. Um.
When you start talking about the big companies of Live Nation,
eight g CTS, Ossessa and others, they have access to
facilities and credit and debt facilities. They're public companies. The investors.

(07:53):
A lot of investors look at them as value because
they think, oh, when the claustrophobia economy kicks in and
world restarts, everybody's gonna want to we participate in. These
companies will be in a good position to take advantage
of it. So I believe that is going to rule
the day and people will make smart investments into business

(08:16):
as they think they'll come back. But the bigger the
better there if you're small, if you're medium sized, it's
going to be tricky. If you know, like NIVA, the
organization who represents is a trade organization for the clubs
is trying to appeal to the government for money for
obviously a loan or a grant to the clubs. So
I think at the end of the day, Um, the

(08:36):
economic devastation is going to be bigger than people think
they Reshaping is going to be bigger than people think,
and we all have to watch and conserve our capital
and just take a pause and try obviously not spend
just to get to the other side. I know that
sounds very basic, but I think it's true. Question becomes

(08:56):
when we come out the other side, do the big
get bigger? It depends how they act. They can. I
mean they have to get small. Larder worries is overhead.
But you know, people with real access to capital. Again,
if you think about it, like a bigger version of
two thousand eight in the real estate crash, if you
owned a bunch of office buildings or apartment buildings or

(09:17):
hotels or houses and you had to sell them, or
you had a cash crunch, you were screwed, right, you
were on the bad side. If you were a real
estate funder private equity a hundred billion in cash or
ten billion in cash, and you waited till all the
foreclosures showed up on your street, which we all saw
and you could swoop in. It was an unprecedented opportunity.

(09:39):
Um certain banks and others made a fortune during that time.
So I think it's how you look at the world
and if you have access to capital. But I do.
I do think there'll be a lot of different owners
uh and people who have equity in the music business
infrastructure when you come out of this, well, liberty is
capped in terms of how much they can own of
Live name. But if you look historically in two thousand

(10:02):
and eight, uh, they invested in Serious and ended up
with control of that company. So staying on this same tip,
we grew up in the pre internet era where you
were a band, you started in clubs, you worked your
way up, and in addition, the record company supported the clubs.

(10:22):
Let's talk about what that was like prior to this crisis. Um, okay,
which part to you omans? The question is is that
paradigm broken? It's more important than ever. I think that
there's just because the world switched to streaming and there's
a different distribution system. Artist developments not that different. You

(10:45):
have more tools, all right, You have more connectivity, you
have more ability to be globally, use multiple platforms to
communicate with your audience, and your music can get distributed better.
You're not held out of a record store. But the
development process the same the touring press. Yeah, but it
But but as I say, if we go back to
the club are critical, they're more They're more packed today

(11:05):
than they were back in our club era by a lot.
But are there as many Yeah, there's more, many more clubs.
Music has infinitely more genres than the period you're talking about,
a right, popular genres. Kids have much more access kids,
everybody has much more access to music, and so music
is thriving. Um. You know, you can argue long tail,

(11:28):
but from a genre standpoint, you have much more access.
They're much deeper. I mean, the electronic nightclubs alone outnumbered
the amount of rock clubs than in total when we
were growing up. So I think it's a um and globally, um,
there's a ton more. So I think the supplies up

(11:50):
and the demand is up. Um, which ones last, how
they get transformed, that's all a big question. But yeah,
I think the development process is healthier than ever and
bigger than ever. And by the way, the upside is
bigger than ever. It's just there's more noise. It's a
signal noise, right, there's there's how many new releases, remember
what was back in the era you're talking about. There

(12:12):
is only x amount of music that could come out
that's dwarfed in a week Okay, let's let's go to
this specific issue. Hey, when you're working at William Morris,
would you sign an act, Let's assume the right act
had no record recording representation of any significance. Would you

(12:32):
sign an act that did not have a live head? Uh,
you know, could not sell tickets by themselves already, So
how would you break an act like that? Okay? You
breaking an act would imply that we were that powerful.
You know, we're just team member, subcontractor on the team

(12:52):
of building a house. That's the way I look at
it all right, from any position. So part of it
is how well is the team and the work together.
How great is the manager obviously? How great is the artist?
How greatest in music? Um, Listen, when you sign an artist,
if you really love them and you believe in them,
it's not about breaking them in a record. It's about

(13:14):
laying a base so they grow, they happen to break,
they break. The industry wants. It's you know, immediacy, and
it's stadium this and so and so that, and it's
pop metaphor. I typically, you know, my taste is outside
pop metaphor. So you don't have a choice. You're five
ten years to grow and break artists over time, especially
depending on how they how they record, and how frequently.

(13:37):
So part of it is packed tour packaging. Part of
it is festivals, part of his getting great publicist. Part
of it is calling favors if you can to whoever
it might be that can promote stream etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
If you have that kind of leverage and and hope
that others are making the same calls. From our standpoint
when you were on the agency and by the way,
you work well with the manager and the manager had

(13:59):
how how's their social media? How are they on? Are
they are they frequent posters? Are they infrequent posters? Is it?
Are they creating content more frequently than the other There's
a lot of What changed was the ability to post
content in different places and different types. So if you
were not an artist that generates a lot of content,
you were a significant disadvantage in the digital area. If

(14:21):
you're somebody who could post a lot of content, assuming
you didn't turn into a commodity, you had a big advantage.
So you know, it's all different, and you have to
look at every artist, genre, level of interest, critical acclaim, uh,
all of it and create a custom strategy, just like
you know a good UM tutor or teacher does for

(14:42):
a student. Their all individuals, so part of his can
you get other artists to love them and recognize what
you love about him and and champion them. There's a
lady I signed before before I left, called Jensen McCrae,
and she is my favorite. She's Joni Mitchell meets Tracy Chapman,
and I think she's absolutely spectacular. A couple of songs

(15:02):
on Spotify, the albums should be Best New Album, Best
Artist on the Grammys. Um, she's a social media monster
and she's hyper genius. So she's very different than some
of the other people who don't post. They're not political,
they're not trying to build an audience that way, and
her music is more viral than others. So I think

(15:23):
there's a lot to all of this, and it's very
custom and there is no one. What we have now
as an open system like technology where everything getting an
app can be made for any platform because there are
open systems. Now leave Apple out of this for a minute. UM,
generally open systems. I think music is the same, and
so people who create more content know how to communicate
with their audience to do a little better. But that

(15:44):
was part of the job, was giving them opportunities, getting
the right slot on Coachella, lallapaos at this festival, that festival,
this opening slot, this so and so, this right night.
It's all of it. And if you do it all right,
you know, people think you do but that's okay. So,
speaking of the signal to noise, it also applies on

(16:05):
the agency level. There are more people making music, more
people looking for your time and your abilities to work
with them too. How does someone reach you or w
when you worked at or an agent at W M
E or do they have to be involved with someone
who knows you because there's just too much product? You know,

(16:27):
it's an interesting thing. First of all, everybody's reachable because
I'm pretty easy to get too, as there are most
people out there if you try, if you don't know
anybody and don't can't figure an email address or to
post or what to do. I understand that, but I
do think when you look at things that are income
and you have a lower hit rate than when you

(16:48):
look at things when you're proactive, so let's call them reactive.
I get twenty million artists coming at whether it's Wan
in the old you know, in my past, or any
other agency or any other label, or I'm trolling blogs, criticalist,
all music Guide, Consequences, sounds, stereogum, whatever it might be.

