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sol1056 · 5 years

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don't eps or story editors review the storyboards? wouldn't they notice all these mistakes and inconsistencies in colors of the lions and other stuff while they're in the process of the production?

just fyi for any pedantics reading this: yes, I know what this ask says but since I don’t have time today for an extra-long answer, I’m gonna go with what this ask means, which is: “aren’t there people to catch mistakes?”

idealistic answer: yeah, a whole lot of ‘em, and some of them can be very specialized, too. [frex: the person who checks that colors are rendered appropriately per a scene’s lighting]

every industry has its own quirks but in the general outline, producing collaborative media (tv, movies, etc) can be roughly analogous to constructing a massive apartment building.

it’s a whole lot of specializations, and the process for who does what, in what order, is a known thing. the plumbers and electricians come after the carpenters but before the drywallers, and the painters can’t do anything until the drywallers are done… each team works through the apartments on one floor, aiming to finish right as the next floor is ready for them. (you could say an apartment is a single episode, and a floor a production season.) the general contractor (the EP) is responsible for making sure – or hiring subordinates (ie the various producers) to make sure — it’s all in line with architect’s blueprints (exec demands), and satisfies investors (partners, franchise owners) — and that’s before anyone even thinks to ask whether someone actually wants to live in these apartments.

realistic answer: people make mistakes. they get tired, they get distracted, they get things mixed up and stamp the wrong thing as okay — or they take the word of someone on their team who did any of the above, and it’s not caught until too late. sometimes it comes down to just not enough people or too much work to meet deadlines, which results in a conversation like this:

lead: my team has 87 tasks and there’s no way we can get it all done. we need more time or fewer tasks. manager: can you get the high priorities done?lead: I think so, and maybe half the medium-priority, too.manager: okay do the high, then start on the medium, from the top. anything else is gravy, and I’ll let the VPs know.

you have a conversation like that, it’s pretty much taken for granted that your team’s going into overtime. if not around-the-clock, definitely into 14-16 hour days, and weekends. even then, you’re just not gonna get everything done.

so many obvious mistakes and inconsistencies usually mean there was something bigger that had to be addressed or the whole thing fell apart. one would hope it’s ‘bigger’ on the level of “we didn’t have time to paint or carpet thanks to the asshole who picked an abandoned graveyard as the construction site which meant we spent all our time and budget getting rid of poltergeists.”

nine times out of ten, though, it’s bad management. either the boss/EP couldn’t manage client/stakeholder expectations (over-promising) or they couldn’t juggle all the teams/tasks in the pipeline (under-delivering). or both. or they hired incompetent or inexperienced people, and didn’t manage them well enough to realize there was a problem until it was too late… which is still bad management.

you want me to give someone the benefit of the doubt about that graveyard gumming up the works? be a boss who gives your people all the credit, and doesn’t blame the people above you. because that’s your job, that’s why you’re paid the big bucks: to do the seemingly impossible.

if every time an interviewer had said, “this is such a great scene,” the EPs had praised the storyboarders, writer, director, or animators — if they’d named people and details in a way that made it sound like they were just constantly astonished, a little, at how amazing everyone else was and all they had to do was be a traffic cop and make sure the teams didn’t collide — that their role came down to making sure everyone else could perform at their best — then I’d be giving a lot more benefit of the doubt. ALL the benefit, really.

but what I heard was two people who called out their team by name fewer times than I have fingers, who took way too much of the credit and far too little of any blame.

which means: yeah, there are people whose job it was to check each of those details and make sure mistakes were fixed and inconsistencies addressed. they’re all credited on IMDB, so we know they were in the mix. but if they couldn’t perform at their best, ultimately it comes down to EPs who couldn’t — or wouldn’t — do their part to make that excellence possible.

#television production #management #vld #voltron #sol explains things

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torentialtribute · 5 years

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MARTIN SAMUEL: We win the World Cup… and now the ECB sideline 50-over game

In the opinion of Sir Clive Woodward and many others, the RFU weakened the legacy of England Rugby World Cup

Imagine that on his return from Australia the governing body had decided to leave rugby, almost in its entirety.

Imagine that they had come up with a whole new format of the game and decided to focus on that. Fives. Eights. Twelve year olds. Imagine that, just as England had reached the height of the sport, it had become superfluous.

