From: peter noone
Subject: Re: Gerry Goffin
hello bob
on plane from frankfurt to houston to go sing the gerry and carole song
woke up this morning feeling finer, because that song came to mickie most and when he played it to me and my merrie band of hermits, we knew that it was the perfect song for a gang of 16 to 18 years old english posters to eat up the charts.
I changed the words a bit, because I didn't think it was a good idea to sing "last night I met a new boy in the neighbourhood, oh yeah."
I open every concert with the song and see the smiles!
my audience see my face when they hear it on the radio!
I am so happy to read your stuff and it's always appreciated.
peter noone
________________________________________
From: Keith Hopwood
Subject: Re: Gerry Goffin
Right on the nail Bob - the power of the pen. We were incredibly lucky to have I'm into Something Good as our first release, thanks to Mickie Most finding the original. It's only with the benefit of hindsight you can recognise the talent that wove such brilliant lyrics into melodies that just got under your skin, saying so much, in so few words. It was an era when the art of songwriting triumphed, and 'production' was just the process that got it onto the vinyl. So different to today - now it's the other way round. The sheer amount of covers of songs from the sixties over the years is testament to their writers' genius.
Keith Hopwood
________________________________________
Subject: from Kim Carnes
Hey Bob, just want to thank you for mentioning my song BREAK THE RULES..... I still open every show with it, only I sing it acapella with my band....
my thanx, best, Kim
________________________________________
From: CLINT YOUNG (and others)
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Cream Primer
Hey Bob.. this is the scoop on BADGE
"Badge" was originally an untitled track. During the production transfer for the album Goodbye, the original music sheet was used to produce the liner notes and track listing. The only discernible word on the page was "bridge" (indicating the song's bridge section). Due to Harrison's handwriting, however, Clapton misread it as "badge" - and the song was titled soon thereafter.
Harrison remembered the story differently: "I helped Eric write "Badge" you know. Each of them had to come up with a song for that Goodbye Cream album and Eric didn't have his written. We were working across from each other and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part so I wrote 'Bridge.' Eric read it upside down and cracked up laughing-- 'What's BADGE?' he said. After that, Ringo walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park."
A common legend or misconception is that the name came about because its chord progression is B-A-D-G-E (it is not), or simply because an anagram of a guitar's standard tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) can be arranged to spell "Badge".
________________________________________
From: Cahoon Keith (and others)
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Cream Primer
legends have it that-
NSU stands for non specific urethritis, a disease which Clapton was said to have been suffering from at the time
________________________________________
From: Stuart Marvin
Subject: Re: Rhinofy-Cream Primer
About 17 years ago, my buddy and I peeled out of work early to play some pool on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was mid-day so the place was pretty empty, until two guys walked in and snagged a table near ours. One looked a bit like Clapton but I really didn't give it a second thought, until I heard the British accent. I said to my friend, "holy shit, that's EC playing two tables over." Not missing a beat, I walked over and in a very understated way said "hey guys, my friend is giving me a real beating how'd you like to make it interesting and play us in a game of eight-ball," They replied affirmatively and I went back to get my friend.
When we returned Clapton put out his hand and said "Hi, I'm Eric," although inside I said to myself "really, no f-ing shit." His playing partner was Russ Tittelman, the famed producer. Now, to briefly set the table here, in my day job I've met a fair amount of famous sports celebs and never, ever have I got even the least bit star struck. Not once! That said, when I lined up my very first shot in this eight-ball challenge, my hands started to shake. I thought of all the times I listened to Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, Wheels of Wire, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos, etc., in both my childhood bedroom and as an adult. This was "Slowhand" or "God," or any other moniker attributed to Clapton over the years. My childhood was literally flashing before my eyes.
Eric couldn't have been nicer. We played for about an hour and did talk a little shop, although I refrained from being the star struck fan that I was. I couldn't tell you who won, not that it really mattered much. It was both a great day and experience!
Oh, and talk about karma, my playing buddy, who wasn't a super hyped up fan like me, well, his real-life name is Derek. So I guess it was fate all along.
Stuart K. Marvin
________________________________________
From: Ben Erickson
Subject: Re: Uber
Like I emailed you before...Uber is a tour managers wet dream. It has literally changed my life being able to send cars to pick up the band, have them waiting backstage, take guests home, etc. I get bummed when I'm in a city that doesn't have it...and the whole $100 to deliver a mariachi band and a bottle of tequila to wherever you're at on Cinco de Mayo is such a cool idea it's ridiculous. You always talk about "getting people to talk about you" and nothing does it like on demand Mariachi. Ole' from the beach in France!
