It's a beautiful, sunny, Southern California Saturday and I'm killing time reading magazines before I up and go to parties.
Yup, that's why the summer is better than the winter, the extracurricular activities. First we're stopping by at a Middlebury event, and if there's time left thereafter, we're going to Kevin Weaver's house for an Atlantic Records soiree, where they're serving Umami Burgers...mmm, that's worth the trip, don't you think?
As for the Middlebury event...it's my first in decades, but they tracked me down after I was featured in the "Magazine," so I'm gonna go. But funny thing about the article...I thought it would mean more to me, all these years later, to get a write-up in the publication of my alma mater, but if you're fighting old battles in your head, if you think connecting with a long lost love will make your life complete, it's evidence you're not living in the present, which I finally am, to my great wonderment and surprise.
Anyway, I want to clear the decks so I can get back to my book, Elizabeth Strout's "The Burgess Boys." It didn't get such hot reviews, it hasn't caught fire, but it's ringing my bell, the way it's so intimate, it doesn't seem to be written for the reader, it's like you're eavesdropping on a conversation, and in a world where it's all about the whizz-bang, to focus on the little, the irrelevant to most, is so satisfying.
I'm back on a book kick. I'm burned out on the lousy writing in magazines and newspapers. And Amazon replaced my four year old Kindle with a new Paperwhite, oh I had to pay fifty bucks, but it was a thrill after being on hold and wasting two hours with nitwits in their customer service department. It's not like Apple, the people are not comprehensible and they're just this side of useless, and the Paperwhite...is imperfect, it's got glowing hot spots at the bottom, everybody complains about them online, but I'm doing my best to overlook them.
So I read Meg Wolitzer's "The Interestings." Long on plot, a bit short on insight, it's still the Franzen novel for those who hate his work. And if you ever went to summer camp... I got hooked on these looking back books with Sara Davidson's "Loose Change" in the seventies, I like them. And then I read Claire Messud's "The Woman Upstairs," which the intelligentsia raved about, despite tepid reviews upon release, and I was expecting a dry tome, but it opens so vividly, so realistically, that I was hooked. And the protagonist went to Middlebury! Not that that's relevant. And I had to look up words constantly. And the plot petered out. But there was so much insight! We're all so lonely, looking for fulfillment. And are those who do the right thing consigned to a life of quiet desperation? Read it and tell me!
And I can't tell you how many lousy articles I skimmed, until I found a good one in "Vanity Fair"...an excerpt from Ava Gardner's memoir. The real story about her relationships with Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw. It's almost worth the price of the magazine. But the article I saved, the best for last, just like Vanessa Williams sang, was the one on Mary McCarthy and her book "The Group."
I read it. The book. The article I had to skim, it was nearly pointless. Except something stood out. THE SALES FIGURES!
"The Group," which was released in August 1963, had a first printing of 75,000. Stores were ordering 5,000 a day thereafter. By the close of 1964, nearly 300,000 copies had been sold.
Like a record.
Yes, books were supplanted by records. You wanted to write the Great American Novel and then you wanted to record the Great American Album. And writers and musicians still believe we're living in yesteryear, but nothing could be further from the truth.
In other words, if I'm exposed to any more of the Kanye hype, I'm gonna explode. Because I just don't CARE!
That's the difference, that's what the Internet has wrought. Instead of the populace being hyper-focused on what's hyped, most of us can quite easily avoid it, we're deep into our own niches. The number one record? MOST PEOPLE HAVEN'T EVEN HEARD IT!
But we all know Google, we all know Facebook, we all know iPhone.
So having flipped through "Vanity Fair," I picked up "Outside," and started reading from the back, which is what I usually do, the front is too scary, I've got to ease into my reading. And it was there that I was confronted with a story on Joel Gratz. Of OpenSnow. Or should I say opensnow.com, the go-to precipitation/powder website.
Huh?
Believe me, if you're a skier, you know Open Snow, you know Joel Gratz, he's the one who every day, sometimes twice a day, tells you how much snow you're gonna get at your ski area. Which is devilishly important now that global warming seems to have stopped winter precipitation, this season was better than last, but 2011-12 was the worst on record in Vail.
How did I find out about OpenSnow?
Andy!
We all talk, we all communicate, I was just about to text Andy about this article, even though he's in Colorado right now, just flew in from his home base of NYC. Yes, today our closest friends don't live in the neighborhood, but the virtual village online. I connect with Jake and Marc and Richard more than I do with the people who live in my town, even though they live in Toronto, New Jersey and London respectively.
Joel Gratz gave up his dream, of weather-forecasting. He tried to go straight, getting his Master's, an MBA and a cubicle gig. But he couldn't give up on weather. That's how you know you're a lifer, when you can't give up. Gratz quit his job and started his site.
And word spread.
Because we need to know.
I hate Accuweather, my old go-to weather provider. Because it's not LOCALIZED enough! What they say is Vail is miles away and thousands of feet lower than the ski area, and this makes a huge difference. Hell, it can be snowing atop a peak and bright sunshine a mile from the base.
So Joel showed his work to Chris Davenport, famous Aspenite, famous extreme skier, and word started to spread, because we need the information. Not that OpenSnow scales, I mean Gratz has widened his world to New England and the west coast, but most people just don't care about snowfall, they'd rather it NEVER happens.
But we do. Enough of us to keep Joel in business. He's now running a freemium model. Yup, you can pay more for more, like videos and other chozzerai. And there are people who are just that interested.
So, there's a business in niches. Maybe your music doesn't scale to everybody.
But what's weird is no music scales to everybody today. There's no hit everybody knows, no show everybody's got to go to.
But we all know the aforementioned Google, Facebook and iPhone. And we know Amazon too.
And it's all because they're useful, they provide a service.
That's the modern model, that's what's hip today.
Sure, write your book, make your music, but know the heyday of those creations is past. Could come back, then again, there was only one Renaissance. Oh, people have been painting ever since, it's just that painting...doesn't drive the culture.
But no one in book publishing or the music industry will admit the foregoing. They believe it's the same as it ever was. But it's not. The nitwits might go on TV talent shows, but the educated want nothing to do with the so-called arts, they're all into tech, and tech is about being useful, because useful SCALES!
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Saturday 15 June 2013
Friday 14 June 2013
Media Rules
If it's not in the newspaper, that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Just because the newspaper says it's important, that doesn't mean it is.
Don't confuse ink with traction. You can hire a PR person, be all over the media, and no one can care.
Just because you're on TV, don't assume everyone's seen you.
Don't assume anyone's seen anything in the media today, we're all so drilled down into our own little holes that everybody misses much, and doesn't care when they're called out on it. The concept of feeling better about yourself because you know about something somebody else does not, or you know it sooner, is passe.
Don't trust the newspaper. Those are reporters. We want someone who lives that beat all day long, not someone who does a bit of research and tries to put the story together. Old school journalists are concerned with the w's, the where, when, why and...how. You can only get so far asking questions. But if you live it all day long, you know the history and you know the context. Chances are, on everything other than front page news, there's a maven online with a website who knows more about it than the traditional reporters.
Reporters get it wrong. Not only do they misquote, they make stuff up. And oftentimes, editors change things so they're not accurate, sometimes to justify their jobs, other times for space.
If someone's in the media, being interviewed and quoted everywhere, they're a whore, they're into the publicity. Anybody with a profile knows that the media gets it wrong, so they do their best to stay out. So if you see someone incessantly, whether it be Kim Kardashian or John McCain, know they're working it.
You can tell your own story online. If you're concerned about the truth, do so. But the real story is you can't inform everybody, no longer how much you protest, people will spread rumors and false information. Focus on your work, not the sales pitch.
Almost everything in the newspaper other than hard news, i.e. killings and political situations, is placed there by PR people. PR people make it easy for reporters, they fill up the paper. If you think someone in the arts department sits down and decides the important stories, you're dreaming. They're concerned first and foremost with access. That's what PR people do, deliver stories, they write the newspaper...
