Interview with Max Leinward of In Store Sports
MVP: Ladies and Gentlemen it is November 7th, 2005 and we are in New York City and we are speaking with Max Leinwand, who is the programming director at in In Store Sports Network. In Store Sports Network is a retail pool, which means they service videos to retail outlets all over the country. I’m curious Max, for people who are not familiar with the term retail pool, could you perhaps begin by talking about what exactly what that moniker involves?
Max Leinward: In Store Sports Network provides monthly video programming for retailers across the country. We happen to concentrate on the athletic shoe market. In Store Sports Network currently services the Footlocker companies, which includes Footlocker, Champs, and Foot Action. All together that represents 40% of the athletic shoe retailers in the country. They are high end retailers and we feel like we have a lock on the demographic that shops there. That’s advantageous to certainly anyone who wants to reach that demographic. The demographic tends to be male, 12-24, that is the sweet spot. Obviously, older and younger people, along with woman, but 12-24 year old males is the sweet spot. That is important to record companies when they are trying to sell a band. It is important to advertisers. We sell advertisements on our network that are targeted to this demographic. What we do in the industry is what is known as "out of home" advertising. Now ad agencies are looking for non traditional advertising outlets. People are not watching as much TV any more. They are playing video games or they are watching TiVo and going past all the commercials. Ad agencies look for non traditional outlets. There is the Internet, there are billboards, and there is what we do. That is a specific network that is directed at a certain demographic. When we go to ad agencies and say look at who we are reaching that appeals to companies who sell deodorant, or cars, or the US Army. Since we have such a unique demographic, the advertisers know they are getting the most ROI, Return on Investment.
MVP: I am curious, when it comes time to make your reel to send out to these thousands of outlets, how do you decide what video is going to be featured on an In Store Sports Network reel and what videos end up getting past on?
ML: Well, being that I have a very specific market, we are in sports retailers. We are looking to expand on that brand. We are looking to enhance the Footlocker Inc. brand. So the videos have to talk and speak to that brand. It does not only have to appeal to the shoppers, but what says Footlocker. They want their shoppers to leave the store and remember not just the expensive shoes they are selling, but also the whole memorable shopping experience. So therefore I am looking for videos that are upbeat and colorful. Very important, I’m sure that other people who produce video for retail will tell you, it has to be clean. We have very strict rules on content; a lot stricter than broadcast television. The word "ass" doesn’t pass with us. I know it passes on MTV, but not with us. I know the kids are certainly not going to complain, but we have parents who go shopping. Especially this time of year when we are about to enter holiday shopping season and a lot of parents are shopping in there, we have to be cognizant of that. If you go into a Footlocker store, they are very colorful and up tempo and we have to protect that. It is all a part of the wallpaper and the store image. We actually work very closely with the store design team at Footlocker. So I’m not just looking for a clean video, but a colorful, eye catching video. A video does not have to be a hit for me to program it. I don’t want to say we are necessary in breaking artists per say but we absolutely love playing videos that are not seen anywhere else. That isn’t such a difficult thing anymore because very few places are playing videos. We don’t compete with MTV because MTV really doesn’t play music videos. We are in a unique position to play videos that no one else does. So a song does not have to be a hit. We program 4 hour shows for our stores; it is a 4 hour loop delivered on DVD. Obviously we don’t have 4 hours of new music every month so I have to play re-current songs that are from previous months. I don’t go too far back because again our audience tends to be young. They are hip and fresh. Personally I would love to walk into a store and see a video from the 80s, it would be a big wow factor for me, but that’s not who my audience is. They are not about the wow factor; they are more about the future and fresh new stuff. A 12 year-old will not know a 3 year-old video, they were 9 and they probably weren’t listening or watching, and an old video sounds older. Plus videos have this weird characteristic in the fact that an old video looks old and because there have been so many advances so quickly like visual effects and graphics. For the stores that I am programming I have to be very aware of how fresh a video looks. So my point is I have no problem playing new unknown videos but I do sprinkle it with hits. I do like going to the store and watching