JDK is one of the most prolific A&R men. His keen sense and ability to "sense" a hit, and an artist is legendary. The industry has changed. And I can't say it's for the better. I have fond memories of JDK. Met him years ago and he is charismatic, amazing, intelligent, strategic and focused. He is the power behind the house.
What does that even mean and how is it respectable? He is Khazarian Mafia and he ruins what he touches. But because the Khazarian Mafia controls every facet of entertainment, they can force garbage to be popular.
He told me face to face that I would never be a rock star. He said “ You’re a great songwriter, not a rockstar.” He said “you’ve got no band...great songs...but no band” I hated him that night but looking back on it now, he was exactly correct. His direct and blunt honesty was awesome. 🤟🙂
Because he’s not an artist or a musician or a creator of original artistic ideas he’s inherently detached from the art, but is clearly a fan & appreciates artistic creative minds, hearts & spirits. Plus he speaks from a world of experience & has operated within the icy cold backstabbing horror & utter wankers of “the music industry” & drawn fantastic results from distrusting egomaniac self serving assholes. Respect.
@@garybruce4704 I’m an Emmy winning songwriter who now owns 3 clubs in downtown Atlanta. I have a 700k home, 4 cars, a boat and a second home on the lake. All of which I bought from money I earned from the music business. Who the fuck are you?
He is so right. I remember in the early 90`s you could buy a new released and amazing record every week. Nowadays you just suffer from most of the crap the record companies put on the market.
His comments, regarding psychic pain fostering art (17:30) and the negative effects of drugs like prozac in reducing art quality were stunning. God, I'd never considered any of it, but he's right!
John Kalodner: John Kalodner. No other description ever fitted, so unique and special is his talent. Here, his idea on how Microsoft could have killed the mp3 tragedy with one line of code is pure genius. But his records will be forever living proof of that genius. Our only regret is that he never managed to make a record with our great friend Ruby Friedman, whom he so wonderfully championed just before retiring. Ah, and also that we never managed to make a record with him, of course.
Dude is worth $50 million . He never produced, wrote or performed a single note. I think he is happily unemployed and didn’t have to adapt to the changes... just my opinion! I would fade off into the sunset and be chill AF!
Anybody who looks like that, and talks like that - HAD to be a genius to make it in the industry, fortunately for John, he was: thanks for the great records John!
John pulled my wife, Elaine into Geffen from Atlantic in '80, which from there for the next 10 years, were some truly amazing days! Being a cocky musician, I'd often fuck with him about his white suits, but the man was a fucking genius. I'd thought he was just resurrecting dozens of great acts, but he landed nearly a dozen original acts like Berlin, Wang Chung, Black Crowes, and Jackyl. Compared to the BS of today, and a world of press a button/create an LP, John's a Da Vinci, in comparison!
Man this guy nailed it all. No wonder he was a great a&r just mentioning how certain medications and personality are being fixed is totally why i write good music cause I'm not taking paxel and stuff .I swear to god i feel like sometimes the reason my relationships go bad or no ware is to write great songs, and that's what i do lol.The only shitting thing is who now is going to listen to my songs and care, if i can't make it .
For his ending he seems to not know why they made mp3. The reason was just to make yes a smaller file but the smaller file was easier to download based on internet speeds at the time .Now that its super fast you can upload 50mb songs and still download them super fast without mp3 so it wont matter.The only way you can control it is by controlling the file and now that's impossible now.
As Kim Fowley RIP told me not too long before he died: Oh there's still jobs in music, you just have to work and do 15 times as much now since the dismantling of the classic labels. Music isn't the only thing in entertainment that got dismantled and it's a matter of eveloutuon. The first buisness ruined was adult film, then music, then television and film and now even cable and satellite. People now a days, mostly kids, don't even use television anymore. Unfortunately that's how it is now. You can't turn back either unfortunately.
It's just what happens to a lot of these LA guys. They get tunnel vision. - There are a lot of black A&R guys who only listen to rap, soul, r&b, dance styles and don't dig product from white artists. It's just the way it is. - They are great at picking out artists in the genre they love. But they're really just 'one trick ponies'. (You don't see many LA Rap producers scouting Bluegrass, Americana or Country). It's just the way it is. Nothing bigger or more evil.