________________________________________
From: Richard Musterer
Subject: Re: WWDC
Random musing: Does Jimmy Iovine actually use Beats headphones? Would
audiophile Steve Jobs use Beats?
http://www.wired.com/2014/04/steve-jobs-stereo-system/
And it was interesting to read this while recalling that Jimmy Iovine
once engineered Springsteen sessions...
(Bruce) kept saying, "This doesn't sound right." I was like, "What are
you listening on?" He goes, "Well, I got Dr. Dre Beats headphones."
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bruce-springsteen-producer-breaks-down-high-hopes-exclusive-20131230
Thanks.
________________________________________
From: Dan Millen
Subject: Re: Delusional
Oh man, you gotta love it! This is why I have a love / hate relationship with small clubs… the bands and agents are just as delusional.
Hey Dan,
We are the dungflingers, we are from Bayonne NJ, we are all high school students who started this band a couple years ago. We plays tons of house parties and we opened up for LIT once. We are looking to go on tour this summer to support our new CD, do you have Saturday July 5 (in your 21+ club in the heart of the city that no one will be at because it's the 4th of July and nobody knows who your are) that you could hook us up with? We are asking for $350 versus the door plus a hotel room. You can book three local bands to open for us that will bring 25-30 people.
ugh…
Or contrast with:
Dan,
it's Ari Gold at the humungo agency. We have "Had a hit 10 years ago and still trying to cruise on it" out looking for dates.
Me: I like the band, what kind of cake are they looking for.
Him: $7500 plus ground transportation and back line.
Me: Last play in the market was 240 tix sold at $15 - that's about half of what you are looking for.
Him: Well they won't even look at offers less than that.
Me: Get the money from a Casino…
Act fires that agent. Three months later I get the same email from the agency across town… and the cycle never stops.
________________________________________
From: Jack Casey
Subject: RE: Delusional
Hi Bob,
The notion that mass appeal = rubbish is a subject I address constantly in class and at WERS. Radio has traditionally been driven by Arbitron (now Nielsen) which has never been about qualitative measurement (who has advanced degrees or who appreciates the great poets)... it has always been about cume aka tonnage. Because the ad agencies sell their clients' products and services through media, they want numbers. That's the business. This has never been more true for radio than in the age of the personal people meter (PPM).
In the end, taste is always subjective and people vote with their meters and their purchases (downloads, hard media, concert tickets). If you want to survive and thrive (or as we say in the not-for-profit world "become sustainable"), give the most people you can reach what they want. And, just because more and more started to like them doesn't mean that Mumford and Sons or The Lumineers "sold out" or lost their mojo.
By the way, Kiesza's success is an interesting example of "give the people what they want." I met her and her friend Alicia Lemke often while they were both at Berklee. Alicia was just as driven to succeed as Kiesza but she is much more a pure folk artist. Her voice reminded me of a young Judy Collins. And, while she has done OK in New York, she hasn't enjoyed the same level of success as Kiesza because she simply isn't as mass appeal. Niche artists can still make a decent living but they shouldn't whine because others have more of what consumers are looking for. The Studebaker Avanti was a unique and wonderful automobile in many ways. But sorry, it never had enough of the things that made people buy Corvettes in record numbers. And that's why Studebaker is no longer in business.
Love your blog.
Jack Casey
General Manager
WERS-FM
Emerson College
Boston
________________________________________
From: mark weiss
Subject: Re: Private Equity
I read the same article and wondered how the facts fit my world view:
here's one way:
Palo Alto, California recently passed a noise ordinance that banned the use of music amplifiers in a public plaza during business hours due to the lobbying by a hedge-fund manager named Rick Kimball of Technology Crossover Ventures and his landlord who claimed that the street musician playing blues guitar for tips was disrupting their ability to make that kind of Leon Black Steve Schwartzman money--Kimball by the way is a trustee of Dartmouth College, as is Leon Black.
mark weiss in palo alto (who spoke a half dozen times at public hearings claiming that the noise ordinance was actually contrary to bill of rights)
________________________________________
Subject: The Impact of Refrigeration
Hi Bob;
I feel as though the bulk of the music industry is still in the ice making and delivery business and despite the advent of home refrigeration; they want everyone to keep using and paying for their daily ice delivery.
