I need you to watch Malcolm Gladwell’s TED talk "What We Can Learn From Spaghetti Sauce". I’ll post the link at the bottom. It’s an almost eighteen minute video. You won’t understand where he’s going until at least half way through. But, as he reaches his climax, you’ll identify with the ultimate concept, that success comes not from trying to deliver one product to satisfy all people, but delivering a skein of products, that satisfy a great swath of the public.

If major labels had their druthers, they’d release only one album a year. Which they’d labor over incessantly, and then market in every available medium, beating you over the head until you purchased it. As it is, their paradigm is not much different.

It started in the eighties, when MTV drew a line between winners and losers. If you were on MTV, you sold a ton of product. If you were not on MTV…major labels no longer had an interest in signing you, they weren’t satisfied with the low return.

It got worse in the nineties, with MTV airing even less music and radio getting ever tighter. There were winners and losers. The middle ground almost ceased to exist. Either you were pretty, singing songs written by committee, polished into a product, or the major label couldn’t sell you at all.

Then came 2000 and the Napster era.

The major labels have stated that their decimation has come from theft. That if only people paid for the music they acquired, their business model would be hunky-dory. This is patently untrue. Suddenly, with digital files, people could acquire a wide swath of material, essentially for nothing. And it turned out that although there was a demand for major label product, everything from Mariah Carey to Justin Timberlake to Madonna, that demand was far from the entire spectrum of consumer interest. It was just a slice. People wanted more.

Used to be you couldn’t buy more. First and foremost, you didn’t hear it. Radio didn’t play it. And you literally couldn’t buy it, the big box didn’t stock it. The old model was based on scarcity. You buy what we anoint in retail shops we authorize at a price we determine.

But it turns out many people don’t like Mariah Carey. Some like banjo music. Some like emo. There’s an infinite variety of musical styles, and an audience for each. Maybe the audience isn’t large, but it exists.

How did the major labels deal with all this?

By cutting rosters and employees. Faced with a financial crisis, they pulled back, when they should have been expanding!

The major label, to be a dominant force in the future, has to be all things to all people. It has to release more product… Each album will sell less, but you’ve got to fill the demands of everybody. Instead, they’re focusing on fewer acts, marketed by fewer workers. And those making music outside this purview…want to stay outside!

Why sign with the major label? They’re going to tell you what to record, guide your career, and if you’re not an instant success, you’re going to end up in limbo, your career is going to expire.

So now, all those acts that don’t fit the major label paradigm…they’re going it alone, and they’re happy about it!

They can establish their own Websites. They can get their product in the iTunes Store. They can be in the retail landscape and be beholden to no one. They can reach their audience and make money!

When you watch this Malcolm Gladwell speech, you’ll find out that Prego overtook Ragu by offering a multiple of options. Turns out the public didn’t want just a runny spaghetti sauce, but a spicy one, and most especially, a chunky one. Didn’t matter that the runny was the authentic Italian version. That’s about dictation from above. Like in the music business. Major labels have priorities. But maybe, if the public was exposed to something different, they’d like it! In enough quantity to make money! For everybody who likes Mariah Carey, there are tons who are turned off and hate her. This is the lesson of the twenty first century. Not that if everybody paid for music Mariah would sell more, but that many people don’t want her music at any price, they want something different! He who will rule in the future is he who services all these niches, who gives people something different.

To amass enough power to dominate the market, you must purvey a plethora of acts, you must cover all desires. It’s not about finding the one big hit, but a bunch of singles and bunts. It’s not about giving one person $500,000 to make a record, but enabling people to get their product into the marketplace for almost nothing. Right now, these people are doing it by themselves. These people are not wanted by the major labels. The majors’ "indie" operations are all about physical retail and flying up to the major. Physical retail is dying and the downsides of being on the major are…major. Artists want to be in business with people who are more hands-off than hands-on. The exact opposite of today’s paradigm, with Clive and Jimmy making stars.

