Let the Bob Lefsetz Column Close Down

Lefsetz says we don't need live music in our towns and cities. I say he's an idiot.

As a few people have now written to me about it, here’s my response to the latest Bob Lefsetz column:

Q: How do you know when an opinion about music and the music industry is completely outdated, retrogressive, stupid, badly reasoned, and unlikely to stand up to the smallest scrutiny for factual accuracy?

A: When Bob Lefsetz posts it.

Robert Scott "Bob" Lefsetz is an American music industry analyst and critic. He is the author of The Lefsetz Letter, an email newsletter, and a blog, which has thousands of subscribers in both the recorded and live music sectors. While a lot of people take things he posts with a pinch of salt, many do not. In his latest column, he directly discusses the work of Music Venue Trust towards creating a grassroots contribution from the most successful events in the UK into a fund to support music in our towns and communities and ensure the talent pipeline thrives. Lefsetz, seeking clicks and reactions, goes all out, declaring war on this concept, which obviously offends him in some way he isn’t clear about.

Lefsetz claims we should let all the grassroots music venues close because the music industry doesn't need them. In his, as usual, incredibly poorly researched article, Lefsetz advances the theory that the talent pipeline is thriving without them, and that everything will be just fine if they all close down. He has, essentially, gone into bat for the biggest money making companies in the world in a half arsed attempt to prevent them from having to take any responsibility at all for people's access to live music, the cost of creating new talent, the essential skills and experience you learn from playing small clubs that you transfer to big arenas and stadiums, the value of music in our communities and the cause for a wide variety of music being accessible, diverse and inclusive for the maximum number of people. God forbid that any company returning massive profits to its shareholders should have to invest in any of that.

In Lefsetz's world, artists should have a Tik Tok viral and then headline Wembley Stadium for the next twenty years. Playing a stadium is all the live music there needs to be, because the only thing about live music is the money that's made from it. Artists should have careers only if they play stadiums, says Bob, because any music that can't headline a stadium is pointless. The rest of you are wasting your time, and Bob's, with your silly new and original stuff that won't be liked by the correct number of people to sell out a stadium. Music that isn't profitable for the biggest companies in the world isn't really music at all, and who on earth would want to spend time together enjoying music anywhere other than a massive stadium? Lefsetz proclaims that he wouldn't choose to go to a club to see new music, which is helpful because I can't think of a single club that would want someone like him in it.

The list of factual inaccuracies in his brain fart ranges from the comical ('nobody wants to see live music unless they are paying £100 for it and it's at least 500 metres away') to the just stupidly badly researched (it will be news to Chappell Roan that she has been wasting her time putting any effort into crafting a live career when she could simply have put out a few YouTube videos and gone straight to the top of the festival bill). Somewhere along the way he imagines a dystopian future where people only watch new artists on their mobile until such time as they are ready to fork over a couple of hundred pounds to stand with 90,000 other people and watch a TV screen image of them. At another, without any sense of irony or history, he declares that guitar groups are on the way out. Come back Dick Rowe, all is forgiven.

Why does anything Lefsetz says matter? Well, in reality it doesn’t. But there will be individuals and companies in the live music industry nodding sagely at this column because although everything about it is demonstrably idiotic, accepting the premise that they have no responsibility towards the future of live music does at least help them maintain their profits.

Lefsetz is, and I don't say this lightly, taking out of his plump backside. Take your trousers off Bob, your whining is muffled. And no, I'm not posting a link to his desperate clickbait ranting because he doesn't need any more people reading an opinion that is more outdated than the Dodo. Here's a photo of Bob instead.