<img id = "i-246567b2c7caffab" src = "https://ift.tt/2k6d62T -7249871-image-a-17_1563218430395.jpg "height =" 453 "width =" 634 "alt =" The success of the Cricket World Cup in England is in danger of being reduced by The Hundred of the ECB. by The Hundred of the ECB "

The success of the Cricket World Cup in England is about to be diminished by The Hundred

Welcome to English cricket, 2019

Do you think this is the beginning of a brave new era? Think again. From here, the best English cricket players do not play 50-over matches unless they are selected for the national team or the Lions. Indeed, the only players who will gain experience with the format used for cricket & # 39; s World Cup will be those who are considered inferior. Those who are unwanted by the shiny new franchises of The Hundred

The ECB decided this game, with its merged teams in the city and the supposed attraction for those who don't like cricket – not a single ball of it, let alone 100 – is the future of money spinning. And the victim, squeezed in this desperate search for new markets, is the elongated, short play of forms. The 50 overs used at the World Cup.

There are eight of these new franchises and after three overseas players have been recruited for each, the clubs will need squadrons of 15. So 12 English players per team. Multiplying eight by 12 gets 96. So, the 96 best white ball cricketers available for England will never play the World Cup version of the game from next summer until they are elevated to international level. This is the equivalent of six-and-a-bit World Cup squadrons.

The Andy Murray and Serena Williams found knowledge and experience of any size to be essential this year in the mixed doubles at Wimbledon. On paper, Murray and Williams seemed unstoppable as a double play. In reality, they were defeated in round three by Nicole Melichar and Bruno Soares, two players whose impact is negligible.

<img id = "i-e2c428b263d36a38" src = "https://ift.tt/2NUmNiR image-a-19_1563218516762.jpg "height =" 636 "width =" 634 "alt =" The 100-ball format means that the best 50-over players in England will no longer play that game "-balformat means the best 50-over England players no longer play that game "

The 100-ball format means the best 50-over England players will no longer play that game

Melichar is in seventh place in singles tennis, Soares has never been higher than 221 and that was 15 years ago, they are not the same as they are, but they are difficult, and as such they comfortably defeated two players with 42 Grand Slam- titles – single and double rooms – between them.

There is no relevant evidence in cricket either, and the ECB left it between 2011 and 2013 5 0-ball game and was rewarded with a 2015 World Cup achievement that redefined incompetence. To finish four in a seven-team group, England registered two wins – against Afghanistan and Scotland – and failed to reach the quarter-finals.

Highlights? The 111-run defeat by Australia at the MCG, Sri Lanka surpasses England & 309-run total for losing a wicket, being blown out 15 runs short of the 275 set by Bangladesh.

It was this debacle that provoked the revolution in England's approach, culminating in the World Cup victory. How could the ECB have witnessed this story and decide to leave 50-over cricket for the second time it would go?

Future Test players can still sharpen their talent for building long turns, or for exhausting spells of concentration in the field, in the provincial championship. Those who excel in the shortest forms of the one-day game are now particularly well cared for.

The public doesn't like the 50s, but it won't happen. – about game, it is argued. Too long. Too boring. This is the ECB's mantra cricket for people who don't like cricket. The marketing department asked people who didn't look at cricket what they didn't like about cricket and most of them said the cricket, so they try to get rid of it.

<img id = "i-ae88386914ad3258" src = "https://ift.tt/32sIqtP -7249871-image-a-18_1563218463407.jpg "height =" 931 "width =" 634 "alt =" Jofra Archer celebrates after England won the Cricket World Cup by playing with Lord & # 39; s "

Jofra Archer celebrates after England won the Cricket World Cup during a fashion show at Lord & # 39; s

If they can remove the cricket from cricket, they think, people will start watching how it is played. It's a genius idea, you have to admit.

Families are the target audience, so alcohol will also be banned, otherwise people will just start chatting. Anyway, it's not that someone might need a glass of chardonnay to relieve the tension from taking a group of school kids to a sport they all hate. That is why The Hundred emphasizes how little cricket there will be. & # 39; No, seriously, you can do this sober. It is not that we are going to hit or something. & # 39;

But strangely enough, if this World Cup has proven one thing, it is that the modern 50-over-white ball game can be super entertaining and has benefited immensely from the rise of Twenty20. It is now faster, more furious, but with enough subtlety and nuance to captivate those who love test matches. They could be called cricket fans.