As Gladwell says, the search for universals is futile. Because they don’t exist. Turns out the public is segmented, horizontally, they want a lot of different things. It’s not about the lowest common denominator, but servicing each and every one of these niches.

It’s interesting to watch the major label movie, but the enterprises have been so mismanaged as to be marginalized. If they’re lucky, major labels can be the equivalent of BMW in the future. Making highly polished, exquisite merchandise for a limited market willing to pay a high price for it. Whereas the true money is in being Toyota. Purveying everything from the tiny Yaris to the Lexus LS600h. Hitting price points from $10,000 to $100,000. Sure, the Camry is the best selling car in America, but if that was all Toyota sold, the company would not be in good shape. Unless maybe, it focused solely on this product and cut costs and determined to be nothing more. Then there’s GM… Paying lip service to small cars but focusing on big trucks, because that’s where the money was. But then oil prices spiked and no one wanted the small GM cars, because GM had not focused on them and made them great, Toyota made better tiny cars.

We’re presently in a period of chaos. I believe an aggregator will appear in the future, someone servicing artists at a low price to the creator, both artistically and financially. Historically this has not been the major label and no major label is trying to change this paradigm. No major is giving more to the artist, the major wants to give less and take more, like merch and touring revenue. The majors are heading towards marginalization, they’re an ever-decreasing sideshow, to focus on them was to watch IBM to see where the personal computer revolution was headed, as opposed to Microsoft and eventually Netscape and Google.

This is important.

And Gladwell’s speech has implications for radio too. People don’t always know what they want, and they can’t explain what they want, so your call-out research is actually winnowing out listeners, those interested in a broader spectrum of music.

But pay attention to the application to major labels. The majors get way too much press. They are not the future, they are the past.

Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

You earn the right to release a collection. Yes, your goal is to create a body of work, but the question is how do you build a fan base that is interested in that work, and how do you grow that fan base.

If you are an established act and you are releasing albums essentially as merchandise, continue to do so if this is a profitable venture. The CD is no different from a t-shirt. People see you, they want a memento. The fact that it contains your music is a bonus. Will they play it ad infinitum? Maybe, but you’d be surprised how few do. Furthermore, they’re already convinced, they’ve already been closed…what made them come in the first place?

The key is gaining attention, and how do you maintain this attention once you’ve gotten it?

It’s hard to get people to take a chance. Almost impossible. Reviews mean less than ever before in rock history, which is kind of a head-scratcher, since there are more of them… Maybe, they’re just less trustworthy, or the people writing them are bad writers or uneducated on the issues, or maybe their sheer volume is just overwhelming. And radio listenership declines. It’s not like everybody is focused on the limited outlets that existed before. Everyone’s a grazer, collecting a bizarre group of work on his hard drive. Take a look. The Chipmunks can sit next to Edith Piaf. Someone can like Kenny Chesney and AC/DC. Please file trade and look into others’ hard drives. It’s utterly fascinating. Don’t tell me about what happens in physical retail, about CDs…they are declining, they are not the future. It’s just a matter of when they are completely marginalized.

Do people watch entire movies on their mobile phones? Hell, they don’t even type out complete messages! Texts are brief and in minimalized code/language. People are busy, on the run, trying to make sense of this modern world, overloaded with information. Don’t assume the sixties and seventies still rule. That people are going to buy your CD, sit on the couch and listen for hours digesting it. Will some oldsters do this? Sure. But oldsters are getting older every day. And, unlike youngsters, they’re not impulse buyers, they’re the hardest people to sell to.

Follow a young person’s life. Besides texting, kids are in multiple IM conversations on their computers simultaneously. Each conversation is not at length and in depth. They might be listening to music in the background, but they’ll click through what they don’t like. How do you get their attention? With the killer track. It all starts with the killer track.