TV news is what you see and usually nothing more. Other than sticking a camera in someone's face, shooting a tragedy, there's almost no one in the field scouring for news and developing stories. If you think you're getting the real story on TV, you haven't read the newspaper, which is where TV gets all its leads.
Rupert Murdoch has a viewpoint. He tries to change public opinion via Fox News and his newspapers. If you see a left wing position in his outlets, it's a straw man ready to be struck down.
Don't try to convince someone their political position is wrong. They'll just dig down deeper and e-mail you a contrary opinion by their favorite blogger. People change their opinions over time, by themselves, via a plethora of information. This is the essence of gay marriage. Once everybody saw everybody else was for it, they were too.
Politicians are last. They stay far from the leading edge and are beholden to corporations. If you're looking for leadership, you should look to artists. Unfortunately, in today's challenging financial times, artists have been derelict in their duty, they too want to be beholden to corporations.
Just because someone analyzes deeply, that does not mean they're right. Today, you must do your own analysis. In other words, you must be educated. Which most people are not. The mark of an educated person? Someone who can hold two opposing thoughts in their brain at one time. If you're just a knee-jerker...you're gonna get jerked around.
"The New Yorker" is the best-written mainstream publication. But that does not mean it's always right or on the cutting edge or can influence policy. It just means it's the most rewarding reading experience. Too many magazines focus on the glitz and not the substance...then again, the average person can't understand substance.
You see Kim Kardashian in the news because you want to. Want to banish her? Stop reading the stories.
The press stopped hounding Owen Wilson after his suicide attempt, demonstrating it can exercise restraint. But somehow, it never does. If the press didn't report every move, would Amanda Bynes fly straight? Lindsay Lohan?
See who is paying the bills... Trust trade magazines and sites for raw data, discard the analysis, they say positive things about those who pay them.
Beware the professional prognosticators... Who said the iPod was too expensive and no one would want the iPad. Now digital music rules and tablets are killing the desktop. Furthermore, reporters on this beat go to the same damn pundits every time, skewing the story. But the iPod and iPad show that the pundits are powerless. The people will do what they want to do.
"Huffington Post" has a better layout than the "New York Times," but is purely link-bait. The "New York Times" site needs a makeover, but no one working there understands design or the web, they're too busy pounding their chests and claiming they're reporters. What did Steve Jobs teach us? Number one comes usability!
"USA Today" is irrelevant. Because its bland stories are done better online, and no one's got a captive audience anymore, you can get the news on your phone, you don't need a physical paper.
There's a need for local news, but local newspapers can't make it financially. The "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" survive, everything else is up for grabs.
People need news. They don't need to get it from traditional sources.
There's new news every day, want your story to survive? Keep it alive, keep making news every day.
Kids today know more news than their parents, they're exposed to it all day long.
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Just because the newspaper says it's important, that doesn't mean it is.
Don't confuse ink with traction. You can hire a PR person, be all over the media, and no one can care.
Just because you're on TV, don't assume everyone's seen you.
Don't assume anyone's seen anything in the media today, we're all so drilled down into our own little holes that everybody misses much, and doesn't care when they're called out on it. The concept of feeling better about yourself because you know about something somebody else does not, or you know it sooner, is passe.
Don't trust the newspaper. Those are reporters. We want someone who lives that beat all day long, not someone who does a bit of research and tries to put the story together. Old school journalists are concerned with the w's, the where, when, why and...how. You can only get so far asking questions. But if you live it all day long, you know the history and you know the context. Chances are, on everything other than front page news, there's a maven online with a website who knows more about it than the traditional reporters.
Reporters get it wrong. Not only do they misquote, they make stuff up. And oftentimes, editors change things so they're not accurate, sometimes to justify their jobs, other times for space.
If someone's in the media, being interviewed and quoted everywhere, they're a whore, they're into the publicity. Anybody with a profile knows that the media gets it wrong, so they do their best to stay out. So if you see someone incessantly, whether it be Kim Kardashian or John McCain, know they're working it.
You can tell your own story online. If you're concerned about the truth, do so. But the real story is you can't inform everybody, no longer how much you protest, people will spread rumors and false information. Focus on your work, not the sales pitch.
Almost everything in the newspaper other than hard news, i.e. killings and political situations, is placed there by PR people. PR people make it easy for reporters, they fill up the paper. If you think someone in the arts department sits down and decides the important stories, you're dreaming. They're concerned first and foremost with access. That's what PR people do, deliver stories, they write the newspaper...
TV news is what you see and usually nothing more. Other than sticking a camera in someone's face, shooting a tragedy, there's almost no one in the field scouring for news and developing stories. If you think you're getting the real story on TV, you haven't read the newspaper, which is where TV gets all its leads.
Rupert Murdoch has a viewpoint. He tries to change public opinion via Fox News and his newspapers. If you see a left wing position in his outlets, it's a straw man ready to be struck down.
Don't try to convince someone their political position is wrong. They'll just dig down deeper and e-mail you a contrary opinion by their favorite blogger. People change their opinions over time, by themselves, via a plethora of information. This is the essence of gay marriage. Once everybody saw everybody else was for it, they were too.
Politicians are last. They stay far from the leading edge and are beholden to corporations. If you're looking for leadership, you should look to artists. Unfortunately, in today's challenging financial times, artists have been derelict in their duty, they too want to be beholden to corporations.
Just because someone analyzes deeply, that does not mean they're right. Today, you must do your own analysis. In other words, you must be educated. Which most people are not. The mark of an educated person? Someone who can hold two opposing thoughts in their brain at one time. If you're just a knee-jerker...you're gonna get jerked around.
"The New Yorker" is the best-written mainstream publication. But that does not mean it's always right or on the cutting edge or can influence policy. It just means it's the most rewarding reading experience. Too many magazines focus on the glitz and not the substance...then again, the average person can't understand substance.
You see Kim Kardashian in the news because you want to. Want to banish her? Stop reading the stories.
The press stopped hounding Owen Wilson after his suicide attempt, demonstrating it can exercise restraint. But somehow, it never does. If the press didn't report every move, would Amanda Bynes fly straight? Lindsay Lohan?
See who is paying the bills... Trust trade magazines and sites for raw data, discard the analysis, they say positive things about those who pay them.
Beware the professional prognosticators... Who said the iPod was too expensive and no one would want the iPad. Now digital music rules and tablets are killing the desktop. Furthermore, reporters on this beat go to the same damn pundits every time, skewing the story. But the iPod and iPad show that the pundits are powerless. The people will do what they want to do.
"Huffington Post" has a better layout than the "New York Times," but is purely link-bait. The "New York Times" site needs a makeover, but no one working there understands design or the web, they're too busy pounding their chests and claiming they're reporters. What did Steve Jobs teach us? Number one comes usability!
"USA Today" is irrelevant. Because its bland stories are done better online, and no one's got a captive audience anymore, you can get the news on your phone, you don't need a physical paper.
There's a need for local news, but local newspapers can't make it financially. The "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" survive, everything else is up for grabs.
People need news. They don't need to get it from traditional sources.
There's new news every day, want your story to survive? Keep it alive, keep making news every day.
Kids today know more news than their parents, they're exposed to it all day long.
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Rhinofy-5150
I know, I know, we're supposed to like David Lee Roth Van Halen better, and I do, but...
That does not mean that Sammy's version of the band was no good...
So Dave thinks he's a star, a veritable one man band, covering classics and promoting them with extravaganzas on the breakout MTV. And then...
Word comes down that the Van Halens have hooked up with Sammy Hagar. Who they famously met through their exotic car mechanic, back when musicians were rich, before everybody found out the money was in tech and players invested in startups instead of iron.
And I'm a Sammy fan. Probably because of Montrose, but even more the Capitol years, with Carter...do you know the second solo, which started off with "Red," but had the hilarious "The Pits" on side two? I bought it, I became a fan.
But then...
John Kalodner recognizes Sammy's greatness, signs him to Geffen and he starts having hits. The debut had two, "There's Only One Way To Rock" and..."I'll Fall In Love Again"! Produced by Keith Olsen, I won't say you hear the Fleetwood Mac influence, but there's a melody, a subtlety, sonic extras that were absent previously.