Even the final, played on a slow pitch by the New Zealand team whose success is based on defending low scores with stingy bowling, gently cooked to an astonishing climax. The competition can sometimes look like a relapse until a few decades ago when too many teams tried to build a day of innings because they might score, but the last hour was sport at its very best.

Alternatively, we can participate in those who demand immediate satisfaction and reduce cricket to a series of Instagram moments. Why have 50 overs? Cut directly to a super.

There are many reasons to be wary of The Hundred, but it is more worrying than one of them is the nonchalant contempt of the ECB for the World Cup that their players have just won.

The lap of honor of the English team was conducted on the Oval on Monday amid hundreds of happy school children. What was the ECB's message to them? & # 39; This is cricket, children.

It's very difficult to play with your friends, easy to make negative comparisons between the women's final in Wimbledon in 56 minutes, and the men's match between Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer , which lasted three minutes less than five hours

By the time the men finished their

It is clear that, measured by the time on the field, those on were present on Sunday, paid more for their money.

<img id = "i-e525119ae7c28748" src = "https://ift.tt/2k366DR image-a-11_1563217416415.jpg "height =" 362 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-e525119ae7c28748" src = "https://ift.tt/305gPND /15/20/16084152-7249871-image-a-11_1563217416415.jpg "height =" 362 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-e525119ae7c28748" src = "https: //i.dailymail. co.uk/1s/2019/07/15/20/16084152-7249871-image-a-11_1563217416415.jpg "height =" 362 "width =" 634 "alt =" Looking at the length of a match, the incredible performance is amazing by Simona Halep on Saturday Halep's incredible performance on Saturday "

Yet this looks at the incredible performance of Simona Halep against Serena Williams, certainly one of the most complete individual screenings that the has seen competition.

In her 6-2, 6-2 victory, Halep made only three casual errors and one of those errors is considered debatable.

It was a stunning display of athletic behavior against a champion who has displaced the physical parameters of the sport. And yes, it was short. But that doesn't mean it wasn't sweet.

The strange thing about Lewis Hamilton's tax affairs is that they

Hamilton & # 39; s residence in Monaco is always stopped by a kind of stain on his character in a way that he never was or never is, for other British sports heroes who live there. It is almost as if there is something else that separates him, something else.

& # 39; Was Jenson & # 39; s Britishness ever questioned because he lived in Monaco? & # 39; He wrote Ferdinand. & # 39; No chance. I will tell you why – because I looked the same, sounded similar, dressed in the same way, and walked the same way as the people who raise questions about Hamilton. The level of contempt and racist overtones in doubting Hamilton's patriotism should not be underestimated. "

He is right. No one ever says that Radcliffe was less than British, who now lived in Monaco for two decades, nobody said about Button, or about the British Tour de France winners.

Yet Hamilton constantly fights against negative perceptions, with his tax status used as a blatant moral justification, and he also wears diamond earrings and flamboyant clothing – why can't I be gentle and down-to-earth like all those other Formula 1 drivers?

It is not that it is the best in racing the fastest cars on earth, but that could lead to a man developing an extravagant style.

<img id = "i-a13113f774a1d7b9" src = "https://ift.tt/2NVcz1L" height = " 586 "width =" 634 "alt =" Lewis Hamilton & # 39; s stay in Monaco is always stopped by a kind of stain on his character There "Lewis Hamilton & # 39; s stay in Monaco is always stopped by a kind of stain on his character

Lewis Hamilton & # 39; s residence in Monaco is always held back by a kind of stain on his character

On Silverstone on Sunday, Hamilton won his sixth British Grand Prix, a record for every driver, not just a British citizen. Michael Schumacher, on the other hand, won three. Those who don't understand claim that Hamilton drives the best car. But that is not an accident either. The best drivers end up with the best builders, in the best machine. Hamilton did not demand to drive for Mercedes. They chose him.

Andy Murray, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, Andy Murray, Andy Murray, Andy Murray, Vijay Singh – he didn't have the right to be good the way he became. Black children from poor families in Stevenage do not become Formula 1 champions.

Hamilton is an outlier, an unprecedented willpower and that is an inspiration, no matter where he puts his hat. & # 39; I am going to all these races and I proudly lift the British flag & # 39 ;, he said. & # 39; There is no one else in this sport who has raised it that high. & # 39;

Indeed.

Bruce Bruce did not play in the era

Bruce & # 39; s exit appears on EFL financial foolishness when Premier League wages exploded. Still, as a former captain of Manchester United and a manager since 1998, now working at his 10th club, he is unlikely to fall short at Christmas. In other words, he is not about the money.

