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How to hire a pop star for your private party
- minimaxir 3y agoNote: the title is rhetorical and not typical SEO blogspam. This is actually a good longform article on a niche industry.
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago> and not typical SEO blogspam I mean it’s the New Yorker. It would be news worthy if they did do blogspam rather than long form articles.
- kortilla 3y agoThe title can’t be rhetorical because it’s not a question
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Veen 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric
- laristine 3y agohttps://archive.is/B9t1C https://archive.is/B9t1C
- 101008 3y agoThe title reminded me of a startup called Magic, that promised things like that for a fee through a SMS or something like that. I can't recall more details...
- strgcmc 3y agoThis is a wild time capsule of an article to reread now... Whatever happened to Facebook "M"? And why did anyone ever think this would survive as a business model? https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/make-magics-assistants-do-almost-anything-with-100hour-and-a-text-message/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/05/make-magics-assistants-do-...
- Mistletoe 3y agoInterest rates were low, near zero for seven years by 2016. It seemed like anything was possible because the funny money just kept coming in from investors with nowhere else to put it. The ideas didn’t have to make sense and they didn’t have to be profitable, it was the last days of Babylon and it seemed if you just reached out with an SMS you could get the Backstreet Boys at your birthday party.
- modeless 3y agoSeems like "M" was just about 8 years too early, I bet their chats would be an amazing dataset for training LLM agents right about now.
- gkoberger 3y agoIt was Magic, they did YC W15! They still exist; they've just pivoted a bit into virtual assistants. They mostly were for normal stuff early on, although Justin Kahn (who invested in them) used to do some weird stuff using Magic: https://justinkan.com/feed/fun-with-magic https://justinkan.com/feed/fun-with-magic They're still around: https://getmagic.com/ https://getmagic.com/
- DANmode 3y agoGreat post. Thanks.
- dereg 3y agoOne of my favorite stories is an acquaintance's aunt had Willie Nelson perform at her birthday party. The condition was that he was to be paid $200k in cash. He arrived, performed at the party, took the bag of cash, and left without exchanging any words.
- jamestimmins 3y agoThat's genuinely surprising given how affable he seems. But does remind me of Elon Musk doing the commencement address at my graduation. He spoke for five minutes, then walked directly off stage and to his waiting car.
- dereg 3y ago"If you've got the money honey I've got the time. We'll go honky tonkin' and we'll have a time [..] If you run short of money I'll run short of time. If you've got no more money honey I've got no more time."
- cguess 3y agoI'd bet that it was the vibe at the party that didn't set well with him. That or awe had a very specific schedule to keep. Perhaps both.
- druidfacelamb 3y ago[flagged]
- 1letterunixname 3y agoI wouldn't read anything into a third-hand impression. Willie and the Austin country music scene are pretty chill and nonchalant.
- wnevets 3y ago> in cash. Not surprised by his IRS problems
- dangwhy 3y agofyre festival and platform
- prawn 3y agoAn acquaintance has a business/platform in this space, which started around sports personalities: https://pickstar.pro/au https://pickstar.pro/au Seemed to catch the wave of "side hustle" popularity at the right time. Many people with jobs have a wandering eye as it is, and athletes/etc often have enough of an audience to leverage.
- walterbell 3y ago> Despite all the luxuries, “corporate events can be sort of soul-destroying,” Viecelli said. “It’s not really an audience. It’s a convention or a party, and you just happen to be making noise at one end of it.” Expensive noise!
- victor9000 3y agoHonestly, this could afford a lot of liberty. If no one's really listening then you could treat it like a jam session and polish new work.
- shapefrog 3y agoDoing a jam session while the crowd are "networking" and exchanging linked-in tier anecdotes about how they thought they were missing a meeting with the CEO because they were helping a homeless person is not a good creative environment.
- irrational 3y agoI work for a Fortune 100 company that fairly frequently has big name artists perform at corporate events. I always feel a bit sorry for them. Most employees are just wandering around, chatting with friends and enjoying the free food and drinks. Hardly anyone pays attention to the musicians.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoMost corporate employees tend to skew towards narcissism, lack social skills, and tend to lack colorful life experiences. Ask me how I know. The musicians are probably the most fun and interesting people in the room.