And then, on the follow-up, there's another one of these melodic smashes, "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy"...
And then comes the apotheosis, the ubiquitous "I Can't Drive 55."
The track was great, it's just that Sammy looked like such a doofus in the video, wearing the one piece yellow outfit. Huh? I thought the guy was a heartland rocker. But now Sammy inhabited a place somewhere between Fontana and Hollywood...a no man's land. I mean it was a great track, but did you have to chew the scenery?
That's MTV... Everybody knows your name overnight, and then everybody looks at each other and says...eewww!
Now Eddie Van Halen's trajectory was just the opposite. Seen as a Starwood/Gazzarri's metalhead in new wave crazy L.A., with every album the cognoscenti shifted its opinion, suddenly Eddie was seen as possibly the world's best guitarist, certainly the most innovative player with any traction. But he had no lead singer, his was a band without a frontman.
So you match the credible with the cartoon and..?
Sammy tones down his act. Retires the clothes and becomes about the music. Although it takes the better part of two years to hear the result. And when "Why Can't This Be Love" hit the airwaves...at first you weren't sure, but almost immediately thereafter you couldn't hear it enough.
It was Eddie's playing, the sound. From the intro to the breaks, it was an Eddie tour-de-force, with Sammy doing what a frontman should do...SING! Sammy was the anti-Dave, he was a team player, with no antics...and he could hit the notes! Despite being so heavy, there was a certain melody in the track, suddenly Eddie was playing with someone who could sing.
As Sammy did all over the album.
The opener was a little atonal, but after experiencing the single, you were gonna give the album a chance. But really, it was the two songs that finished side one that closed you...
"Dreams"...that's what we all have, and Eddie mastered the keyboard once again, as he did with "Jump," and created something infectious, that just made you feel good.
But his guitar skills were back in "Summer Nights." It was the perfect melding of Eddie and Sammy. Eddie was wailing and Sammy was singing about the good times. Far different from the Dave days, when the songs had a twist, a deeper meaning, but...you could not deny that unlike Dave, Sammy could sing. Sure, it was a different band, a different thing, but it was bigger than the sum of its parts... Very few Dave-era fans were lost, Sammy's came aboard and a whole bunch of new fans were made, stoked by the ear-friendly music.
But I wouldn't be writing this if it weren't for the cut that opens side two, my favorite on the album, the absolute highlight of the Sammy era, "Best Of Both Worlds." And Sammy's good, but really it's all about Eddie, the dynamics. From loud to quiet to loud once again, it's positively Zeppelinesque, without being a rip-off. It's a roller coaster, with hills and dives, twists and turns, I can listen to it all day long, it makes me feel so good, powerful, like the rest of the world doesn't matter.
And "Love Walks In" is a gorgeous ballad, something Dave could never do. And instantaneously the almost impossible is achieved. Yes, Genesis replaced its lead singer, but they were not superstars when they did. Van Halen was at the top, and then they got Sammy and they were BIGGER!
And from there...
"OU812" was almost as good.
But then sophomoric Sammy gained undue influence and despite great sales, the music was less meaningful and more pedestrian. "Poundcake"? Dave would never sing that. Sammy doesn't believe in subtlety, and he continued to pull the rest of the band along with him and then...
It all expired.
The Van Halens got together with Gary Cherone, a blatant mistake.
And then reunited with Dave.
Then Sammy.
Then Dave.
But one thing's for sure, the star is Eddie... Who's got nothing in his life other than music, that was Sammy's bitch with him, that he never wanted to take time off.
And Eddie was so good, that hooked up with journeyman Sam, he once again made memorable music, he didn't need Dave.
But Eddie always needs somebody.
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/p6HcZ8
Previous Rhinofy playlists: http://www.rhinofy.com/lefsetz
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That does not mean that Sammy's version of the band was no good...
So Dave thinks he's a star, a veritable one man band, covering classics and promoting them with extravaganzas on the breakout MTV. And then...
Word comes down that the Van Halens have hooked up with Sammy Hagar. Who they famously met through their exotic car mechanic, back when musicians were rich, before everybody found out the money was in tech and players invested in startups instead of iron.
And I'm a Sammy fan. Probably because of Montrose, but even more the Capitol years, with Carter...do you know the second solo, which started off with "Red," but had the hilarious "The Pits" on side two? I bought it, I became a fan.
But then...
John Kalodner recognizes Sammy's greatness, signs him to Geffen and he starts having hits. The debut had two, "There's Only One Way To Rock" and..."I'll Fall In Love Again"! Produced by Keith Olsen, I won't say you hear the Fleetwood Mac influence, but there's a melody, a subtlety, sonic extras that were absent previously.
And then, on the follow-up, there's another one of these melodic smashes, "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy"...
And then comes the apotheosis, the ubiquitous "I Can't Drive 55."
The track was great, it's just that Sammy looked like such a doofus in the video, wearing the one piece yellow outfit. Huh? I thought the guy was a heartland rocker. But now Sammy inhabited a place somewhere between Fontana and Hollywood...a no man's land. I mean it was a great track, but did you have to chew the scenery?
That's MTV... Everybody knows your name overnight, and then everybody looks at each other and says...eewww!
Now Eddie Van Halen's trajectory was just the opposite. Seen as a Starwood/Gazzarri's metalhead in new wave crazy L.A., with every album the cognoscenti shifted its opinion, suddenly Eddie was seen as possibly the world's best guitarist, certainly the most innovative player with any traction. But he had no lead singer, his was a band without a frontman.
So you match the credible with the cartoon and..?
Sammy tones down his act. Retires the clothes and becomes about the music. Although it takes the better part of two years to hear the result. And when "Why Can't This Be Love" hit the airwaves...at first you weren't sure, but almost immediately thereafter you couldn't hear it enough.
It was Eddie's playing, the sound. From the intro to the breaks, it was an Eddie tour-de-force, with Sammy doing what a frontman should do...SING! Sammy was the anti-Dave, he was a team player, with no antics...and he could hit the notes! Despite being so heavy, there was a certain melody in the track, suddenly Eddie was playing with someone who could sing.
As Sammy did all over the album.
The opener was a little atonal, but after experiencing the single, you were gonna give the album a chance. But really, it was the two songs that finished side one that closed you...
"Dreams"...that's what we all have, and Eddie mastered the keyboard once again, as he did with "Jump," and created something infectious, that just made you feel good.
But his guitar skills were back in "Summer Nights." It was the perfect melding of Eddie and Sammy. Eddie was wailing and Sammy was singing about the good times. Far different from the Dave days, when the songs had a twist, a deeper meaning, but...you could not deny that unlike Dave, Sammy could sing. Sure, it was a different band, a different thing, but it was bigger than the sum of its parts... Very few Dave-era fans were lost, Sammy's came aboard and a whole bunch of new fans were made, stoked by the ear-friendly music.
But I wouldn't be writing this if it weren't for the cut that opens side two, my favorite on the album, the absolute highlight of the Sammy era, "Best Of Both Worlds." And Sammy's good, but really it's all about Eddie, the dynamics. From loud to quiet to loud once again, it's positively Zeppelinesque, without being a rip-off. It's a roller coaster, with hills and dives, twists and turns, I can listen to it all day long, it makes me feel so good, powerful, like the rest of the world doesn't matter.
And "Love Walks In" is a gorgeous ballad, something Dave could never do. And instantaneously the almost impossible is achieved. Yes, Genesis replaced its lead singer, but they were not superstars when they did. Van Halen was at the top, and then they got Sammy and they were BIGGER!
And from there...
"OU812" was almost as good.
But then sophomoric Sammy gained undue influence and despite great sales, the music was less meaningful and more pedestrian. "Poundcake"? Dave would never sing that. Sammy doesn't believe in subtlety, and he continued to pull the rest of the band along with him and then...
It all expired.
The Van Halens got together with Gary Cherone, a blatant mistake.
And then reunited with Dave.
Then Sammy.
Then Dave.
But one thing's for sure, the star is Eddie... Who's got nothing in his life other than music, that was Sammy's bitch with him, that he never wanted to take time off.