I had a similar experience. My uncle Peter was director of advertising for Billboard Magazine. He would have offered to demo albums. We would play a game called pick the hit from about the time I was 12 years old. I got really good at it. I wrote for Bruce Springsteen. Several of his major hits the lyrics were written by me. Bruce promised to pay me if he used the lyrics depending on how good they were. Bruce welched on his agreement. I provided him lyrics and 1975, 1976, and 1982. Bruce doesn't write all his lyrics.
Smart guy, obviously, but I think there are really great writers out there, but there's also so much product that it's very hard to stand out and the standard is that rap/hip hop is good when in actuality it's crap.
He's right, the record industry fucked up royally by allowing MP3 files that could be downloaded by anyone then kept the CD prices at almost $15. I was surprised that no artist took a record company to court and sued for allowing their music to be given away. And then drove it home with shit rap music. Disposable music. He was smart to take his $50m and take off.
This is an great interview. His proposed solution won't work though, because mp3 is just a file format, there's plenty of other formats, and people pirate those too. Even if Microsoft removed mp3's from their media playing software, people can still pirate WAVs, FLACs, various other formats, or just use a third party's software to play the mp3 files. Limiting file formats will in no way help the music industry. It'll probably only make it worse since people will begin pirating in higher quality.
John, Dump the pink and purple, get a serious cut and beard trim, start pumping iron. Your life will beautifully change in a positive direction. Send me a message if you want to make beautiful music together, I'm a fantastic songwriter.
John Kalodner, after having heard the original ASIA album and viewing the logo and artwork for the first time...."the logo is ugly and we don’t hear a single". The album went on to be the #1 selling album in the USA in 1982. SO, he didn't always get it right.....
you don't know that. Aerosmith had a lot of great songs. That kind of talent gets noticed and promoted eventually regardless. Put another way, I don't know of any bands like aerosmith that made a ton of good music and barely made a splash. Songs like walk this way, dream on, etc. have a way of catching ears. Real talent eventually emerges and floats to the top.
Andrew Berry, A decent 70's band? Aerosmith was inarguably the biggest/baddest American hard rock band in the 70's. Get Your Wings, Toys In The Attic,Rocks and Draw The Line are the benchmark for 70's hard rock. You have no idea what you're talking about.
John, just pick up the pieces of your life and move on. You have intelligence and abilities. Use them in another industry, the same way others have had to do. Look at all the people in America who used to make clothes, produce steel, make heavy machinery, manufacture goods and make cars....all of whom are out of jobs because the industries moved to China and other third world countries. Do what they did.....adapt. Yes, your glory days of being connected to an exciting and glamorous business are over...just like big music stars who rise, peak and then years later, find themselves playing one-nighters in small towns and living on a tour bus with no groupies chasing behind. It is the cycle of life itself. The key of real success is the ability to survive and be grateful for having lived some glory days in the past.
+jennifer86010 I wonder if you're possibly missing the larger point in the totality of this interview. YES he laments on a personal level but I feel he's commenting more on the changes in the business and what has happened as a result of an overall lack of industry wide innovation. I think he laments that the business run by an old guard never embraced change with regard to technology. I took away more of that than woe is me my life over. Though to be fair, he definitely went there a bit.
Fascinating overall. Can't say that the record companies were out for others than themselves though, as he rightly claims Apple is. They served artists and employed many people when it served their own interests. So does Apple though. I could offer that his complaint sounds more to be about human greed being smoke screened through corporate movement. Music's just a very visible microcosm of the way things are becoming in so many areas. Different particulars.
Correct the record companies are looking for the LOOK and some talent, they can sell more merch and sell out concerts to make the money they made on record sales years ago.So if you have the IT or X factor then yes you still have a chance in this industry.
I agree with him that Kelly Clarkson is a great recording artist and that Country Music is still as authentic as ever. Many Spanish ballads still produce great sounds. Just listen to any song from Cristian Castro, the 1930’s classics that Luis Miguel re-recorded, etc.