The great ice making companies: Warner/Elektra/Atlantic, EMI, Sony (CBS/Columbia), A&M, Polygram, Universal, BMG....slowly melting away, daily....and their greatest ice makers: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elton John, The Eagles and so on...
http://www.history-magazine.com/refrig.html
excerpts:
"By 1879 there were 35 commercial ice plants in America, more than 200 a decade later, and 2,000 by 1909. In 1907, 14-15 million tons of ice were consumed, nearly triple the amount in 1880. No pond was safe from scraping for ice production, not even Thoreau's Walden Pond, where 1,000 tons of ice were extracted each day in 1847."
"The ice wagon was a familiar sight on urban streets. It became an American institution, delivering ice as needed when consumers posted the 'Ice Today' sign in their windows. Iceboxes were typically made of wood, lined with tin or zinc and insulated with sawdust or seaweed. Water pans had to be emptied daily."
"The household refrigerator changed the way people ate and socially affected the household. They were no longer dependent on ice delivery and they didn't have to make provisions for it like leaving a key or leaving the door open. Ice wagons became a thing of the past. By the 1920s, the household refrigerator was an essential piece of kitchen furniture. In 1921, 5,000 mechanical refrigerators were manufactured in the US. Ten years later that number grew past one million and just six years later, nearly six million. Mass production of modern refrigerators began in earnest after WWII. By 1950, more than 80 percent of American farms and more than 90 percent of urban homes had one."
Sound familiar? Yes, it does.
Get with it.
Andre Bourgeois
INSTINCT
________________________________________
From: Scott Cohen
Subject: Re: More Math
Bob,
I think everyone really loves this debate. But can you really call it a debate. It is like debating climate change. There is no debate.
I wrote this a few months back. - http://www.dailyrindblog.com/news-flash-music-business-fixed/
"'News Flash'-The Music Business Has Been Fixed"
That's not really true. Let me start differently. The music business is not broken. If I hear one more artist complain about the broken music industry and the small digital payouts, I am going to pull my hair out. (Luckily I am already bald so it is not a real concern.)
If you are successful, the music business is amazing. Lots of fun, money, drugs and alcohol (if you choose and I am not endorsing this behavior) and of course the opportunity to make music that people enjoy. If you are not popular, the problem is that there is not much money. Still lots of fun, drugs and alcohol (but you have to pay for them) and still plenty of opportunities to make music. But no money. And it has nothing to do with Spotify payouts or the quality of the music.
I used to hear complaints about the broken business back in the 20th century.
Here is a list of a few of the common ones:
1. I need to get signed by a label to release my music.
2. Recording is too expensive.
3. I have no way to reach potential fans.
4. I can't get distribution.
These problems don't exist anymore. Solved. But still there is a lot of complaining. The system must be broken. The business just doesn't work. I can't make enough money to survive with my music. Digital services just don't pay enough.
SSShhhhhhh. Let me tell you a little secret. It is a secret that all the successful artists know. Are you ready? You need to become popular. Then you earn a lot of money. People that knew this: Elvis, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, every rapper that ever existed, Taylor Swift, Jarvis Cocker, Oasis, and the list goes on and on and on.
The last time I checked there was still only one number 1 single every week. Make it to number 1 and you will see that the system pays out a lot of money. Don't get hung up on your numbers of streams, downloads, views, etc. It is only the amount in relation to the other artists. So 100,000 video views may seem like a lot but it really doesn't stack up to the billion views a top artist receives. Same with streaming payouts. Even 1 million streams is not a lot. There's no money in 1 million streams.
So please stop blaming the system. It is hard to make money in the music industry. But it is not because the industry is broken.
________________________________________
From: Jim Steinman
From: Jim
Subject: TODD R. & THE 1977 BLACKOUT
I remember Todd Rundgren, a pure genius, maybe the ONLY one I ever met or knew in pop/rock, was incredibly sarcastic. He never once said anything positive about ANY of my songs--which never bothered me. (I had a certain immunity to being criticized, from my college years at Amherst, where Ray Teller (Penn & Teller) was a dorm mate.) My first piece as ARTS EDITOR got the following alumni comment: "Well, hallelujah! Amherst now has its premier priapic perpetrator of pure pornography." I was extremely flattered.