No one wants to see the act with one killer track. Oh please, don’t criticize my point here. Rihanna played clubs in the wake of "Umbrella"! You need multiple tracks before you can garner a reasonable live audience. If you’re a newbie, and you’re trying to break live, like a jam band, just put a plethora of material on your Website, complete live shows, tracks, rehearsal tapes…that’s a different culture, it’s one of immersion, of club membership, a badge of honor. Most scenes are not like that. In most you’ve got to earn people’s attention.

How many killer tracks do they have to hear before they’re eager for more?

Come on… After hearing "Take It Easy" did you think the Eagles were going to release "Hotel California"? Shit, took them albums to build momentum. And, once again, the singles from this early period comprise the best-selling album in U.S. history ("Greatest Hits 1971-1975"). People are skeptical at first, they don’t believe you’ve got the goods. Or, there’s mania, like with the boy bands, and they buy the album and then forget the act in minutes.

How can you get people to pay attention and believe you’re real. It’s not by dropping a complete album. The bigger the album, the smaller the number of people who are going to be interested. You want to cast a wide net.

This is not Radiohead. That band is only about the hard core fan. They don’t care about radio, TV… But, they started off with a single, "Creep"! That’s what got people’s attention, got them hooked. But that was years back, when most people checked in with MTV, which still played music. When you had to buy the complete album to hear the single! How are you gonna make it now? How are you gonna grow your audience? How are you going to make your music more than a souvenir of the live show?

By dribbling out killer tracks and letting momentum build, just like it did in the sixties.

People didn’t think Brian Wilson was a genius when they heard the Beach Boys’ first single, "Surfin’". Hell, many people didn’t respect him until "California Girls". The cumulative effect of endless singles eventually made people realize, this guy is great!

I’ve got each and every Beach Boys album. Believe me, the first, "Surfin’ Safari", which I like, would not close almost anybody. It’s an almost amateurish drive into a new territory by a new band. Years later, it’s an interesting artifact. But, if people had to buy it to hear the title track, the Beach Boys’ career would have been hurt. Especially if the formula was resurrected today.

Took multiple tries for the Beach Boys to make a great album, that they could give to newbies and newbies would like. This is Brian Wilson we’re talking about here, one of the foremost musical geniuses of the rock era… Are you really as good as Brian Wilson, did you really emerge fully-formed, instantly?

It’s a new world. It’s not about the shiny initial disc labored over for years, hyped to hell by Clive Davis for a phenomenal first week debut. That formula, if not completely done, is dying. You’ve got to develop, over time. With more and more material. True artist development. You’ve got to get people so excited that they turn on their friends…and believe me, their friends will only be interested if your body of work is great through and through.

If you are great, over time, you’ll assemble multiple great tracks. And that will generate ticket sales. Hell, almost no one from the last fifteen years is an arena act. Not on a consistent basis. So, don’t tell me I’m wrong here. People will go see the train-wreck once… But now they’re not even interested in doing that in prodigious numbers, because the train-wreck does not consume the country, it’s not a national mania… Hell, the Idols tour no longer sells out!

Start small. Very small. Woodshed. Get better. Only let people see your best stuff. Get traction. Don’t overwhelm the audience. Be so good you leave them wanting more! Don’t adhere to the old ways of doing it. That era, like Clive Davis, Tower Records and music on MTV is DONE!

Don’t make an album. And whatever you do, don’t send it to me! I don’t have time. And neither does anybody else. Except for your hard core fan base. Assuming you’ve got one. And they might not even be interested either.

The album was a moneymaker. Let’s string together 10 or 12 tracks so we can charge more. That’s why the labels’ enabling of iTunes/Amazon/Wal-Mart to sell singles is a death wish. You get one-tenth the money! It would be like buying a car wheel by wheel. Worse. Being able to buy a car for $1000. Manufacturers want to load your automobile up with gadgets, so you’ll pay a high price, so they can make a lot of money! Labels can’t pay their bills at a buck a track.

And maybe you can’t either. Which is why you need a career.

How do you garner new fans? By selling them sixty minutes of music? No, through the single! One track!