(17:12):
Other filters that I trust, and I proactively go after
the records, all right, or the the artists. That's the
difference between success rate and a ten percent success rate.
So a lot of times you don't want the incoming,
even though that story sounds good. Hey, somebody got to me,
they were fantastic, whatever, And I think that the bottom

(17:38):
line is to try to prioritize your trusted filters over
just incoming noise. Would be how I'd answered that question,
so I didn't care that much about that. It's kind
of like you, by the way, you're the one who writes, hey,
if you pitch me on a record, I'll never play it,
and then I have to read every way every three

(18:00):
letters and some random rant on a record you discovered,
and you wouldn't write it. If I told you to
listen to it, you wouldn't, absolutely, man, But there's so
much incoming. It affects the business so on so many levels.
Since you were in a different vertical than I am.
That's why I asked question. You know what the truth is,
we had to process more than you did. You could

(18:21):
be more selective because of what you did. We had
to process hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
artists and try and make intelligent decisions whoever you are
in any business thousands and what can I say? You
try to make you try to narrow down your decisions
over time and get more fine in your filtering. Well generally,

(18:43):
you know, I would say this is ninety nine percent.
I don't respond to email from people I do not
know unless they're famous, because ten percent of the public
is literally insane and you don't know what ten percent
it is. Have you had that issue where there are
people who relentless and coose problem for you to get
rid of what? Yes, but that's a few people. You know,

(19:07):
you didn't lose my music. You don't know what are
you're talking about it? So you get judged on ultimately,
get judged on the artists you work with, not the
failed attempts and the who wanted to get into the
party and you didn't sign them. It's did you find
were you able to identify good artists. Could you grow
them and develop them? Did others on your team do

(19:29):
the same? Could you be collaborative? Could you figure out
more intelligent filtering systems? Could you figure out more intelligent
marketing promotion systems or whatever it is or artists development
systems in our case, So you know that's what it is.
By the way, Debra Newman Hart South Side did a
great one and it was great for New Jersey. They're
just one off. But even though they're successful. Sorry, I'm
reading the chat high kids. Okay. Now, in the old days,

(19:51):
pre internet days, the developing act would essentially borrow money
from the record company to stay alive until hopefully they broke.
How do you how do you do it today if
there's no record company involvement. Well, here's the good news.
In the old days you needed a record company. Today
you don't, right, I mean you know that you write
about it all the time, of course. Okay, So there's now.

(20:13):
In the old days, there were two ways to get
on the freeway, right, record company or you had to
be allowed INDI right, and even the indies developed over time,
but they had them right back on the pop days.
You can a VJ. You could have this, you could
have that Concorde rounder, subpop, etcetera. And not it or
is There are many many of them. Those were your

(20:33):
two on ramps and the rest of the time you
were kind in the demo in Nowadays, there are multiple
platforms for all the way up to Spotify and artist
program from sound that that that, and you can break
on TikTok or something all right, so you have options
didn't happen before. You also have scale options, global scale options.

(20:55):
You also have CRM see rum technical term for identifying
your audience and figuring out how to keep them right
and keep them interested. And that is what record companies
tried to do without the actual communication directly with an individual.
So you can be a record company and there's a
billion indies. So the options are dramatically different. It's back

(21:19):
to how great is your art? How does it cut through?
You know? Is it Jensen McCrae one listen, holy shit?
Or is it something else? Right? Um? And I think
it's how intelligent how can you act given the new
tool set? Well, I'm plugging specifically about cash frequently it's

(21:39):
a it's make a bunch of videos, you get some traffic,
you get viral and you get some ad sense from YouTube,
and you know if people are if you read about it,
you can make money that way, you could. You need
a lot of you sift. What I understand. My point
is that there is ad revenue. There didn't used to be, Okay, ever,
there is ad revenue across a bunch of platforms if

(22:00):
you can generate traffic. If you were look, Bob, I
cannot answer you to tell you that all the two
trillion artists who want to make it in this world
are gonna make money. They're not. That's not how the
system works. Okay. No matter what system, and no matter
how open it is, there's a bunch that get through,
have traffic, listeners and fans that make money from the

(22:23):
bottom of the pyramids. Let me let me be very specific.
In all these days, you put a band on the road,
they need a van, they might need hotel rooms and usually,
and usually there was short full. In the old days,
it was the label, assuming there was a label, or
the manager. If there is not a label, is it

(22:43):
still the manager's taking care of that shortfall? Necessity is
the mother of invention. I know a lot of artists
to sleep on couches who make phone calls to work
the networks. I was talking to Jim Casey who came
out of defying his so far sounds. They do shows
in people's living rooms. People just scale down. They released records,

(23:07):
they put it on band camp. They sell twenty records
at ten dollars each and they make they make do,
and they make do with the costs they have. Like
everybody else, you can create a home to which you
couldn't use to. Yeah, they find a way. If you
talk to people who sell clubs, and of course clubs

(23:29):
have been redefined. It used to be really under four hundred,
but now you know you have the Wiltern that is
fifteen hundred. But if you talk to acts that consistently
go clean in those venues, they are bitching at infinitum
about the ticket master fee and they can't make money.
Needless to say, on the other end, the stars dictate.
Are they bitching? Do they have a legitimate point that

(23:52):
they cannot make enough in these buildings and they cannot
keep ticket prices low or they just you know, wankers
who were complaining. Hold on, are you saying the bands
are to air Live Nation at those relates to the
Weltern and you confuse me said the capacity. Let's not
make that specific. Let's just talk under five hundred capacities. Look,

(24:12):
ticket fees, you know what they are? You right about them,
all right? Right? Most people, most artists don't get ticket rebates.
That's wrong. You write about it all the time. You
write about the top few people who are have that
kind of leveraging cloud and you know, or grandfather deals.
Most people don't get them. I can tell you that, right,

(24:32):
and I know that world well, they don't. They don't.
So it's not the artist dictating ticket fees. Ticketing was
a profit center for a promoter that we're all promoters, frankly,
all promoters. They were lifelines and not just the big
ones took advances from et cetera. Because in world with

(24:52):
no downside, promoters can't make money. Okay, they can't. It's
not a fair fight. So the reality is a little
different than you write, okay, because there's a sensationalism. Um no, no,
I agree with hold hold okay. You know you talk
about the big people who are able to get a
ticket rebate here and there that for the most part, okay,

(25:16):
there weren't rebates, and ticketing is what helped promoting companies
grow as sad as it sounds. So in an all
in ticket it might be a more fair economic percentage.
And then for whatever reason, people don't want it all
in ticket because the artists then thinks ticket brice to you. Whatever. Okay,
this will find its feet at the end of the day,

(25:37):
no matter what have been. Anybody says there were more
tickets selling in two thousand nineteen and there were going
to be in two thousand twenty as a record year
than ever before in history. Buy a lot. So the
ticketing fees as however you feel about them, and obviously
I'm trying to answer you in a political fashion. Wait, wait,
didn't affect consumption. Let's talk about then you is it

(26:00):
are under five hundred, which is a complet There are
acts that consistently sell those. They say, we want to
sell the ticket for it's forty and we're not making
enough money. That's true. That that's true, and they have
to negotiate a reduced ticketing deal, which is possible, especially
if you have good connections. You can do it. If
you can't, you might be a little screwed. There's some
truth there, Okay, So let's go to the future. What

(26:25):
do we know which you which you illuminated, which essentially
is the acts take all the revenue, and therefore the
promoter and the biggest promoters you talk to them. Yes,
they make their money on the ticketing. But also let's
get real the acts again. I'm not taking the pro
artist pro anything here. I'll just try to be a realist.
The artists have expenses, forget commissions. That question. Okay, listen,

(26:54):
if the promoter doesn't make money, you know, Live Nation
would be out of business, like question becomes when it
comes back. Already, the promoters are trying to lower the percentages.
They're trying to make deals a more advantageous to themselves.
Do you do you think those will stick? I think, Look,

(27:17):
I don't want to be a prognosticator. My instinct is
is that the artists and their representatives have always had
the leverage and they exact it as balanced as they
can be. Okay, So I don't think any of this
stuff lasts to be fair to promoters to have additional

(27:39):
risk when people are trying to reschedule dates when you
may be reschedulinguntil next May, which is going to get canceled?
Okay or whatever? And the promoter can't get insurance and
has to hire that more doctors, temperature checks and all
the other crap they have to put up with, let
alone that they don't know. Which mayor governor county official

(28:01):
will say, you can only sell half the people half
the capacity and they're supposed to be on the hook
for a guarantee is insane, all right, I'm just insane.
The risk is infinite, So promoters are absolutely not wrong.
They should say everybody should share the risk. We don't
know what the futures like, certainly in the immediate short term, right,

(28:21):
and everybody does need to pitch in UM. And I
think for the most part before I got before I
exited UM, most people were and most people when you
really think about how much risk the promoter does carry
and what they have to deal with and the lack
of food and beverage or sponsorship and all the things

(28:43):
that canceled out of any of these people's lives. From
a nancialer revenue standpoint, they're getting pounded. So to just think, oh,
they should bridge their companies and then they should make
minus minus dollars isn't really fair. So that was sort
of in my two cents. What I would say back
to you, I think it is needed in the short term,
like any help is needed for anybody, whether there's governmental

(29:05):
assistance or whatever. Talent fees are high, and they'll find
their way back. It's like the stock market. You know,
it goes way up, then it goes back down, then
it crawls back up, and if you're an investor, you're
kind of used to it. And I think artists, we'll
have to play that way. And not every artist. Remember
this is too easy of an argument, because not every
artist sells the same amount of tickets and means the

(29:26):
same gross. So there's levels of risk just of promoting
artists in general. And maybe if the overall markets down
and half the artist sold sixty, now they're down forty.
You know, there may be down to forty or something
like that, and so the promoter has to deal with
that too. Let's let's go back to the agent used

(29:51):
to be for Historically the agent got a straight ten percent.
Assuming you have an agent, the people who can go
clean the p selling the big buildings are not paying
ten percent, So give us the landscape there. Well, listen,
ten percent. Business is different if you're in theater books, acting, film, television, etcetera.

