Notes

"How country music went crazy: A comprehensive timeline of the genre's identity crisis" bit.ly/17c9klo

At least they're having the debate, no one's fighting over the soul of rock.

Will the traditionalists pull country out of the proverbial ditch, leaving trucks and babies by the wayside, or has country truly left Nashville and is just another pop format, albeit a couple of generations behind Top Forty?

In other words, do you play to the lowest common denominator or go for authenticity?

Authenticity wins in the end, when people burn out on the hollow, but it can take a very long time.

_________________

"Disruptive Innovation Explained" bit.ly/HsH9YC

This is the guru of the future, Clayton Christensen, expounding upon his theory of disruption. How the inadequate cheap gets slowly better and ultimately supplants the high margin quality. Christensen believes good enough is good enough for most people. In other words, not everybody needs a Mercedes Benz, BMW or iPhone. Tim Cook should watch this and be very afraid. Once upon a time, the iPhone owned the market, with high margins to boot. Then inadequate Android handsets came upon the market. And now you've got Samsungs, never mind Motorolas, LGs, HTCs and a plethora of cheap knock-offs that are not quite as good as the iPhone, but good enough for most people (and in the case of high end Samsungs, nearly as good!)

But the biggest takeaway from this clip comes at the end, wherein Christensen says that fact-based analysis inevitably looks backward, because that's where the facts are. If you want to go forward, you've got to have a theory!

I doubt business school is as interesting as this clip. But this is the most fascinating video I've watched all week.

_________________

"The Doctor Is In": http://nyr.kr/1bvJRY6

The story of Dr. Luke. Worth the price of this week's "New Yorker" if you're a wannabe and want to see how to make it.

Will Dr. Luke be on top tomorrow?

Everybody dies. Whether it be Phil Spector, Roy Thomas Baker, Mike Chapman, Stock Aitken Waterman or... You wake up one day and you're done.

I've got no idea why Dr. Luke agreed to this victory lap. Everybody profiled by the "New Yorker" tanks right thereafter, or doesn't make it, it's kind of a jinx, from Ben Kweller to Cherie to...

Everyone feels inadequate, everyone wants the kudos, but he who refrains from this wins.

David Geffen agreed to Tom King's biography, and his image has never recovered.

Be grateful you've earned the success you've got, if you're on top the only thing press can do is...bring you down.

_________________

From: Rich Harris
Subject: Re: The New Me Decade

No it is NOT going away. It's just different. To your point......some stats for ya....(I'm a mobile analyst/strategic for a Fortune 250 company). Get on board or move to the caves of Tora Bora.

A long, long time ago, back in 2011...

96M smartphones in the US.
13% of all internet traffic was mobile.
U.S. E-Tail sales was at $197B, $25B of that from mobile.

Today...

230MM smartphones in the U.S.
39% of all Web traffic is mobile, expected to crest 50%+ by end of this year beating out desktop/laptop internet traffic.
U.S. E-Tail sales expected to hit $240B this year with $39B of that from mobile.

Rock on....
-Rich

_________________

From: Andrew Oldham
Subject: Re: Desperation

bob;

old acts do not deserve 60 minutes plus of saying time.
neither do most younger acts, but it is what it is.
and most younger acts do not survive the long term format.
some shirts should only be washed and left to dry as opposed to dried. they look - or sound - better.
in the beginning there was sheet music, and that was all about one song.
guy drives around the houses with a piano on his flatbed, plays the songs and sold the sheet music for the folks to play at home. he sold the hits!
in our day you got to cut your first 45 RPM; if that did well you were allowed another, then an EP, then another single and if all that hit, an LP.
you were on probation!
as you grew and succeeded you were promoted from the fourth division to the first.
i do understand how much elton enjoys being in the studio. it's like going back to the safety of the womb, but sometimes you just gotta stand in the alley and jerk off .....

best, o

_________________

From: Chris Wink
Subject: Re: Grit

If you look at Angela's Lee Duckworth's TedX talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaeFnxSfSC4) you see a big drum in the background. That's because her TedX talk was in Blue Man Group's rehearsal Space. We brought her in because Grit was one of the topics we were interested in trying to teach at the School we founded http://blueschool.org. It also resonated with our own experience. The question is, is Grit teachable? Or do some people just have it? Well, one thing is certain, you won't have it if you pursue things you aren't passionate about. I'm like you; people said I was lazy when I was doing stuff I didn't like. But when it comes to building cool shows, I'm an unstoppable force. I'm not saying all my ideas are good, I'm just saying I can't be stopped. I keep going, getting help from others until the ideas get good. Maybe not every time, but most of the time my partners and I can outlast the forces of mediocrity (which are everywhere).

Anyway, Angela Lee Duckworth rocks.
Chris

_________________

My favorite viral video of the day:

PEOPLE ARE AWESOME 2013 (NEW) http://bit.ly/16tyDmg

_________________

"Say 'Cheese' to the Narrative Clip Life-Logging Wearable": http://on.wsj.com/15iTGr4

I want one. But not this one. Kickstarter sucks. Have you seen a Pebble in real life? Absolute junk. A plasticky thing you'd never wear on your wrist.

_________________

Thirty Seconds To Mars vyrt: https://beta.vyrt.com/mars

I love everything about this but the counter.

Jared Leto is smart, innovative and I give him credit for this live stream. The only problem I have is he's only sold 4,114 of 7,500 tickets.

That's why you don't want a counter online. Because people can see how puny your effort truly is. Like the number of people who fund the Kickstarter project. You might have raised the money, but you're proving your a tiny niche.

As for Jared/Thirty Seconds To Mars...it's a big band. But with this small number, it gives the impression they're not so big. Bottom line...people want to go to the show, they don't want to pay to watch at home, because going is as much about the experience as the music, and free live footage is plentiful online.

Now you know why people buy Twitter followers and YouTube plays, to give the imprimatur that something is happening, when in many cases it's not.

_________________

Howard Stern's radio show is no better today than it was before he was a judge on "America's Got Talent." But having been on network television, the gatekeepers, the handlers, now approve of him and the quality of his guests is equal, if not better than that of mainstream media outlets. Howard interviewed Floyd Mayweather soon after the fight, as well as Michael J. Fox and James Caan and so many others. And sure, Howard extracts information everyone else is afraid to get near, but my point is Howard played a very traditional game and it worked for him, we want to believe the Internet changed everything, but it didn't.

P.S. Listen to Howard's interview of Graham Nash, it'll blow your mind. That's the thing about Stern, he digs deep when no other pro will even pick up the spade: http://bit.ly/1a6n4z5

_________________

Speaking of disruption, soon the "New York Times" will be even more powerful than it is today. If you focus on money, you get left behind. When everybody else was cutting severely, the "Times" held out, well relatively. As a result, the paper is ready for the next paradigm, Web 3.0, filters. We want trusted ones. We're all sick of the online outlets we've never heard of reporting rumor or rendering opinion at best. Television has punted. Radio is almost exclusively opinion. The "New York Times" sets the American agenda more than ever, whether you're a liberal or a conservative, it's what those in the know read to find out what is going on, they haven't got time to waste on untold Websites.

The "Huffington Post" has jumped the shark. It's linkbait and nothing more.

The "Wall Street Journal" is the only paper in the "New York Times"'s league.

I'm not saying the "Times" is not challenged, but it's got boots on the ground. And suddenly, that's very important.

P.S. The "Times" is taking all kinds of risks, even though it's doing a bad job of promoting them. Baby boomers should bookmark this page, to read about the long term marriages and the divorces if nothing else: "Booming": http://www.nytimes.com/pages/booming/index.html


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