It's gasoline on embers.
Yup, Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich just did Spotify a big favor, they got every music blog and major newspaper to write about the service, the Internet is blazing with this irrelevant story, but if these guys are that mad at the service, is it worth paying attention to?
That's Spotify's problem. The youngsters, who glom up every new social networking service, believe it's irrelevant, for adults at best, and those adults...are so frugal and so afraid of coughing up their Facebook identity that they don't use it either. And then the smug, self-satisfied digerati complain about streaming costs, even though the service allows you to synch four digits worth of playlisted tracks to your handset so it's like you own them and...
That's just the point. Ignorance rules.
Kind of like with the artists themselves...
Read this explanation of Spotify payouts, you'll find it enlightening:
bit.ly/10YxIWd
As for the complaint that catalog plays get as much in payment as new cuts...do Radiohead really want to take less on "Creep"? I don't think so, just ask Brian Message, their manager, who came out against Yorke and Godrich's screed:
http://bit.ly/12FgXh9
A song is a song is a song. And until recently, catalog music used to cost more at retail! And since everybody's paid by the play, why give new artists a leg up, when it's those who last that reap rewards.
As for major label ownership... I hate to disillusion you, but he who has the desirable asset makes the deal on favorable terms. Kind of like Apple and Verizon. Yup, turns out Verizon is upside down on iPhone payments, by BILLIONS!
http://onforb.es/1agGrYj
Should Verizon be complaining that they pay LG less?
Come on. There is no Spotify without the major label catalogs, that's how they got their ownership position. As for payment per track, this is what has bothered me since Spotify's inception, the lack of transparency. It's all digits, they now even tell you the number of streams tracks have, but as far as delineating every last detail of payment...it's all behind a curtain, exactly the way the major labels like it. They've been underpaying and screwing artists since their inception. Which is kind of why artists believe they're getting screwed by Spotify, because the label is keeping most of the royalties. If you go indie, you get paid more. As for getting paid less per stream... Come on, even Steve Jobs backed down regarding indies and the iTunes Store. Indies now make up a greater percentage of the marketplace than ever before. They're gaining leverage. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater by pulling your music from the service, that's like an eight year old taking his ball and going home, and one thing about that eight year old...the rest of the kids hate him!
If Yorke and Godrich were smart, and they're not, based on creating this publicity juggernaut that is benefiting Spotify, not the indie musicians they say they care about, they'd be doing "I Want My MTV" commercials for the service. All acts should be doing this. MTV was a failed enterprise before this campaign, but with stars in commercials imploring viewers to call their cable companies and demand the service...MTV blew up.
We want Spotify to blow up.
Yes, we want everyone in America to have a streaming music subscription. We want to grow the pot. But Yorke and Godrich would rather stand on ceremony and deny the future to their detriment.
Most people to this day don't know how Spotify works. We've got to get them to check it out.
Have you used Spotify with Sonos?
Positively mind-blowing.
Or if you haven't got this wondrous equipment, have you been at a dinner party, in a restaurant, talking about a track and...
The Spotify subscriber pulls it up instantly on his or her phone. The rest of the patrons are wowed. You've got to pay to do this on the go. We've got to incentivize people to pay.
Or maybe, like Jimmy Iovine, you try to get AT&T to subsidize your streaming service, MOG/Daisy.
As for iTunes Radio, artists don't want that. Are you kidding me? You want people to be able to play your music ad infinitum. iTunes Radio is a RADIO service, just like it says. Do you like sitting in your car waiting for another spin of your favorite... OF COURSE NOT! But if Yorke and Godrich and their ilk put a dent in Spotify that's what you'll get.
So all you artists, and too often it's wannabes who weren't making any money anyway but are students of the game, start proselytizing streaming services. Subscribe yourself and demonstrate them. Use your power to get your minions to sign on.
THEN YOU'LL MAKE MORE MONEY!
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Wednesday 17 July 2013
Tuesday 16 July 2013
Tell Ten Friends
That's what Seth Godin says.
Seth calls it an urge to be picked. I'll call it an urge to be famous. And rich. With the belief that if you just put yourself in someone else's hands, if you just get a little help, you'll rise above the fray and become famous and be successful forever more.
But it just doesn't happen that way anymore.
Everything starts from the bottom up. If you believe the opposite, you're still living in the twentieth century.
So what you've got to do is woodshed and send your stuff to ten friends. And if they don't tell others, if nothing happens, the problem is you.
Oh, I know you don't want to hear this, you don't want to self-examine, but your only other option is to get new friends or to struggle in oblivion. But to delusionally believe it's about getting a big shot to push you...you're wrong. That's one of the reasons labels always ask young acts what they've got going on. They want to build on the fan base you've already established.
Seth says the key is to do work that matters, and to make enough money to survive doing it.
I know that's not the modern paradigm, where everybody's looking for world domination. But the question is, is that fulfilling?