(30:14):
Let's talk about music. I got it, but I want
to explain it because it's important for people to realize
it's about effective margin, Okay. And I tried to explain
this to a lot of people in Hollywood so they
understood it because a lot of people in Hollywood felt
that music people were disruptive and disrespectful of a commission system,
which is not true. It is totally different. Okay. If

(30:35):
you're a director or an artist, you get or an
actor or whatever it is, writer, you get paid your fee,
and you pay either an attorney or an agent or both,
and you keep roughly of the hall. If you're an
artist and you get a gig, you may be thirty
thirty five percent, maybe forty of the net. Okay, that's

(30:58):
your net of a guarantee. So commission off the top,
which is a gross number, is a big number to that.
It can vary the net by a good amount, and
when you have million dollar guarantees or higher, commissions can
be very high at ten. So there's been a natural
arc I should say um over time in the music
industry because of this, and arc is as the artist

(31:21):
gets bigger, they pay less commission, right, and they make
it a more digestible piece of their fee structure. And
I think they do that with a lot of the
professionals on their team as they have more leverage. And
I think that's historic. Okay, when you get to the
level we're making a touring deal with Torpedo and certainly
Rapino or Concerts West under age you want to do that?

(31:42):
Why does an act need an age? By the way,
did want to do that? Right now? You're you're the
one who mentioned that they have all this money out. Yeah,
I'm sure they would like to have a lot of
it back right now and keep some employees, uh and
some other infrastructure, versus having it sitting an artist bank
account that can't be recouped at the moment, so that

(32:04):
will find it's it's day two, right, and who has
that much advanced capital and sitting out and for how long?
And thought that all? Right? Back to your question because
I I took a side road, Okay, it was the agency's.
The question is if you're making a touring deal with
like just simplify there, why do you need an agent?

(32:25):
A lot of people don't A lot of a lot
of the lot of the managers do those deals directly? Um?
And look, there's a whole bunch of reasons. Uh, you
don't know what you don't know. So are you paying
for professional advice? Paying for people that know the market?

(32:47):
Why don't people list their houses more on their own?
Tell me why it's cost five or whatever it is?
Do they think they know the price? Do they think
they know the deals? Do they know the comps? Do
they know how to do it? Um? Can they market?
Can they get well? Hang on? No? No, no, these
are specific answers to the same thing in music And

(33:09):
can they get on that festival? Oh, they make a
deal with Ropino and now they want to play glaston Barrier,
they want to play Coachella and that's a e g.
Then how do you manage all of that stuff? Right? Um?
And the truth is there's loyalty in this. People grow
bands from inception and here's a big deal and you're
gonna cut people out there. There's a lot in this.

(33:31):
It's not one answer, all right. Sometimes when it whether
it's reading your articles or other um people's take on
the industry, it's very simple and black and white. And
I don't think any of these answers are okay, because
there are millions of artists, or at least tens and
tens of thousands, and they're all different. So I would

(33:51):
say you should. If you ask ten managers that question,
they would give you ten different answers, including I don't
need an agent, or I would only pay them a
reduced amount, or you know what, they deserved it and
they earned it, or I think they got me double
the money, or they got rid of an earnout provision
in the deal that would have lengthened you know, wouldn't
make it a fine ideal. There's a lot of answers

(34:12):
there or there or you know what, I don't need
to pay them on this, But the private corporates and
the college gigs or the fair dates or the festivals
outside of so and so are we're so much to
me and that's where I make the money I'll pay
them are reduced on it. Again, it's there's a lot
of answers here. Okay, let's say you're an act. A
lot of these festivals have three to five stages. If

(34:35):
it act plays with two in the if they played
two in the afternoon. Other than saying I played that gig, okay,
I played Lollapaloosa. Is there a benefit to them? Can
they break? I think so. I mean, listen, I've said
for years and made it a real point to say
festivals or the new record stores. All right, when those poet,

(34:56):
when that gets announced, most people that are going and others,
because there's such a massive cultural force, go do research
like you would up anything back in the day, all right,
on all the people playing the festival, including who knows
what band, what artists, what friend of theirs? Who? Why
are they not know that band? They're not hip enough?
And so there there's a hastened discovery process on the announced.

(35:19):
Then the app comes out and you're making your schedule
of where to go and what to do, and you're
basically continually sifting through a lineup whether it's a hundred X,
and you are making choices and you're in it. Okay,
it's like what party do I go to? It's like
your school um day, all right? What classes do I take?
And where do I go and win to my lunch?

(35:41):
So I think festivals are infinitely more than that. And
I think the one o'clock and two o'clock slots I've
I've been involved with fifty acts that are breaking broken
starting there. In fact, as it relates to signal to noise, Bob,
if you have a big show at two in the afternoon,
you own that period. By seven, the whole festivals rocking,

(36:02):
and you don't, you might not make a sound, right,
So I'm not sure it's a disadvantage. We've purposely put
artists in the old days early in the slots to
avoid competition, so they got all the attention, Amy Winehouse
is four o'clock on purpose. Okay, let's to what degree
you've talked about this over the last fifteen years or so,

(36:23):
expanding the purview of the agency into advances into promotion
of concerts. Are these venues that agencies will continue to
forage in or will they ultimately just be arbiters of gigs? Listen,
I can't I don't want to tell you what other

(36:43):
people are gonna do moving forward post COVID. What I
would tell you is the market's going to get and
when that happens, typically things can be more formless and
opportunity drives. Nobody's going to be worrying about regulation at
the moment, you know, if not for years until this

(37:05):
thing comes back. So the answer really is where do
people see opportunities and where they're willing to go and do,
including the agencies, right, labels could go start agencies or
management companies. Michael Ropino is all and and a g
of invested in management companies and other things and venues.
I know, Core and cap Show. He went and spent

(37:27):
or went and invested in a lot of different um
vertical markets around touring. A lot of people have, so
I think it's a The one thing that everybody's learning
through this is how complex ecosystem is and how many
pieces get affected right when the revenue stops and artists
can't play, including even labels. Right people think labels are okay, Well,
really all the indies depend on the artist touring getting

(37:49):
pressed putting out records in order for they don't spend
that much in marketing promotion. They don't have it. So
UM and the major says you know, have reduced their
flow of new releases in it because people don't want
to just lose the record in a week for the
most part. Again, so I think everything is on the table.

(38:10):
Everybody is going to make some choices where they think
the opportunities are best and where they should invest and
what they should grow. The great news unlike past disasters.
I don't know there's everyone like this, but but is
that the music economy is way bigger and way more
healthy than people know. So wherever you invest, you've got

(38:32):
a good chance of making money or striking gold because,
as you know, value copyrights is going up. Look at
the Warner I P O Spotify price. Everything in the
copyright I P business is skyrocketing. Look at merk mercuriotis
is multiples on its publishing. That world is going nuts.
You read the Goldman Report, it's how you four to

(38:53):
six times and you're talking a hundred billion dollar recorded
music industry minimum, and then the touring industry and how
vast it is, and it was just really growing, especially globally.
You know it's gonna go through at least a double
could be fifty billion a year, bigger than the movie
business and all the associated pieces. I think it will
come back, will come back big, and it will be healthy.