Sure, the Beatles turned the paradigm upside down and made the album an art form unto itself, releasing "Rubber Soul" in the U.S. with no singles whatsoever. But that was forty years ago. Today albums are endless productions, over sixty minutes long, that everyone gave up listening to prior to the Napsterization of the music business, back in the nineties, when they realized albums only had one good track. They had to purchase the album to get it, but no more. Furthermore, how many of those nineties acts have careers today? Turns out it was only about the single!

Heritage acts. Classic acts. Cut one great single! That you can do your best to work. Shit, give it away for free… As an inspiration to buy a concert ticket, where the true money is. Why spend all that money and time to cut an album that almost no one’s going to hear?

Come on, when your favorite old classic act has a new album do you buy it? No, not unless you’re the diehard of diehards. And even those people don’t expect it to be good, since the act hasn’t cut anything great in decades. But what if Styx put out only one track. You’d check out that track. Hell, if I got e-mail telling me Styx had one great track, I’d check it out, even though I’m not a big fan of the band.

Everybody’s got time for one track… If they hear it’s good. Sample fifteen seconds? Sure… If you say so. But as soon as you tell me about ten tracks and you want an hour of my time, I’m out of here. Most albums take days to devour, to fully understand, to get…and I’ve got much better things to do with my time, and so does the rest of your potential audience.

The album is a circle jerk, perpetuated by so called "artists". Do you really have that much to say? Does it really all tie together? Do I need to hear it all at once? No, you just believe you’re the new Beatles and you’re important and you’re entitled. But you’re not! You’re competing for mind share with not only the greatest musical hits of history, all at one’s fingertips online, on one’s iPod, but 500 cable channels, video games… Make it easy for me. Just give me one steaming single. That I can’t deny!

When we heard "I Want To Hold Your Hand", we didn’t put our fingers to our chins and say…wonder what the album’s gonna sound like! We did buy an album because we were infatuated with the sound, and were rewarded…but we were still jerked off by not only Dave Clark Five albums, but early Stones records too. And Animals albums. And Gary Lewis & the Playboy albums. Shit, the album really didn’t gain traction until "Sgt. Pepper", and now everybody believes they’ve got a "Sgt. Pepper" in them. Wrong!

I’m not saying you’ve got to create a Clive Davis hit. Rote, by numbers, just like everything else. But it must grab the listener. Maybe because it’s so damn different, but there must be instant magic. So maybe you can have instant karma, and become an instant success, so people will want more!

But you don’t give them ten more tracks… You give them a dribbling of killers. So they end up becoming fans of the act, not the track.

Everything you know is wrong. The train has jumped the track. The slate has been wiped clean. The old era is over. The Internet and iPod have changed everything. Now you’re only one of thousands of tracks. You’ve got to make it into a listener’s pantheon, or be deleted. How good are you?

New bands… One track only. Maybe you’ll get radio play, good luck. But even so, if it’s that good, people will trade it. And, if you get no traction, you can go back to the drawing board at a much lower price. In the old wave system, you cut an unsuccessful album and you’re over. Today, have a stiff single and you go back to the studio!

I know, I know, you don’t like it! You want to be like the bands of yore. Maybe you are a band of yore. But no one’s paying attention! They just don’t care!

We’re constantly trolling for great stuff. We say no, no, no and then yes! There’s not an issue of scarcity, there’s tons of music out there. And we haven’t got time for all of it. Face that fact. Can you earn our time? It’s precious. Start by asking only for a little. If we like what we hear, we’ll give you more. Continue to spoon-feed us, let us become addicted, we want to become addicted. To something good!

Maybe if you can get the record company to give you a big advance, or Wal-Mart to cut you a guaranteed check, then you should make an album. But then it’s about money, not success. You’re just interested in pocketing the dough. If you’re interested in having a career, don’t spend six months or a year in the studio working up ten tracks, cut one and give it away on your Website!