the shoppers sing along or bop along to music and the trick is you play something familiar. This is a radio trick, I am not inventing anything here, you play something that is familiar and that way you can sell something new. Once you have their trust with something familiar something new is easier to sell. Well okay, you played Eminem so this new band must be cool too, and then I’ll follow up with something familiar again. That is my approach to programming videos. Now for Foot Locker we do several different type networks, we have what we call the urban network which is as it sounds—R & B, hip-hop, urban, rap—then we have a suburban network which tends to be more of a mix of pop, alternative, rock, and some cross over rap as well, or R & B. Then we have a show which we call Hits which is pretty much what it sounds like; its chart toppers, it’s familiar. I tend not to break as much new music on there, that’s the type of show that is what the kids know, it’s what they hear on the radio. I might break a new video by a familiar artist, certainly, unless it is something that is so obvious, I tend not to break an artist on that particular show. The others, certainly, the suburban show, I know Andy you work mostly with alternative rock, that usually finds a home in our suburban network. The beauty of the suburban network is that we are not pigeonholed by a specific type of music, I am not afraid to play a pop video like Christina Aguilera into Against Me! and some people are like ‘Whoa that’s from two opposite ends of the spectrum’ I disagree. I think if you really hooked someone with Christina Aguilera then they will trust the next thing you play and suddenly you might turn on a person who knows Christina’s cool and then says ‘Against Me!, oh I love that Against Me! song “Don’t Lose Touch.”’ I love that, I played it last month and I am gonna bring it again. I love that song, I think it would be a good pop song and I think that song sounds very much like the Offspring and I think that fits. The Offspring would fit after Christina and so why wouldn’t Against Me!? I am not worried about the bands name or if they are known, if the sound is right it is going to work for us.
MVP: As a former DJ on WLIR in the 80s I would guess that when you put together a reel for your clients you’re thinking very much about the flow. Is that something that is recognized by your retailers or do you sometimes have a situation where you might have to react to a particular client or concern that a retailer has.
ML: Flow is very important to me. I think it’s more noticed by me than your average shopper. The average shopper is in the store for 10-15 minutes, that’s what the retailers tell us and I tend to program based on that clock. Within 10-15 minutes I want to hit every possible taste. I don’t know at what part of that 10 minute block anyone is going to walk in but that is my approach and I don’t think it is really noticed by anyone but myself except for the fact that people are satisfied, people seem happy. I’ll get a call from the retailer about a complaint, it happens, sometimes I misjudge a call or something gets by that on second thought probably didn’t work, but it happens rarely. The retail headquarters hear from the store managers, the employees in the store are going to be the first ones to react, their listening to the same 4 hour show every day for 31 days and that will be grating no matter how good your show is, but what’s understood and why our retailers are partners and why we only work with a few retailers is because we really have established a partnership and that’s what’s important about our relationship, it’s a partnership. They understand the shows are not for the employees, we know they would much rather be going crazy, but it is not for them, it is for the customers, it’s to enhance the customers experience and that mantra trickles down to the store employees. They know the show is meant for the customers, everything is meant for the customers. If they are a salesperson in the store, the customer is always right.
MVP: The employers are there for the customers!
ML: Exactly. So I’m less concerned about what their reaction is, although sometimes they say every time that video comes on all the customers are like ‘eww!’ and rolling their eyes. So I’ll make a note of that, that video bad call note to myself, don’t use that video again.
MVP: So you will react to those kinds of concerns.
ML: Absolutely, I have to. Our retailers are who I am most concerned with. I have to react to their wishes and the direction they want the show to go into. I have to say not to pat my own back but I think I’ve been pretty much on the money and then certainly the fact that we’ve kept our clients for so long and they are happy with us is a testament to part of the program.
MVP: Now your competitors are not including full fledged advertising on their retail pool reels. Two questions, curious out of the 4 hour DVD block of music videos, how much of that is just full on advertisements and do you guys feel any pressure being the only retail pool that includes advertising that perhaps this wasn’t a prudent endeavor?