(39:14):
The questions can people get through and then where they
spend their time agencies? Yeah, everybody can remake themselves. Now, okay,
let's go into genre. You were saying that generally speaking,
you are not personally into what is on the chart,
so to speak, how strong hip which charts we're talking
about Spotify, Spotify Top fifty, which okay, the Spotify Top fifty,

(39:40):
which is basically hip hop and pop. Does that do
as well as the top fifty of your live They've
always been disconnected. I mean I remember reading poll Star
in the eighties and looking at Pink, Floyd, The Grateful Dead,
Bob Seeger. You know, they weren't on any chart of

(40:02):
recording music ever, right, Pink, etcetera, etcetera. And the same
was true later in the all rock, you know, grunge revolution.
There's a lot of it. Look, I think pop and
ticket sales can converge and do probably more today than ever.
And saying with hip hop hip hop, it was part
of the development period for people to really take the

(40:24):
touring infrastructures um and invest in it as as the
rap and hip hop community grew. And that took a
lot of time. I was part of it and I
watched it um. I think the same is true for
the electronic music industry. Took a while for people to
really shake their metaphor of what being a DJ was
and put it into a live you know, Greena or

(40:46):
other conte festival context, and I think over time all
of them grow and that's why I have such a
robust business at the moment um. So the chart is
the charts. The recorded charts are again not today when
the touring market is shut, but it's more in line
than it was in the past in my opinion, and
there's more surprises than ever because there are touring surprises

(41:09):
that are not on the chart, and there's huge recording
artists that don't really affect the touring, but I would
say a large percentage of it. The holy grail is
people to switch on all the revenue streams, okay, and
they understand what they are today. So whether it is
the ad rev ad share that you discounted but I
think is bigger than you do, or direct e commerce

(41:31):
or merchandise which is an all time high, publishing and
sinks and you know all the different uses of publishing
and splits and remixes and data touring and all the
touring besides merch all the touring ancillaries. I think today
people realize there's ten revenue streams in the music history.

(41:52):
I gotta turn at least six to ten of them
to to really be in the game. So I think
everybody's trying to learn. So you have history in different areas,
you have history at a record company. Let's just assume
there's not my best one. It's like, okay, but I'm
going to give you a liberty here. There are three
major record companies at this point in time. If I

(42:13):
were to put you in charge of one of them,
forget which one, what would you do besides take it public? Yes, okay,
well that's the first thing, all right, um, and I
think that will be happening. Well, really, Sony is part
of a Sony Music is part of Sony International, Warner

(42:36):
just Win Public and right now it used to be that,
you know, if you were content, you're driving the machine.
There's an argument to be made that Sony Music's valuation
is getting crushed by being part of the bigger But
you have to but you have to assume that. Okay, Now,
whatever it is, it doesn't matter. I think that you

(42:56):
know it's a separate stock. Um. Universal obviously is under Vendy,
and I think Universal at some point goes public and
will be massive and good for all of them. They've
done a ridiculously great job building look I think record
companies have the next eighteen months where they have a
lot more staying power. They have the market with them.

(43:17):
If you're public and a lot of capital, they could
be the great consolidators right now. If I were driving one,
I would be really building out my tentacles of infrastructure
to have more pieces of the music industry and the
what I'll call the supply value chain. If you if
you call Spotify pipeline and the label is oil will supply.
I would be um doing a lot around the oil

(43:39):
supply and the healthy parts of the music industry. Because
I have capital on flush, I can do artists felt
you could buy clubs, you could be a label, you
could do a lot right They started merged companies, they
started agencies, They've invested in managing companies. I know Vivendi
is doing a ton in Africa. I saw a presentation
that was fascinating there in like fifteen cities and Africa.

(44:01):
Why is there not They're investing in the music industry, infrastructure,
their French company, there's a lot of French territories and
so it's sort of fascinating. I think they are. They
have the most opportunity right now. My two cents and
they have publishing, so they're already covered two ways to Sunday, right, okay,
but what do we know about major labels today. They

(44:21):
are releasing fewer records and fewer genres than ever before
in an arrow where there's more music and more genres
both being distributed in that type of music. So they're
pausing the new release piece to but remember, the new
release pieces at least profitable for them. So in some ways,
by cutting that all right and getting more catalog revenue
as a blend, they're actually profitability is going to go

(44:42):
up in some ways, okay, and the valuations are skyrocketing
at the same time. I think they will be fine.
I don't think that their DIP is going to be
bad invested. Let me put it slightly different way. Uh,
they are missing out on genres uh that don't do
well on the Spotify quickly because certainly you get paid
on consumption. This could ultimately the be the bane of

(45:04):
their existence. I don't think, because they certainly want to
take a big piece, I don't agree. I think what
happens is after every format change, the majors just buy
up what they don't have. Historically, they've started labels, bought labels,
consolidated labels, because when there's a new profitable model and
streaming is the most profitable and the best one, they
just buy more of the Spotify. It's a it's a
math formula. Okay, it doesn't stream as much as a

(45:27):
hip hop record maybe or a pop record. But you
know these labels are they have very smart people in
there who know the value of an indie record, electronic record,
hip hop, hop, pop record. They have a different value
and multiple assigence, and they still want to buy them.
The end of the day, the game is going to

(45:47):
be buying up as much as the Spotify streaming revenue
as you can get, and the majors will be able
to do that. So I think that's gonna be unprecedented
in the next five to ten years because they're losing
market share, you know of that, because the exactly, yeah,
they're gonna buy it up. They're gonna be flushed cash
like a lot bo bob sixty billion dollars the Universe

(46:07):
I said forty, they're gonna go out at sixty. Okay,
if anybody's listening from Universal, I'm sure you whatever, you'll
say something, but it's good what do we know if
you have good what do you think they could do
with five billion dollars in cash with indies a rabbit hole.
Now he's got a side because let me go to
a slightly different point. Okay, if you have incredible traction,

(46:30):
if you're a little naz X, you can write your
ticket at the label. But if you're not someone with
incredible streaming numbers, at first, the record company, the traditional
label is not going to give you a good deal.
Whereas you go to direct to spotify the others and
get it more than of the recording revenue. Someone who
is young and leverages that, why do they need the

(46:52):
major labels? The major label is a great percentage of
their distribution market share is based on they distribute all
these little labs to them. Signal to noise, you don't
first of all, you have efficient back ends and systems.
If usually because you get a cash advance, because you
get bought out, and you don't get a cash advance otherwise.
So that's the majority of why people do this, right.

(47:14):
It's not like they take your records of the store
and rebrand them with a label on it and sent
in as a nice price that no longer happens, so
nobody knows what happens because the I P stays in
Spotify or Apple Music. It never changes. It's always accessible
to customer. There's no label there anyway, So it's just
who gets paid the royalties, right, that's it. It's an

(47:35):
invisible transaction. So if somebody's wait, so if somebody's gonna
make a margin on it, they're gonna buy more of it.
It's like factoring. So if I think that you know,
the indie label deal is this, and I'm gonna pay
him a million dollars to take over this, and I
get thirty nine cents and might pay out to them,
was factor to thirty three cents and I make six cents.
They're gonna do it all day long. It's just math. Okay,
let's go to the other side of the equation. The artist.

(47:58):
Of course, there's a decision whether it take that deal.
But in the heyday of classic rock, when this business
was built, artists were worried about their credibility. They did
not want to do endorsement, sponsorships. There were very few
private To what degree is that a factor it acts today?
It feels very like an old topic from back from

(48:18):
the seventies and eighties. To me, I think that that
that ship sailed. There are a few people that still
feel that way. My good friend Paul to Let feels
that way about Coachella, and more power to him. Um. Look,
my view is this, Uh, sponsorship is one revenue stream
most people can't get. Okay, it's easy to say, oh,

(48:39):
you're selling out, and a lot of people feel that way.
I don't know what that means anymore. I mean, Trump's
using people's music without authorization for his ship, and artists
are fucking freaking out over that. You think they should
care about a commercial they got paid for. That's much worse.
So anyway, Look, here's what I say. It's a it's

(48:59):
an older, overblown topic. Of the artists I think would
take it and think it's no hit to their credibility.
The truth is that in their Instagram feeds there's advertising everywhere.
Just like when MTV played their videos there was ads
before and afterwards they couldn't do anything about it. The
same was true on radio, the same is true on
social media, and I think it's an overblown topic. Music
is surrounded by advertising almost no matter what platform. Again,

(49:23):
you know Pandora and streaming services aside their concerts. They
go play a venue where they don't take a sponsor,
and there's a spot three sponsors at the venue. Who
the funk knows? You think the consumers like, Nope, that
band has credibility because they're playing the Chevy Concert Series.
It's not them. I don't buy it. I think we're
way past that. But sell by date. Sorry, Okay, let's

(49:45):
talk about you for so people get where you're coming from.
Where did you grow up near you, buddy Stanford? I
know all your history this Connecticut. Okay? And uh, were
you the type a kid who was the straw that
s uh stirred the drink? Or were you alone? Or
what kind of kid were you? What is the straw

(50:06):
that started to drink social? No, yes, that's someone. When
uh Reggie Jackson came to the New York Yankees, he says,
I'm the straw that stirs the drink, the leader of
the band. I try not to have that kind of
a thought about myself. I think I was a normal,
you know, first generation immigrant kid who was a jock

(50:26):
and I was into music. I was I used to
call myself a geek jock because my dad is an engineer,
and I was pretty mad, and I was into genetics
and immune therapy and gene there. You know, I'm a
bit of a geek and I'm a computer nerd. Was
gonna be a here science miner. In college, I was
writing compilers. That was probably the first guy in the
industry use a computer or spreadsheet. Most people know that.