Yes, I've changed topics. But that's one thing that's been left out of today's discussion. I know plenty of people doing work I'd rather die than do. Like working in the Dakota oil fields. So you work like a dog, make money, ruin your relationship and..?
Now we need people to do menial jobs. But I don't think those are the people reading this. You're looking for something more. And yes, some people win the artistic lottery. But very few. If you want to survive, maybe you have to take your eyes off the prize. As far as getting picked, it happens long after you've done the work, when you're no longer even trying.
Yes, the media has a herd mentality. You rise above the fray because your fan base can't stop talking about you and suddenly everybody wants to write about you. That's the story of electronic music in America. It's not like there was a PR czar. As for the usual suspects...the major labels and Live Nation and AEG weren't in it. No, the story of EDM grew as a result of the incredible success of the Electric Daisy Carnival, by selling tickets. If your ten friends tell ten more and it never stops...you're gonna get a huge audience. That's the story of the Dave Matthews Band, playing in a bar, opening for jam bands many have never heard of. But everybody exposed to the music told everybody else.
It's kind of like mix tapes. They don't write about them in mainstream media, but that's where those who really care about hip-hop pay attention, and it's from there that new rap stars are born.
But everybody wants a short-cut. Believing the game is rigged against them. That they just haven't got enough money or any relatives in the business.
It might have been that way once.
But it's not that way anymore.
You've got the means of production and distribution at your fingertips, they're close to free. And if you're not getting a reaction, if your friends are not spreading the word, the problem is you.
P.S. Seth also talks about being afraid. But it's when you're vulnerable and taking a risk that you truly get a chance that people will react. In other words if you're self-censoring, you're making a mistake. As for mistakes...you can always recover from them, especially early in the game. You can make more music, write more blog posts, this is what is called a "pivot" in the tech game. How will you know what works or what doesn't if you do not play?
"Seth Godin: The Art of Noticing and then Creating"-you want the unedited version: http://bit.ly/10Uoa27
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Seth calls it an urge to be picked. I'll call it an urge to be famous. And rich. With the belief that if you just put yourself in someone else's hands, if you just get a little help, you'll rise above the fray and become famous and be successful forever more.
But it just doesn't happen that way anymore.
Everything starts from the bottom up. If you believe the opposite, you're still living in the twentieth century.
So what you've got to do is woodshed and send your stuff to ten friends. And if they don't tell others, if nothing happens, the problem is you.
Oh, I know you don't want to hear this, you don't want to self-examine, but your only other option is to get new friends or to struggle in oblivion. But to delusionally believe it's about getting a big shot to push you...you're wrong. That's one of the reasons labels always ask young acts what they've got going on. They want to build on the fan base you've already established.
Seth says the key is to do work that matters, and to make enough money to survive doing it.
I know that's not the modern paradigm, where everybody's looking for world domination. But the question is, is that fulfilling?
Yes, I've changed topics. But that's one thing that's been left out of today's discussion. I know plenty of people doing work I'd rather die than do. Like working in the Dakota oil fields. So you work like a dog, make money, ruin your relationship and..?
Now we need people to do menial jobs. But I don't think those are the people reading this. You're looking for something more. And yes, some people win the artistic lottery. But very few. If you want to survive, maybe you have to take your eyes off the prize. As far as getting picked, it happens long after you've done the work, when you're no longer even trying.
Yes, the media has a herd mentality. You rise above the fray because your fan base can't stop talking about you and suddenly everybody wants to write about you. That's the story of electronic music in America. It's not like there was a PR czar. As for the usual suspects...the major labels and Live Nation and AEG weren't in it. No, the story of EDM grew as a result of the incredible success of the Electric Daisy Carnival, by selling tickets. If your ten friends tell ten more and it never stops...you're gonna get a huge audience. That's the story of the Dave Matthews Band, playing in a bar, opening for jam bands many have never heard of. But everybody exposed to the music told everybody else.
It's kind of like mix tapes. They don't write about them in mainstream media, but that's where those who really care about hip-hop pay attention, and it's from there that new rap stars are born.
But everybody wants a short-cut. Believing the game is rigged against them. That they just haven't got enough money or any relatives in the business.
It might have been that way once.
But it's not that way anymore.
You've got the means of production and distribution at your fingertips, they're close to free. And if you're not getting a reaction, if your friends are not spreading the word, the problem is you.
P.S. Seth also talks about being afraid. But it's when you're vulnerable and taking a risk that you truly get a chance that people will react. In other words if you're self-censoring, you're making a mistake. As for mistakes...you can always recover from them, especially early in the game. You can make more music, write more blog posts, this is what is called a "pivot" in the tech game. How will you know what works or what doesn't if you do not play?