ML: The amount of advertising varies from month to month depending on the amount of advertising we sell. In fact, the more advertising we sell the better the business is.
MVP: Is it less than the 18 ½ minutes during an hour long television program?
ML: Oh yeah, we don’t want to ruin the flow of the program, we don’t want to ruin the shopping experience.
MVP: Are the spots like 20 seconds?
ML: The spots are usually the standard 30 seconds but there will also be movie trailers. For instance the movie studios will advertise with us so that could be a 2 ½ minute trailer and depending on how the sales people sell that particular package; the frequency might be 3 times an hour, 4 times an hour. It all depends. Every advertiser has their own package, that’s how the sales people sell.
MVP: So it isn’t going to be long before you see another cool music video?
ML: Exactly. The idea again is you don’t want to ruin the shopping experience; you want to enhance the shopping experience. That said, the business model of selling advertising on a retail music video show, it’s not just a way of watering down the video show. This was actually started from the retailers themselves. Retailers were suddenly aware that they had these incredible pieces of real estate through these TV monitors that are situated in the store. They have a captive audience that television doesn’t have and even MTV doesn’t have, you can still change the channel if you don’t like what you see. But they have an audience that is there for the long haul, certainly for the whole of their shopping tenure. The retailers are the ones who said, well this is valuable real estate, the entertainment is fine and we want to entertain our customers and we want to expand our brand in this way, but we consider the television monitors some of the most important shelf space that the retailers have. It’s an avenue to promote themselves, promote the specials that they have in the store, upcoming events, what have you, but also a way of attracting advertisers as a way to actually make money. Why not. Advertisers are looking for untraditional advertising avenues. People are not watching TV that much anymore, those who do have digital video recorders or TiVo and they are zapping past the commercials. The ad agencies are painfully aware of this and they are looking for different avenues. This is actually more of an invention not so much of our company but of what the market said to us, listen we’ve been playing music videos but we can make money off of these things, can you go out and seek this out for us. In that way we partnered up with them, and everybody is happy, advertisers are happy, retailers are happy and that’s the reality of the In Store video business. I’ve been working music videos for many, many years and you talk about my competitors, I’ve worked with almost all of them. I respect them all and they all do a wonderful job. What attracted me to the In Store Sports Network was a little bit of a different business model, that’s not to say the that business model that Sceenplay or DMX has is wrong or bad, it’s not, what they have is mass. Screenplay is the largest as far as mass, the largest reach; they have a tremendous number of stores and outlets.
MVP: And DMX has an impressive roster of clients.
ML: Right, everybody does. We’re not looking necessarily to turn over more clients in more stores, we look at ourselves as a boutique company with a certain niche market but we know how to service that market. Our sales people are not out looking for another retailer, we are not looking to take Screenplay or DMX’s clients, our sales people are out in the ad agency world trying to sell advertisements and to give and to feed the advertisers with a unique demographic and a targeted demographic. That sounds like a fancy buzz word and it is. That’s what they talk about, target demographics because that’s what the advertisers are looking for. It’s just a little bit of a different business model. So, I don’t even consider Screenplay or DMX my competitor, technically. We’re looking for a certain demographic and we knew that sports athletic retailers were going to fulfill that. So I don’t really consider our competitors Screenplay and DMX, our competitors are MTV in that we are looking to get the advertising dollars that cable is looking to get. We’re looking to get the advertising dollars that television gets. We are a whole different market, now the advertisers are looking for different markets. That’s where In Store Sports Network came in at just the right time when advertisers are looking for other outlets. When you’re dealing with ad agencies it’s just a matter of saying, hey we’re in Footlocker come advertise with us, or hey we’re in Sears come advertise with us, or wherever. That’s a whole different world, a world I wasn’t familiar with myself before coming here. It’s about ratings, it’s about demographics and statistics and CPM’s and buying habits and all sorts of things that an ad agency looks for. An ad buyer looks around for different