- _boffin_ 3y ago[flagged]
- arp242 3y ago
- vinhboy 3y agoThe wide spectrum of the human experience never cease to amaze me. Reading the stories in this article just made that spectrum a little bit bigger. Just wild. I am too shocked to have any sort of moral opinion about it.
- bombcar 3y agoIt's really hard to imagine "scale my net worth up to billions" and work out what that practically means - even just your random billionaire can hire people to do things we wouldn't even think of considering, like having multiple houses around the country/world that are identical, and you have staff at each that makes sure they remain identical - if you left the New York Times on your desk in Milan, it will be on your desk in New York when you walk in the room.
- hattar 3y agoWait, are you just suggesting this as a hypothetical, or is this a real thing people do?
- CSSer 3y agoPower cuts both ways. Move one or two random items to a location they’ve placed them before but haven’t in awhile, call coworker in Milan with list of things to update, note down reactions and make slight adjustments to tactics until they snap and buy a social media network for $40bn. Never mess with the help.
- HWR_14 3y agoYour example sounds infuriating. First, I want items where they are supposed to be, not where I left them. But who wants the same thing all the time? If I go out to a large meal and every course tastes the same because it's all covered in the same sauce, it doesn't matter if it is my favorite sauce. I want to have variety. Similarly, when I travel, different spaces please. On the other hand, I would like to arrive at a hotel and be handed a key as I walked in and had the closets already populated with my clothes.
- gonzo41 3y ago
- shalmanese 3y agoPeople missed that the infamous Fyre Festival concert was meant to be a promotional event for the Fyre App that was built to solve this exact problem.
- comprev 3y agoFyre Festival will go down in history as a great example of a "clusterfuck". Watching the car-crash documentary about everything going full steam ahead was wonderfully entertaining. Less so for the Fyre guests mind...
- BurnGpuBurn 3y agoIf you find disaster festival documentaries entertaining, there are a ton about Woodstock '99 as well.
- jimmydddd 3y agoI think I read that the organizer guy is currently planning a Fyre Festival II. That's one confidant dude.
- Utkarsh_Mood 3y agoReminds me of https://myria.us/home https://myria.us/home
- j7ake 3y agoThis long form article was excellent in audio mode. What’s interesting is that there is a market for artists today even though their hits were from previous generations: the new aristocracy were once high schoolers and are now are adults looking for unique experiences.
- Bad_CRC 3y ago> Charles Ruggiero, a drummer in Los Angeles who is active in jazz and rock, told me, “The way musicians look at it, generally speaking, is: It’s a fucking gig. And a gig is a gig is a gig.” Was that a Scott Pilgrim quote? :)
- adityaathalye 3y agoI absolutely love such deep dives into how a slice of the world functions (or, should I say dysfunctions?). I feel like I've heard several aspects of this piece before, because many of my friends are musicians and performers. I get to be fly-on-the wall during their conversations about the commercial side of things. This anecdote stood out, because I've heard a version of it before... > Even geniuses have had to navigate a certain servitude to their sponsors. Some years ago, a friend was a performer in one of the myriad shows at one of those insane $100 million weddings. Our film industry's G.O.A.T. superstar was the emcee. Redefined cinema for generations, absolutely revered by the public. My friend recounted pretty much this impression of the status and treatment meted out to that person... > Mozart fumed about the Archbishop of Salzburg, who “treats me like a street urchin and tells me to my face to clear out, adding that he can get hundreds to serve him better than I.” The world must look very different when you know you can wake up one fine morning and decide which way you want to drive a small country's economy, while you relieve yourself or sip your morning cuppa. (edit: formatting)
- theresistor 3y agoI worked at Apple in the late 2000s and early 2010s, at a time when iTunes was still king of the hill in terms of music distribution. During the summers, they would periodically host private performances from popular musicians on Apple campus. It was a neat perk for a fresh-from-school junior engineer. I have no idea what the details of those performance bookings were, but I always assumed that plenty of money changed hands to make it happen.
- iamben 3y agoI wonder if at that point there was a "do this for us and we'll promote you on iTunes" thing as well - which at the time was arguably worth far more.