He was successful. But this success most often meant commercialization and lowering artistic level. An instructive example is when he had good parts of Yes and King Crimson and crated Asia. In the 80s many seasoned rock musicians were struggling to survive. Classic rock era was over, and big stages were taken by kitschy Van Halen or fresh but simple The Clash. So, people like Coverdale and later Aerosmith got scared of their future and they agreed to compromise part of their identity and integrity to adjust to the new times. Same happened earlier to Ozzy who had to part ways with Black Sabbath in order to adjust to the heavier sound. Kalodner was instrumental in several of such "adjustments". I appreciate his abilities to successfully promote many bands, and probably in the 80s there was just no other way. On the other hand, I don't see his work as a significant contribution to artistic legacy, in my mind he is rather a symbol of commercialization of the music in the 80s. Nowadays things are much different, btw. There is place for more genres and more opportunities for all these bands to keep playing. OK, there is no big fame for Whitesnake anymore and money is probably not like in the 80s, but at least Steve Howe does not need to simplify his playing like he did in Asia.
he has a lot of knowledge on the music biz from his experience. But the more this guy spoke the more I understood why he is no longer apart of the music game!
so the record label used to actually find a band they want to sign, and then rewrite their songs, edit to their specs, mix to their specs, hand pick everyone involved in the process of making the record, and then "blame" the band by sticking them with the debt if the record fails??? WTF?
There were many great points made in this video, but I doubt that "one line of code" could have ended the MP3 problem. Microsoft would have had to ban any MP3 software from working on their OS. Apple would have needed to do the same, and every hardware manufacturer capable of creating a portable player would have as well. It would take a lot more than one line of code to identify that someone was trying to launch an MP3 player and then stop it. Also there are many legit uses for MP3 and other audio codecs that have nothing to do with pirating music. And the CD is based on a technique that also omits some of the information from the original sound, but that seems to be OK. Most people can't tell good MP3s from CDs on most common stereos and headphones anyway. But, aside from those technical points, there were some very good insights here about the history of the music business. I tip my hat to Mr. Kalodner for the music he helped bring to fruition.
I remember this guy in all the old Aerosmith videos! LOL! Throughout the interview he sprinkled some interesting inside-baseball about the biz. His perceived mp3 threat was way off.. "His" enemy was the internet ...and the free distribution that brought. He's pissed because all popular music isn't monetized and channeled through his office and up to his boss's suite.. Music creation and appreciation is bigger than ever.. its just not controlled by a handful of people that he worked for.
He was kind of right about Aerosmith's GET A GRIP - it indeed sold "like" 20 million copies. Over 20 million copies world wide, so, sure, "like" is correct. His view about drugs in regard to the art of music... that's completely biased based on who he knew about. Whether in 1978 or 2022, someone writing/recording and the results of that is what it is, only the results of awareness/hype world wide are different; the industry has changed in layers, not just in technology, in regard to artists being whatever amount of successful, blah blah blah, genre this genre that. That's not the artists' fault. There won't be a Keith Richards, Jimmy Page or Kurt Cobain in the 2030s because it's the 2030s, not the 1970s or 1990s, when the music industry was still quite in place, with only minor changes - LPs, EPs and singles went from vinyl and cassette, mainly, to CD, and printed magazines were the hype. His view about the record industry via CD prices is spot on, though. And his view about Steve Jobs. iTunes ruined the music industry, although it took a little longer than it could have - Jobs had originally considered streaming but focused on the iPod instead because he thought people would be more interested in owning their music than renting it, like so many people do these days with Apple Music, Spotify, CZcams, Amazon, Tidal, blah blah blah. Neither format pays artists worth a shit. County music has been the biggest selling genre of music, overall, especially with hard formats, since the late 1990s, regardless of what he thinks. His criticism of Aerosmith's recordings is mind blowing (see THE MAKING OF PUMP). There's no way to know if he was right or not - at least until Aerosmith release some box set of what they did before he stuck his opinions in without knowing anything, even considering the things he says, which is a bit convoluted, given his own hot air of himself. Successful, indeed, and given a lot of sway, but he sure did piss a lot of people off, and being unemployed revealed that his opinions were not wanted, they were strictly paid for. Apparently he didn't know who Adele was at the time of this interview.
Kalodner seems to give no fucks and tells it like it is. Met him front row at an Aerosmith show in the 1980s, nobody seemed to know who he was at the time. He signed our ticket, still have it.
So rap music, the #1 genre at the time this interview was done, is "Shit" to him? This thinking is probably the reason why he became unemployed. The music business changed and he was unable to adapt. He doesn't have to be a fan of the genre, but he failed to see the lucrative opportunity that hip hop has created for the music business. Failure to adapt to the changing climate of any industry, results in finding yourself unemployed...