possible places to place ads and they’re not just going to say, "oh Footlocker I love that store, I shop there all the time, so do my kids, I want to advertise there." No no, they have to see specifics; who’s shopping there, how many people are shopping there, how long do they stay there for, all of these little statistics are a whole world into themselves, the advertising world is a whole world into itself. It’s also not necessarily a matter of how many stores you have; it’s a matter of who’s shopping there. If you are going to sell advertisements in network you better have those statistics readily available. Now we do have Nielsen media rating our network, we just did a recent study, preliminary numbers show that we’ve grown in teens. That seems like an obvious, well of course teens are shopping in Footlocker, it’s true, but the fact that you have Nielsen, an outside company saying this rather than Footlocker saying it, that gives credibility to what we do. It shows also the viewership went up, 47 million people a month are now in those stores shopping and that data is based on intercept surveys, observations, some statistics coming from Footlocker. It’s respected and we say the number of people seeing ISSN is 47 million and then there’s an asterisk, then a footnote says "as per Nielsen media research 2005." So that’s an accountable number. That’s the secret. Compliance is very important. Since our retailers are partners with us, part of their responsibility is to make sure that every store is playing a video. If we get a report that a store's monitors are out, our retailer is on the job right away fixing it because they are a partner in advertising, and compliance is very important. At this point I think we have a 93% compliance rate, which is unheard of in the industry, but we have a department which is specifically responsible for compliance.
MVP: Now you’ve been looking at music videos for close to twenty years. Other than the emergence of digital film making, allowing videos to be created for a much smaller budget, what do you think have been the biggest changes? Not only in the music videos themselves but in how labels and artists approach them.
ML: Well what’s certainly happened, when I first started in this business about twenty years ago and that was about five years after MTV went on the air and don’t forget when MTV first went on the air it was the coolest station because they got all the videos from England, because they were the ones putting out videos then. There were very few videos available, for a very short period of time. Then it became excruciatingly obvious to these record labels that, oh wow, we have to make videos now. MTV saw this not as a way to sell records, they saw this as entertainment. At the beginning the record labels saw music videos as commercials for albums and that’s originally what they were. MTV kind of raised the bar and said well, we don’t look at them as commercials for the album, there’s nothing in it for us if you sell records, we’re just looking at this as entertainment. These are little shows, these are little movies.
MVP: Mini movies.
ML: They’re mini movies and that’s what’s exciting. They didn’t invent music videos but I think they invented the art behind these and the reason to make it an art form. Over the years that has certainly expanded and some of your biggest directors started off doing music videos because there really is an art for it. They took it beyond a commercial. To the labels it was always a commercial, they didn’t know what to do with these videos. Duran Duran and Michael Jackson were at the forefront of suddenly big budget music videos, that was part of their contract, because they were selling more and part of the contract was you have to put a million dollars behind the music video budget. So they saw it as an art form but the labels still didn’t know what to do with it. You had your MTV and at the time Rock America was one of the first video pools for nightclubs and in the early 80’s if you were a nightclub, and I was working at a nightclub, if you were at a nightclub that had music videos, then you were at the coolest nightclub around. If there were three nightclubs on the block, everyone was going to the one that had music videos. Who ever heard of it! That’s amazing! The clubs in those days were paying top dollar for these video compilations. They were paying $150 for an hours worth of music videos because that was such an important thing. As time went by music videos became ubiquitous, you are not a club unless you have music videos. So it wasn’t special anymore. It wasn’t long before MTV realized that music video, at least as an art form, from their point of view, has burned out. Certainly directors are still there believing in it as an art form. The last couple years now you’ve seen a lot of these DVD compilations coming out. There’s that directors series on Palm, Chris Cunningham, Michael Gondry and Spike Jonze and that’s really new art. They are marketing that as an art form.
MVP: That’s their legacy.