Todd had a strong undercurrent of real bitterness: I think he KNEW that he was WAY UNDERCELBRATED, and massively not as "successful" as he should have been. He would say "I hate nothing more than when record people, or musicians, say 'That's a reallly commercial track! Definitely a hit.' He'd respond with "There are NO commercial or hit tracks, until it's released & proves it. Until then, it's all BS!" Hard to argue with!
He took out his venomous "side" mostly on people like Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel; he was "withering" in criticizing them. On the other hand, his genius was gloriously shown on all the background vocals on BAT OUT OF HELL and BACK INTO HELL--breathtaking!
I did BAND OF GOLD with Bonnie Tyler. (Still the ONLY song I know about impotence.) He sung a ton and sampled about 35 vocal phrases into a synth. He then played back the song and inserted those phrases EVERYWHERE in the song: usually doing "variations"--like "since you've been gone" would be "si--si--si--si--since you've been gone". He had not planned any of this out! It was spontaneous and throughout the song, maybe over 65 "phrases". He then said "OK, let's double that". As I watched in total amazement, the song played back and he "doubled" EVERY SINGLE PHRASE, right down to all the variations like "si--si--si--since you've been gone" which was done manually by clicking really fast on the word "since". There were tons like that, & he doubled the entire song perfectly! Only stopped one time to correct himself.
I felt that Toddy creating BACKING VOCALS was one of the most breathtaking things and purest example of musical "genius: I'd ever seen!. In summer 1977, Meat and I were up at Todd's house working on BAT and he finished, and said something like "You wanna see my souped up video game?" He had some STAR TREK large standing set up game. We said "SURE!" and he suddenly started doing the most explosive things I'd ever seen in a"game". And by far the loudest!
The lights would dim a lot, even shut off for a second, and he just kept on going. When it had ended I was pretty blown away. Meat and I drove down from Bearsville back to the city. We were so consumed by & involved in talking that it wasn't till we were on the West Side Highway that I said "Meat! Look! Something's wrong!." We both THEN noticed the complete lack of ANY KIND of light! It was the GREAT BLACKOUT of 1977! We drove around the whole city, seeing revellers in the streets, people breaking windows and looting, and everything you could think of happening OPENLY in the pitch black of NYC! I kept a notebook and it read, for that night, "10:17PM: Toddy makes the lights go off with his fucking amazing video game!." It was FOUR DAYS later that the papers, reporting on the cause of the blackout, wrote that "It seemed to begin at a major power station near Newburgh NY, and spread from there. Analysts say it started about 10:15 or so." People can deny this all they want, but Todd,
being right up against Newburgh, to me, CAUSED the GREAT BLACKOUT with his "souped up video game."! I'll never forget those days, and believe, totally, that it WAS Toddy!."..........Now THAT's ROCK N' ROLL! Plunging the country's biggest city into "medieval" darkness for days!............And honestly, this all began by my thoughts of eating at HoJo's and FRIENDLY'S in Massachussetts!."
________________________________________
thank you for that beautiful piece---you see gerry goffin is my husband --- and i thought that piece was just perfect gerry would have loved that michele goffin
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Saturday 21 June 2014
The Helicopter
Absolutely positively frightening.
And thrilling all at the same time.
I thought it would be easier coming back, but the guys in the copter were from Brazil and Mexico City, where whirlybirds are de rigueur, they were nodding out as the electronic music pulsed in the headphones and the vehicle was getting bounced around and the pilot had been in the military but only learned to fly when he got out two years before and please, dear God, let me live through this.
The wash from the bird next to you is unreal, almost enough to blow you away, literally.
And then they drive the thing down the runway, really, they're about six or eight feet from the ground, and they've got to go to this launching pad only you don't know this and there are other copters going in the other direction right next to you and you really want to elbow the pilot to say not to fly too close but then you turn around and take off and...WHEW!
I was worried we were going to hit the Stratosphere, it felt that close. But when I saw the traffic on I-15 I was happy I flew. And you've got to know it's Vegas and the desert, coexisting, what I mean by that is there are lights and then...nothing. And EDC is on the racetrack and they set the bird down and what did I see?
ASSES!
It's like every woman stopped eating three months before and was eager to demonstrate her cheeks. Truly.
It wasn't like this when I was a kid. You had to scramble to see boobies in adult magazines. But there were a few babes prancing topless. The rest were exhibiting their assets to the point that if you were outside the demo, your eyes would bug out and you'd be eager to touch.