"Seth Godin: The Art of Noticing and then Creating"-you want the unedited version: http://bit.ly/10Uoa27
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Monday 15 July 2013
Spotify Mailbag
One of my biggest frustrations at the moment is the complete lack of leadership from the artist community on the key issues facing our industry. It is a complete void. Those who step up are either painfully wrong and disorganized (as in this case), or go completely unsupported by their peers. There is no artist union. THERE SHOULD BE. Managers and agents keep that from happening because they're afraid of poaching if they let another representative get close to their artist. But artists aren't demanding unionization (or something like it) either. Collaboratively in the live business alone, they could:
- Stop the poisonous attack on artists' rights to try to get a cheap
ticket to their fans through legislation
- Force a better consumer experience by insisting on all-in pricing (and potentially secure better economics for themselves)
- Drive full inventory disclosure so fans get the best shot at tickets
- Even potentially break the venue control of the ticket if they wanted to
They are missing the fact that being an artist in this age also means being an entrepreneur. And good entrepreneurs know when to partner to further their interests. My observation is that most of the bad things about the consumer experience in both recorded and live music have been allowed to persist because the artist community is fragmented, and therefore powerless as a whole. They lose out to established status-quo forces via thousands of one-on-one negotiations, rather than creating leverage by assembling their interests. It also allows larger artists to act with only self interest, rather than using their status to advance the cause of all artists. There are no ties that bind.
I'm obsessed with solving this, because without a collective voice from the artist community, transformative forces will shape the future of their business (and potentially their craft) without them. And history says that is an exploitative environment for artists, and a mediocre-at-best experience for fans.
Nathan Hubbard
CE0
Ticketmaster
__________________________________________
Testify, brother. It's important to note that overall prerecorded music revenues in Sweden rose by 14% from 2011 to 2012 as Spotify scaled to dominate that market. If Spotify (or whoever wins the streaming battle) were bad for business, then would this be the case? Clearly not. The real problem is that many artists still line up at the record company trough so they can be paid pennies on the dollars that their music earns. Then they blame Spotify rather than their managers or themselves for the iniquities around them. There are other options to taking your music to market with the requisite infrastructure without having to get f****d. Ask Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (speaking of Jimmy Iovine).
Best-
David Macias
Thirty Tigers
_____
"Making Dollars: Clearing Up Spotify Payment Confusion": http://bit.ly/10YxIWd
"Spotify helps Swedish music sales rise 30.1% in first half of 2012": http://bit.ly/Nesfqi
"Streaming Sales Lift Scandinavian Music Market": http://bit.ly/18aNAbS
__________________________________________
I love Thom. I love Nigel. But was blown away when I watched this rant live on Twitter. Can we applaud Spotify / Rdio / Rhapsody for throwing down a ton of money to legally provide music in a modern way that makes sense? We should have done this with Napster. It only took our industry almost 15 years to figure it out!
Artists: Streaming services DO pay. If you have a problem with not getting "paid" by streaming services, complain to the entity you sold your rights to, not to the platforms trying to get ahead of the curve for once. And since you're most likely un-recouped due to gross overspending in the past; let's all try to create and market music in a more effiecent and sustainable manner from here on out.
Thanks,
Emily White
Whitesmith Entertainment & Readymade Records
New York / Los Angeles / Nashville
__________________________________________
Bob,
And how about Jason Isbell ranting against Spotify awhile back?
I figured I'd never hear his new record (Southeastern) as I had purchased others in the past, each with diminishing enthusiasm.
Then I went on Spotify and there it was! I played it , liked it (more than once) and I'll play it again…so he's making a little $$ off me after all.
I may never have heard it otherwise.
Bob Bradshaw
__________________________________________
hi bob
this is exactly why i started Audiam
YouTube is the new iTunes.
If someone is using music in a video that is not theirs, the law does not allow anyone to do anything beyond ask YouTube to take down the video.
And then it just pops up tomorrow.
However, what can be done is telling YouTube its OK to place an ad on that person's video. And if that happens, the "cash" is paid by the advertiser, not the user or YouTube.
In other words, we now have a world where music fans can legally â€" and for free â€"create videos containing music they love, upload these videos to YouTube, have YouTube license the music the videos and then have advertisers pay the artists and copyright holders for the use.
YouTube can become kickstarter. Please use my music in your videos, cover my songs, to help me raise money.
Even a single song by one artist can be used by hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of fans. Each video is its own creation with its own potential to become a "hit,†from lyric videos to "unofficial" music videos to music in the background as the wedding party dances. Each work of art has the potential to become popular, and with each view, money can be generated and the artist can be promoted
Instead of suing the music fan for using the music, embrace it.
Tell them to use the music.
We WANT people to use the music in their YouTube videos. And when we find those videos, we tell YouTube its OK to sell ads into them.