(50:47):
And I was one of the first people to talk
about online services the Internet before the Internet, right when
it's commercial online services. So I don't know. I'm a geek,
music freak, you know, jock, kind of normal, normal guy
that doesn't it isn't any I don't want to be
one of the big personalities in perfect Okay. So we're okay, okay,

(51:13):
I know this, But from my audience, where do you
go to college? You see San Diego? Why pre med only?
And I was gonna go to Berkeley. Sere used to
buy records on telegraphic Leopold's and rescuing. It was my nirvana. Right,
I'd be shopping for C. T. I Jazz all the
way through the latest indie whatever. I was a freak,
and um Berkeley had a ship med school and no

(51:38):
housing In nineteen eighty and you had to pick three
schools if you were in the UC and I looked online. Still,
UCSD was beautiful and at the best med school. I
flew down there and it was out of control, gorgeous. Okay,
just at what point do you at what point do
you move from Connecticut to San Francisoto junior junior year? Okay,

(51:58):
that must have been very hard and social. No, no,
I was. I was a baseball player, so it was easy.
What happened? You got? How good a base that was
pretty good? My kid's good too. But here's the bottom line.
You get accepted. I wasn't an outcast athletics or other
special interests. Uh allow you acceptance in ways that you know,

(52:19):
the normal outcast slash. I don't know, anybody doesn't. And
you know I tried to be so much social. Okay,
So to go to UCSD, how do you get involved
in the music program? There's a fun story. So um,
it's some fun fun dormates by the way, my judge
with the dormate was at the time, So they had

(52:40):
a campus record store and I signed up to work
at it. It started the year before and once again,
what once you get what ye're we in And I
ended up running the record store within two months, I
think maybe a month, and that was really fun. I
had I managed a band out of the record store.
I called their number on the back of the vinyl.
What was called the church, so what I was at

(53:02):
that point. Then the campus radio station came calling. I
joined the campus radio station and I took that over. Um.
I then joined the concert committee and that went really
really well, and I end up promoting shows on campus
and then a little bit slower because usually there's a
hierarchy in college. You're the newbie and there's not a

(53:23):
UCSD everybody. It's a nerd school. It was you know, yeah, no,
and I kind of I don't. I don't want to
say anything here, but let's just put it this way.
I was lucky enough to have an idea of what
to go do and that led the day. So what

(53:44):
did you say to do well in the concert area?
Buy more shows and put on more shows. And I
convinced the administration then call just did enough fear calling
agents back in the day. I remember this day calling
Andy Waters and my first show and Joel Harrisman on
the second show. I promoted and trying to remember who
did spyro Gyra at the time, Paul la Monica on

(54:05):
bb King, you know, Joel Parrisman on King, Crimson, Andy
Waters and Ian Hunter, and it just rolled. I I
don't even know what to say. My friends said to me, Yeah,
this is what you're always destined to funk that doctor ship.
That was a bunch of bullshit cover for your mother,
and this is what you were going to do. But
I didn't know that. So it just went and I
ended up having a lot of success down there, and

(54:26):
I was on ninety one excellent Radio. I started humphreezing.
It blew up and I a little bit slower. How
many shows did you do at ucsday four to start?
Then started a company, did four more and then got
hired by what is was Avalon Attractions Mark Berman that
then got bought and is now Live Nation. But and

(54:47):
then hundreds of shows the junior and senior year. Hundreds. Okay,
so we say you started home Free. You tell us
about that um To venue in San Diego. It's been
going thirty something thirty up thirty seven years probably the
Potters Venum say, do you get one of them? But
what happened was we were. I promoted Carla Bonoff, Bonnie

(55:08):
Rait and John Anderson from Yes at the old Globe
Theaters in San Diego and which are gorgeous, all right,
lar theaters, but they were union houses and you couldn't
make any money, okay, and no, Bob, I did not
church twenty dollars a ticket to make money on top
ticket fees. But uh, you couldn't. So we were looking
for a cheaper venue. And I happened to go with

(55:30):
the production manager to a radio station um event where
they were giving out drinks and promoting some advertiser, and
it was at a hotel and they laid it out well,
Jasmine was playing on this lawn, and I said, Hey,
I bet you this looks cheap. We could do shows here.
And I went and met with the hotel manager and
he said sure, and I cut a deal with him

(55:51):
on the spot. And I think the first show we
did there was David Lindley and El rayo X and
I think we did The Crusaders and then four nights
of Jimmy Buffett, and Jimmy Buffett sold that in ten minutes.
There were three thousand boats trying to watch the show.
From next to Humphries and it broke and it never
looked back, so okay, And whose money was it? It

(56:14):
was the company I worked for at the time, which
was the promoter who part of it before. It was
a partnership between a San Diego promoter named Mark Burman
and Avalon Attractions, so it was both of their money's.
I think Avalon was floating the cash and Mark Berman
had done some stuff and Avalanche it wasn't nice, and
Avalone said, we're gonna throw you out and take our

(56:36):
money back. So there was a big show that they
captured the entire box office and settled the score. And
then I was asked to choose which one was I
going to work for, and I and I was still
in school and Humphries was my baby at the time,
so I stayed with the Mark Burman guy for a moment.
It's a whole funny story. He was funded by a
drug dealer and it was just wacky. And I lasted

(56:59):
there about another nine months, and then I made a
decision to go to l A and become an agent.
I was pursued. Funny story, the guys who were triad
than William Morris, Richard Rosenberg and Peterboroughs like great guys,
dear friends and great people. God rest, Peter salt Um.
I sold out a Sergio Mendez date. I think ine

(57:19):
and Richard Rosenberger was one of Sergio Mendez his best
friends at Bellafante, and all these people had loved del Mar,
who's a horse guy, so he would go down to
Delmar all the time. So here's this excuse, Sergio Amende
is actually selling out somewhere, which never happened. He's like,
I gotta meet the guy that's selling out, Sergeion Amendez,
And I got to go to del Mar. He came down,
we became friends, and I went to work for him

(57:40):
after that. And and it's, uh, you know, that was
the start of post college and what point do you
decide you're not going to be a doctor. And what
do your parents say about that? She's still pissed. Um.
I don't know that my parents ever figured out what
I actually did or do truly, they're ritchen press, but
I don't know if they know. Um. I was really

(58:02):
getting my ass handed to me into sophomore year in
Kem classes and down there, Okam and Pekem were really
really hard there, and I just got killed. I was distracted,
so that made it made my choice easy. Then management
science became came calling, which is a joke, but whatever. Okay,
So you you moved to l A. You work for
Triad Agency at the time, got merged into Triad, went

(58:26):
to nine one, okay, and in ninety one you go
Rick Rubin, here's here's here's a fun story. So incredible years.
They were all incredible years. So those are incredible. I
mean the music that was coming out, whether it was
beginning hip hop, where it was grunge, all rock, it
didn't matter whatever you call it, you know, indie data

(58:48):
da da. But it culminated kind of in Lollapalus and
I left and I was really upset. I got a
shitty bonus one year and it really bummed me out.
And then the other thing that bumped me out was
product manager and Electra Record just had all the say
and the promotion people over the Pixies, who are one
of my favorites, and I was a Pixies fanatic, and
they were putting out I think it was Trump Lamont