ML: It’s their legacy, exactly. And this really is an art form. If you just watch MTV or even just retail you are going to miss a lot of the real artistic videos out there that just aren’t quite right for television or retail, that are just absolutely sensuous, artistic, unique original and creative. But now what’s happened in the last couple years with the Internet is suddenly music videos have become a commodity. So they started as a commercial that labels didn’t know what to do with so they would give them to anyone for free because, they just wanted to get it out there. It’s a way to publicize the album, maybe they’ll sell more records, that’s all it was. It went from being a commercial to being an art form to being a commodity. Suddenly the labels are starting to perk up their eyes and saying, wait a minute, these kids are downloading videos and now with the video iPods, all you need is the video. If you want to listen to music you can listen to music, you can turn off the video portion I guess, but they are buying the videos in and of themselves. The music videos have become the commodity, they are the new CD’s. The labels are trying to do the dual disk one side music, one side video. Now with UMG trying to charge for that, they are doing that because they are suddenly aware of the fact that music videos are a commodity the same way CD’s used to be. If kids aren’t buying CD’s anymore, maybe they will buy a music video. That I think is certainly the major change in the approach to what music videos are. Now to me, my favorite videos are the ones that are artistic, that mean something. I don’t like to see it as a commercial, even though it potentially is a way to promote the band and promote the CD. I enjoy a video that makes my eyes pop, that’s something that I haven’t seen before, something that’s unique and creative. Those videos are so rare these days, but they’re there and that is something that turns me on. If I had to say the biggest change to music video, I would definitely say it was the change from commercial, to art form, to commodity.
MVP: A lot of people are predicting the death of music video, but as someone who has viewed practically every music video for the past 15-20 years would you agree with this statement; People aren’t going to stop making music videos?
ML: Absolutely, the death of the music video was predicted when MTV stopped showing music videos. At the time MTV said, you know, we can’t get ratings from music videos anymore, so they had to go in a different direction and obviously they are a lifestyle channel and the most successful one out there. Are music videos dead? Quite the contrary, now they are just being breathed with new life with the advent of the Internet because they are a commodity. The labels didn’t decide they wanted a commodity, they saw it could be a commodity. I don’t think they were forcing the issue as much as they were reacting to the issue. With video iPods most of the content is music video and from what I read the kids are doing it, they’re downloading it, they’re buying it. The death of music video is the death of the traditional outlets of music video. Video as a commodity, as an art form, I don’t think it’s dead, I think it’s being breathed new life. I personally could never watch a video on an iPod.
MVP: The screen is too small!
ML: They brought the art of the music video back to the forefront. For companies like myself, that makes what we do all the more special. Now videos have become important again and we’re glad when MTV doesn’t show videos cause now when kids want to see them they have to come to us, or companies like mine to see the music video. The fact that the video iPod has gotten so many downloads certainly speaks to the fact that the music video is hardly dead. The next step is where do you take it; do you make it an art form, do you make it a commodity? If you are going to make it a commodity you better make it a good art form. You want the kids to be downloading based on the merit of the video. Certainly the music is important, but in the future, the not so far future, the consumers are buying music tied to the music video already. Instead of buying the CD you are buying a video album and the option of watching it as a music video and not just hearing it, with the advent of the Internet it’s all about visuals. It’s also an aggressive medium. One of the things that I think makes a company like mine unique is that, when videos had became where you could see them everywhere, maybe networks like mine weren’t as special but when MTV stopped showing videos, networks like mine became unique, they were one of the few types of outlets for it. I think what’s important for the record labels it showing that there is a point to making these videos. Kids can watch videos on the Internet but that is an active medium, an aggressive medium; you have to click, point, look for it, search and do all that. A medium like ours is a passive medium it’s always going to be there, it’s in the shop, it’s always going to be in their face. As a whole I think, there was a time with MTV where videos weren’t considered cool anymore. MTV at one point made videos not cool, MTV lost its hipness factor. They’re playing Michael Jackson videos all the time and videos just became un-hip. I think it’s coming back though, that’s just my opinion. Now that there are other outlets it looks like mine or the Internet is raising the bar again. I don’t want to see cheap videos, I don’t want to see cheap homemade videos, unless that is the approach and there’s a reason for it. It doesn’t mean it has to be expensive, it just means that it has to be creative. It really has to compliment the music.