What existed before, continues to exist, only now they generate revenue
Thank You
Jeff Price
_____
"A New Way for Musicians to Make Money on YouTube": http://buswk.co/1av12vI
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- Stop the poisonous attack on artists' rights to try to get a cheap
ticket to their fans through legislation
- Force a better consumer experience by insisting on all-in pricing (and potentially secure better economics for themselves)
- Drive full inventory disclosure so fans get the best shot at tickets
- Even potentially break the venue control of the ticket if they wanted to
They are missing the fact that being an artist in this age also means being an entrepreneur. And good entrepreneurs know when to partner to further their interests. My observation is that most of the bad things about the consumer experience in both recorded and live music have been allowed to persist because the artist community is fragmented, and therefore powerless as a whole. They lose out to established status-quo forces via thousands of one-on-one negotiations, rather than creating leverage by assembling their interests. It also allows larger artists to act with only self interest, rather than using their status to advance the cause of all artists. There are no ties that bind.
I'm obsessed with solving this, because without a collective voice from the artist community, transformative forces will shape the future of their business (and potentially their craft) without them. And history says that is an exploitative environment for artists, and a mediocre-at-best experience for fans.
Nathan Hubbard
CE0
Ticketmaster
__________________________________________
Testify, brother. It's important to note that overall prerecorded music revenues in Sweden rose by 14% from 2011 to 2012 as Spotify scaled to dominate that market. If Spotify (or whoever wins the streaming battle) were bad for business, then would this be the case? Clearly not. The real problem is that many artists still line up at the record company trough so they can be paid pennies on the dollars that their music earns. Then they blame Spotify rather than their managers or themselves for the iniquities around them. There are other options to taking your music to market with the requisite infrastructure without having to get f****d. Ask Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (speaking of Jimmy Iovine).
Best-
David Macias
Thirty Tigers
_____
"Making Dollars: Clearing Up Spotify Payment Confusion": http://bit.ly/10YxIWd
"Spotify helps Swedish music sales rise 30.1% in first half of 2012": http://bit.ly/Nesfqi
"Streaming Sales Lift Scandinavian Music Market": http://bit.ly/18aNAbS
__________________________________________
I love Thom. I love Nigel. But was blown away when I watched this rant live on Twitter. Can we applaud Spotify / Rdio / Rhapsody for throwing down a ton of money to legally provide music in a modern way that makes sense? We should have done this with Napster. It only took our industry almost 15 years to figure it out!
Artists: Streaming services DO pay. If you have a problem with not getting "paid" by streaming services, complain to the entity you sold your rights to, not to the platforms trying to get ahead of the curve for once. And since you're most likely un-recouped due to gross overspending in the past; let's all try to create and market music in a more effiecent and sustainable manner from here on out.
Thanks,
Emily White
Whitesmith Entertainment & Readymade Records
New York / Los Angeles / Nashville
__________________________________________
Bob,
And how about Jason Isbell ranting against Spotify awhile back?
I figured I'd never hear his new record (Southeastern) as I had purchased others in the past, each with diminishing enthusiasm.
Then I went on Spotify and there it was! I played it , liked it (more than once) and I'll play it again…so he's making a little $$ off me after all.
I may never have heard it otherwise.
Bob Bradshaw
__________________________________________
hi bob
this is exactly why i started Audiam
YouTube is the new iTunes.
If someone is using music in a video that is not theirs, the law does not allow anyone to do anything beyond ask YouTube to take down the video.
And then it just pops up tomorrow.
However, what can be done is telling YouTube its OK to place an ad on that person's video. And if that happens, the "cash" is paid by the advertiser, not the user or YouTube.
In other words, we now have a world where music fans can legally â€" and for free â€"create videos containing music they love, upload these videos to YouTube, have YouTube license the music the videos and then have advertisers pay the artists and copyright holders for the use.
YouTube can become kickstarter. Please use my music in your videos, cover my songs, to help me raise money.
Even a single song by one artist can be used by hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of fans. Each video is its own creation with its own potential to become a "hit,†from lyric videos to "unofficial" music videos to music in the background as the wedding party dances. Each work of art has the potential to become popular, and with each view, money can be generated and the artist can be promoted
Instead of suing the music fan for using the music, embrace it.
Tell them to use the music.
We WANT people to use the music in their YouTube videos. And when we find those videos, we tell YouTube its OK to sell ads into them.
What existed before, continues to exist, only now they generate revenue
Thank You
Jeff Price
_____
"A New Way for Musicians to Make Money on YouTube": http://buswk.co/1av12vI
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Thom Yorke vs. Spotify
What I like most is the tweet from MusicAlly:
@MusicAlly: Needless to say, Atoms for Peace albums still available to stream in full (unlicensed) on Grooveshark and YouTube
What kind of crazy, fucked up world do we live in where artists are so ignorant, so behind the curve, so out of solutions that they rail against a platform that hasn't gotten any traction anyway?
Streaming won. Kids watch music on YouTube. Over.
