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quite a bit. Thanks Monti. Let’s hear another one, Dave. Whatcha got? We’ve got Hip-Hop, and it’s Izzy Dunpor. Angelo, what do you think? Angelo: I don’t know. I’m kinda like Monti here with the tone and the voice, especially for a HipHop artist. Some of your best artists, like Nas and Jay-Z, as soon as you hear them on the mic, you know who that is. So there was nothing really that just stood out to me vocally about his voice. The raps were kind of gimmicky, the delivery and everything. It seems like what a lot of people or artists think they have to do to get on [the radio] these days is to have that singin’ hook, that catchy melody. And honestly, my label puts out a lot of that too, with Ne-Yo and The-Dream and everybody. But you’ve got to find your own lane, you know what I mean? You just can’t just buy into the formula, and that just seemed real formulaic to me. Most of the labels that run listings with us will say, “Find me something like this, find me something like that,”using the a la system common to the industry for many, many years. It frustrates our members. They ask us,“Why are they trying to pigeonhole us? Why do they want something that sounds like this or that?” Yet the industry guys are always saying,“Find me something fresh and different.”There’s a conflict there, obviously. My take on it is to be 15% different. Be similar enough that you get on the radio format, but different enough that you’re identifiable. Angelo: Exactly! I mean, there are thousands of new rappers every day—thousands. So you’ve got to do something that stands out. There’s got to be something about you that no one else can do. And I’ll bet everybody in the room will know it when they hear it. Next we’ve got Pop. It’s Soul Tattoo. [Music Plays] Ken, you seemed to be groovin’on it; what did you think? Ken: Clearly it was musical, and I think he had a good idea track-wise and the feel of it. But I think the song doesn’t live up to the rest of the kind of feel. It’s awfully wordy, and it just kind of goes on and on. I think there’s a much better, more creative way to say all that was said in that that would be much more compelling to me. I mean, it just didn’t inspire me that way. Musically, it was cool to hear the kind of influences that they had, but I just don’t think it would be something where you would go, “Oh wow. That’s cool.” Sorry. Angelo, do you concur? Angelo: The same thing. When it initially started, I said to Ken that it had like a Stevie feel, and then it changed and went somewhere else. To me, a song is about capturing a feeling, an emotion. And it’s good to have a range and take a song somewhere else, but at the same time, if I feel something coming

into a record, it’s like, sell me all the way on that— don’t cut me short and take me in another direction on it. Ken: I think the most important thing is for all of us on this panel, and for all of you out there, that this is a totally subjective situation, where one man’s opinion can differ vastly from someone else’s. People make music for their soul too. So just because it doesn’t inspire us or hit us immediately, it doesn’t mean that it’s not right. Monti: I would just add that records like this—this is a good message, but it’s got to be hot. There was nothing hot about that. Jamiroquai made a wonderful living doing that, and this track sounds like that sort of artist. But if you’re gonna make music like that, it’s got to really inspire. The message is nice in the song, but musically it just isn’t hot at all. Fair enough. Got any Country up there, Dave? [Music plays] Cliff: My take there is that lyrically, Country is a very storytelling, a very lyric-oriented genre. To me, the lyrics there were pretty cliché, in a sense very generalized. I’ve done a few of these panels over the years, and I always encourage people to get more specific in their lyric and allow the listener to universalize it to their experience. You don’t have to write really big, broad, generic, universal-sounding lyrics, hoping that you’re gonna hit a big audience with that lyric. I believe just the opposite. The more you can infuse the lyric with some personal detail, it sets it apart. You know, the color of her eye or the way a tear fell—something that allows the listener to climb into the room and be a part of the story. We’ve all had experiences of whatever, and we can listen to a song and extrapolate it as our own. It doesn’t have to be note-for-note, tit-for-tat, but for the lyric to be more personal, in my opinion, allows you to reach more people, because they get to take something away from it. So, in that one, I just got a real kind of broadstroke lyric, like I don’t really know that much about the people involved, except for “a man for all seasons,” and “the moon and the stars,” and I’ve heard it many times before. So give me something a little more that’s gonna grab me that’s specific to whatever the story is you’re trying to tell. Thanks Cliff. David, what do you have next for us? Modern AC, and it’s Ziron. Monti, you look like you’re deep in thought. Monti: Well, I’m just trying to figure it out. Modern AC … I’m not really sure what that is. That song could go in a variety of different ways. I don’t know if it was an artist submission or a song submission; you didn’t state beforehand. The U.K. loves songs like that, which they consider to be their mainstream pop music. In America, that’s a very difficult song to place; it’s very difficult for an artist like that to get a Continued on page 55

Continued from page 51 into that. Singer/songwriter is next. We’ve got Craig Lyons. [Music plays] What do you say, Monti? Monti: I think it’s a well-crafted song. The singer/songwriting world is very difficult. If that were submitted to me, I’d listen to three songs on that demo. But off the riff, the voice is not all that distinctive to me. I’m always thinking in the big picture, like, “Is that a voice that could sell a million records or sell a couple million singles?” So it didn’t resonate with me on that level. So, if the artist is in here, I’m sorry. You know, we’ve got these folks pretty well trained to deal with reality, and that’s what they’re here for. You brought up a good point. If record sales are doomed today, and nobody has really come up with a new system that’ll ever approximate the sales like we used to see in the good old days—many people say that music will still be used to sell concert tickets. That’s fine for the larger acts who have already built a fan base, but what about new acts that don’t have a major label, don’t have a fan base and maybe are out there playing to 100 people in a club. Where do you think it’s going to end up? It feels like the industry, as we’ve known it, is doomed: radio is dying, I’m sure that the days of the mega-hits are over, the private-jet Rock stars are over. I think that a musician middle class is on the way, which is a good thing—more people making some money. But what about new acts? How are they gonna break without record labels to do the work that they’ve done well. I know you guys have gotten a bad rap—not you particularly, but major labels. Monti: Michael, that is an enormous question. Look, I think, to break it down in a few different areas, we look for new ways and look at different types of technologies, different things to help break some of the new artists that we invest in today. I mean, you have to. I don’t believe the days of the jet-setting Rock stars are over. Frankly, I think we will continue to have them, maybe just not as many. I mean, certain artists attain that, and I think we still need to have that in our business. But look, it’s becoming harder and harder, we’re becoming more of a singles-oriented business, and that’s what we tend to be focusing on for the most part. It’s not so much that the conversation is, “How many records are we selling?” It’s, “How much music are we selling across the board? How many audience impressions are we able to move that music through on some digital platform?” That is really what we talk about quite a bit, both on the frontline business and in the catalog business we do that
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Recording - December 2010

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