(59:09):
and they picked the wrong single and you should appreciate this.
You mass was the hit, and they never put out
as a single and I went crazy. I was like,
the Pixie are finally gonna have a huge hit. They
get something they deserve in the world, and the record
is gonna suck it all up because some radio programs
like the of this record I was living. So I
realized right then and there, between the bonus and that

(59:30):
I gotta go on the record business. That's what the
power is. Every agents are nothing, live business on the
bottom of somebody's shoot, which is no longer the case.
And you've written about that too, but it was at
the time. So Irving had offered a job to me,
and um somebody worked in me and said, you know,
instead of you being reactive, you should be proactive. How
did you know? How did you know Rick Rubin? Well,

(59:52):
I worked as Dan's exagent and we were friends. We
were friends from before that. Um and I wrote down
my three heroes at the time and the record business.
One was Iva Watch Russell for a d but it
couldn't work for him, um Rick, Reuben, Gary Kerr First
and Seymour Stein and they were when when when this

(01:00:13):
person said be proactive, you gotta work your your mark, Igor,
you gotta don't take the first whatever, go work where
you want to work. And I went and met with
all of them. I was they were heroes to me.
And Rick felt the best and I spent five years
with him. That we're amazing. I learned a ton he was,

(01:00:34):
He's amazing. Uh too much for the podcast. But I
watched him and George de Culius and Brendan O'Brien and
Dave Sarrty and all these people make records, and I
didn't know how to make a record. I'm watching recruit
and make records. I helped them sign Johnny Cash and
Mr Funt Delly Kind. I'm the guy that flew down
to sign Johnny. You know on behalf of Rick It's huge, Branson,

(01:00:55):
Miss Already and Nata It's ridiculous. Chili Peppers, Bloodshirt, Sex mensh,
Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic, Wildflowers, Tom Petty. All made during
that time, Mick Jagger, plus plus plus, Plus, Plus plus
plus plus, Slayer, this that. In the next I signed
fifteen bands that I loved. All failed, but you know,
not failed great records. Mary Jane, I'm Sea, Jesus Medicine,
Julian Cope, Frank Black, just artists that people didn't care

(01:01:18):
about commercially but I loved but I learned a lot
and then I bought a couple of websites when I
was with him that I had a real vision for
and he became a partner and artist Direct. So that
was kind of so tell us when Artists Direct started.
What the viewpoint was in the development thereof the viewpoint
was pretty simple. It's funny. Okay, So here's a funny story.
I saw Mark cats Is somewhere here, but um so

(01:01:41):
this is relevant. If you haven't seen the Beastie Boys
documentary on Apple TV, I highly recommended watch Linda run
Stats too. It's amazing. But the Beastis brought me back
to um a story. Ian Rodgers and I met in
Detroit at Pine Knob I think was a beast show.

(01:02:03):
It wasn't La La it was Beast Show and John
Silva was there and I was freaking out at that
period over the Internet and what it meant. And I
just to be clear, what what year are we in?
Do you remember? Ninety? True? Good question? It was not.
The Internet was commercial online services, so it must have

(01:02:24):
been earlier two okay okay? And Ian and I were
explaining the Beasts and Silva what was going to change
about the world and fast forward. I was in the
car with Rick explain maybe it was when the browser
came out, uh, explaining that right now, I didn't understand

(01:02:49):
how if I was a fan and I used the
best boys with Rick obviously because he was instrumental there. Um,
why I have to go to a concert to buy
the band's T shirt? And why when I want to
find out what they're doing on their new album, I
have to wait and buy ten magazines to see who's
going to write about them. And I want to buy

(01:03:12):
go to the records from buy their records, but I
can't buy their ticket there. I have to go somewhere else.
And so what the fund is that? It's like the
worst organization system you could even think about. It makes
a scavenger hunt look good, right because it's random. I said,
it's impossible to be a fan. What terrible? So again,
I've been in commercial online services, a well compy serve Prodigy.

(01:03:35):
You know Delfi, my buddy from college, was one, was
probably number two in siliconality. They made a movie about
him because it was such a forward thinker, uh, in
terms of home automation and networking. And I said to Rick.
When the browser hit, I said, the world has to
be reshaped. Everybody has to go to the artist for everything,

(01:03:56):
their tickets, their t shirts, their information, their tour dates,
their music, their videos, and it should be in one place.
Why do you have to fucking jump around the digital
This internet thing is going to allow for that to happen.
I want to build a company that builds the home
base where everything is at, so when people go there
they get everything. It's a stupid organizational system. This is

(01:04:17):
a reorgan okay, with the artist around the center. This
is before the concept of commercial online streaming services, which
then is a platform where you have a lot of artists, right,
but then hopefully you link to these centers and now
there's multiple centers, multiple channels. But at the time it
was built trying to build the first one. So the
real thought behind it was trying to centralize the artist

(01:04:37):
content and their goods right and their information and not
make it, you know, a road trip to have to
figure out how to get that ship. It was. It
was maddening and for me, who was a super fan
of Indian underground music, um, it was double bad because
those artists didn't get enrolling stuff or on MTV or

(01:05:01):
on the radio. So now you had to dig and wait.
For god, it was written in a musician magazine, or
did option to a story or trouser pressed do something
or cream or this or that, or depending what you
were doing, or oh, I gotta wait till the enemy
comes in three weeks late and Sounds and Melody Maker
to see if they write about them right. And I'm
representing the Order and the Bunnymen, and you know, Smith's

(01:05:22):
for a moment and cocked out Twins, the Pixies and
Dead Can Dance and nobody's did They're not on the
fucking radio, kay rock whatever some of them, And how
are you going to find out about that? And then
what really bothered me was I said, Okay, now I'm
an agent. I'm working with these bands. I'm in New

(01:05:43):
York for the bunny Man. They sell out Roseland and
Radio City ten thousand freak Bunnymen fans, and after the
show's over, nobody knows who they are and how to
get to them again. And I go, that's the dumbest
thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I have
to fix this. This is so stupid that things with
this kind of fandom where those fans would kill to

(01:06:04):
have Ian McCulloch say here's a new song or anything right,
kill crush, and there's no system for that. So those
two thoughts is what I went to try to do. Okay,
so you leave deaf American, which becomes American at some
point what year beginning of what do you? What do

(01:06:25):
you do for cash? On this startup? Start an agency?
We made cash right away, had chili peppers, rage, pearl
jam b York, you know, ninety we had a lot
of them. Okay, Well, just to be clear, was the
agency part of artists to direct? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the
whole way. That was the concept. We didn't take financing

(01:06:45):
for a year and a half and then we raised
very little. We didn't need it, and we built. I
built the first system and FileMaker e commerce. Both the
booking system and the e commerce system was built in FileMaker.
I wrote it, I coded it. So we were doing
FileMaker transactions and what happened. Here's a funny story. So
I was good friends with Norman Perry from Periscope Vancouver promoter,

(01:07:06):
great guy, hyper smart, dear friend. He went to work
I think in Toronto for Michael Cole and then he
opened up one of the merchant companies called Brockham with
Peter Lubin and got sold that got pushed out whatever,
and then started a new company and he had David Bowie,
he had the Rolling Stones, you know, he had some

(01:07:27):
real heavyweight folks and he was a big friend and
fan for another mutual friend. But we were dear friends.
We still are to this day. And when we were
opening Artists Direct, the Rolling Stones are a huge business
for him, but he couldn't sell anything online and this
e commerce thing was new, and I called him up.
In fact, my Frankie said you should call Norman see
if you can get the Stones. And I actually the

(01:07:49):
first band Artist Direct ever signed with the Stones ever.
Norman is like, I'm gonna set you with Mick bless you.
You go meet with Mick if you can convince him,
and he's an online freak. O you go. And I
went back with Mick in the Four Seas Hotel in
Beverly Hills one morning, came out the bathrobe. He's the

(01:08:10):
smartest motherfucker anyway. He understands understood the Internet. He's like,
I'll give you this, but you gotta get me my cricket.
I want my cricket every city I'm in. Now, this
was in nineties six or ninety seven. There's no cricket
online being streamed anywhere when most streaming and his bandwidth
was terribly You couldn't a well, graphics are still downloading slow, right,
so forget songs. And he wanted to watch cricket everywhere

(01:08:31):
he went. And he was furious that he wasn't running.
He was like, that's what the Internet is gonna be.
Fast forward. He was right, um, and he said absolutely,
And we built the Stone Store and it, you know,
did a million dollars of e commerce pretty quickly. And
then we went from there and it was a hell
of woy to start. Um sort of proved the concept.
Although it was early. There weren't banner ads. I mean,