Elrik K first things first.... It's "Hire"... Second, no one said anything about "Black" artists... I said Hip Hop artist.... Third, he is out of business because of his failure to adapt to the changing scope of the business, and blames the genre's popularity instead of his ignorance... Please refer to my previous statement again. Thanx ;-)
@ 31:32 ...."it's really going to damage the culture of America..for awhile at least." is that not true???? that is exactly what has happened! look at us now, floundering in the deep. This is May 2022 I am writing.
Yes, this is all someone else's fault and those shit rap records ruined it especially. This is how you think when you're the one who actually fucked it up. It's a guy like this who made all this possible by contributing to a stale, alienating music business rooted in theft and abuse. As soon as he said that Hillary Duff is one of the few real artist left I had no reason to take him seriously. There's a lot of great musicians today but he decided to retire because no one would pay him enough. That's the problem nowadays. All the smart guys in zz top beards have their heads so far up their asses that the only people left to run the music business are starving inner city kids who never thought they had a chance. A guy like this can tell you what chord progression sounds nice and fresh but that's it. He found success in a predictable industry flush with cash but as soon as the weather changed he lost interest and went home. Now he's complaining but why? Avril Lavigne is putting out music...
he said some true stuff that is happening today. but he was afraid of change. so sad. Rap killed his career , lol. and there were no black artist considered in his praise of current music? Hillary Duff ?? C'mon son
yuck, is this guy just gonna talk about how much better his taste in music is than anyone else's for the whole video? Thanks but no thanks, I was hoping to learn something.
Now that i've watched the whole interview i hafta say that i have rarely watched something so depressing and that i feel pity for the guy because he has no idea what is going on and how the world is running nowadays.
Metallica is a great example of decline as he describes it. Those kids had nothing in the beginning except their instruments and their garage. Now they spend their time with their kids and overpriced vacations. When they do get together they don’t even know one another anymore and they sound like shit.
A book by John Kalodner would be a treasure of insights and stories about the music business.
JDK is one of the most prolific A&R men. His keen sense and ability to "sense" a hit, and an artist is legendary. The industry has changed. And I can't say it's for the better. I have fond memories of JDK. Met him years ago and he is charismatic, amazing, intelligent, strategic and focused. He is the power behind the house.
What does that even mean and how is it respectable? He is Khazarian Mafia and he ruins what he touches. But because the Khazarian Mafia controls every facet of entertainment, they can force garbage to be popular.
He told me face to face that I would never be a rock star. He said “ You’re a great songwriter, not a rockstar.” He said “you’ve got no band...great songs...but no band” I hated him that night but looking back on it now, he was exactly correct. His direct and blunt honesty was awesome. 🤟🙂
Who the fuck are you ??? Lmao
Because he’s not an artist or a musician or a creator of original artistic ideas he’s inherently detached from the art, but is clearly a fan & appreciates artistic creative minds, hearts & spirits. Plus he speaks from a world of experience & has operated within the icy cold backstabbing horror & utter wankers of “the music industry” & drawn fantastic results from distrusting egomaniac self serving assholes. Respect.
@@jamescassidy3995 boy, he crushed me that night but as years went by, I knew he was dead on. I wish I’d met him when I was 20.
@@garybruce4704 I’m an Emmy winning songwriter who now owns 3 clubs in downtown Atlanta. I have a 700k home, 4 cars, a boat and a second home on the lake. All of which I bought from money I earned from the music business. Who the fuck are you?
@@curtisclark13 , Like, like, like, like, like………
One of the all-time greats. Thanks for your passion and the resulting artistry, John! If you're a fan of 70s/80s rock, thank this man.
Thanks for creating the supergroup ASIA, they are the only group I listen to since 1982!
He's really right. Digital music destroyed the music industry.
He's seems to me the Rain Man of the record industry back in the 80s and 90s.
You tell them. Finally - a person of knowledge.
"Good art always comes from physic pain or hunger", 100% agree. "Most Rap is disposable music that doesn't cost anything to make", 100% agree too.
10 years later this is still relevant
He is so right. I remember in the early 90`s you could buy a new released and amazing record every week. Nowadays you just suffer from most of the crap the record companies
put on the market.
His comments, regarding psychic pain fostering art (17:30) and the negative effects of drugs like prozac in reducing art quality were stunning. God, I'd never considered any of it, but he's right!
I appreciate his depth and brutal honesty.
Thanks for posting this full interview!
it's a shame he's still not in the bizness....now talentless rappers everywhere..
blame universal
Remy ma still going...