Karren Brady says that Bruce was alone during his stay in Birmingham

So the job in Newcastle will in part be a labor of love. It was his youth club with personal ties.

[bewerken] External links [bewerken] See also

<img id = "i-7724172c526b5e11" src = "https://ift.tt/2UINeHc /2019/07/15/20/16084146-7249871-image-m-14_1563217458753.jpg "height =" 448 "width =" 634 "alt =" <img id = "i-7724172c526b5e11" src = "https: // i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/07/15/20/16084146-7249871-image-m-14_1563217458753.jpg "height =" 448 "width =" 634 "alt =" Steve Bruce & # 39; s move to Newcastle shows the tension that FFP laws put on championship clubs

Steve Bruce & # 39; s move to Newcastle shows the tension that FFP laws put on championship clubs

owner of Sheffield Wednesday, Dejphon Chansiri, almost certainly has more ambitions than Mike Ashley in Newcastle. I would like to invest more – and Bruce knows this – but his hands are bound by a gentle transfer and the fear of punishing further penalties for violating EFL spending rules.

That is why even a low-wage club, an exhausted team, a reputable stingy recruitment policy and a president who would sell in the blink of an eye if a serious offer were to come – we can probably now consider the lord of Abu Dhabi as the last in a long series of pretenders – being viewed by Bruce as the better bet.

The Wednesday fan who confronted him on the sidelines during Saturday's friendship with Lincoln would like to file his complaint with the top managers of the division.

Worldwide glory no warning for Brexit

Jacob Rees-Mogg fourth the victory in the World Cup in a foolish way by trying to make a connection between England's success to Brexit.

& # 39; Clearly we don't need Europe to win & # 39 ;, he brayed and set fire to fire.

Players such as Ben Stokes and Jason Roy were born abroad – New Zealand and South Africa – but came to this country as students and progressed through the English system.

<img id = "i-767b6f72d35f33e" src = "https://ift.tt/32sv3dl image-a-15_1563217679748.jpg "height =" 423 "width =" 634 "alt =" This team from England represents the global nature of modern life and its need for openness.

This team from England represents the global nature of modern life and its need for openness

This article is licensed under the GNU license for free documentation The material used in the Wikipedia article "

Still arrived Jofra Archer a few months ago as an international international cricket player from Barbados and Trevor Bayliss, the trainer who owes the huge improvement to England in the one-day match, is very much an Australian who will return home after the Ashes series

Indeed, what this England team and their victory To represent more than the petty nationalism of Rees-Mogg is the global nature of modern life and its need for alliances and openness.

if this is the level of understanding of those who hijacked the conservative party and therefore our next government does not venture too much into days like Sunday.

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#MARTIN SAMUEL: We win the World Cup… and now the ECB sideline 50-over game"

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allofbeercom · 6 years

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Can Adele fix the broken music industry?

Unless you fell into a post-holiday food coma, you know that Adeles album25just sold more copies in its first week than any album, ever. The average human being had been conditioned to believe this was not possible in 2015.

Remember that narrative?Napster destroyed the music business, the iPod stopped the bleeding, digital and streaming services are still nascent, and a Google search can find anything for free, so the good old days of multi-platinum records are pretty much gone.

On the heels of her first single “Hello,” Adele waved goodbye to that doomsday line of thinking, crushing decades-old sales records by such a distance that, if she were an Olympic athlete, wed immediately assume she healed her damaged vocal chords with PEDs. Putting aside certain idiosyncrasies of Adeles album buyers (it turns out old people still buy CDs!), getting more than 3.8 million people to doanythingin the same week is a triumphant feat.

The ripple effect of Adeles astonishing sales figure is already visible. This past week, Rihanna and her management made a last-minute decision to postpone the release of her new album,Anti, at the apex of the heaviest consumer spending moment of the year. It turns out the shadow of Adele is the one umbrella Ri-Ri wont stand under.

And who can blame her? Between Adeles album sales and Taylor Swifts cultural and touring dominance (FYI: She played to a stadium full of 76,000 people in Sydney last weekend), its tough to stand out at the moment, even for Rihanna, one of Forbes top 10 grossing female artists. Despite working in a music industry with a dearth of women in meaningful executive positions, the strength and power of female artists has never been more profound. And unlike Hollywoodwhere thanks to the North Korean email hack of Sony and a courageous Jennifer Lawrence, we now understand the starkness of the gender pay gapfemale musical artists get paid on par with their male counterparts. In music, the entire ecosystem earns a sizable percentage of whatever the artist makes; record labels make a percentage of album sales, promoters make a percentage of ticket sales, merchandisers make a percentage of T-shirts sold, and so forth. Which means we are at a unique moment in history where A-list women hold much of the real power in the music business.

