M-Dolla On Top

Billboard have just published Music’s Top 40 Money Makers 2013 (money earned in 2012).

Who do you think is number one?

THE QUEEN OF COURSE! M-Dolla!

That should come as no surprise. 

Have a look at the top ten:

1. Madonna.

2. Bruce Springsteen

3. Roger Waters

4. Van Halen

5. Kenny Chesney

6. Dave Matthews Band

7. Tim McGraw

8. Jason Aldean

9. Coldplay

10. Justin Bieber

But what DOES come as surprise (not for us) is that Lady Gaga is nowhere to be seen, despite having the 6th grossing tour of 2012.

Where is Lady Gaga ranked, the poor thing….?

#15?…No

#20?… God no.

#30?… Errr no

#40?… LOL NO! 

Despite having the 6th highest tour gross of 2012, Lady Gaga is NOWHERE to be seen on the top earners list. 

Why do you think that is Little Morons?

It’s because her tour (with limited amounts of tickets being sold + give-aways) was BARELY breaking even. And that just proves what we, at PDLM, have been saying ALL along. If Lady Gaga had sold out every date in 2012, she would have appeared on this list, after all she landed in the top ten grossing tour of 2012. 

Numbers people. Numbers. 

About Madonna, Billboard says:

“Thanks largely to her blockbuster MDNA tour, the Queen of Pop reigns at No. 1 on the Moneymakers list for a second time. (She first crowned the tally for earnings in 2008.) MDNA was last year’s -biggest tour ($305 million gross), and the No. 10 top-grossing trek of all time. The 88-date tour earned Madonna an estimated $32 million in 2012. The globetrotting tour also supported her MDNA album, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and generated $1.5 million in physical and digital album sales for the artist. Her first studio release under a 360 deal with Live Nation,MDNA was released and promoted through Interscope, with U.S. sales buoyed by a promotion in which tour ticket buyers had an option of receiving the album as part of their purchase.”

And the #1 Tour of the Year is…

Madonna’s MDNA TOUR, of course!

Billboard has just published their end-of-the-year lists and, as I have been saying for months, Madonna’s MDNA Tour is the highst grossing tour of the year - and she still has some more shows to go. Madonna also ranks at #3 on the Dance/Electronic Albums chart and #5 on the Dance/Club artists chart. 

Our beloved Lady Gaga, poor thing, #2?

No.

#3?

No.

#4?

No!

What the heck?

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Ball ended up at #6!

And just like I have said before, Lady Gaga would not report all of her shows because many of them flopped.

Remember when I said Lady Gaga would pretend her entire tour was “sold out” by hiding the commercially flopped concerts and acting like they never happened?

Check the number of shows Billboard says she performed: 65. Billboard says “65 sold out shows out of 65.“ 

Except that Lady Gaga has already performed 80 shows with theBorn This Way Ball to date - NOT 65.

Until the end of November, Lady Gaga had performed 76 shows - not 65.

Why have only 65 shows been reported to Billboard Boxscore?

You know why!

Coldplay (#5 on the list) didn’t have a problem revealing that not every single show was sold out - they are still ahead of Lady Gaga on the list.

Cirque Du Soleil, Roger Waters, Bruce Springsteen… they are all ahead of Lady Gaga and they still did not have a problem revealing the real numbers of their tours - not every single show was sold out.

Only Lady Gaga, who has her own head far up her own ass could not deal with the fact that she flopped in many markets. Only Lady Gaga and her big inflated ego lied about selling out all of her shows.

The saddest thing is seeing that Billboard decided to help Lady Gaga hide the fact that her tour was NOT sold out.

- Ask them what happened to Lady Gaga’s shows in Mexico City, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Santiago, Lima, Asunción?

I’ve been saying this forever: the mainstream media protects Lady Gaga. Does anyone still have doubts?