And Eddie was so good, that hooked up with journeyman Sam, he once again made memorable music, he didn't need Dave.
But Eddie always needs somebody.
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/p6HcZ8
Previous Rhinofy playlists: http://www.rhinofy.com/lefsetz
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Wednesday 12 June 2013
Seize The Moment
If you've got my attention...
Blow my mind.
Sunday, I'd never heard of Craig Federighi. Monday, I couldn't stop talking about him, because he was so damn good in the Apple presentation.
Turns out, according the "Wall Street Journal," in an article behind a paywall, that Mr. Federighi began at NeXT, moved to Apple with Steve Jobs, left to be CTO of Ariba and was wooed back to Apple in 2009. And when Scott Forstall was pushed out, he became the new software kahuna.
And you might not care about Apple, but this story is instructive.
It takes a long time to get your breakthrough moment. And when you get your opportunity, you've got to kill.
This is the opposite of conventional wisdom. People believe it's about the fame more than the work, and that if you just get a chance, you're in. But where are the losing contestants of "American Idol" today? Where are the WINNERS!
First and foremost, you've got to love what you do. Because that may be all that you get, the work experience. If your happiness depends upon becoming a household name, you're gonna waste a lot of time in the trenches being frustrated. That's the number one reason people give up, frustration, they don't like that it's so hard... Winners don't always win because they're better than everybody else, but frequently because they outlast everybody, there are fewer competitors down the road. I know, I know, music is a youth business. But that's changing. Youth records don't pay as well as they used to and oldsters have disposable income and are interested in music. If you think your chance expired when you hit your thirtieth birthday you're thinking inside the box, and that'll hurt you.
The biggest payment you can get in this world is attention. Everybody's overwhelmed with incoming. When you presume we've got time to waste on you, you're wrong. We're not sitting at home bored, we don't have time to do all we want, but we always have room for excellence. So when you finally get our attention, you've got to deliver. As for a second chance? That's so twentieth century...
Don't ask for someone's time until you're ready.
You can get your name in the newspaper, but if you think that ensures long term success, you have no Internet connection. You want to build yourself off the radar screen, you want to figure out what works, you want to become so good you're undeniable.
I don't know how Craig Federighi got so good. Watching him present at the WWDC was like watching a dancer, a figure skater, who continues to execute difficult moves without falling.
It was the jokes.
Anybody can tell the story, but can you endear yourself to us? Can you make us think you're one of us?
First and foremost you must gain our trust. Sure, Kanye gets away with people hating him, but he's the exception. You're truly no better than the rest, you're human, relate as such. And know that performing is a skill unto itself. You can't throw in everything, you can't wander, you've got to keep hitting the notes.
Oh, don't tell me I've got to listen to the whole album ten times to get it. We only give that kind of attention to our heroes.
And at this point, that's what Apple has become...
No one but a small coterie of fanboys watched Steve Jobs's initial presentations. If he'd tried to launch the iPad without the iPod and iPhone, no one would have cared. Even Apple started small. As for the prognosticators, the hoi polloi...they said the company was doomed, Michael Dell said to liquidate and distribute the proceeds to the shareholders. Then Apple became the world's most valuable company. Huh?
So you've got to believe in yourself.
But that's not enough. There are more delusional people in the arts than in any other field. You cannot make it through sheer will, by having a positive attitude and performing affirmations. No, you've got to be positively realistic, launching a career is like launching a satellite...they don't blast one off without running the numbers incessantly and a firm belief that failure is essentially impossible. In other words, it's fact-based.
Fact... Are you good enough?
But art is about emotion. The delivery counts.
Craig Federighi delivered this week, that's why I'm talking about him.
"Apple's Rising Star: Craig Federighi": http://on.wsj.com/11FwIbs
Article with WSJ excerpt: http://bit.ly/15WecvF
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Blow my mind.
Sunday, I'd never heard of Craig Federighi. Monday, I couldn't stop talking about him, because he was so damn good in the Apple presentation.
Turns out, according the "Wall Street Journal," in an article behind a paywall, that Mr. Federighi began at NeXT, moved to Apple with Steve Jobs, left to be CTO of Ariba and was wooed back to Apple in 2009. And when Scott Forstall was pushed out, he became the new software kahuna.
And you might not care about Apple, but this story is instructive.
It takes a long time to get your breakthrough moment. And when you get your opportunity, you've got to kill.
This is the opposite of conventional wisdom. People believe it's about the fame more than the work, and that if you just get a chance, you're in. But where are the losing contestants of "American Idol" today? Where are the WINNERS!
First and foremost, you've got to love what you do. Because that may be all that you get, the work experience. If your happiness depends upon becoming a household name, you're gonna waste a lot of time in the trenches being frustrated. That's the number one reason people give up, frustration, they don't like that it's so hard... Winners don't always win because they're better than everybody else, but frequently because they outlast everybody, there are fewer competitors down the road. I know, I know, music is a youth business. But that's changing. Youth records don't pay as well as they used to and oldsters have disposable income and are interested in music. If you think your chance expired when you hit your thirtieth birthday you're thinking inside the box, and that'll hurt you.
The biggest payment you can get in this world is attention. Everybody's overwhelmed with incoming. When you presume we've got time to waste on you, you're wrong. We're not sitting at home bored, we don't have time to do all we want, but we always have room for excellence. So when you finally get our attention, you've got to deliver. As for a second chance? That's so twentieth century...
Don't ask for someone's time until you're ready.
You can get your name in the newspaper, but if you think that ensures long term success, you have no Internet connection. You want to build yourself off the radar screen, you want to figure out what works, you want to become so good you're undeniable.
I don't know how Craig Federighi got so good. Watching him present at the WWDC was like watching a dancer, a figure skater, who continues to execute difficult moves without falling.
It was the jokes.
Anybody can tell the story, but can you endear yourself to us? Can you make us think you're one of us?
First and foremost you must gain our trust. Sure, Kanye gets away with people hating him, but he's the exception. You're truly no better than the rest, you're human, relate as such. And know that performing is a skill unto itself. You can't throw in everything, you can't wander, you've got to keep hitting the notes.
Oh, don't tell me I've got to listen to the whole album ten times to get it. We only give that kind of attention to our heroes.
And at this point, that's what Apple has become...
No one but a small coterie of fanboys watched Steve Jobs's initial presentations. If he'd tried to launch the iPad without the iPod and iPhone, no one would have cared. Even Apple started small. As for the prognosticators, the hoi polloi...they said the company was doomed, Michael Dell said to liquidate and distribute the proceeds to the shareholders. Then Apple became the world's most valuable company. Huh?
So you've got to believe in yourself.
But that's not enough. There are more delusional people in the arts than in any other field. You cannot make it through sheer will, by having a positive attitude and performing affirmations. No, you've got to be positively realistic, launching a career is like launching a satellite...they don't blast one off without running the numbers incessantly and a firm belief that failure is essentially impossible. In other words, it's fact-based.
Fact... Are you good enough?
But art is about emotion. The delivery counts.
Craig Federighi delivered this week, that's why I'm talking about him.
"Apple's Rising Star: Craig Federighi": http://on.wsj.com/11FwIbs
Article with WSJ excerpt: http://bit.ly/15WecvF
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Final Petty
LISTEN TO HER HEART
"You think you're gonna take her away
With your money and your cocaine"
Tom Petty not only fought to keep his records cheap, refusing to be the first act to charge a dollar more, he also told his label he wouldn't change the above lyric for radio. Yup, they wanted "cocaine" to be CHAMPAGNE!
But then it's totally different.
But it gets worse... The album, Petty's second, underperformed, without the giant hit single it didn't sell as well as the first. But Tom soldiered on. Because that's what you do when the music is more important to you than the fame, when being true to yourself is all you've got.
AND THE FANS NOTICE! Hell, I'm telling this story thirty five years later!
All this hogwash about the younger generation not caring if you do endorsements, if you sell out... People know whose payroll you're on, they know if they're number one. Life is lonely, you look to artists for solace, you need to know they're pure, that they're thinking of you. But if they're thinking of money, bitching about it ad infinitum, which is all today's musicians seem capable of doing, the public is turned off.