The strength and power of female artists has never been more profound.

So what will they do with it? And how does their massive success shine a giant spotlight, for better and worse, on everything thats happening with the music business and the streaming business and the concert business and artist representation right now?

Adele and Taylor started this upheaval by each flexing a particular muscle that belongs to them and them only. Taylor used her pen as the sword, bringing the mighty Apple to the bargaining table to pay artists for streams during the free trial for Apple Music. Adele turned herback on streaming services to break an album sales record that had stood since Justin Timberlake was fronting a boy band with Britney Spears on his arm. But beyond the PR success and ego boost thats generated from seven-figure first-week sales numbers, these efforts did little to make a lasting impact on the business of music.

Like the rest of the news cycle, we celebrate heroic outliers, write think pieces, marvel at the numbers, and move on within the confines of the same old structure. As President Business from The Lego Movie would have us believe, everything is awesome. Only it isnt. While artists have done much to break through decades of exploitation and capture more of the value they create, the fan experience in most facets of music consumptionlive and recordedremains unconscionably broken.

Nowhere is the dysfunctional tension between Los Angeles/New York-based content creation and Silicon Valley-based technology more on display than in digital music services. In the Valley, we scoff at companies that ship their org chart in a product. (Note: Microsofts Steve Sinofsky who coined this phrase for mass appeal, and for some time it was Microsoft who was guilty of this en masse.) You can tell when groups within or outside a company arent working well together based on the way the products features play wellor dont play wellin production. This is displayed everywhere in digital music from convoluted hardware options and endless interconnected devices in the home to cutting-edge software that never seems quite ready for primetime. In particular, Apple Music still feels like a house built on the foundation of an old home that the owners never wanted to fully tear down for tax purposes. The compromises and technical debt are palpable.

The fan experience in most facets of music consumptionlive and recordedremains unconscionably broken.

But those issues pale in comparison to the evolving royalty structure in musicbasically, the agreements for how much artists, labels and songwriters get paid when you buy or stream a song. Without hit music from the Taylors and Adeles, those subscription music streaming services are essentially useless. Even if they have the best user experience for fans, without music that matters, their core proposition (the music you want for a flat monthly fee) becomes completely hollow. Disappointed fans know theyre being misled, especially when YouTube and BitTorrent offer even the mildly unscrupulous a holiday table cornucopia of free access to all the music on earth.

We know the economics of music streaming are still being sorted out, but we also know this happened with video content a few years agoand, eventually, major players like Netflix, YouTube and Hulu figured out how to window content, present it exclusively,and generate their own product. If music follows that model, then the biggest artists will sell their exclusivity to distributors like Spotify, Apple, YouTube/Google, and others. Our best asset to help that happen? Just keep complaining about this stuff.

What we are seeing and (not) hearing now as fans is the very public sausage making of a new recorded music revenue model, the loudly creaking rusty hull of an antiquated ship turning a bit too quickly in a swift current. For most of us downstream, it creates a suboptimal listening experience and never-ending frustration.

And its only worse with live music, where artists now make 70 to 90 percent of their income, despite a gallingly offensive fan experience.For one thing, the industry continues to lie to fansblatantlyabout the price of tickets until the very moment of purchase.An upper deck ticket for the Demi Lovato and Nick Jonas tour in Los Angeles on Sept. 17, 2016, is currently available on Ticketmaster for $49.95. After a $15.30 service charge, the actual price of that ticket is31 percent higherthan advertised. At StubHub, where between buyer and seller fees the ticket is routinely marked up 25 percent, the company tried to show pricing all-in. But after competitors didnt follow suit, StubHub reverted back to the draconian way of tricking fans into moving down the purchase funnel by baiting them with a lower price point, before dropping fees on buyers at checkout. Most artists are consciously (or navely) complicit in this dirty game. Many touring deals for large artists stipulate that artists are paid more than 100 percent of gross ticket sales. How can this be? Its because the promoter and venue make their money off of parking, beer, sponsorship, and importantly, service fees.

