The Jimmy Buffett Dustup

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive."

That's the first half of the Stewart Brand quote that everybody forgets but the news media has embraced. Used to be reporters asked hard questions and revealed their answers in their newspapers and magazines, now they've all emulated the music business and taken their show on the road, it's all about conferences baby, where the well-heeled overpay and the hoi polloi get crumbs from the people who can't write and leave the best parts out.

Yesterday Jimmy Buffett asked Daniel Ek for more money at the "Vanity Fair" conference in San Francisco. What, you didn't get an invitation? Of course not, because you don't count, it's a whole world of intelligentsia who are all about relationships and the only people you know are hanging at the bar.

And Jimmy Buffett stands up in all his glory and asks Daniel Ek for a raise. Why don't you try the same thing. Why don't you go into Lucian Grainge and talk about his pay and the money Universal is making and ask for a bonus. Even better, ask for a discount on the subway. Better yet, on your taxes. What Buffett is asking for is to throw out the rule of law, of contracts, and to have Spotify throw artists a few shekels out of the goodness of its corporate heart, although the last time I checked they didn't have one, no corporation does, Apple doesn't pay taxes and neither does U2. Everybody's in in for themselves but since Buffett makes art, he gets to evade the rules. Huh?

Even better, how about Jimmy kicking back some of that live dough to his label. Ticket prices have far exceeded inflation for years, doesn't Lucian Grainge get to dip down into the seaman's pocket for some of that?

Actually, they do that today, with a 360 deal. Which you don't have to sign.

You want the label to make you famous, you want it to employ its marketing power and relationships, and then you want to bitch that you're just not getting rich. No one said you had to do it their way!

Bitch about something you can change. Elect a different congressperson, fight to ensure gay marriage or abortion, take to the courts, because jawboning hardly ever works, check it, the President rarely employs it.

I expected more from Jimmy, who's a minor Gene Simmons, for all his affability Buffett is supremely confident, he thinks he knows everything. When his record sales started to tank he opened restaurants, put the pedal to the metal on merch, even got into the casino business. Once again, did he share a piece of this revenue with those who got him there? Of course not!

And no one beats up on Google, which started this problem, with YouTube, because Google is their friend, those guys are over forty, we all use Google every day, it's an institution in this short term memory society.

But the wisest words were spoken by Tom Freston, who declared that music no longer drove society, tech did. This is the same guy who said MTV was no longer gonna show videos, that they'd become an on demand item online. But the artists complained about MTV's U-turn until very recently, when they found out YouTube allows them to go directly to their audience whenever they want and get paid in the process. Come on, hear anybody bitching about the cable channel recently?

And they won't be bitching about streaming services either.

But the truth is artists are dumb. Trotted out for entertainment. Unaware of how business really works. U2 will not recover from the stink of the Apple cram down forever, the same way Metallica has never fully recovered from the Napster fiasco, because in both cases they could not read the landscape. Napster died and was replaced with worse and piracy reigned and then streaming services reined piracy in. And U2 is the poster boy for aging out of touch rock stars which tech companies will now keep at arm's length, because they're only about the money, only about the promotional value, do you really think Tim Cook is gonna listen to Jimmy Iovine now?

Streaming revenues will go up.

And if you create something as good as the iPhone you will not be bitching about your income.

That's right Jimmy, write a hit, you'll make money in ways you never thought of, and you can whore it out to the corporations you bitch about, licensing it to the beer company or TV show or movie du jour, never mind playing corporates for seven figures.

But that's much harder to do than complain.

"Jimmy Buffett Asks Spotify C.E.O. Daniel Ek for a Raise": http://vnty.fr/1CYoXhP


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