(01:08:55):
we're the very first implementation of s A P RP
system on the whole internet. So you just think about
what area you were in. There was no programming languages.
You couldn't program a database. Everything is in Tickle, which
ran CEN that and you had to hire Tickle engineers
T I C L. And there were none of them.
So it was you know, today it's everything's plug and playing.
You could do anything on multiple platforms. So it was

(01:09:15):
a very different era. Okay, now we know the end
of artists directors, It goes public and it goes bus
But what happens between what happened to be in siding
the stones and then built like we built like motherfuckers.
We signed a hundred twenty five artists, did their websites,
their e commerce, their direct marketing, their email, you know,

(01:09:35):
marketing to their fans. We ended up selling tickets, We
ended up selling albums. So whether it was beck or
share or it didn't. You know, we worked with a
number of brilliant artists and they had records that didn't
that the labels didn't want to count a commitment records,
so we sold them direct a fan and we'd sell
fifty twenty thousand direct a fan of a record that

(01:09:57):
you never heard of. Now, this is before digital, so
it's still C D S or whatever, vinyl or whatever
um at the time. And obviously then the file business
changed things. Um it's kind of gone or close to
gone by then. But we grew, we built, we grew bigger,
we built bigger, we did more stuff. Um. We failed

(01:10:18):
on a couple of record labels, which weren't really a
big part of the business. We had a couple of
other websites, the Ultimate Band List, which was the first one,
UBL dot Com, which was you know, we were trying
to grow the traffic. But you know, at that point
you had MP through dot Com, then Napster, you know,
prior to that music Boulevard CD now than the introduction

(01:10:38):
of Amazon. So for historical sake, that's what you were
dealing with. And nobody knew the difference between Napster and
MP through dot Com and US or Launch, poor David Goldberg,
and they didn't know, and they were all radically different.
And but it was version one point of the Internet
with Ultivist and asked Jeeves an Excite and Yahoo and
Infoseek and micos and not many people made it past

(01:11:02):
wave one. And you know, our story was legendary because
I went We went public the week of the market crash,
which was interesting and Starbanes Oxley and I had to
be a public company CEO for you know a couple
of years after getting completely beaten up and not knowing
what to do. So I can I feel for public

(01:11:24):
executives right now? Um, you know, twenty years later they
have to face a version of a completely decimated business
and market. But listen, it was the greatest learning experience
of my life. So I don't know what else to say.
You know, it happened, it's history, and we built a company.
We were doing million dollars in internet revenue, which you know,

(01:11:46):
in today's numbers, who knows what they'd be mostly e
commerce we started. We were one of the first people,
Mark Whites and a few others in the internet advertising business.
People figure out what's a bann or how does it work?
What's a mouse over? What's you know when flash doesn't
work here? So and so there. You know, I think
we took a lot of blues and built one of
the first websites ever for a festival. It was really fun.

(01:12:07):
Remember his little carnival. Okay, you're painting such a positive picture.
Why did it fail? There's a bunch of reasons. Number one,
I fucked up number two fifteen years early, probably for
the real market. Number three, I fucked up number four.
What do you mean terrible market? Meaning you had to

(01:12:31):
for me to be an inexperienced public company executive when
the markets closed for three years and run and Starvings
Oxley and me trying to figure out what the fuck
to do. I should have just shut down and thought
about it and waited. I it was too when I
say fucked up, Bob, it was ship was swirling in
my head. People were happy the internet was over. It

(01:12:51):
wasn't you know who old media's see all you young upstarts.
You you were in a hard as you thought. You know,
you're dealing a lot of crap. I didn't know what
to do, and I was lost. I went and met
with everybody or trying to sell our companies had a
lot of cash. I was still lost, but I was
an idiot. I should have held out in my cash

(01:13:12):
and just got through it. Definitively, Were you too early
and it could never work? Or was there something I
don't wait at the bust up son for fifteen years,
you'll do better? And that was a cutting, fucking blow. Um.
You know, I was so into being in the next

(01:13:33):
system that I forgot that people have to transition into
the next system. It was all about what I thought
was possible, not what was gonna happen all right, or
or consumer habits hadn't evolved, or technology hadn't been laid
in or the waves of the Internet had to happen.
I was enamored by this idea, and I just imagine
time didn't exist and everybody's going to convert like they

(01:13:55):
have today. Right, So now that I'm supposed to be
older and wiser, definitely older. Whether I'm wiser and that's
a different story. But once you look back pindeslight being,
you go schmuck. There were massive societal changes that had
to take place before your vision could come through. Who
the funk are you? And what were you thinking? Asshole? Right, Like,

(01:14:17):
everybody's just gonna, you know, have their browsers handle this
kind of add thing, or they're gonna feel comfortable with
their credit cards on the internet or any of that stuff. Right,
those are all hurdles society has to get through or
people will go to the web. There were no mobile devices.
Is fucking blackberries? Right? I mean the bricks so um
and is an air of palm pilots. So I was

(01:14:41):
a moron that way, and today I try to think,
am I doing something that takes massive societal adoption? Is
there technology that has to get laid in place? Oh?
Do they have to lay in bandwidth for the ship
to work, you know what, like I should be the
one that's out they're experimenting. So that was a lot

(01:15:02):
of it. The answers, Yeah, it's a schmuck. Okay, so
ay when it crashes, how does that affect you emotionally?
Be how long does it? How long does it take
you ultimately to segue back into the business, and how
do you decide to go back into the agency? Three
years I was bloodied in bankrupt and had to get
a job that paid me a salary. I was paying

(01:15:23):
myself a hundred and fifty grand a year as a
public executive because I Don Muller and I were very
worried about that that we were we wanted to be
looked at ethically. We're taking the public's money, investors. We
weren't going to get ourselves rich. We weren't gonna do this,
do that. And I was crushed. Had some kids during
that time, two boys, and you know, ah, so I
was going personally bankrupt. You know, I lost sixty three

(01:15:46):
million on paper and two million in cash, and thank
god for a couple banker friend of mine who basically
got me credit and helped me work my way out
of it. And then Peters hired me back. I went
to see we had sold the talent agency to see
a done wanted to go. We wanted to get off
the scary ride. I don't blame him at that time.
And we had a great staff and most of those

(01:16:07):
people went to see a lot of me stayed there
and the artist want We closed that piece down and
I kind of high. I made a mistake and I
hired ted Field because I was beaten. I was a
beaten man, and he basically turned into the label for
the last gap and it wasn't great. It was terrible, actually,
but whatever it is what it is. Mistakes made, and
I put myself to bid to the agency because they

(01:16:28):
were the only people who are gonna pay me. I
didn't want to go back and be an agent. I
went to go run a tech company. But nobody's gonna
hire me and run a tech company. I just got
beaten up. They didn't pay. It was all back end.
The record label was gonna have me. I was a
failure there uh and wasn't proven manager. I didn't have clients.
They didn't really want to do that. I tried to

(01:16:48):
go back to be an agent, totally bummed out. At
the time, and Peter said, Geiger, come on back, I'll
pay you, and that's what as I started. Okay, so
that episode at the agency business which turned into w
m ME is now over and needles to say, there's
a little bit of a pause, but certainly in the
live business. But what do you see for yourself personally

(01:17:08):
going forward? Business was Um, I'll be honest, um, curly,
somebody should read that comment. Damn straight good good left midfielder. Sorry,
I'm reading the text. Um. I think it's the best
time in history to start something. So I think I'm
going to start something. I mean, listen, there were some

(01:17:30):
rumors planted out there about what I was doing, and this,
that and the next thing weren't true. You know, well
I never got a call from Daniel Ack. He's a
friend of mine, so uh, you know, I don't have
a job to be a mocker at YouTuber, Apple Music,
Amazon or Spotify or any of those places, and they
don't or anything close. If you were offered those gigs,

(01:17:50):
I don't know. I don't know, but I don't have them,
so it doesn't matter, and it depends what the gig is.
I got inquired about a position at SoundCloud that wasn't
very interesting, but still, um, there's nothing really there. There's
a few other big jobs I might consider in the
rest of the traditional music industry, and they're not there.
And and that's so, that's okay. But the truth is,