Speaking of which...despite Saturday's show being three quarters through before the fire marshal closed it down, Petty is giving full refunds:
http://www.tompetty.com/blog/ticket-and-premium-package-refund-june-8-fonda-theatre-show-137261
Huh?
Because, you see...love is a long road.
LOVE IS A LONG ROAD
You pace yourself. If you've got to do six nights...first and foremost you've got to make it through. But when you do, when the end is in sight, YOU CUT LOOSE!
Yup, last night, the final show, they started off louder, more energized, they hit the stage running. Instead of stopping the train at the station, we had to run alongside and jump on.
Are you ready to jump on?
Back then, music was the alternative. It wasn't made for commercials, it was purely youth culture. And in the thirties hobos might have hopped rail cars, but every baby boomer will tell you about hitchhiking, it was a communal thing...you stuck out your thumb and it could take you all the way across the country. We were looking out for each other, we were helping each other. Until those at the bleeding edge of financial success pulled far ahead as taxes took a dive and suddenly it became about me and not you.
FOOLED AGAIN
AND I DON'T LIKE IT!
This was the highlight of last night's show...
It's the organ, the lead guitar, the frustration...
Tom said they rarely do it, he couldn't remember where it was on the album, the first side or the second...but it was that kind of night, that kind of run, where the songs you know by heart COME ALIVE!
Sure, it's a good song, but it's an even better PERFORMANCE! The kind the Grammys say they recognize, but not until you've had massive success and have been anointed by the cognoscenti.
Awards are meaningless. If you need a Grammy to sell your tour, it's not worth going to. What brings people into the building is the belief that you're putting yourself on the line, that you're expressing what everybody feels but cannot articulate.
If you haven't been frustrated in love...you married your grade school sweetheart or you're lost and lonely and have never played. It's the essence of the game. What do they think? What do they feel? What are they gonna do? And once upon a time, unlike the rappers, unlike today's "winners," it was o.k. to say you were on the losing end...
MELINDA
Play it: http://spoti.fi/19r9KJZ
And don't tell me you don't have a Spotify account... That's like saying you still use a BlackBerry... It's all about the apps, it's all about the modern age. If you don't think it's better today than yesterday you weren't alive back then. Sure, there's so much of everything, life is overwhelming, oftentimes incomprehensible, but before the Internet, before Spotify, we had to own it to hear it, and that's no longer true, the history of recorded music is at your fingertips...PARTAKE!
And the reason you want to listen to "Melinda" is...Benmont Tench's solo. It starts about 2:40, it goes on, it's a journey equivalent to the Dead, but without any superfluous noodling. Check it out.
BABY, PLEASE DON'T GO
It's all about roots. If you've got none, we're not interested. The young may be pretty, but the lines on the faces of the old are all about experience... Experience molds your personality, it influences you...this is one of Tom's influences, every baby boomer has heard it, whether it be on the radio or in a bar or...
THE UNEXPECTED
"Best Of Everything," from "Southern Accents." Even better than the recorded version.
"Kings Highway," from "Into The Great Wide Open," when we still listened all the way through and knew the album cuts.
"Two Gunslingers," also from "Into The Great Wide Open," played acoustically. Adding new meaning. Sometimes the best version comes long after the recording is made.
"Time To Move On," from "Wildflowers." A gem. In all iterations. It was a raucous evening, but this added a moment of touching introspection.
THE COVERS
"I'd Like To Love You Baby." Eric Clapton is not the only person who listened to J.J. Cale. We all have influences. The greats can respect someone else's work...and make it their own. Fantastic Mike Campbell guitar work here, listen to the version from the "Live Anthology": http://bit.ly/12GxiJo
"The Image Of Me," originally done by Conway Twitty...
Tom told a great story about coming up, traveling around Florida and listening to country music on the jukeboxes at the truck stops. He said we pooh-poohed that music, but it was really good. Yup, the closest boomers came to country was covers on Grateful Dead albums.
Then Tom went on to say yesterday's country was not like today's, which is "rock light with a fiddle." Ha! Funny how the truth rings true.
But the absolute best part of the intro was when Petty dealt with a heckler. Someone yelled out I LOVE YOU! and Tom stopped in his tracks, looked over and said...he liked the positive feedback, it's interesting to hear that from a guy, but HE WAS TELLING A STORY!
Whew! The pros, with all those years on the road, know how to silence the interrupters and endear themselves to the audience, without even pissing off the hecklers!
RUNNIN' DOWN A DREAM
On "Full Moon Fever," this is intimate. It's more Traveling Wilburys than Heartbreakers. But last night, this was a freight train with its headlight shining right in your eyes, mesmerizing you, making you unable to jump off the track. POWERFUL!
YOU WRECK ME
This too was more intense than the original, even though the take on "Wildflowers" rocks. Ferrone drove everybody forward, everybody was locked on, you could only nod your head in time...and agreement.
REBELS
"I was born a rebel
Down in Dixie
On a Sunday mornin'
Yeah, with one foot in the grave
One foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel"
That's what we were, whether we lived north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. Everything our parents told us to do, everything the government told us to believe in...WE QUESTIONED! And who were the leaders? MUSICIANS!
Yes, John Lennon was bigger than God.
Because those Bible-thumpers think everything's written in stone. When nothing could be further from the truth. If you're not questioning authority, if you're playing the game, I feel sorry for you, you're dead inside.
But Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are not. Rather than bitching about the death of the old days, they're keepin' on, giving back as opposed to taking. Sure, they're doing festivals, but those big paydays allow intimate shows like this, which not only keeps their image alive, but the band itself.
You know the feeling... Driving down the highway with the window down, your arm on the sill, with the radio cranked, truly the king of the world, that's the essence of rock and roll, that's what happened at the Fonda this week.
I just wish you could have been there, seen it, experienced it.
I wish everybody could have. Then we'd get a reset, and realize...
1. You've got to know how to play.
2. You've got to love to play.
3. Music is an end unto itself. It needs no videos, no backdrops, no dancing...when done right, the sound and the feel is enough.
P.S. It was a rogue fire marshal who shut down Saturday night's gig, there were no more people inside than on any other night. It was not his beat, he refused to count the people on the floor, he insisted on eyeballing it... Then again, the man has been shutting down our music since its inception. The question is, which side are you on? Are you for the man or against him? Do you only listen or do you talk too? Do you take risks, worry about money last and realize life is about exuberance, the moment, the high? If so, welcome to the club!
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"You think you're gonna take her away
With your money and your cocaine"
Tom Petty not only fought to keep his records cheap, refusing to be the first act to charge a dollar more, he also told his label he wouldn't change the above lyric for radio. Yup, they wanted "cocaine" to be CHAMPAGNE!
But then it's totally different.
But it gets worse... The album, Petty's second, underperformed, without the giant hit single it didn't sell as well as the first. But Tom soldiered on. Because that's what you do when the music is more important to you than the fame, when being true to yourself is all you've got.
AND THE FANS NOTICE! Hell, I'm telling this story thirty five years later!
All this hogwash about the younger generation not caring if you do endorsements, if you sell out... People know whose payroll you're on, they know if they're number one. Life is lonely, you look to artists for solace, you need to know they're pure, that they're thinking of you. But if they're thinking of money, bitching about it ad infinitum, which is all today's musicians seem capable of doing, the public is turned off.
Speaking of which...despite Saturday's show being three quarters through before the fire marshal closed it down, Petty is giving full refunds:
http://www.tompetty.com/blog/ticket-and-premium-package-refund-june-8-fonda-theatre-show-137261
Huh?
Because, you see...love is a long road.
LOVE IS A LONG ROAD
You pace yourself. If you've got to do six nights...first and foremost you've got to make it through. But when you do, when the end is in sight, YOU CUT LOOSE!
Yup, last night, the final show, they started off louder, more energized, they hit the stage running. Instead of stopping the train at the station, we had to run alongside and jump on.
Are you ready to jump on?