Furthermore, there's no money in music for anyone but the owners of catalogs because individual acts just can't get enough traction. We can ignore not only Rihanna, but Dave Grohl and Radiohead too. Oh, the fawning press makes it seem like these acts are important and universal, changing the face of American culture, but the truth is if you've heard all three, you're part of a tiny minority paying attention, everybody else is salivating over new smartphones and the software they contain.
Yup, Steve Jobs kills the floppy, and Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich want to jet us back to the past.
Spotify gives 70% of the revenues to rightsholders. The exact same amount rendered by iTunes. What's the problem? That they pay you over time instead of right now? Afraid that no one will listen to your music in the future? Then you'd better make it really damn good, or create tchotchkes people are dying to own, because the old slap together ten tracks to sell for ten bucks paradigm is so toast, it's stale and in the garbage.
Once upon a time musicians used to lead. Now all they can say is GIVE ME BACK MY PAST! As for saving the future for the new artists... I'd feel better if the new artists created their own paradigm, but instead we've got wannabes too dumb to do anything for themselves. Want to neuter the power of the old gatekeepers, implore acts not to sign with majors. But no, Yorke and Godrich would rather rail against the present, unaware that it's already history. Making Spotify the enemy is akin to the RIAA scapegoating Napster. What happened after they closed Napster? It got WORSE! There was KaZaA and Limewire. Do Yorke and Godrich like Whac-A-Mole that much that they want to fire up the arcade when the game is just about worn out?
Yup, P2P theft is too much trouble. You know what made me stop stealing? Spotify. And for young kids, YouTube. The legal way is much more convenient. This was what was supposed to happen, this was the promise of tech, finally the rightsholders are ahead of the consumers, but in this case they're ahead of the acts too!
How much money did it take to create the cell or cable systems. And with mobile phones, it took almost two decades for people to realize they had to have one. That's progress. You invest now for rewards later. If you think record labels believe in this paradigm you believe Doug Morris owns Sony Music... But Doug's just an employee inured to short term profits like the rest of the corporate titans. As for those vaunted new acts Yorke and Godrich are referencing...they want instant profits too! And are usually so bad they don't deserve any attention.
The truth is, if you're a superstar, there's still plenty of money in music. And superstars are the future, because no one's got time for any less. Just like there's one iTunes Store, one Amazon and one Google, we don't need a plethora of me-too acts, we just need excellence.
Don't musicians get it? If you want to survive in the future, you need solutions.
Want a solution for recorded music? Create a site with everything and get everybody to pay. Cell phone companies don't say you can't call your grandma, but you can't listen to AC/DC and the Beatles and now Atoms For Peace on Spotify. Metallica and the Eagles got the memo, they're now living in the future, but the aforementioned trio and the rest of the Luddites, they believe if they hold their music back they can stem the tide of the future, the same way the lack of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin and the Beatles killed the iTunes Store. Huh? They put a dent in it not a whit!
Will Spotify win?
Who knows, Iovine's MOG/Daisy may replace it. Or the interim might be iTunes Radio, with the public too cheap to pay for access for the moment. But the future is definitely not paying a bunch of money up front for songs you've never heard. Can't get anybody but diehard fans to do that now. And only Yorke and Godrich's diehard fans care about their misguided removal of their music from Spotify. Everybody else shrugs and moves right along, if the news even reaches them.
In Scandinavian countries the lion's share of the revenue IS Spotify, IS streaming. There's nowhere to buy a CD. Is that Spotify's fault? Did Spotify kill the CD, the album and the record shop? No, the public did, by embracing new technology, and now they've all gone to streaming and the crybaby acts keep lamenting the passage of the past the same way buggy whip makers and typewriter constructors did and died.
To quote the great bard Dylan, "He not busy being born is busy dying."
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@MusicAlly: Needless to say, Atoms for Peace albums still available to stream in full (unlicensed) on Grooveshark and YouTube
What kind of crazy, fucked up world do we live in where artists are so ignorant, so behind the curve, so out of solutions that they rail against a platform that hasn't gotten any traction anyway?
Streaming won. Kids watch music on YouTube. Over.
Furthermore, there's no money in music for anyone but the owners of catalogs because individual acts just can't get enough traction. We can ignore not only Rihanna, but Dave Grohl and Radiohead too. Oh, the fawning press makes it seem like these acts are important and universal, changing the face of American culture, but the truth is if you've heard all three, you're part of a tiny minority paying attention, everybody else is salivating over new smartphones and the software they contain.
Yup, Steve Jobs kills the floppy, and Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich want to jet us back to the past.
Spotify gives 70% of the revenues to rightsholders. The exact same amount rendered by iTunes. What's the problem? That they pay you over time instead of right now? Afraid that no one will listen to your music in the future? Then you'd better make it really damn good, or create tchotchkes people are dying to own, because the old slap together ten tracks to sell for ten bucks paradigm is so toast, it's stale and in the garbage.
