Excerpts From the Lefsetz Letter

This is Jinners of Jinners.com. Hello. Nice to meet you. I can't seem to post on my own blog (No thanks to Blogger), so I am going to post on Extrawack.

I got hip to Bob Lefsetz and his newsletter (Lefsetz Letter) thanks to Extrawack. These newsletters are actually really great to read when you're in the mood to rant about the music biz. There is a discourse within. There is a fire and passion in his words that I haven't seen in a while. Here are a couple of my recent favorite excerpts:

Chris Rock on the Music Business (from Rolling Stone)
Chris Rock: Music kind of sucks. Nobody's into being a musician. Everybody's getting their mogul on. You've been so infiltrated by this corporate mentality that all the time you'd spend getting great songs together, you're busy doing nine other things that have nothing to do with art. You know how shitty Stevie Wonder's songs would have been if he had to run a fuckin' clothing company and a cologne line?
RollingStone: Plenty of rappers say, "I'm not a rapper, I'm a businessman."
Chris Rock: That's why rap sucks, for the most part. Not all rap, but as an art form it's just not at its best moment. Sammy the Bull would have made a shitty album. And I don't really have a desire to hear Warren Buffett's album - or the new CD by Paul Allen. That's what everybody's aspiring to be.

The ComScore Report
"I'm sick and tired of the constant debate about Radiohead's business model. It WASN'T a business model. It was a one time stunt that is not the future of the music business and will only be replicated by fools.

Want to make some money? Sell t-shirts. Charge for gigs. Create a fan club (that actually delivers something besides tickets). Because as 2007 draws to a close, it appears most people now believe music is free. And want to hear it before they pay for it!

You take a test drive before you buy a car, don't you? You go to the Apple Store and fiddle with a Mac before you order one. What makes you think the same rules don't apply to music? Music, when done right, isn't disposable. The only stuff you don't try out before buying is shit that's cheap, that you instantly use up. You don't care that much if you get ripped off. You'll just never buy that product again."

Artistic Control
"By time we hit the seventies, acts just delivered their records. They recorded them wherever they wanted to, with no unwanted input. And labels had an obligation to release them. End result? Riches for everyone.

But we haven't had that environment for fifteen years, at least.

Now, if you take their money, you've sold your soul. You must do what the label wants. Or else it won't even release your record."

Now what do YOU think?