MVP: It’s been said that people aren’t going to buy newspapers anymore. And it’s been said that it’s only a matter of time before actual passive programming on television goes the way of the buffalo nickel. It’s an on demand world, there is no programming left. All that’s left is self programming. Your comments?
ML: I think you’re right.
MVP: You think I’m right?
ML: I think you’re right.
MVP: That’s a scary though isn’t it? What about the programmer who is there to give you the heads up?
ML: Well I think you’re absolutely right. I take a look at my Yahoo! Music, they are very instrumental now and according to labels they are very important in helping record sales. And I’m saying to myself ok, do I compliment the programmer for that because the way I see it is they put everything on, when they get it they put it on.
MVP: Who’s next?
ML: Blogging is so big right now, I look at certain blogs all the time that I feel has my certain taste in music just to see what is out there. But it’s very difficult to find new music and who is pushing that. I still think there is a need for a programmer, and I don’t mean someone who is putting one video after the next and after the next, what I do for the In Store, but who is making recommendations. When I was in radio we were an alternative station and we were trusted because of our taste. It doesn’t mean everything we played everybody liked, but I think people liked more because of where it was coming from. That’s what I think a lot of it as about. Fortunately still what I do, what In Store does, there’s still a need for programming because someone is creating the experience that is in the store. I say creating an experience, I’m sure Leslie (Screenplay) must have used the same term. I know Muzak always used that term and I always thought it was a good one. You’re creating experiences, not just a musical program but literally an experience. I always thought that was a great philosophy because that is what we are doing. That’s what I am doing. Anyone who is programming for retail is expanding the brand. They’re not just playing their personal tastes, I do understand my customers and I understand my clients and I understand the brand who I’m programming for. That is who I seek to fulfill. There’s still a need for that but as far as being introduced to new music, our outlet is certainly one, we do consider ourselves an outlet for new music where music consumers are going to find things that they don’t see elsewhere. But you’re right, on demand changed the whole dynamic. What’s interesting is that everyone is embracing it. I spoke to someone at MTV a couple months ago when they were telling me about the whole MTV 360 initiative, a lot of the shows are available online and on demand. And I said isn’t that kind of counter-productive because then don’t they have no reason to watch the show? Then they can get it whenever they want. The guy told me, true, but we have to do it anyway because that’s the future. I said, wow, I guess it is.
MVP: Don’t you find that troubling?
ML: Yes at my age I find that troubling because I don’t come from there. But when I think where my kids are going to be, that’s the world they’re going to live in. Is that bad? Well it’s bad to us because we’re not used to it. On the other hand, what you and I were talking about earlier; kids have the opportunity to be exposed to so much more music than they were ever exposed to before. Now the idea is to find the right outlets for what I think is good music, but that’s everyone’s taste, that’s a matter of taste. Radio’s don’t find anything decent anymore. You see kids who have mix tapes that they downloaded or ripped or one way or another gotten and I look at some of these mix tapes and I say, how do you know about all of these bands? Where did you hear about them? It’s funny, I was playing Against Me!, I was playing the CD and I had some friends over from L.A. and they said, how do you know about these guys? And I said oh, I got the music video and I got turned on to it and I loved it. And I said, how do you know about it? He said well, I listen to NPR. The point is that there are other outlets to seek. You’re not going to learn about new music by watching MTV or listening to radio. You have to find other ways, but they are out there. I think my kids are going to be exposed to more new music, I’m certainly going to help direct them, but I’m going to encourage them to do it. You know the station I worked at WLIR, which in its heyday was the alternative outlet, that was the only place you found new music. Since it fell by the wayside and it’s not around anymore and they changed the format, I thought it was very sad, and I thought oh my gosh there’s no place for anyone in this market for people to hear the great music that WLIR was exposing people to. Then I said to myself, but do we need it? And you know what there are other places to find new music. I find it from two sources; I find it from videos, from people like you who service me with them and if I like a video I’ll ask you to send me the CD and I’ll further explore it, or maybe I’ll look online and find out more about the band. That or I go to certain blogs that I like, like Stereogum…
MVP: How about Antville?
