We’re sorry, but we like the people at Branded and respect what they are trying to do for the non-existent Asian “music industry”, but, sorry, BOB LEFSETZ is gonna show us the way??? Again???
The last time he was paid to be a speaker at Music Matters, very few cared.
In his Lefsetz Letters, he fawned about his 5-star hotel room and that his taxi driver from the airport to the hotel spoke “fluent English.”
Hell, my ex-wife is American and whom I still love very much and Uncle Bob made Americans looks and sound geographically challenged. They are NOT.
In recent weeks, Ken Ehrlich, the Producer of the Grammy Awards ‘live’ telecast has asked, “Who the fuck is Bob Lefsetz?”
Wired magazine has asked the same question and came neither here nor there with its answer.
It was a shithouse piece.
More to the point, as far as ASIA is concerned, Who the fuck is Bob Lefsetz to offer any relevant advice to this region?
What’s he going to talk about? An American living in the past with Jo Jo Gunne and how it relates to Asia?
Asia is a peculiar business even when it comes to big business, let alone the miniscule Asian market which, in 2008, stood at 2.7% of global sales for EMI.
What possible insights, solutions and visionary foresight- redundant, yeah- can Uncle Bob provide?
The size of his hotel suite at- where?- The Fullerton ?
How there are so many shows in Singapore- and which he has never ever seen- and most of which keep going el-busto-?
How F1 Rocks and the blood bath Universal Music took on this event?
About the quality of the satay and Hainan Chicken rice and half-baked entrepreneurs in Singapore?
As a music market, Asia is dead, dead, dead. And, puhleeeese, don’t give me any crap about China.
As Apple, Nike and numerous others have found out, China will counterfeit, forge and, when it comes to music, make it “less worthy.”- and export pirated product into Europe and Australia.
Fuck it, chitins, this has been happening for over two decades.
Meanwhile, a “music” company like Gold Typhoon cannot even give artists a proper accounting of sales.
Then again, what sales?
Over 40 million streams and a “royalty settlement” of less that US$5k????
Ask UK-based singer-songwriter Stewart Mac who had these amount of “streams” and bugger all else.
Bob Lefsetz as a “speaker”? About what? The Grammies? The Ninnies? How Asia can sell more music product?
Oh, come on, puhleeese: This is like someone telling me old Seymour Stein is trying to “rescue” the “Asian music industry.
Er, HOW? And when?
Respect for what he’s done, but what has he done for the ASIAN music industry despite all these freebie trips to the region???
These are “oldsters” from “the West” coming to the “East” like music missionaries ‘cos some dullards are in awe of the “white men”, Tonto.
Who can make some semblance of the Asian music industry and MAYBE rescue it?
An Asian- and REAL Asian Talent as opposed to some Filipina doing a note-for-note copy just like the covers band I just heard at Insomnia in the once-hip Lan Kwai Fong area of Hong Kong: Technically great, but batting squat when it comes to originality. But, hey, it’s a fucking gig.
But, right now, Bob Lefsetz coming to Singapore means another free trip for the geezer, the chance to stay in a five-star hotel and have some Asian toadies listen to some guy “from the West” who never even travelled around Asia. Hell, I’d rather pay to listen to Adrian Cheesley at EMI, far left below.
At last he knows how this region- and the Middle East- works- and understands what music works in Asia.
Better yet, now that Branded has paid for this freebie trip for Uncle Bob, put him on a panel with Calvin Wong at Warner, Lord Cheesley, and if she can be bothered, my Daughter.
Me? Screw it: I am taking music further with the Hong Kong Jockey Club than any of these “music companies”, music conferences and vacuous talking heads.
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