Once upon a time musicians used to lead. Now all they can say is GIVE ME BACK MY PAST! As for saving the future for the new artists... I'd feel better if the new artists created their own paradigm, but instead we've got wannabes too dumb to do anything for themselves. Want to neuter the power of the old gatekeepers, implore acts not to sign with majors. But no, Yorke and Godrich would rather rail against the present, unaware that it's already history. Making Spotify the enemy is akin to the RIAA scapegoating Napster. What happened after they closed Napster? It got WORSE! There was KaZaA and Limewire. Do Yorke and Godrich like Whac-A-Mole that much that they want to fire up the arcade when the game is just about worn out?
Yup, P2P theft is too much trouble. You know what made me stop stealing? Spotify. And for young kids, YouTube. The legal way is much more convenient. This was what was supposed to happen, this was the promise of tech, finally the rightsholders are ahead of the consumers, but in this case they're ahead of the acts too!
How much money did it take to create the cell or cable systems. And with mobile phones, it took almost two decades for people to realize they had to have one. That's progress. You invest now for rewards later. If you think record labels believe in this paradigm you believe Doug Morris owns Sony Music... But Doug's just an employee inured to short term profits like the rest of the corporate titans. As for those vaunted new acts Yorke and Godrich are referencing...they want instant profits too! And are usually so bad they don't deserve any attention.
The truth is, if you're a superstar, there's still plenty of money in music. And superstars are the future, because no one's got time for any less. Just like there's one iTunes Store, one Amazon and one Google, we don't need a plethora of me-too acts, we just need excellence.
Don't musicians get it? If you want to survive in the future, you need solutions.
Want a solution for recorded music? Create a site with everything and get everybody to pay. Cell phone companies don't say you can't call your grandma, but you can't listen to AC/DC and the Beatles and now Atoms For Peace on Spotify. Metallica and the Eagles got the memo, they're now living in the future, but the aforementioned trio and the rest of the Luddites, they believe if they hold their music back they can stem the tide of the future, the same way the lack of AC/DC and Led Zeppelin and the Beatles killed the iTunes Store. Huh? They put a dent in it not a whit!
Will Spotify win?
Who knows, Iovine's MOG/Daisy may replace it. Or the interim might be iTunes Radio, with the public too cheap to pay for access for the moment. But the future is definitely not paying a bunch of money up front for songs you've never heard. Can't get anybody but diehard fans to do that now. And only Yorke and Godrich's diehard fans care about their misguided removal of their music from Spotify. Everybody else shrugs and moves right along, if the news even reaches them.
In Scandinavian countries the lion's share of the revenue IS Spotify, IS streaming. There's nowhere to buy a CD. Is that Spotify's fault? Did Spotify kill the CD, the album and the record shop? No, the public did, by embracing new technology, and now they've all gone to streaming and the crybaby acts keep lamenting the passage of the past the same way buggy whip makers and typewriter constructors did and died.
To quote the great bard Dylan, "He not busy being born is busy dying."
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Newsroom
What a difference a year makes.
Last year it was us versus them. This year...it's every man for himself.
You remember 2012. When the Tea Party was battling the Democrats, when left wingers were scared out of their wits that automaton Mitt Romney would beat out Barack Obama for the Presidency. Now not only is that battle ancient history, we know it was irrelevant, because corporations run this country and the Supreme Court, installed for life, has been hijacked by a right wing majority and there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it.
Have a different opinion? I couldn't care less. Because opinions no longer matter. Now it's about facts. Like how much money do you have and how much have I got. Did you get laid last night?
Yes, since the summer of 2012 hope has gone out the window, we're no longer in it together, and one thing's for damn sure, no one trusts television news.
All this b.s. about Fox and MSNBC. Neither covered Wendy Davis's filibuster and that was ultimately irrelevant with Texas passing the bill anyway.
What is going on in America?
I'm tying to figure it out. And that seems to make me a party of one. Because everybody in mainstream media is so self-impressed, and myopic, I'm not sure they can even see the truth, never mind sacrifice themselves for it.
What we've got is a cable channel predicated on fantasy, with "Game Of Thrones" and "Vampire Diaries," trying to be au courant and meaningful and missing the target by so wide a margin I'm not sure they know what the target is.
Something is changing in America. And it's definitely not being televised.
What we've got is an incredible tumult, leaving everything up for grabs, and those with power and those who desire it are grasping at straws that will never stir the drink. They're playing to each other instead of those with the power, the people.
We don't trust NBC.
We don't trust CNN.
We don't trust Facebook.
We don't trust Jay-Z.
Watching "Newsroom" tonight it's clear they're all in it for personal glory. And maybe that's the ultimate point, that their hubris gets them into trouble, but why do we care to begin with?
Why should I care about your record? Because you made it? You're just like Aaron Sorkin, so deep in your hole you've lost the plot.