ML: I haven’t gone to Antville. But Stereogum is one that I like.
MVP: Stereogum.com?
ML: Yes, Stereogum.com
MVP: What are some others, I’m curious?
ML: Coolfer.
MVP: Music videos?
ML: No, this is music in general
MVP: Ok, how about music videos?
ML: I haven’t gone online much for music videos. I feel like I’m getting just about all of them.
MVP: Well, how do you find out about a Coolfer or a Stereogum?
ML: I think just surfing, I’m not even sure how I first discovered them.
MVP: Well now why do you trust them?
ML: I’ve read about music on there that I like, I trust them enough to seek it out, it doesn’t mean that I’m going to buy it. Which is the other thing about the Internet and about video on demand, or anything on demand is you can try it out before you purchase. I don’t think there’s a death of the music video, but there’s certainly the death of the albums as we know it. People are buying singles now. Rarely do you buy an artist for the entire album.
MVP: Yeah, but the whole idea of an album is that it gives you a full picture and understanding of the artist
ML: Yeah, you’re right. You and I understand that because you and I grew up in an album world. Do the kids today understand that? The kids today are on iTunes or other sites like it. iTunes is not about selling albums it’s about selling singles. You might like it enough to buy more than one single, and you have the option of downloading off of the album as well. But that’s not what the model is, the model is not to sell an album. It’s to sell songs. That’s reality. It’s not that different from when I was younger buying 45’s, or in the 50’s, people didn’t buy albums in those days, or in the early days of The Beatles. Albums were just compilations of singles. People bought 45’s, that’s come back, it’s about singles. You hope that an artist can be marketed and developed to where people care enough to buy an album. Some artists didn’t like having their music on iTunes unless it was the whole album. I think Madonna did that for awhile, she had to change her tune because the future is songs and that’s unfortunate, it’s very unfortunate. I, like you, want to hear an album from beginning to end and I want to get it. There might be a song or two I don’t like, but I did it anyway. Now, songs you don’t like, delete it, or don’t buy it. You can sample 30 seconds and say, eh, I don’t like it. My thing is, I can tell in 30 seconds if I like something, but that’s not a rule. Sometimes you can’t tell in 30 seconds, or sometimes the sample is wrong where it’s the beginning of the song and it’s not the right sample. So that’s an unfortunate way to sell art. Imagine trying to sell the Mona Lisa but just showing the eye, or just the smile. Could you sell it based on that? It’s the whole painting or the whole album. We’re living in a different world. Again, it’s bad for us who grew up with the album as an art form, but is it that bad? I think more kids now are into music then ever before and seeking out new music. There isn’t a need for WLIR anymore, unfortunately there isn’t. There’s enough outlets out there. For people who want it, they can find it. My M.O. professionally is not all about breaking records or breaking artists. It certainly was when I was on the radio because that’s what we were doing. We were talking about it, we were at the shows, we were hosting and we were selling the artists. What I do now is not the same. If I believe in an artist and I think it’s gonna work, I’m glad to put it on; it doesn’t have to be new, it doesn’t have to be a hit, it just has to fit in the program. Is my purpose for me professionally to break an artist? I’d have to say no. If I can, more power, but that’s not what I’m about. I’m about trying to play good music, make people happy and make the shopping experience an enjoyable one. If they see something they like, they’ve never heard it before and they go out and buy it, great. I answer to the retailer who has hired us to enhance the shopping experience. That’s what I have to say. Me personally, I’m about as much new music as I can find and I thank you for turning me on to a lot of interesting, new stuff. It’s easier for me to program Jay-Z, 50 Cent, or Gwen Stefani, or any of those. You give me videos that challenge me. If you give me something that I like, then I really like it. Then I’ll ask for the CD, then I’ll make a mix tape at home and I’ll play it in the car, and I’ll play it for friends.
MVP: Well thank you for that Max and thank you for the interview.
ML: My pleasure and good luck Andy. I’m glad you are picking up the slack, you are doing an important thing for the community.
MVP: Well we appreciate your support and we appreciate you taking time out tonight to talk to the folks.