Greg Coakley updates us on the music industry in 2022 on Expert Talk 9@9

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. You know where you are 9 at 9 with me TGo. And as always, I bring great experts that has all kinds of really cool information. And this particular expert, I give him a hard time, but he really is friend, family and a true expert on the business of music today. Greg Coakley's in the house.

Hey Greg, are you out there? Yep. I'm here. What's going on? What's going on with you, man? I mean, we got nine minutes for you to tell me how to fix the music industry for everybody. Go, Go back to using instruments. No, really. I mean, come on. You know, we went through COVID,

ple that are watching this in: 2035

you know, in this day and age, when people are listening to music in their headphones and they're on their phones, on their computers, I mean, we got little things in our living rooms and we could say, play this song, do that. Why does COVID stop them from being able to literally survive in this industry? Well, short answer is it depends on who you're talking about.

If you're a record label, you are doing great. If you're a streaming company you're doing phenomenal. If you actually created a music or perform it, you are in trouble. And that's because most of these artists don't own the music. Cool. Now you look at younger artists. Now, these young artists that are out there, they're, you know,

YouTube phenoms, they're TikToking, they're doing all this kind of stuff they seem to be doing. Okay. Some of them seem to be thriving quite well, but then you look at legends and it seems like they are really hurting because their system that they use for decades doesn't even exist anymore. Is it going to come back? Never it won't. How can it come back?

We now live in a digital era and we're not going back. We would probably have to get buy meteor for us to go back. Okay. Let's not put that out there. We don't even want to say that. Let's put that out there. So how do they survive now? How do they shift? What do they do? What are they missing?

Like with everything else is adapting to the new world, adapting to the digital world, adapting to technology. Most of the artists that you're referring to these legends, they came up in a whole nother world. Things were analog and you were able to touch it, feel it, look at it, you know, do all kinds of things with it nowadays.

Everything's digital. And if you spent the majority of your career living in an analog world, it's just very difficult to adjust and subsequently they're paying the cost. Now concert halls are opening again. You know, venues are opening again. Won't they just go back on tour. Like they used to, Well, what you have to realize is yes, they will.

They will, there are still limitations from COVID and they're bouncing depending on where you go. A lot of limitations are still overseas. People kept people from America, Kent to overseas. And then when you're talking about touring here in the U S I don't know, who's really crazy about getting them on a tour bus with 12 people vaccinated or not. Yeah,

there is that. There is that. So let's talk about, you know, I know there are new artists out there and with all the new technology, you can have a whole band and you're in your guest bedroom and create, I'm not going to say it's good music, but you can create some kind of music. If you are someone that's watching that would love to get started in this business has even the start of your career changed because of COVID.

Yeah. You stand a better chance if you w if you remain in control of your music, if you remain in control of your career and bear in mind that you live in a digital world now, and nothing analog is going to work. I mean, what COVID did for the music industry that I think was phenomenal is it actually proved a theory that you can stream concerts and make money.

A lot of the old artists still don't understand that, but these kids are doing it. So how do you get the older artists to understand it? Because I think my personal opinion, if they don't, they really are going to be lost. You're going to look back and say what happened to so-and-so? Oh, remember so-and-so how do we get them to see that they're going to have to make that move.

To be honest with you. I don't have an answer to that. I have a lot of friends. I grew up, I cut my teeth. I worked for 30 years with a lot of these older artists. And it's just difficult. It's difficult for someone that grew up in an era where number one, the record label did everything for you, even though they were ripping you off,

they did everything for you. You have promoters. You had, you had agents, everybody was handling that. And basically all they wanted you to do do is show up and perform. Now there's no such thing you show up and perform just sitting in an empty house. Yeah. Because I'm not buying tickets. And you know, I love, I drove you nuts.

Hey, so-and-so's coming to town. I'm not going. I just don't feel like it's safe. I'm not personally going. I watch them. I'll pay for tickets for a virtual concert. Like you're speaking of, but me going into a, you know, thousand seatrr, 10,000 seater and sit there. Yeah. That's not something I see. I'm going to be doing any time soon with all of that stated,

and with the technology that we're on right now, you know, are they streaming even just words? Are they doing podcasts? Are they expressing themselves in some other manner so they can stay connected with their audience? You know, you say they, and I have to accept that they, as the majority and the majority of these artists, aren't doing it because they don't understand.

They truly believe that they lose something when they stream the other. The other aspect of that is a lot of them don't understand the whole technology. So consequently, you'll see Instagram lives, you'll see Facebook lives. You'll see you too. And they're really poor quality, which is gonna to chase the audience away. But a lot of these, all the artists don't understand.

They think that if they go and they do a full production streaming show, it's going to take away from their future income. When the truth is, it's actually the reverse, You know, our producer just threw up the two minute warning, but I gotta ask you about vinyl, man. Everybody's talking about how vinyl's coming back. They're selling them. People were paying 40 and $50 for an album.

What do you think about that? Is it going to stick around or is this just a trend that happened because of COVID and it'll go away again. No vinyl was actually ticking up before COVID, but it is a trend. A lot of these kids, I have grandkids. I have a grandkid that If you put them in front of a turntable,

he'll think of something you're going to serve food on. Yeah. My grandkids think that the hole in the roof and the 45' is the it's broken. We won't get into that. I just like these, all the artists don't understand technology. These kids don't understand the older, the older music. So it's a great trend and I'm glad it's happening.

Unfortunately, once again, the artists are the ones that are losing because this vinyl, the majority of it is going to the label is going to everybody else except for the artist. And we don't have enough time, but I would actually get into some of these companies now that are actually buying up catalogs. Like it's the stock market. And these people own so much of these old artists music that when you do buy vinyl yep.

You're selling it to if you're buying it from this company, not from the artists. Well, I mean, you're one of our experts and that's, what's great about what we're doing now, because people are asking for more, for more, for more, but they don't want to sit down and do a half hour interview. So we're doing nine minute interviews.

So I thank you for coming on now, because now they're going to get to see you once a month. And we've had your web address going by gregcoakley.com. So people can reach out to you if they're in the music industry, or they're just a little confused. So maybe we can talk about, you know, the catalogs and all of that.

And the next episode that we do with you, but I wanted to thank you for coming on now. And for everybody out there, you know, if you want to know more about the music industry, you want to hit this guy up and go check out gregcoakley.com. I thank you, brother. You taught me so much about this industry. It's crazy.

And then Allen cuts us off. Hey, everybody, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you'll watch next time. And like I said, Greg Coakley will be on once a month, so make sure you check them out and as always I'm TGo, and I'll talk to you next time. Really Allen Really?