You can reach Billboard.com’s Managing Editor, Jessica Letkemann, on Jessica.Letkemann@billboard.com, Billboard’s Charts Manager, Gary Trust, on Gary.Trust@billboard.com, and Billboard’s Research Manager, Gordon Murray, on  Research@billboard.com.

You can also ask them on Twitter: @billboard

Billboard Bizz has an article that talks about the highest grossing tours and the artists on the list. It’s interesting to see that Gaga’s people still over-hype her. It’s even more interesting to see that Gaga’s booker reveals they envision her longevity like Madonna’s and the Rolling Stones’. But again, Billboard failed to expose Lady Gaga and the fact that she is hiding the numbers of her flopped shows in some markets:

“Lady Gaga has yet to play to North American fans on her “Born This Way Ball” tour, but international audiences drove Gaga’s gross to $124.9 million, with 1.1 million in attendance to 65 shows. The run is produced by Live Nation Global Touring, and Gaga is managed by Troy Carter and booked by WME’s Geiger. 

“The strategy on this run was to use this album cycle to go into marketplaces she left untapped in the first cycle, [knowing] she was a huge cultural force in those places,” Geiger says. ”We really tried, as part of this plan, to ‘crop rotate,’ and it has worked, because you have to lay down roots if you’re going to be a global superstar everywhere.”’ 

“Gaga added stadiums to the mix internationally, but will play primarily arenas in North America next year, which could be considered an underplay. “We look at it as, ‘We have a real artist here’ — we always did — and this is just part of artist development,” Geiger says of the strategy. “Her measurement of success is, I believe, to be a brilliant, interesting artist for 25-30 years, or longer. The Stones and Madonna have shown you can do this for a long time and do it well, and we’re still in the early stages [with Gaga].””

» I think they failed to realize that the Stones and Madonna were not selling less albums within their first four years in the music business. They were getting bigger at that stage of their career. The same stage Gaga finds herself now selling less records than before, covering up empty seats and half empty stadiums and with a tour that will not be bigger than the previous one. Talk about the huge cultural impact she has had in those places, huh, Geiger? 

About Madonna:

“As was the case for her tours in 2009 and 2004, Madonna emerges as the highest-grossing touring act for the year with “MDNA” still under way and putting up huge numbers. (…) Madonna joins the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Bon Jovi among the only acts to be the highest-grossing tour twice in a three-year span, according to Boxscore. (…)

Though she still had numbers to add to the tally when the chart period closed, Madonna’s $228.4 million gross from 72 sellouts and 1.6 million in attendance is tops for the year by a wide margin. “MDNA” is Madonna’s fifth tour with Fogel’s team, a run that marks the artist’s surge into the elite ranks of touring acts and inarguably makes her the top touring female artist of all time, a designation that Fogel readily embraces. 

“It seems like I have said this a number of times following Madonna tours — five times to be precise: The overwhelming global success of the “MDNA” tour proves yet again that Madonna is the greatest female touring artist,” Fogel says from Medellin, Colombia, where, following a turnout of 85,000 paid attendees in Mexico City, Madonna was poised to play to another 80,000 ticket buyers. “As this tour takes its place as one of the most successful in history, I can’t help but enjoy the fact that it is the millions of fans who determine that.“ 

» Very well said, Fogel. I guess millions of twitter followers do not fill up stadiums worldwide.

TOO OLD FOR POP

“Too old for pop”. I could say that about everything in life. Substitute “pop” for any other noun in the dictionary, and no one would care. We live in a society that echoes the idea that people lose their liberty to do whatever they want as they grow older, especially women. But do we really want to perpetuate this idea? 

After a certain age, women cannot wear bikinis - they’re too old for that (no matter how good they look, they HAVE to cover up their bodies). After a certain age, women should cut their hair short - they’re too old for long hair. After a certain age, women have to stop wanting to go out and have fun - they’re too old for that. Women are encouraged to quit their jobs and stay home taking care of their houses, partners and kids. The ones that don’t do that are the freaks.