Back then, music was the alternative. It wasn't made for commercials, it was purely youth culture. And in the thirties hobos might have hopped rail cars, but every baby boomer will tell you about hitchhiking, it was a communal thing...you stuck out your thumb and it could take you all the way across the country. We were looking out for each other, we were helping each other. Until those at the bleeding edge of financial success pulled far ahead as taxes took a dive and suddenly it became about me and not you.
FOOLED AGAIN
AND I DON'T LIKE IT!
This was the highlight of last night's show...
It's the organ, the lead guitar, the frustration...
Tom said they rarely do it, he couldn't remember where it was on the album, the first side or the second...but it was that kind of night, that kind of run, where the songs you know by heart COME ALIVE!
Sure, it's a good song, but it's an even better PERFORMANCE! The kind the Grammys say they recognize, but not until you've had massive success and have been anointed by the cognoscenti.
Awards are meaningless. If you need a Grammy to sell your tour, it's not worth going to. What brings people into the building is the belief that you're putting yourself on the line, that you're expressing what everybody feels but cannot articulate.
If you haven't been frustrated in love...you married your grade school sweetheart or you're lost and lonely and have never played. It's the essence of the game. What do they think? What do they feel? What are they gonna do? And once upon a time, unlike the rappers, unlike today's "winners," it was o.k. to say you were on the losing end...
MELINDA
Play it: http://spoti.fi/19r9KJZ
And don't tell me you don't have a Spotify account... That's like saying you still use a BlackBerry... It's all about the apps, it's all about the modern age. If you don't think it's better today than yesterday you weren't alive back then. Sure, there's so much of everything, life is overwhelming, oftentimes incomprehensible, but before the Internet, before Spotify, we had to own it to hear it, and that's no longer true, the history of recorded music is at your fingertips...PARTAKE!
And the reason you want to listen to "Melinda" is...Benmont Tench's solo. It starts about 2:40, it goes on, it's a journey equivalent to the Dead, but without any superfluous noodling. Check it out.
BABY, PLEASE DON'T GO
It's all about roots. If you've got none, we're not interested. The young may be pretty, but the lines on the faces of the old are all about experience... Experience molds your personality, it influences you...this is one of Tom's influences, every baby boomer has heard it, whether it be on the radio or in a bar or...
THE UNEXPECTED
"Best Of Everything," from "Southern Accents." Even better than the recorded version.
"Kings Highway," from "Into The Great Wide Open," when we still listened all the way through and knew the album cuts.
"Two Gunslingers," also from "Into The Great Wide Open," played acoustically. Adding new meaning. Sometimes the best version comes long after the recording is made.
"Time To Move On," from "Wildflowers." A gem. In all iterations. It was a raucous evening, but this added a moment of touching introspection.
THE COVERS
"I'd Like To Love You Baby." Eric Clapton is not the only person who listened to J.J. Cale. We all have influences. The greats can respect someone else's work...and make it their own. Fantastic Mike Campbell guitar work here, listen to the version from the "Live Anthology": http://bit.ly/12GxiJo
"The Image Of Me," originally done by Conway Twitty...
Tom told a great story about coming up, traveling around Florida and listening to country music on the jukeboxes at the truck stops. He said we pooh-poohed that music, but it was really good. Yup, the closest boomers came to country was covers on Grateful Dead albums.
Then Tom went on to say yesterday's country was not like today's, which is "rock light with a fiddle." Ha! Funny how the truth rings true.
But the absolute best part of the intro was when Petty dealt with a heckler. Someone yelled out I LOVE YOU! and Tom stopped in his tracks, looked over and said...he liked the positive feedback, it's interesting to hear that from a guy, but HE WAS TELLING A STORY!
Whew! The pros, with all those years on the road, know how to silence the interrupters and endear themselves to the audience, without even pissing off the hecklers!
RUNNIN' DOWN A DREAM
On "Full Moon Fever," this is intimate. It's more Traveling Wilburys than Heartbreakers. But last night, this was a freight train with its headlight shining right in your eyes, mesmerizing you, making you unable to jump off the track. POWERFUL!
YOU WRECK ME
This too was more intense than the original, even though the take on "Wildflowers" rocks. Ferrone drove everybody forward, everybody was locked on, you could only nod your head in time...and agreement.
REBELS
"I was born a rebel
Down in Dixie
On a Sunday mornin'
Yeah, with one foot in the grave
One foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel"
That's what we were, whether we lived north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. Everything our parents told us to do, everything the government told us to believe in...WE QUESTIONED! And who were the leaders? MUSICIANS!
Yes, John Lennon was bigger than God.
Because those Bible-thumpers think everything's written in stone. When nothing could be further from the truth. If you're not questioning authority, if you're playing the game, I feel sorry for you, you're dead inside.
But Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are not. Rather than bitching about the death of the old days, they're keepin' on, giving back as opposed to taking. Sure, they're doing festivals, but those big paydays allow intimate shows like this, which not only keeps their image alive, but the band itself.
You know the feeling... Driving down the highway with the window down, your arm on the sill, with the radio cranked, truly the king of the world, that's the essence of rock and roll, that's what happened at the Fonda this week.
I just wish you could have been there, seen it, experienced it.
I wish everybody could have. Then we'd get a reset, and realize...
1. You've got to know how to play.
2. You've got to love to play.
3. Music is an end unto itself. It needs no videos, no backdrops, no dancing...when done right, the sound and the feel is enough.
P.S. It was a rogue fire marshal who shut down Saturday night's gig, there were no more people inside than on any other night. It was not his beat, he refused to count the people on the floor, he insisted on eyeballing it... Then again, the man has been shutting down our music since its inception. The question is, which side are you on? Are you for the man or against him? Do you only listen or do you talk too? Do you take risks, worry about money last and realize life is about exuberance, the moment, the high? If so, welcome to the club!
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Tuesday 11 June 2013
Radio
1. The major music business, the "new music" business, is built upon radio, it depends upon it.
2. There's a fiction that we still live in a monoculture. This concept has been blown apart on television, where there are five hundred channels available, but the Luddites in radio still believe the Internet didn't happen, that we're all prisoners of the dial, where there are few stations and little innovation.
3. There are radio alternatives. I.e. Pandora and the forthcoming iTunes Radio. Please don't confuse Spotify and Rdio and Deezer and MOG/Daisy with radio, they're nothing of the sort. Oh, they might have a Pandora or iTunes Radio component, but these streaming services are retail replacements, lending libraries wherein for ten bucks a month you can go into the store and borrow anything you want, as long as you return it. Also, you're not limited to one album at a time...
4. The radio alternatives represent market fragmentation. Because Internet in the car is not yet here on a widespread basis, they've had little impact on car listening... Then again, we've experienced tapes in the car, CDs and iPod hookups. Terrestrial radio listenership is not close to what it once was. Radio used to dominate, it's still the biggest player, but its market share has receded dramatically.
5. Satellite, Sirius XM, benefits from its automobile deals. That was the essence, even more than the programming. At this point, ten years past launch, almost all cars are satellite-ready. Not everybody pays, but subscriptions exceed twenty million. How can Sirius XM get the rest of the public to subscribe? By utilizing Internet techniques, i.e. social networking. People go where their friends are... Right now, Sirius XM has not leveraged its subscriber base.
6. When wi-fi hits the car, or whatever type of cheap Internet access deploys in automobiles, Sirius XM will be challenged too. Right now, Sirius XM's Internet play is laughable.
7. Most people under age twenty have never experienced good radio. So when baby boomers and Gen X'ers start waxing rhapsodically about their old time favorites, wanting them to come back, it's the equivalent of wishing that music videos would come back to MTV. Music videos are now an on demand item. No one is going to sit and wait for their favorite. And this is the same challenge facing all radio outlets, from terrestrial to satellite to Pandora to... They're all based on an old model. Which is you'll sit through what you don't like to hear what you do, paying for the experience, whether with cash or by listening to ads. At this point, ads on Pandora are limited. But it's the ads that will kill terrestrial...
Never forget Sirius XM's channels are commercial-free. The public hates commercials, despite all the b.s. propagated by advertisers. The absence of commercials is satellite's number one selling point.