(01:18:12):
when I sat out here over the last four months
and thought about what made me happy because I'm getting older,
what do I want to do? Damn on this old
what do I really want to do? It came to
a couple of fun conclusions. One is I am what
I am. I love tech, but there's no Roman tech
right now. I don't see it. Everything that I talked
about happened, and it's big, big I've said it, You've

(01:18:34):
seen my speeches. It's the big player time, the very
little room for disruption right now. Okay, it's hard. Everything
is being built onto the big platforms, and new media
is in some way. It's not the same becoming old
media again, right They just is and it's bound to
be that way. Um, systems don't change that much, even
though the distribution of pricing changed. Um. So I looked

(01:18:59):
in I said, what turns me on another in tech
and being forward is artist development and discovering music and
I'm a music freak, and the underbelly of the industry,
the ground up golden voice, you know, clubs, indie labels,
developing artists. You know, Jenson McCrae is an example, right,

(01:19:22):
So that's what gets me the most excited and gives
me some purpose. And I could and and there's some
part of me and my friends know this, and I
think they're the same that feels young by staying very
current in music and the music business and tech. Okay,
if you're sort of I'm into e sports, my son's

(01:19:44):
and the sports, I'm very on top of that. I'm
deep in the digital world, so kind of keeps you young,
and so I want to stay there. So I'm probably
gonna start up focused in those areas. Okay, just looking
at the business and large. Once we get to the
end of this pandemic, Uh, what do we know? The
record companies ruled until the internet. The Internet came along

(01:20:05):
a great percent Other than the tippity top tier of
streaming artists, most artists make the majority of their income live,
which has changed the paradigm, and that the live business
A funds these acts and B can break these acts.
Do what do you see going forward in terms of

(01:20:25):
where the power lies. Well, this is gonna be not
that sexy and answer. I think building an artist's career
is like building a house. The reason I use the
housing metaphor is because the manager is really like a

(01:20:47):
general contractor to me. They have to manage the owner
i e. The artist, right, and they have to look
after all the subs, the record company, the publishing, the agency, touring,
the merchandise that this that you know, everything right, advertising,
the content creation, and they have to do all those
deals or manage all of those things. So I think
it's similar to a g C. And then I think
all of the other pieces of the building the house,

(01:21:10):
I either the artist is um actually important so in
a weird way, you know, can the electrician do the
roof and the hardscape? You know, I eat, can the
promoter do this that in the next short in certain cases.
But there's a lot of artists and there's a lot
of specialized pieces to all of this. So as much

(01:21:30):
as people want to label me a disruptor, I've never
actually been a disruptor. I have tried to identify disruptive disruption,
but from a disruptor, either dropped price or you collapse
and consolidate people into or companies and jobs into into

(01:21:51):
you know, you consolidate them. Do you disintermediate? Okay, sorry,
I was searching for the word. And I actually think
that when the business comes back, every piece of the
subcontracting universe and general contractor will be more needed than
ever because every artist will be hurting for money or success.

(01:22:13):
Every club will, every venue will, every promoter will, every
agency will, every label will want to get back to
where it was, and I think it will be all
hands on deck and more activity than ever before. So
I'm not sure that I see there's consolidation opportunities, Like
I talked about, if Universal or Warner went on a

(01:22:33):
tear and wanted to do some stuff and got really
smart about it. I can see that, um. I can
see new money coming in like that real estate investry
doesn't have office buildings during the crash, but they have
new capital and and and buying things. But I think
every part of the industry is gonna be vibrant. I
think agents are gonna be more vibrant than ever and needed.

(01:22:56):
I think promoters are going to be very high on
the on the value chain. I think labels will continue
to be high on the value chain only increase because again,
everybody wants success, Bob, and they want money, and so yeah,
there's a very powerful mental force to look at big
artists and go who works on their team? And they don't.
They're not devoid of a manager and ageent or a

(01:23:19):
record company. There's not that many of those stories. So
I think when you look at the most successful artis
in the world, is who's on who is their team?
And I want to be with them. So I think
the aspirational you know called Lemming theory. Aspiration drives the business.
So I think every piece of the industry is going
to be there and healthy and not disrupted. Weirdly, I'm

(01:23:39):
not talking about radio or or record stores or those
pieces which get wiped out. I'm talking about professional services.
I don't see it. I think it actually got more complex.
I don't think promoters know how to break you worldwide
for the most part. I've national Age a little different.
They are worldwide, and they have tentacles. They can keep
them for the most part, and with good players, so

(01:24:02):
they are as close and the labels have similar that
they are as close to filled out networks is as
you can find now whether they give a funk about
your little artist or not, and would give you the
You know, this is where the theory is different, interacting
for the superstar and then for anybody else. But there
you go, Okay for getting the pandemic. What how do
you do that? Sorry, it's not that hard when the

(01:24:23):
question is ultimately reviewed. What what advice would you give
to a new artist today just starting out? Number one,
make a lot of content. I mean, the one thing
I would say to artists starting out or not is
right now, okay, here's the left SIPs. You know, back

(01:24:44):
in the day, the Rolling Stones made three albums a year,
The Beatles made three albums a year, The Beach Boys
made three whatever. Okay, you know what I'm saying about
two albums with a minimum relief. Steely Dan. I remember
we went on Steely Dan listening binge. First three albums
came out in like a year and a half. It
was crazy, right, and they were genius. So you sit
there and go, what the funk? Weren't they touring? Oh yeah,

(01:25:04):
they actually Steely Danton, But for the most part they did. Actually, um,
I had no idea. Michael McDonald was in Steely Dan.
I just learned that and Jeff Baxter, and that's how
they do. Jeff Baxter was a regular member. You know,
Michael even more than you think. But anyway, pre dubies anyway.
I think artists to do that again right now, right create.

(01:25:26):
I think that the elongation of the marketing period where
you can tour the world for two or three years,
you know, and not put out a record and come
back and then have to spend a year making a
record discycles too long. So I think the number one
thing people need to do is make a lot of
content right now. I don't care what it is, but
store it up for winter and don't release it all
because the distribution systems give you credit for constantly releasing,

(01:25:51):
whether it's YouTube or Spotify. The way the new releases
are set up, the way the playlist work. You know,
you have your one week to one month honeymoon period
and if and then it's gone up in the Library
of Congress in the FOURT floor, nobody know you wrote
the book. So to me is okay, how do I switch?
I may still put out albums, maybe it's the end

(01:26:13):
for whatever, but how do I consistently work the system
in the way the system works which just have new
releases on a constant basis. So that's my answer. Okay,
And what advice would you give to someone once again
forgetting the pandemic disruption? What advice would you give to
someone wanting to get into the music business? Not the
greatest time. Um, Look, there's so many people that are

(01:26:37):
getting laid off by the music business. Yet I gotta
I won't get there. I just right now? Is I
just I can't? It's a ship time, Um, manage the band?
No barrier to entry. I mean you want to learn
how to build a house. Start on the smallest house
and build it. Figure out how to you know, that'd

(01:26:58):
be one thing you know is no getting on the radio,
you know, put together play list for your friends. Uh,
but managing man is the lowest barrier to entry if
you think about it. You can't get a job at
a record company or an agency. It's not that easy.
You can, by the way, you can try agencies were
an easy point of entry. You go in milrone. Uh,
gonna be somebody's assistant that you respect, UM and write

(01:27:20):
him a personal note. Do some research. You know. The
biggest thing I found about young people is they don't
do much research. I read everything coming up. I read
every Rolling Stone Guide cover to cover, fifteen times, Trouser Press,
Gude fifteen times, Option magazine. Fucking print was six point
font and I would read Option magazine reviews. If you
remember Scott Becker and every bit of it. I was

(01:27:41):
just a freak. I listened to everything. I the way
I used to sign artists. I go to England, I
talked and talked to the indie label head and they
would say to me, Wow, you know more about my
artists in my label than I do. And you're a
kid from America, right, So do your research. Figure out
who's your favorite. Write him a note. Nobody ever does that.

(01:28:01):
There's a lot of ways to enter, but find somebody
and manage them. Mark. This has been wonderful, Thanks so
much for your insight by pleasure until next time. This
has been the Bob Left Sets Podcast

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

The Nikki Glaser Podcast

Stuff You Should Know

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Marc Geiger

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Dateline NBC

The Nikki Glaser Podcast

Stuff You Should Know

All Episodes

Marc Geiger

Dateline NBC