This wont change until fans start pressuring the artists to facilitate that change. Artists are intensely sensitive about their brands. With social media giving loud voices to all, artists are hyper-concerned with criticism for high ticket prices even though they have historically enabled a service fee system that exploits their fans. Its why so many good tickets often make it into the hands of brokers from venues, promoters, and artists directly. Ever wonder why you see so many VIP packages for sale? Theyre designed to charge market price for a ticket with a few low-cost add-ons attached. So why cant artists own their income desires and get paid what they are worth, or alternatively restrict transferability of tickets to ensure that fans get in at an artificially low price? Service fees are an extension of the ticket price, so why arent they presented as such up front in the buying process?

Apple Music still feels like a house built on the foundation of an old home that the owners never wanted to fully tear down for tax purposes.

All of the carnival barking about ticket prices comes against the backdrop of a swelling period of time between the onsale of a concert and the actual show date. For the concert example above, a fan buying four mid-level tickets would be putting down more than $400 of his hard earned money10 monthsbefore the show. That same week the tour plays a Wednesday night in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Who the heck knows what theyre doing on a Wednesday night 10 months from now in Albuquerque? The answers fall into three categories:

I dont.

Im one of the few passionate fans who will move my schedule around this show and give you my money ten months in advance.

Im a ticket broker, and Im buying bunches of tickets now to arbitrage and capitalize on all the people in #1 above.

This practice of ridiculously early sales has been expanded by the industry to bank money early, test demand, and reduce risk. Do they care that the best tickets go mostly to brokers, that fans pay more money than they otherwise would, and that the most passionate fans lose out on 10 months of interest on their money? Of course not. Were moving backwards.

The big question: Is all of this a calculated plan by the music industry to keep things as unfavorable for fans as possible, or can we chalk it up to sheer incompetence?

The recent Paris tragedy reminded us that the music industrys obligation to provide a better experience for fans are growing ever more urgent. The attacks on fans at a concert hall and a sports stadium were the manifestation of a longstanding fear we had at Ticketmaster about live eventscrowds are so much more vulnerable than we want to believe. We already learned this in air transportation after 9/11; 14 years later, we collect loads of data and restrict transferability of tickets between passengers boarding a 200-seat airplane. But with 80,000-seat stadiums, we continue to do almost nothing. With the use of cash, paper tickets, ticket reselling, and an average of almost three tickets-sold-per-order, upwards of 90 percent of individuals entering an arena or stadium can be unknown to event organizers.

The entire paradigm of music distribution is staring down the barrel of an evolutionary leap.

There are common sense solutions that would make live events safer for fans. By reimagining a ticket as a digital access credential replete with identity, payment, and location metadata, we could do the forensic work before and after events to identify bad actors. This need not restrict ticket transferability or resale; it simply means maintaining a centralized system of record where tickets can be sold and the data associated with buyers and sellers infinitely logged. Existing and emerging technologies, including blockchain, are candidates for handling this challenge. They can also prepare us for the dawn of virtual reality in live events, ensuring this technology becomes incremental and not cannibalistic to the artists live performance. To do so fully requires sunsetting the idea of a ticket as a piece of paper; identity and access can be tied to a phone, a card, or a fingerprint.

Guess what? This is precisely the course of technology across most consumer products today. Like other products, these advancements have the happy consequence of actually improving the consumer experience. This data can serve to personalize the live experience for each fan before, during, and after the event. It could allow artists to over-deliver on an experience for which they are charging astronomical sums, up to a year in advance. As usual, we fell way behind the curve in the music business. So maybe this is about incompetence over anything else.

Indeed, the entire paradigm of music distribution is staring down the barrel of an evolutionary leap. Twitter, like its many mobile social messaging peers from Snapchat to WeChat to Line to Instagram to Facebook, is really a direct-to-consumer distribution channel that could fundamentally transform the relationship between artists and fans. Katy Perry has 78M Twitter followers, Taylor Swift has 67M, Rihanna has 53M, and Adele, essentially without even trying, has 24M. Roughly half of the 100 most-followed accounts on Twitter are artists, and the technology is now in place for artists to commercialize their follower relationships by selling songs, tickets, and T-shirts directly on these platforms. Twitter led this effort; others followed suit. Its the fastest way to remodel the entire music industry. Any artist who pined for more control over the distribution of their art, as well as the artist-fan covenant, have the powers at their disposal to take command.