8. Insiders believe that there's no revolution in terrestrial radio because the owners know it's headed into the dumper. They're just milking it for all they can before it falls off a cliff. So if you're waiting for format innovation and fewer commercials...you'll be waiting forever.
9. The challenge of Spotify/Rdio/etc. is...to tell their subscribers what to listen to. That's what traditional radio has done best. So far, these services have not succeeded because they're run by techies, and curation is all about human effort, not algorithms, otherwise we'd all be in relationships determined by computers.
10. Indie and left of center musical acts cannot get on terrestrial radio.
11. Terrestrial radio sells records and builds careers. Just not as well as before. The reason we see so few diamond sellers isn't because of piracy so much as the fragmentation of the audience. In the old days of the walled garden, of radio and MTV dominance, if something got airplay it went nuclear, now radio just plays to its niche.
12. There's very little innovation in the music played on alternative and active rock stations. Hip-hop killed rock and roll, but rather than innovating, rock and roll stayed the same. And now electronic music is killing hip-hop. Sure, kids want something different from their parents, but even more they want to own the scene, they don't want to be dictated to, they want something that's testing the limits!
13. Pop/Top Forty has more innovative music than alternative and active rock. Because the largest rewards are in pop/Top Forty, the best people gravitate there. I know you hate this, but it's true.
14. Young people, prepubescent people, listen to Top Forty to be a member of the club, it's a rite of passage, discovering pop after Disney...before you become an adolescent and want to express your identity by finding your own music, when you stop inviting all the kids in your class to your birthday party and only the few you like, who you gossip with about those you hate.
15. Baby boomers and Gen X'ers control the big time music business. They're inured to the past, the dominance of radio and MTV, and they only want to be involved with that which pays, heavily... So they're not about to put a decade into building your indie band, never gonna happen.
16. The young acts of today have to depend upon the young entrepreneurs of today to build their careers. It wasn't oldsters who built classic rock, but a totally new generation of young players and young business people, only the young business people understood it.
17. Look at trends. Ten years ago the major labels said no record ever broke on the Internet. Look at PSY's "Gangnam Style"! Radio is dying and YouTube and other alternatives are growing.
18. If you want to gain the most eyeballs, you must be controversial, tweet-worthy. If I can listen to your station and have no opinion, not hate or love your deejays or hate or love your music, if you give me nothing to talk about other than the same damn thing, then I'm not gonna talk about it, I'm not gonna bring new people in, you're going to be living in an echo chamber.
19. Just like music piracy is a dead conversation, just like streaming has eclipsed it, terrestrial radio is dying...however, its replacement has not reared its head yet. Therefore the oldsters say radio is forever. But lousy sales figures of today's mass market records proves this to be wrong.
20. We, as a culture, want to feel included. That's what the radio of yore was all about. To grow mass, you've got to make us feel included. In other words, it's all about culture. Talk radio has culture. As does public radio. After that, it's a vast wasteland of sold-out stations with the same flaw of network television... Trying for broad-based appeal, they appeal to no one, and cede their market to excellence. HBO and the cable outlets killed network with quality... If you don't think new services will kill terrestrial radio, you must like inane commercials, you must like me-too music, you must think airplay on one of these outlets will sell millions of albums, but that almost never happens anymore.
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2. There's a fiction that we still live in a monoculture. This concept has been blown apart on television, where there are five hundred channels available, but the Luddites in radio still believe the Internet didn't happen, that we're all prisoners of the dial, where there are few stations and little innovation.
3. There are radio alternatives. I.e. Pandora and the forthcoming iTunes Radio. Please don't confuse Spotify and Rdio and Deezer and MOG/Daisy with radio, they're nothing of the sort. Oh, they might have a Pandora or iTunes Radio component, but these streaming services are retail replacements, lending libraries wherein for ten bucks a month you can go into the store and borrow anything you want, as long as you return it. Also, you're not limited to one album at a time...
4. The radio alternatives represent market fragmentation. Because Internet in the car is not yet here on a widespread basis, they've had little impact on car listening... Then again, we've experienced tapes in the car, CDs and iPod hookups. Terrestrial radio listenership is not close to what it once was. Radio used to dominate, it's still the biggest player, but its market share has receded dramatically.
5. Satellite, Sirius XM, benefits from its automobile deals. That was the essence, even more than the programming. At this point, ten years past launch, almost all cars are satellite-ready. Not everybody pays, but subscriptions exceed twenty million. How can Sirius XM get the rest of the public to subscribe? By utilizing Internet techniques, i.e. social networking. People go where their friends are... Right now, Sirius XM has not leveraged its subscriber base.
6. When wi-fi hits the car, or whatever type of cheap Internet access deploys in automobiles, Sirius XM will be challenged too. Right now, Sirius XM's Internet play is laughable.
7. Most people under age twenty have never experienced good radio. So when baby boomers and Gen X'ers start waxing rhapsodically about their old time favorites, wanting them to come back, it's the equivalent of wishing that music videos would come back to MTV. Music videos are now an on demand item. No one is going to sit and wait for their favorite. And this is the same challenge facing all radio outlets, from terrestrial to satellite to Pandora to... They're all based on an old model. Which is you'll sit through what you don't like to hear what you do, paying for the experience, whether with cash or by listening to ads. At this point, ads on Pandora are limited. But it's the ads that will kill terrestrial...
Never forget Sirius XM's channels are commercial-free. The public hates commercials, despite all the b.s. propagated by advertisers. The absence of commercials is satellite's number one selling point.
8. Insiders believe that there's no revolution in terrestrial radio because the owners know it's headed into the dumper. They're just milking it for all they can before it falls off a cliff. So if you're waiting for format innovation and fewer commercials...you'll be waiting forever.
9. The challenge of Spotify/Rdio/etc. is...to tell their subscribers what to listen to. That's what traditional radio has done best. So far, these services have not succeeded because they're run by techies, and curation is all about human effort, not algorithms, otherwise we'd all be in relationships determined by computers.
10. Indie and left of center musical acts cannot get on terrestrial radio.
11. Terrestrial radio sells records and builds careers. Just not as well as before. The reason we see so few diamond sellers isn't because of piracy so much as the fragmentation of the audience. In the old days of the walled garden, of radio and MTV dominance, if something got airplay it went nuclear, now radio just plays to its niche.
12. There's very little innovation in the music played on alternative and active rock stations. Hip-hop killed rock and roll, but rather than innovating, rock and roll stayed the same. And now electronic music is killing hip-hop. Sure, kids want something different from their parents, but even more they want to own the scene, they don't want to be dictated to, they want something that's testing the limits!
13. Pop/Top Forty has more innovative music than alternative and active rock. Because the largest rewards are in pop/Top Forty, the best people gravitate there. I know you hate this, but it's true.
14. Young people, prepubescent people, listen to Top Forty to be a member of the club, it's a rite of passage, discovering pop after Disney...before you become an adolescent and want to express your identity by finding your own music, when you stop inviting all the kids in your class to your birthday party and only the few you like, who you gossip with about those you hate.
15. Baby boomers and Gen X'ers control the big time music business. They're inured to the past, the dominance of radio and MTV, and they only want to be involved with that which pays, heavily... So they're not about to put a decade into building your indie band, never gonna happen.
16. The young acts of today have to depend upon the young entrepreneurs of today to build their careers. It wasn't oldsters who built classic rock, but a totally new generation of young players and young business people, only the young business people understood it.
17. Look at trends. Ten years ago the major labels said no record ever broke on the Internet. Look at PSY's "Gangnam Style"! Radio is dying and YouTube and other alternatives are growing.
18. If you want to gain the most eyeballs, you must be controversial, tweet-worthy. If I can listen to your station and have no opinion, not hate or love your deejays or hate or love your music, if you give me nothing to talk about other than the same damn thing, then I'm not gonna talk about it, I'm not gonna bring new people in, you're going to be living in an echo chamber.