And I had a long conversation with Afrojack. Who told me he does it for his fans. What he means by that is he's showing them they can make it, if he can, they can.
And making it means you stand in front of tens of thousands of people with the lights pulsing and...
This is your children's Woodstock. Something the old farts just don't get and still wouldn't if they attended. Hell, they'd freak if they saw how their progeny came dressed, all 140,000 of them.
And it truly is a carnival, with a cornucopia of rides, all included in the admission price.
And it's dark, but there's no danger.
And there were more fireworks than Disneyland.
And that's what it was like, an adult Disneyland.
Used to be the label was king, now the promoter is king. And the best promoters don't put on shows, but events. And this was the most full-blown, fleshed-out music event I've ever been to.
And I'm still digesting it.
But it's 4:25 AM and I've got to go to BED!
(I would have stayed up to see the dawn, Pasquale implored me to, but I'd never make my flight, and we old people need our SLEEP!)
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And thrilling all at the same time.
I thought it would be easier coming back, but the guys in the copter were from Brazil and Mexico City, where whirlybirds are de rigueur, they were nodding out as the electronic music pulsed in the headphones and the vehicle was getting bounced around and the pilot had been in the military but only learned to fly when he got out two years before and please, dear God, let me live through this.
The wash from the bird next to you is unreal, almost enough to blow you away, literally.
And then they drive the thing down the runway, really, they're about six or eight feet from the ground, and they've got to go to this launching pad only you don't know this and there are other copters going in the other direction right next to you and you really want to elbow the pilot to say not to fly too close but then you turn around and take off and...WHEW!
I was worried we were going to hit the Stratosphere, it felt that close. But when I saw the traffic on I-15 I was happy I flew. And you've got to know it's Vegas and the desert, coexisting, what I mean by that is there are lights and then...nothing. And EDC is on the racetrack and they set the bird down and what did I see?
ASSES!
It's like every woman stopped eating three months before and was eager to demonstrate her cheeks. Truly.
It wasn't like this when I was a kid. You had to scramble to see boobies in adult magazines. But there were a few babes prancing topless. The rest were exhibiting their assets to the point that if you were outside the demo, your eyes would bug out and you'd be eager to touch.
And I had a long conversation with Afrojack. Who told me he does it for his fans. What he means by that is he's showing them they can make it, if he can, they can.
And making it means you stand in front of tens of thousands of people with the lights pulsing and...
This is your children's Woodstock. Something the old farts just don't get and still wouldn't if they attended. Hell, they'd freak if they saw how their progeny came dressed, all 140,000 of them.
And it truly is a carnival, with a cornucopia of rides, all included in the admission price.
And it's dark, but there's no danger.
And there were more fireworks than Disneyland.
And that's what it was like, an adult Disneyland.
Used to be the label was king, now the promoter is king. And the best promoters don't put on shows, but events. And this was the most full-blown, fleshed-out music event I've ever been to.
And I'm still digesting it.
But it's 4:25 AM and I've got to go to BED!
(I would have stayed up to see the dawn, Pasquale implored me to, but I'd never make my flight, and we old people need our SLEEP!)
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Friday 20 June 2014
More Vegas/EDMBiz
THE POOL
So I'm accosted by this woman who works for Jason Flom who's bitching that Republic won't let her put her artists on channels other than Vevo. Huh?
So she introduces me to this English cat, who controls twelve YouTube channels with eight figure revenue. Each one has a million subscribers. They find acts on SoundCloud, then put them up on the tastemakers' channels, and then they blow up! They even sell compilations on iTunes. And since Radio 1 looks at YouTube views...
It was like I descended on another planet.
Everybody here is so young and so innovative, it would spin the heads of the old farts who believe they control this business.
Oh, one more thing, these channels only post a new clip once every two or three days. They're not overloading their subscribers. How can these nobodies get it so right and Beats and Songza get it so wrong?
THE ELEVATOR
"Are you here for EDC?"
YUP!
From D.C. The Electric Daisy Carnival is a destination unto itself. And when someone travels across the country, it's a commitment.
THE FOUNTAIN
I'm right by the Bellagio, whose fountains blow up on a regular basis. I Shazamed the song that accompanied the explosions. It was Faith Hill's "This Kiss." Who knew?
