I go to a guy I’ve known for years now. He’s part of a collective of a dozen doctors who all have their specialty and refer patients to one another. I now bring my dad there.  With my dad, I’m going a bit deeper in to the system than I needed to for myself and that has opened up a world of insight that I had not seen before in spite of going there at least a dozen times over the years for check-ups, illnesses, etc.  These guys have their s*#+ on lock. Their appointment books are held in an electronic calendar like many of us but does yours call a day before to remind your client of your appointment?  That has
to bring down no shows and increase billables without taking up a second of staff time.  Does yours link the visit with methods of payment and history?  These guys get paid every penny they can honestly squeeze and have access to your entire history on a laptop. Yeah. They all walk around from room to room with laptops where they both review and enter info.  Gone are the days of a pile of carefully hole punched papers and ekg streams. It’s all scanned, jpeged and accessible from a server.

Now I look at my own business. We work in various sectors of the music business but they all involve dealing with creatives. Dealing with creatives, especially in Miami, means missed meetings (dude was that today?) And a lot of conversations about how to get around an anemic (read non-existent) budget while tackling a declining market.  Well, I
meet with people, I help make their lives better and I’m dealing with a full-on assault on cash flow. So what can I learn from an indy medical practice?

First, cut the bull. You have to be selective about who you meet with. If you spend your day chasing pipe dreams and random thoughts instead of executing a cohesive plan and entertaining legitimate new projects, you are leaking valuable time like the broken pipe spewing oil into the gulf. Second, be as efficient as possible with the management of information.  Just as in the doctor’s office, history means something and can help you make better decisions. I deal with a lot of people
and new ones all the time. It’s good to be able to recall what has transpired in the past, digest it and draw inferences from patterns instead of just from vibe. Instinct is great but it’s accuracy goes up when you complement it with solid history. Third, always be going somewhere with something. The doctors bounce from one room to another executing their appointment and furthering the whole health thing.  From diagnosis to treatment, they are always moving things forward on a massive scale. I like that as a premise and try to make sure that every minute I spend working is a means to an end.

So, doctors spend their time wisely (with patients who actually pay something), track their usage of time expeditiously and are always moving issues forward. I think I can apply that to any business, even to something as erratic as my precious music industry.

Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin,  said something in his fistfulayen blog (http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/) that I think sums it up:

“Media 1.0 was a world of limited distribution and therefore attention abundance.  Media 2.0 is a world of unlimited distribution and therefore attention scarcity.”

Distribution is no longer the problem.  Garnering attention to what you are offering is now the issue.  So how do you successfully launch an artist, movie or other entertainment property?

1)  Don’t suck

2)  Play your position

3) Surround yourself with people who have seen this movie before

4) Have a plan before you start

The above does not guarantee success but not doing it almost guarantees you failure.  It’s not the money, it’s the talent on both the artistic and commerce side of the fence that makes a successful project.  Rushing a product to market never really works.  Give it time, don’t be impatient.  If you do, it will likely last longer and go further.

I am in New York for an extended stay and happily working away at developing the various tentacles of my business.  In New York, resources seem endless as do opportunities.  Trick is to ferret out the ones that really make sense and focus your energies on those.  This week, the LAMC has taken over the NY cultural scene.  A fabulous conference put together and run by a dear friend.  Good example of finding your core and mining it.  While the “major” players are going down in flames (so what happened to Popkomm?), this conference focused on “outsiders” seems to be doing just fine.  For that matter, so is the sister label, management and all around 360 business he has (congrats to you my brotha).

Meanwhile, I see the world still melting, both in an economic and music industry sense.  Is the recession really ending?  Is Michael Jackson really dead?  Is it true that the best marketing plan is to simply die?  Well, I think I will hold off on that one for now.  What I have found is that many outside dabblers and their private equity groups are retreating from the fray.  All those major acquisitions on the publishing side have waned and the catalogues that did not sell during the frenzy have now lost value…just like your house.  Now those companies are scraping to pay the light bills and finding that they can’t service the debt with the cash flow from those catalogues they overpaid for.  Hey fellas, you realize you have to actually WORK the catalogue to maintain or increase income stream?  It don’t do it by itself…

In my career, I have seen a few of these occurrences.  Outside equity players think they understand the music business, get a front man and put up a ton of money to get in the biz figuring they can buy experience.  Does not (always) work.  In this latest round, look at EMI.  Smarts guys, innovative ideas, completely missed the nuances that drive the music business.  You can’t fire everyone.  Someone has to deal with the artists and songwriters in a language that they understand.  Music is a very strange world and the cocoon that creators need to be in to create can not be messed with.  Of course that is just one of the problems they encountered…and yes, they too are having problems servicing their debt.