It's like we're living in a post nuclear age, one of refugees, searching for sustenance. But all we're fed is talking heads and advertisements for that which we cannot afford to buy or do not need. Will America right itself? Quite possibly. Will it be the land of the fifties and sixties, an egalitarian, socially mobile, near utopia? If you think so, you're dreaming.
I don't care what happened one or two years ago. Occupy Wall Street... That might as well be the "Macarena." Goldman Sachs? No one thinks bankers will ever pay, that dream's been forgotten, we saw the carnage, yet Matt Taibbi keeps writing about it and Aaron Sorkin's making TV about it not realizing the problem isn't education, but pessimism. We know the truth, we just don't think we can do anything about it.
Change in America? It'll happen the same way it did in the Middle East. With an unforeseen spark, a fruit vendor willing to sacrifice his life for injustice.
Sacrifice? Remember when young men went to Canada rather than participate in an unjust war within which they might get their ass shot off? Sacrifice today is when you forget to untag the photo on Facebook and you lose a job opportunity. As for Maggie being busted by a YouTube clip, this would never happen in real life, because no one's that dumb! Is that how out of touch Aaron Sorkin is? That he doesn't know how people really act?
When we get to the other side of this, people don't realize it's gonna be worse. All this hogwash about the opportunity on the Web? Oh, you can put your stuff up on Spotify and YouTube and tweet about it, but if you think anybody's paying attention, you're even more delusional than Sorkin. That's the story of tomorrow, how everybody shrugs their shoulders and gives up and pledges fealty to the new gatekeepers, unbelievably powerful entities with all the eyeballs. Remember the old Internet, the nineties Internet, sans ads, where the worst thing you had to worry about was a pop-up advertisement? Today even the "New York Times" has full page ads covering its site. Advertising is so rampant online that this on demand world subjects us to more commercial messages than the old days of three TV channels and no remote control. The Web is all sell, all the time, and if you're not tired of it, if you don't think something's rotten in America, then you're profiting from it, big time, unlike the losers with Google ads on their sites earning bupkes.
It's the Me Decade all over again. Remember Tom Wolfe's era? When people had sixties hangover and focused on themselves, to the exclusion of everything else? Do you really expect me to care about these bozos on "Newsroom" taking themselves and their jobs so seriously? They're laughable. I wouldn't want to be them, the same way I wouldn't want to be a banker, because I either want to be happy or do something that matters. And today no one wants to do something that matters, because they're too busy trying to be rich.
Oh, there's a patina of importance on "Newsroom," but since we're subjected to the real news 24/7, we have no trust for these self-promoters, not after we've experienced Judith Miller, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. We know it's about the money. And if they weren't making so much, if they weren't invited to the right parties, they wouldn't be in the business.
But the new gatekeepers will have it totally different. They'll garner eyeballs through substance, not the smoke and mirrors and flash of today. And once they gain power, they'll turn to the dark side, as the powerful always do.
Do you really expect NBC or CNN or Fox or MSNBC or any of the TV news outlets to matter in the future? They barely matter now!
And the truth about baby boomers is they don't evolve, they pay lip service to the future and hang on to the past, riding the wave as long as they can until they cut out, swim to shore and start sipping pina coladas on the way to retirement.
The youth are inheriting the earth. It's happening now. And they don't believe in the old institutions. And they're computer-literate in a way that the oldsters never will be. And they're gonna build new institutions that will level those of the past.
But for now we've got to endure this inane chaos. Where those who don't count, the baby boomers and their get rich quick children, are so busy amplifying their message that you can't see the truth.
But the truth is we live in the age of the individual. That's why you social network, to embellish your identity and feel good, how many friends have you got? You tweet the news so you can say you knew first, not because you really care. And just like Reagan channeled the discontent and swept into office upon it, a new leader, a new reality, a whole new paradigm is gonna emerge that will control us all, for better or worse, because we just can't take this crazy myopic cash grab a minute longer.
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Last year it was us versus them. This year...it's every man for himself.
You remember 2012. When the Tea Party was battling the Democrats, when left wingers were scared out of their wits that automaton Mitt Romney would beat out Barack Obama for the Presidency. Now not only is that battle ancient history, we know it was irrelevant, because corporations run this country and the Supreme Court, installed for life, has been hijacked by a right wing majority and there's nothing you or anybody else can do about it.
Have a different opinion? I couldn't care less. Because opinions no longer matter. Now it's about facts. Like how much money do you have and how much have I got. Did you get laid last night?
Yes, since the summer of 2012 hope has gone out the window, we're no longer in it together, and one thing's for damn sure, no one trusts television news.
All this b.s. about Fox and MSNBC. Neither covered Wendy Davis's filibuster and that was ultimately irrelevant with Texas passing the bill anyway.
What is going on in America?