John Kalodner: John Kalodner. No other description ever fitted, so unique and special is his talent. Here, his idea on how Microsoft could have killed the mp3 tragedy with one line of code is pure genius. But his records will be forever living proof of that genius. Our only regret is that he never managed to make a record with our great friend Ruby Friedman, whom he so wonderfully championed just before retiring. Ah, and also that we never managed to make a record with him, of course.
Not at all. Quit swinging from kosher nuts.
Dude is worth $50 million . He never produced, wrote or performed a single note. I think he is happily unemployed and didn’t have to adapt to the changes... just my opinion! I would fade off into the sunset and be chill AF!
Everyone in the 70's was ugly = greatest music there will ever be.
Anybody who looks like that, and talks like that - HAD to be a genius to make it in the industry, fortunately for John, he was: thanks for the great records John!
How do you figure? He looks and talks like that because he's a genetic carrier for Asperger's Syndrome since he's Ashkenazi.
He does know his stuff.
he is right."rap crap, s%^t hop,beats" has soiled the music industry among other things, big blame goes to 'yo mtv raps' lol
Sarcasm is lost to you people. He retired. Not really “unemployed.” Oye
Much smoother @ 1.25 speed!! :D
The arts have always been a reflection of society. The sad state of the music industry reflects the sad state of todays society.
Great !!! the man knows his stuff!!
Music directly represents the passions of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.
Aristotle
his interview and insight is bang on in all cases..this guy knows his shit..his history speaks for itself...
Shit rap music ... I love it and couldn't agree more!!! 💞
John pulled my wife, Elaine into Geffen from Atlantic in '80, which from there for the next 10 years, were some truly amazing days! Being a cocky musician, I'd often fuck with him about his white suits, but the man was a fucking genius. I'd thought he was just resurrecting dozens of great acts, but he landed nearly a dozen original acts like Berlin, Wang Chung, Black Crowes, and Jackyl. Compared to the BS of today, and a world of press a button/create an LP, John's a Da Vinci, in comparison!
Genius of The Click Track and Freeze-Dried Rock.
Man this guy nailed it all. No wonder he was a great a&r just mentioning how certain medications and personality are being fixed is totally why i write good music cause I'm not taking paxel and stuff .I swear to god i feel like sometimes the reason my relationships go bad or no ware is to write great songs, and that's what i do lol.The only shitting thing is who now is going to listen to my songs and care, if i can't make it .
For his ending he seems to not know why they made mp3. The reason was just to make yes a smaller file but the smaller file was easier to download based on internet speeds at the time .Now that its super fast you can upload 50mb songs and still download them super fast without mp3 so it wont matter.The only way you can control it is by controlling the file and now that's impossible now.
This video is refreshing
As Kim Fowley RIP told me not too long before he died: Oh there's still jobs in music, you just have to work and do 15 times as much now since the dismantling of the classic labels. Music isn't the only thing in entertainment that got dismantled and it's a matter of eveloutuon. The first buisness ruined was adult film, then music, then television and film and now even cable and satellite. People now a days, mostly kids, don't even use television anymore. Unfortunately that's how it is now. You can't turn back either unfortunately.
I love that he only understand/recognizes white artists as putting out decent music and gave a backhanded compliment to JF.
It's just what happens to a lot of these LA guys. They get tunnel vision. - There are a lot of black A&R guys who only listen to rap, soul, r&b, dance styles and don't dig product from white artists. It's just the way it is. - They are great at picking out artists in the genre they love. But they're really just 'one trick ponies'. (You don't see many LA Rap producers scouting Bluegrass, Americana or Country). It's just the way it is. Nothing bigger or more evil.
wow. this guy is really talented about talking about music and the industry. he should get paid.
I had a similar experience. My uncle Peter was director of advertising for Billboard Magazine. He would have offered to demo albums. We would play a game called pick the hit from about the time I was 12 years old.
I got really good at it. I wrote for Bruce Springsteen. Several of his major hits the lyrics were written by me. Bruce promised to pay me if he used the lyrics depending on how good they were. Bruce welched on his agreement. I provided him lyrics and 1975, 1976, and 1982. Bruce doesn't write all his lyrics.
Smart guy, obviously, but I think there are really great writers out there, but there's also so much product that it's very hard to stand out and the standard is that rap/hip hop is good when in actuality it's crap.
Almost crossed paths with him at the tale end of his career when we were managed by Bud Prager (Mountain, Foreigner, Megadeth).
Dude knows his shit.