19. Just like music piracy is a dead conversation, just like streaming has eclipsed it, terrestrial radio is dying...however, its replacement has not reared its head yet. Therefore the oldsters say radio is forever. But lousy sales figures of today's mass market records proves this to be wrong.
20. We, as a culture, want to feel included. That's what the radio of yore was all about. To grow mass, you've got to make us feel included. In other words, it's all about culture. Talk radio has culture. As does public radio. After that, it's a vast wasteland of sold-out stations with the same flaw of network television... Trying for broad-based appeal, they appeal to no one, and cede their market to excellence. HBO and the cable outlets killed network with quality... If you don't think new services will kill terrestrial radio, you must like inane commercials, you must like me-too music, you must think airplay on one of these outlets will sell millions of albums, but that almost never happens anymore.
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Monday 10 June 2013
WWDC
It was the first post-Steve presentation.
I know, I know, Apple's supposed to be history. Samsung is on a full court press, giving away their devices to all the tastemakers while Apple, like the moribund music business, refuses to give it away for free.
But then today happened.
Tim Cook is better.
But he'll never be good.
But the new Scott Forstall? This guy Craig Federighi?
He's almost as good as Steve Jobs, and WE'VE NEVER HEARD OF HIM BEFORE!
That's how deep the bench is.
But what we saw today, if you were watching, was cool, was wow, was...I WANNA GET ME SOME OF THAT!
Whether it be Phil Schiller previewing the new Mac Pro.
Or even the Anki race cars, with their glitch.
But the positively mind-blowing experience was iOS7.
Huh? Isn't it a mature system? Isn't that why Apple's dying? Because they don't know where to go?
With Steve gone... With Scott gone...
Jony Ive can take control.
Jony Ive is the new Steve Jobs. And rather than being cautious, resting on his laurels, Jony Ive has completely redesigned iOS7 to make it so cool, once it's launched Apple-envy will be prevalent once again, with every iPhone owner showing off how cool it is.
Oh, I know, you're an Android user. You're a hacker. You like the flexibility of a PC.
That's fine.
But most people are not.
I don't want to know how to fix my car...I just want it to run right.
And if it breaks, I want to know where to take it, a place where the mechanic is familiar with the product, like the Genius Bar.
There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival. They need to feel special, they need to be ahead of the curve, they need to be one of a kind, they need to dictate.
But we just want our stuff to work... Easily.
And it wasn't only iOS7. It was also Mavericks, the latest edition of OS X.
Lousy name, I agree. But just like a band, the name is irrelevant if the music is great.
Maybe you've got to be a fanboy to watch this presentation... But just like those in the audience, you'll find yourself clapping at times, because what they're showing is so damn cool.
It's the opposite of the music industry, where everybody's a moneygrubber looking to sell out. Apple cares not a whit about anybody else...except for its customers, it wants to satiate its customers, it figures they'll spread the word, not the reporter with an agenda.
Smart people have inherited the nation. Being dumb and uneducated is passe. Smoke and mirrors have been superseded by substance.
We're always ready to be blown away...
And Apple did this to us TODAY!
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2013/
P.S. Apple's iPod strategy has died in mobile... The company doesn't seem to know how to create a monopoly anymore. Yup, that's what the iPod was, driven by software more than hardware. Still, if you like sexy, innovative products, the Cupertino company seems to have a lock on them. As for Samsung... It's got one big problem...software. Sure, it builds upon Android, but you've got to control the whole thing to execute elegant solutions. As for Amazon... It's Microsoft, where the money is, but nowhere close to the bleeding edge. There's a business on the bleeding edge. The mass market bleeding edge. That's where Apple has perched itself. That's where musicians used to perch themselves. That's what Steve Jobs took from Bob Dylan. But now we get inspiration from Apple instead of our musicians. Because at Apple they know it's about the work, not the hype.
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I know, I know, Apple's supposed to be history. Samsung is on a full court press, giving away their devices to all the tastemakers while Apple, like the moribund music business, refuses to give it away for free.
But then today happened.
Tim Cook is better.
But he'll never be good.
But the new Scott Forstall? This guy Craig Federighi?
He's almost as good as Steve Jobs, and WE'VE NEVER HEARD OF HIM BEFORE!
That's how deep the bench is.
But what we saw today, if you were watching, was cool, was wow, was...I WANNA GET ME SOME OF THAT!
Whether it be Phil Schiller previewing the new Mac Pro.
Or even the Anki race cars, with their glitch.
But the positively mind-blowing experience was iOS7.
Huh? Isn't it a mature system? Isn't that why Apple's dying? Because they don't know where to go?
With Steve gone... With Scott gone...
Jony Ive can take control.
Jony Ive is the new Steve Jobs. And rather than being cautious, resting on his laurels, Jony Ive has completely redesigned iOS7 to make it so cool, once it's launched Apple-envy will be prevalent once again, with every iPhone owner showing off how cool it is.
Oh, I know, you're an Android user. You're a hacker. You like the flexibility of a PC.
That's fine.
But most people are not.
I don't want to know how to fix my car...I just want it to run right.
And if it breaks, I want to know where to take it, a place where the mechanic is familiar with the product, like the Genius Bar.
There are more blowhards in tech and media than there are at a carnival. They need to feel special, they need to be ahead of the curve, they need to be one of a kind, they need to dictate.
But we just want our stuff to work... Easily.
And it wasn't only iOS7. It was also Mavericks, the latest edition of OS X.
Lousy name, I agree. But just like a band, the name is irrelevant if the music is great.
Maybe you've got to be a fanboy to watch this presentation... But just like those in the audience, you'll find yourself clapping at times, because what they're showing is so damn cool.
It's the opposite of the music industry, where everybody's a moneygrubber looking to sell out. Apple cares not a whit about anybody else...except for its customers, it wants to satiate its customers, it figures they'll spread the word, not the reporter with an agenda.
Smart people have inherited the nation. Being dumb and uneducated is passe. Smoke and mirrors have been superseded by substance.
We're always ready to be blown away...
And Apple did this to us TODAY!
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2013/
P.S. Apple's iPod strategy has died in mobile... The company doesn't seem to know how to create a monopoly anymore. Yup, that's what the iPod was, driven by software more than hardware. Still, if you like sexy, innovative products, the Cupertino company seems to have a lock on them. As for Samsung... It's got one big problem...software. Sure, it builds upon Android, but you've got to control the whole thing to execute elegant solutions. As for Amazon... It's Microsoft, where the money is, but nowhere close to the bleeding edge. There's a business on the bleeding edge. The mass market bleeding edge. That's where Apple has perched itself. That's where musicians used to perch themselves. That's what Steve Jobs took from Bob Dylan. But now we get inspiration from Apple instead of our musicians. Because at Apple they know it's about the work, not the hype.
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Sunday 9 June 2013
Me In Ibiza
I can't watch myself, but maybe you'd like to.
I don't want to be one of those people trumpeting my personal appearances...on Friday I'm in Philadelphia, come on down! But as a reader of my words...maybe you'd like to see me live and in action, the man behind the b.s.
I didn't know this was being recorded (then again, today everything seems to be), so this is my unfiltered, unvarnished opinion, being half a world away it didn't occur to me to leave names out, not that I'd do that anyway.
I'm seeing love and hate tweets. But at this point, the former outnumber the latter, so I'm gonna pass this on.
I expect the lovefest and the excoriation to continue.
Click away!
"Bob Lefsetz -IMS 2013- Keynote Interview with Pete Tong": http://bit.ly/ZDI6E3
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I don't want to be one of those people trumpeting my personal appearances...on Friday I'm in Philadelphia, come on down! But as a reader of my words...maybe you'd like to see me live and in action, the man behind the b.s.
I didn't know this was being recorded (then again, today everything seems to be), so this is my unfiltered, unvarnished opinion, being half a world away it didn't occur to me to leave names out, not that I'd do that anyway.
I'm seeing love and hate tweets. But at this point, the former outnumber the latter, so I'm gonna pass this on.
I expect the lovefest and the excoriation to continue.
Click away!
"Bob Lefsetz -IMS 2013- Keynote Interview with Pete Tong": http://bit.ly/ZDI6E3
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