This is all a good thing.  Music people should be in the music business.  People who live and breathe the stuff.  Most of us got into this because we love music. We are musicians, songwriters, producers, fans…all of it!  We don’t know what else to do.  I can practice law but…no, really!

Now I look at the options and meet with everyone.  Smart guys with money and real music people who managed to escape the damage and survive with some capital to grow.  Perhaps in my next post I will be talking about who ends up being the better partner.  Or perhaps I find that I am best where I am, on my own, growing it all organically. We are actually doing well.  No big press pushes.  Just friends telling friends that we found a way to monetize music assets and operate a good, honest business.  We actually earn and pay royalties on over 300 albums so far.  Not bad for two guys in a house.

This all may make for an interesting micro study some day.

And then there is the campaign of misinformation that came out yesterday saying that AT&T and Comcast are on board.  I don’t see it on so many levels and apparently AT&T and Comcast don’t see it either as they sent out corrections today.  A similar policy was being pushed through in France and New Zealand and even they are backpeddling due to a public outcry.  You really think it will work in the US?  Not likely.  So now, no ground has been gained and we have once again alienated our consumer base.  DRM does not work.  Forcing people to buy music YOUR WAY, by any means necessary, does not work.  Have we learned nothing since Napster?

If you want to sell music, make something worth buying.  Support an artist that deserves to be in this world and let them connect with the public.  If someone loves the song, they may take it without paying (can anyone say free goods?) but if they love the artist, they will buy it.  It makes them a supporter and part of the club.  As a club member, they take pride in buying the song, the t-shirt, the concert ticket, etc.  People want meaningful artists they can believe in who sing meaningful songs that speak to them.  When looking at new talent, ask yourself “is the world waiting for this”?  If the answer is no, move on…

Just because you figure out what the next medium is, it does not  make you a music man.  The vast majority of us are no Ahmet Ertegun.  A friend of mine once suggested that when I look at an artist I ask myself “is the world really waiting for this?”.  If you really are blessed with what it takes to find and nurture a creative talent which would otherwise probably wallow in anonymity, you are the filter and the foundation.  AOL knows that filters and filling niche gaps are the way to move forward.  They may not execute very well but they have the idea.  If only they had the good sense to team up with real music people who can guide not just the music but the culture of the micro-sites, they would succeed.  Unfortunately, for them, and so many of the techy elite, music is just content.  You may get the medium and can build a foundation but you don’t get the essence and will never be the filter.

Artists need a foundation from which to build and grow.  The public, now more than ever, needs the filter because there is way too much stuff out there and, let’s face it, most of it sucks.   Be the filter and the foundation.  Format is transient.

There is always room for the purveyor of quality goods.  Those who find and develop quality artists and songwriters will always have a business.  An artist or writer on his own can do so much more than they used to be able to but someone who has seen the movie before needs to steer the ship while they play their true position.  Otherwise, opportunities slip by without notice.  Also, with all the noise out there, labels and publishers will become the filter that people rely upon to sift through the crap.  iTunes certainly does not want to play that role.  They accept EVERYTHING!  Do you really want to listen to EVERYTHING??? What about recommendation engines and Genius?  Well, I like that stuff but an algorhythm can only do so much and I still would rather follow someone who’s musical taste I align with than a machine.  They reserve the right to be quirky.

So what is fair compensation for their side of the contribution? Well, I guess it depends upon what the artist brings to the table (so what else is new). What you take away from the venture is a direct result of what you contribute to it.  Things like ownership and splits get determined by contribution…as it should be.  Toss it in the bucket and divvy up accordingly.  Talent only gets you so far.  There is a long line of talented artists and songwriters living in the bowels of iTunes right now.  Is it any better than when you were just in your garage?

I live and work on this island so it was a pretty short commute for me.  The whole thing is starting to feel very clubby and thoughts of taking a lunch at the clubhouse during the week are pretty appealing.  I’m starting to get a sense of community.

So why am I talking about this under the heading of holiday crunch time?  Well, my clever system does email merges which lets me set up and send close to 600 emails in a fraction of the time and personally addressed to each contact (shh, don’t tell anyone).  Trouble is, the system screwed up and they are now all named Javier…Oh well, another thing it can’t do right.  Act! for Mac anyone?  C’mon, it almost rhymes!

To that end, I present to you, my blog.  No idea who reads this crap or how I even tell people to read it but for thos who do find and follow, I hope that my missives are helpful, thought provoking and stimulate a smarter industry in some small way.

Ivan