He's right, the record industry fucked up royally by allowing MP3 files that could be downloaded by anyone then kept the CD prices at almost $15. I was surprised that no artist took a record company to court and sued for allowing their music to be given away. And then drove it home with shit rap music. Disposable music. He was smart to take his $50m and take off.
Artists can still make a fortune by touring. If the record companies, who spent decades screwing artists, are suffering, well thats too bad
I never got to work with John, but his reputation was well respected.
This is an great interview. His proposed solution won't work though, because mp3 is just a file format, there's plenty of other formats, and people pirate those too. Even if Microsoft removed mp3's from their media playing software, people can still pirate WAVs, FLACs, various other formats, or just use a third party's software to play the mp3 files. Limiting file formats will in no way help the music industry. It'll probably only make it worse since people will begin pirating in higher quality.
Isnt he the guy in the elevator in Aerosmith's video " dude looks like a lady" ?
yeah he's in both videos.
he dresses as a bride in dude looks like a lady lol
Ummmm obvi
"someone stealing stuff from Target... that will never happen" just one of the phrases that didnt age well
Hmmm i want to know why he spoke of rap music the way he did?? 🤔🔮
If you don't understand this, no one will be able to explain it to you in a youtube comment.
John, Dump the pink and purple, get a serious cut and beard trim, start pumping iron. Your life will beautifully change in a positive direction.
Send me a message if you want to make beautiful music together, I'm a fantastic songwriter.
John Kalodner, after having heard the original ASIA album and viewing the logo and artwork for the first time...."the logo is ugly and we don’t hear a single". The album went on to be the #1 selling album in the USA in 1982. SO, he didn't always get it right.....
If it wasn't for this guy, Aerosmith would've been relegated to a decent 70s band and largely forgotten.
yup
you don't know that. Aerosmith had a lot of great songs. That kind of talent gets noticed and promoted eventually regardless. Put another way, I don't know of any bands like aerosmith that made a ton of good music and barely made a splash. Songs like walk this way, dream on, etc. have a way of catching ears. Real talent eventually emerges and floats to the top.
HA HA HA HA .... AS IF!!!! This guy is simply a 'critic' .... go get a band and try to match Aerosmith JERKWAD!
Andrew Berry, A decent 70's band? Aerosmith was inarguably the biggest/baddest American hard rock band in the 70's. Get Your Wings, Toys In The Attic,Rocks and Draw The Line are the benchmark for 70's hard rock. You have no idea what you're talking about.
Cher has shown John accolades and credits him for her 1987 comeback.
John, just pick up the pieces of your life and move on. You have intelligence and abilities. Use them in another industry, the same way others have had to do. Look at all the people in America who used to make clothes, produce steel, make heavy machinery, manufacture goods and make cars....all of whom are out of jobs because the industries moved to China and other third world countries. Do what they did.....adapt. Yes, your glory days of being connected to an exciting and glamorous business are over...just like big music stars who rise, peak and then years later, find themselves playing one-nighters in small towns and living on a tour bus with no groupies chasing behind. It is the cycle of life itself. The key of real success is the ability to survive and be grateful for having lived some glory days in the past.
+jennifer86010 I wonder if you're possibly missing the larger point in the totality of this interview. YES he laments on a personal level but I feel he's commenting more on the changes in the business and what has happened as a result of an overall lack of industry wide innovation. I think he laments that the business run by an old guard never embraced change with regard to technology. I took away more of that than woe is me my life over. Though to be fair, he definitely went there a bit.
Almost got signed by him when he was at Geffen in 1993🤭
Fascinating overall. Can't say that the record companies were out for others than themselves though, as he rightly claims Apple is. They served artists and employed many people when it served their own interests. So does Apple though. I could offer that his complaint sounds more to be about human greed being smoke screened through corporate movement. Music's just a very visible microcosm of the way things are becoming in so many areas. Different particulars.
If it wasn't about just the look as it is now we'd be listening to some good music.
Brain meds explains Spotify. This guy is spot on in everything he said. How sad he is proven right 16 years after this interview.
Correct the record companies are looking for the LOOK and some talent, they can sell more merch and sell out concerts to make the money they made on record sales years ago.So if you have the IT or X factor then yes you still have a chance in this industry.
I agree with him that Kelly Clarkson is a great recording artist and that Country Music is still as authentic as ever. Many Spanish ballads still produce great sounds. Just listen to any song from Cristian Castro, the 1930’s classics that Luis Miguel re-recorded, etc.