I'm tying to figure it out. And that seems to make me a party of one. Because everybody in mainstream media is so self-impressed, and myopic, I'm not sure they can even see the truth, never mind sacrifice themselves for it.
What we've got is a cable channel predicated on fantasy, with "Game Of Thrones" and "Vampire Diaries," trying to be au courant and meaningful and missing the target by so wide a margin I'm not sure they know what the target is.
Something is changing in America. And it's definitely not being televised.
What we've got is an incredible tumult, leaving everything up for grabs, and those with power and those who desire it are grasping at straws that will never stir the drink. They're playing to each other instead of those with the power, the people.
We don't trust NBC.
We don't trust CNN.
We don't trust Facebook.
We don't trust Jay-Z.
Watching "Newsroom" tonight it's clear they're all in it for personal glory. And maybe that's the ultimate point, that their hubris gets them into trouble, but why do we care to begin with?
Why should I care about your record? Because you made it? You're just like Aaron Sorkin, so deep in your hole you've lost the plot.
It's like we're living in a post nuclear age, one of refugees, searching for sustenance. But all we're fed is talking heads and advertisements for that which we cannot afford to buy or do not need. Will America right itself? Quite possibly. Will it be the land of the fifties and sixties, an egalitarian, socially mobile, near utopia? If you think so, you're dreaming.
I don't care what happened one or two years ago. Occupy Wall Street... That might as well be the "Macarena." Goldman Sachs? No one thinks bankers will ever pay, that dream's been forgotten, we saw the carnage, yet Matt Taibbi keeps writing about it and Aaron Sorkin's making TV about it not realizing the problem isn't education, but pessimism. We know the truth, we just don't think we can do anything about it.
Change in America? It'll happen the same way it did in the Middle East. With an unforeseen spark, a fruit vendor willing to sacrifice his life for injustice.
Sacrifice? Remember when young men went to Canada rather than participate in an unjust war within which they might get their ass shot off? Sacrifice today is when you forget to untag the photo on Facebook and you lose a job opportunity. As for Maggie being busted by a YouTube clip, this would never happen in real life, because no one's that dumb! Is that how out of touch Aaron Sorkin is? That he doesn't know how people really act?
When we get to the other side of this, people don't realize it's gonna be worse. All this hogwash about the opportunity on the Web? Oh, you can put your stuff up on Spotify and YouTube and tweet about it, but if you think anybody's paying attention, you're even more delusional than Sorkin. That's the story of tomorrow, how everybody shrugs their shoulders and gives up and pledges fealty to the new gatekeepers, unbelievably powerful entities with all the eyeballs. Remember the old Internet, the nineties Internet, sans ads, where the worst thing you had to worry about was a pop-up advertisement? Today even the "New York Times" has full page ads covering its site. Advertising is so rampant online that this on demand world subjects us to more commercial messages than the old days of three TV channels and no remote control. The Web is all sell, all the time, and if you're not tired of it, if you don't think something's rotten in America, then you're profiting from it, big time, unlike the losers with Google ads on their sites earning bupkes.
It's the Me Decade all over again. Remember Tom Wolfe's era? When people had sixties hangover and focused on themselves, to the exclusion of everything else? Do you really expect me to care about these bozos on "Newsroom" taking themselves and their jobs so seriously? They're laughable. I wouldn't want to be them, the same way I wouldn't want to be a banker, because I either want to be happy or do something that matters. And today no one wants to do something that matters, because they're too busy trying to be rich.
Oh, there's a patina of importance on "Newsroom," but since we're subjected to the real news 24/7, we have no trust for these self-promoters, not after we've experienced Judith Miller, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. We know it's about the money. And if they weren't making so much, if they weren't invited to the right parties, they wouldn't be in the business.
But the new gatekeepers will have it totally different. They'll garner eyeballs through substance, not the smoke and mirrors and flash of today. And once they gain power, they'll turn to the dark side, as the powerful always do.
Do you really expect NBC or CNN or Fox or MSNBC or any of the TV news outlets to matter in the future? They barely matter now!
And the truth about baby boomers is they don't evolve, they pay lip service to the future and hang on to the past, riding the wave as long as they can until they cut out, swim to shore and start sipping pina coladas on the way to retirement.
The youth are inheriting the earth. It's happening now. And they don't believe in the old institutions. And they're computer-literate in a way that the oldsters never will be. And they're gonna build new institutions that will level those of the past.
But for now we've got to endure this inane chaos. Where those who don't count, the baby boomers and their get rich quick children, are so busy amplifying their message that you can't see the truth.
But the truth is we live in the age of the individual. That's why you social network, to embellish your identity and feel good, how many friends have you got? You tweet the news so you can say you knew first, not because you really care. And just like Reagan channeled the discontent and swept into office upon it, a new leader, a new reality, a whole new paradigm is gonna emerge that will control us all, for better or worse, because we just can't take this crazy myopic cash grab a minute longer.
--
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