Which brings us back to what we learned this week, and this yearthat the biggest artists (including these stellar women who showed their might) have real leverage and real power right now. If they wanted, they could change a sedentary, broken industry. Conventional wisdom is that Adele is an outlier, capable of holding out for her own good but not much more. What if Adele, Taylor, and other elite artists united to force progress for all? Athletes in major sports leagues banded together. Actors held their own. So did screenwriters, directors, producers, and show runners. Music seems to be the only branch of entertainment where the collective voice of creators is mute.

The underlying driver of this silence is artist fragmentation. It is the key environmental factor upon which the 20th century music business was constructed: allow rare stars to extract their pound, but keep the bulk of the talent uncoordinated. Beyond the occasional telethon, its rare to find examples of artists working collaboratively for a cause at scale. Why is that? The leading culprit is that artists have traditionally outsourced a lot of their business decisions to their managers. Now that the time travelled from anonymity to stardom has shrunk to mere months, and artist-as-entrepreneur is a near requirement for success, the role of the artist manager has taken on increasing importance.

Sadly, management remains as fragmented and cutthroat as the days when Colonel Tom Parker was shepherding Elvis. In many cases, the speed to stardom brings along in its slipstream a relatively unsophisticated crew of hangers-on surrounding the artist. Cousins, classmates, boyfriends and the like, with little to no experience become entrusted with decisions that can impact decades of an artists revenue streams. Because most managers are paid on a percentage of the artists revenue streams, near-term money is usually prioritized ahead of long-term career value for an artist. Partnership and collaboration gets lost in fears and insecurities about acts being stolen away by other managers. Even the more sophisticated and professional managers suffer from the epidemic of the shark tank. Irving Azoff (Front Line Management) and Coran Capshaw (Red Light Management) are the two managers who have assembled artist management companies with meaningful scale. Ive apprenticed for them both, and they are excellent at what they do. But competition for the artists they manage (or would like to) remains high, and for their own business self-survival they are perpetually on alert. They do not operate in an ecosystem that fosters cooperation.

Music seems to be the only branch of entertainment where the collective voice of creators is mute.

Even the law works against artist representatives working together. California passed a law in 1978 called the Talent Agency Act that effectively says a person cannot be a manager and also book an artists tour. In practice, artists must carry both a manager and an agent, fragmenting the power of decision-making (and also the artists income). Entire cottage industries have been built on this church-state separation. Alliances are routinely built and broken between agencies and managers, further fueling the lustful competition and mistrust between artist representatives. One can surmise this is generally the scene that inspired the late Hunter S. Thompson quote: The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. Theres also a negative side.

Yet the opportunity for artists in the music business today is wonderfully beyond what even Thompson could have imagined (or hallucinated). And so it rests, finally, on the shoulders of artistsand the biggest ones, at thatto wrest control of this shallow trench of an industry away from those who have kept it in a state of morass, and give it depth. All that stands in the way of advancing the industry forward is overcoming the fragmentation within the artist community today.

And thats why Adeles eye-popping success last week is so confounding. Why, exactly, did she show her strength? The cynic will tell you it was for the money. But just as she could care less about what you think of her weight (somehow I dont expect the press to repeatedly address Chris Martins post-breakup body fat when the Coldplay album drops this week), she seems unmoved by the chance to make a few extra pounds. Which leads to the conclusion that like the rest of us, she falls somewhere on the scale between competitive and vain: She withheld her music from streaming services explicitly in search of setting a mark that none of her peers or predecessors ever did.

Having vanquished them now, will she flex her muscle for more than just the charts? She seemingly has willing partners in this effortin Taylor Swift and many of her now powerful female counterparts, as well as popular artists like Jay Z who have made recent business strides around artist empowerment. In so many ways, Adeles sales figures are less about her, and more a reflection of the continually crescendoing role of music in peoples lives.

In spite of all its dysfunction and fan neglect, our follower graphs on social networks hint that our accelerating interconnectivity is still threaded together most tightly by music. By following suit and binding together in this moment, Adele and the artist community can move the business and experience of music forward for all of us. As the Beatles knew: Come together, right now. Records are made to be broken. Adele and her peers have the chance to be indelible.

Nathan Hubbard is a former touring and recording artist, former CEO of Ticketmaster, and current head of commerce at Twitter. A version of this story was originally published on Medium and has been reprinted with permission.

Screengrab via AdeleVEVO/YouTube

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/can-adele-fix-the-broken-music-industry/

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