Err,is this this guy's real voice,or has he had a bad accident?
Your "free" music is the reason concerts cost a fortune today.
He was successful. But this success most often meant commercialization and lowering artistic level. An instructive example is when he had good parts of Yes and King Crimson and crated Asia.
In the 80s many seasoned rock musicians were struggling to survive. Classic rock era was over, and big stages were taken by kitschy Van Halen or fresh but simple The Clash. So, people like Coverdale and later Aerosmith got scared of their future and they agreed to compromise part of their identity and integrity to adjust to the new times. Same happened earlier to Ozzy who had to part ways with Black Sabbath in order to adjust to the heavier sound.
Kalodner was instrumental in several of such "adjustments". I appreciate his abilities to successfully promote many bands, and probably in the 80s there was just no other way. On the other hand, I don't see his work as a significant contribution to artistic legacy, in my mind he is rather a symbol of commercialization of the music in the 80s.
Nowadays things are much different, btw. There is place for more genres and more opportunities for all these bands to keep playing. OK, there is no big fame for Whitesnake anymore and money is probably not like in the 80s, but at least Steve Howe does not need to simplify his playing like he did in Asia.
Holy crap he pulled no punches lol
he has a lot of knowledge on the music biz from his experience. But the more this guy spoke the more I understood why he is no longer apart of the music game!
exavier swain I promise I'm not being critical but I'm really curious, why do you think so? I would love to hear some other opinions.
exavier swain me too !
i have a studio, if u want to still work with bands come on by sir, cheers
Listen to "Be My Girl" by Rocky Peter. Absolutely Brilliant!!
so the record label used to actually find a band they want to sign, and then rewrite their songs, edit to their specs, mix to their specs, hand pick everyone involved in the process of making the record, and then "blame" the band by sticking them with the debt if the record fails??? WTF?
Very interesting.
that was 6 yrs ago, tho. bye bye music idustry - hello indie artist
besides of him blaming everything on "stealing online" it's a very interesting clip imo!
The purification system in his home is straight out of a sci-Fi movie.
Exactly.
There were many great points made in this video, but I doubt that "one line of code" could have ended the MP3 problem. Microsoft would have had to ban any MP3 software from working on their OS. Apple would have needed to do the same, and every hardware manufacturer capable of creating a portable player would have as well. It would take a lot more than one line of code to identify that someone was trying to launch an MP3 player and then stop it.
Also there are many legit uses for MP3 and other audio codecs that have nothing to do with pirating music. And the CD is based on a technique that also omits some of the information from the original sound, but that seems to be OK. Most people can't tell good MP3s from CDs on most common stereos and headphones anyway.
But, aside from those technical points, there were some very good insights here about the history of the music business. I tip my hat to Mr. Kalodner for the music he helped bring to fruition.
@beatz04 however, keep in mind this video was taken 6 years ago. :D
I remember this guy in all the old Aerosmith videos! LOL! Throughout the interview he sprinkled some interesting inside-baseball about the biz. His perceived mp3 threat was way off.. "His" enemy was the internet ...and the free distribution that brought. He's pissed because all popular music isn't monetized and channeled through his office and up to his boss's suite.. Music creation and appreciation is bigger than ever.. its just not controlled by a handful of people that he worked for.
legends are rarely unemployed...
geez I miss the days of having to buy a 15 dollar CD and only having about 3 good songs worth listening to on it.......
He was kind of right about Aerosmith's GET A GRIP - it indeed sold "like" 20 million copies. Over 20 million copies world wide, so, sure, "like" is correct.
His view about drugs in regard to the art of music... that's completely biased based on who he knew about. Whether in 1978 or 2022, someone writing/recording and the results of that is what it is, only the results of awareness/hype world wide are different; the industry has changed in layers, not just in technology, in regard to artists being whatever amount of successful, blah blah blah, genre this genre that. That's not the artists' fault. There won't be a Keith Richards, Jimmy Page or Kurt Cobain in the 2030s because it's the 2030s, not the 1970s or 1990s, when the music industry was still quite in place, with only minor changes - LPs, EPs and singles went from vinyl and cassette, mainly, to CD, and printed magazines were the hype.
