He spent ten years as a FORBES senior editor and now covers the business of music at Substack, where he is writing a twice-weekly newsletter and serializing his fifth book, We Are All Musicians Now. He has been a source for the BBC, NPR, and 60 Minutes, and a speaker at South By Southwest, the global tech event CES, plus TEDx, Princeton and Harvard. Steve Forbes said of this guest, “There is no keener, more knowledgeable and scintillating observer of the modern cultural scene.” He was previously a guest on this show two years ago on Episode 325.
"In 2019 a dozen acts grossed over a hundred million on the road. Not a single one did that in 2020. And only The Rolling Stones did that in 2021."
"Live music has been the main driver of revenue for recording acts for many years now and without that, kind of, backbone to the business side of things it's very hard to make a living as a band."
"I've talked to a lot of indie artists... who really kind of operate on that philosophy that, sort of, without their 'super fans' there's not much of a safety net, but because they had that direct relationship with their audience, they can really kind of get through this tough time when going out on the road isn't really an option."
"I think that the key here (doing a live stream) is how do you as a creator differentiate yourself and your stuff? You can't just go up and play sort of a static set that's the same as essentially a recording of one of your concerts... What are the things you can do remotely that you couldn't do live?"
"By the time that I decided to leave I like to say my career at FORBES was old enough to drive, or at least have a learner's permit. And I'm not that old so I thought that it was a good time to give it a go. I had this great offer on the table to go over to a rival business publication. And so, I said my goodbyes, I signed the offer sheet, and I took a few weeks off."
"I think that (this year's Super Bowl halftime entertainment) is a fantastic lineup. It's like the Mount Rushmore of hip-hop."
"In my view, we're all musicians now because when you look at the past few decades of major disruptive technological changes, they've all hit music before they hit other industries... So, my contention is that if you follow the musicians, you can basically tell the future, whatever industry you're in."
"It's kind of a mind-bending number. Vinyl sales went up from 27-and-a-half million in 2020 to 41.7 million, so it's a 51 percent change year-over-year, versus CDs, which actually, surprisingly, went up a little bit... This is the first time since... the early 90s that vinyl has surpassed CDs."
"As our world becomes increasingly virtual, just kind of with the march of technology but also the pandemic and we're all stuck inside a lot of the time, I think people are really eager to have physical, tangible things and I think vinyl is a great example of that."