Even the hippest haven’t gotten this memo. I like a small slice of what Trent does. If he’d only put out one track, and the buzz was good, I’d have checked it out. A whole album? I pass. I’d rather spend my time listening to satellite radio, playing only singles, trying to find good new stuff.

The buzz is everything. It’s why "Iron Man" is a hit and "Speed Racer" will be a dud. Create something great and let the Net minions spread the word. But they can’t spread the word on something that takes an hour to digest. It’s kind of like when someone tells me to check out a movie online, or sends me more than one track or a CD, I don’t bother at all! I figure this person’s got no respect for my time, no understanding of the marketplace, thinks their shit is so great that they’re entitled to attention. You’ve got to earn attention. You’ve got to beg for a minute of our time. You’ve got to create something so good we want to give you our time!

It is important to study history, so one does not repeat the same mistakes. Don’t Guy Oseary, Arthur Fogel and Madge herself remember U2’s PopMart tour? The biggest, baddest band in the world, one beloved by Gen-X’ers everywhere (the true Gen-X, in its forties now, the one from Douglas Coupland’s novel), books stadiums and…DOESN’T SELL OUT!

Maybe the record was rushed to completion. Or maybe the fan base was aging and didn’t want to sit that far away.

Shit, stadium shows are for youngsters, and YOUNGSTERS DON’T WANT TO SEE MADONNA! Especially not at these prices.

Why take this risk? Either she plays to empty seats or you’ve got to give tickets away. In this Internet era, do you think everyone’s not going to KNOW?

They call it ARENA ROCK. Not Arena POP, or Arena DANCE! Blow it up even bigger, and IT’S GOT TO BE ROCK! It’s got to be big and ballsy, anthemic. Madonna might have brass balls, but her music DOES NOT! Rock has historically been the guarantee in arenas. It’s the ONLY guarantee in stadia. Why go against this? Why try to reinvent the wheel? Why take the risk?

To prove that Madonna is the biggest, baddest act on the planet.

Well, that’s certainly questionable, but that’s what she needs. For her ego.

Shit, even the Eagles don’t play stadiums. And they own the biggest selling album of ALL TIME! Their audience doesn’t want to go. And sit that far away. Do you really think fortysomething women, driving minivans, still carpooling their kids, want to get all dressed up to sit in the upper deck and eat hot dogs? Watching a miniature Madonna down below?

No fucking way. At least not until she admits she’s a has-been.

Oh, the album may be running up the chart, but people don’t want to hear "Hard Candy" live. Just like they didn’t want to hear Page Plant’s new material when those two toured. They eventually eviscerated almost all of it from their set and focused on Zeppelin tunes. The steady stream of people to the bathrooms and concessions made them feel less like superstars and more like…wannabes?

Madonna refuses to believe her time has passed, that she’s a has-been. Everybody inside knows she won’t go out with a greatest hits show. But that’s what you need to sell stadiums, that’s what you need to get oldsters to leave home and spend a fortune.

Maybe once. Maybe they’ll come to the train-wreck once. But they’ll stay home after that. And there’s no talk of this being Madonna’s RETIREMENT tour.

Who’s advising her? Madonna’s such an egomaniac, she won’t hire a real manager, someone familiar with the game of choosing the right building, of scaling, of ticket counts. She thinks it’s all about TV and radio, that they drive people into a frenzy where they HAVE to go to the show. Uh-uh. That was the eighties, the nineties, but not today’s music world. Money is made on the road. And the show’s got to be about the audience, not the performer. At least if you want people to come back at these inflated prices. You’ve got to DELIVER!

Maybe she’ll change the set list to drive ticket sales.

But you know the show can’t be good… SHE CAN BARELY SING!

She makes a deal with Live Nation and the stock she gets immediately tanks by half. She decides to play venues way too large for her. She needs the aforementioned Irving Azoff. But she won’t listen to him. Because Madonna knows EVERYTHING!

No one knows everything. Not even me. But I’ve got a feeling, this tour is a mistake.