His view about the record industry via CD prices is spot on, though. And his view about Steve Jobs. iTunes ruined the music industry, although it took a little longer than it could have - Jobs had originally considered streaming but focused on the iPod instead because he thought people would be more interested in owning their music than renting it, like so many people do these days with Apple Music, Spotify, CZcams, Amazon, Tidal, blah blah blah.
Neither format pays artists worth a shit.
County music has been the biggest selling genre of music, overall, especially with hard formats, since the late 1990s, regardless of what he thinks.
His criticism of Aerosmith's recordings is mind blowing (see THE MAKING OF PUMP). There's no way to know if he was right or not - at least until Aerosmith release some box set of what they did before he stuck his opinions in without knowing anything, even considering the things he says, which is a bit convoluted, given his own hot air of himself.
Successful, indeed, and given a lot of sway, but he sure did piss a lot of people off, and being unemployed revealed that his opinions were not wanted, they were strictly paid for.
Apparently he didn't know who Adele was at the time of this interview.
Kalodner seems to give no fucks and tells it like it is. Met him front row at an Aerosmith show in the 1980s, nobody seemed to know who he was at the time. He signed our ticket, still have it.
Do you know who "this guy" is? Do you know how many songs, cd's "this guy" sold? At least show some respect!
"Oy vey! He can write articles, Schlomo! Let's let him produce a record!"
@beatz04 Hmm sure but who have you been the executive a+r guy for in ur career??? exactly.
But i love his dry sarcastic sense of being.
So rap music, the #1 genre at the time this interview was done, is "Shit" to him? This thinking is probably the reason why he became unemployed. The music business changed and he was unable to adapt. He doesn't have to be a fan of the genre, but he failed to see the lucrative opportunity that hip hop has created for the music business. Failure to adapt to the changing climate of any industry, results in finding yourself unemployed...
Elrik K first things first.... It's "Hire"... Second, no one said anything about "Black" artists... I said Hip Hop artist.... Third, he is out of business because of his failure to adapt to the changing scope of the business, and blames the genre's popularity instead of his ignorance... Please refer to my previous statement again. Thanx ;-)
Hahahaha, dumbass!
He retired with a net worth of about $50 million.
Hahahahahaha!
is this Roger from American Dad??
😅
I would so like to drink a beer with this guy and just shit all over the music business just to feed my soul...
Did kashew lew get signed?
32 minutes, no it would not be the end of it, programmers would write mp3 reading programs, and mp3 converters to play it on Windows,.
There is a lot to learn from him but he has to open up his mimd to what he thinks Rap & Hip Hop can be.
@ 31:32 ...."it's really going to damage the culture of America..for awhile at least." is that not true???? that is exactly what has happened! look at us now, floundering in the deep. This is May 2022 I am writing.
ADRIAN PARIS GREAT VOICE,CHECK HIM OUT.
He comes across as being pretty self-centered himself...
90% Neanderthal DNA
He seems to be resentful to Hip Hop & Rap music. Maybe that's why he is no longer an A&R
Yes, this is all someone else's fault and those shit rap records ruined it especially. This is how you think when you're the one who actually fucked it up. It's a guy like this who made all this possible by contributing to a stale, alienating music business rooted in theft and abuse. As soon as he said that Hillary Duff is one of the few real artist left I had no reason to take him seriously. There's a lot of great musicians today but he decided to retire because no one would pay him enough. That's the problem nowadays. All the smart guys in zz top beards have their heads so far up their asses that the only people left to run the music business are starving inner city kids who never thought they had a chance. A guy like this can tell you what chord progression sounds nice and fresh but that's it. He found success in a predictable industry flush with cash but as soon as the weather changed he lost interest and went home. Now he's complaining but why? Avril Lavigne is putting out music...
Google waltmanproductionz
I couldn’t watch this. Boring. Shut it off in 3 minutes
he said some true stuff that is happening today. but he was afraid of change. so sad. Rap killed his career , lol. and there were no black artist considered in his praise of current music? Hillary Duff ?? C'mon son
awkward
yuck, is this guy just gonna talk about how much better his taste in music is than anyone else's for the whole video? Thanks but no thanks, I was hoping to learn something.
Now that i've watched the whole interview i hafta say that i have rarely watched something so depressing and that i feel pity for the guy because he has no idea what is going on and how the world is running nowadays.
Metallica is a great example of decline as he describes it. Those kids had nothing in the beginning except their instruments and their garage. Now they spend their time with their kids and overpriced vacations. When they do get together they don’t even know one another anymore and they sound like shit.