And no one is freakier than Madonna. According to what the media tells us, she is too old for everything she does: she’s too old for the outfits she wears on stage,  she’s too old to show her body (even though she is in better shape than most 20-year olds), she’s too old to date younger men, the list goes on and on.

The limitations we try to impose onto others based on their age and gender go beyond concrete terms (body, clothes, hair). We try to limit people’s abilities to THINK a certain way too: Madonna is too old for pop music (a music genre), she’s too old to be singing songs about having fun (should she be singing about retirement?), she’s too old to call herself a girl.

Since when pop music, having fun, and calling yourself a “girl” have an age limit? I would think that logic would be important in this matter: 

The older you get, the more experiences you have, and the more you know, the more respected you should be for singing, talking, and writing about your life experiences in general - from the trivial, to the important things in life. But no, instead of recognizing and accepting this notion, we try to impose the opposite: the older you get, the less you are allowed to talk about life. So what about being too young for certain topics? 

If a woman in her 50s is not allowed to call herself a “girl”, or sing about wanting to “have some fun”, or do anything remotely trivial, drama-free and silly because of her age, why do we take a teenager or even a 20-something-year old seriously when they sing about serious stuff, things that only an experienced person should be singing about?

Sometimes, people are TOO YOUNG FOR CERTAIN TOPICS. We condemn women with experience for singing about life in general. But we praise people in their early 20s and teens (people who have no experience in life at all) for singing about “serious” subjects. And worse, we take them seriously. 

Isn’t it ridiculous when a teenager sings about real love? What do teenagers know about real love? They should be singing about homework and having a crush on someone - those are things that belong to that universe - not real love. Lady Gaga singing about immigration? What is her experience with it again? Oh, none! But it’s okay. She gets a free pass because she’s in her 20s - those “young” people can sing about anything, from the frivolous “getting drunk and just dancing”, to the serious stuff - even when they are too young to really understand the issue they are talking about. 

According to the same “age restrictions” the media uses against older women in the arts, Lady Gaga (among other “young” stars) should be dedicating their songs to the things that belong to her universe: clubbing, getting drunk, dancing. Gaga often does it. But she also tries to embrace “serious causes” that are completely out of her league: 

Gay issues, equality, immigration - she has no life experience to talk about it in the tone she does. She can embrace the cause and sing about it, but the tone she uses is rather misleading. She recently said: “We are in a different place right now. 25 years ago, gay people had to hide”. Exactly! She is 26 years old. She has no clue about what life was really like for gay people 25 years ago.

We are glad that she wants to help the gay cause. But why not make it clear that her first person discourse is actually a role-play? Her age and her own speech on how “we are in a different place right now” are the evidence of how little experience she really has had with the issues she claims as her own. Instead of being a transparent supporter of the cause, she plays the role of someone who suffered as much as the people 25 years ago. But the media would never ever suggest she is too young for knowing what it was like 25 years ago with so much property. Even when her own speech makes her whole act contradictory.

Men do too suffer from ageism. But it is nowhere near what women have to go through. Mick Jagger still wears hot pants, and dances like when he was a sex symbol in his 20s. No one says he’s too old for that. Bruce Springsteen still wears tight jeans. No one says he’s too old for that. Prince still wears the same campy outfits. No one says he is too old for that either. John Bon Jovi still sings shirtless on stage. No one says he is too old for that. In fact, people like it that he is still the same as he was in the 80s.

The problem is not solely the media spreading these retrograde views and rules. The real problem is us, the people who echo those ideas in our daily lives:

Now, for whatever reason, little monsters say Madonna is “too old for what she does”. But hey, Gaga will be 30 in four years. By then, she will be too old to wear her Halloween costumes on a daily basis. 

That’s the danger in spreading and sharing ignorance with the world - it always comes back to bite you in the derrière. Continuing with these retrograde ideas now will only affect the perception we will have of your faves in the near future. After all, we will not have a complete cultural awakening in only four years.