IMPLANTS
Are rampant. Along with tattoos. Everybody's trying to advertise their desirability, at various class levels. The ultra-rich employ their private jets. The upper class wears designer items. The lower classes are all about their bodies, their looks. And if you grew up on the east coast and believe it's all about your mind, you've got no place in Vegas, maybe not America.
THE WYNN
It's like the classes are self-separating. The lower go to Planet Hollywood, which was packed. The Wynn was completely empty. Especially the high end shops, from Vertu (who'd want one?) to Louis Vuitton.
GAMBLING
The tables were next to empty. Once upon a time the rooms were cheap and it was about getting people gaming. Now the rooms are expensive, as are the experiences. I'm not sure of Vegas economics, but if your impression is one big smoky gambling floor, you're wrong. At the Cosmopolitan, gaming is almost a sideshow.
ABSINTHE
The producer tracked me down to go. I'll say that the roller skating act was positively scary. Wherein they spin on a five foot diameter platform and if someone lets go whole swaths of the audience will be wiped out.
ROSE. RABBIT. LIE.
The same Australians who produce "Absinthe" produce this. A cornucopia of vaudeville acts and personal experiences. These are independents, they're doing it for themselves, they're the team that toured "Puppetry of the Penis."
What was fascinating was the ticketing. Only twenty percent of tickets are sold in advance in Vegas (not including Celine, Britney, et al, the destination performers...the head of Caesars' gave me a primer, turns out Caesars is owned by Harrahs and this guy oversees double digit venues). It's about relationships with concierges and resellers and if you're coming to Vegas and want to see a show, you'll do best if you do your web research.
CLOTHING
Believing it's all in the mind, I'm happy to dress down. But walking the Strip made me want to upgrade my wardrobe, to separate myself from everybody else.
SCALE
Come to Vegas to get an idea of how many people there are in the world. How much money you can make with a good idea. This is not L.A., the people don't look like it, what I like most are the hanging bellies over the Daisy Dukes, do they not know or where they come from does no one care? It's hard to fathom 300 million people. But they're out there. And that's the power of art. Steve Wynn may be a hospitality genius, but one hit track will reach many more people.
7UP
Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5FRxlHs93s
They showed the long iteration yesterday, wherein Valparaiso, Chile is turned into...well, just watch it.
This deal was hatched at EDMBiz last year. 7Up saw its market shrinking. They were gonna focus on Latinos, who are heavy drinkers. But they learned that EDM skewed millennial, and they decided to invest in EDM instead. Their whole site is now EDM-centric: http://www.7up.com
Tatiana from Nielsen said sponsorship should not be overdone. What I mean is, the length of time the product is exposed in the clip doesn't matter. An instant of organic presence far exceeds extended airtime that is unnatural.
This deal is paying off for 7Up financially.
7Up was there early, others will soon follow.
JAKE UDELL
He's all anybody would talk about, the manager of Krewella who spoke the first day, when I was still on Southwest.
I caught up with him yesterday.
He graduated from the entrepreneurship program at Indiana. He made a million before school hawking autographs on eBay. He quit his candy job because the big shots couldn't understand his plan to make millions. He broke Krewella by piggybacking on a Skrillex track that was released without vocals or dubstep elements.
Jake is a new Shep Gordon, maybe a new Irving or Geffen. Because suddenly, kids are interested in the music business because they see money. And they don't fit into the corporate world. And they're innovative and limit-testing just like the titans of yore.
PASQUALE ROTELLA
He did the layout. In the big time music business, everybody's too far removed, they're not hands-on. It didn't even occur to me that the number one guy at Insomniac would be in charge of designing the stage placement, etc.
10 PM
That's when we're leaving for the gig.
The traditional festivals begin early and end at midnight. Just like in Ibiza, it doesn't really start happening here until the early morning. And if that's too late for you, it proves the point, this music, this scene, is not for you. And the adherents, the fans, DON'T CARE!
THE HELICOPTER
That's how we're getting to the gig tonight. Yes, I'm afraid. Wish me luck!
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So I'm accosted by this woman who works for Jason Flom who's bitching that Republic won't let her put her artists on channels other than Vevo. Huh?
So she introduces me to this English cat, who controls twelve YouTube channels with eight figure revenue. Each one has a million subscribers. They find acts on SoundCloud, then put them up on the tastemakers' channels, and then they blow up! They even sell compilations on iTunes. And since Radio 1 looks at YouTube views...
It was like I descended on another planet.
Everybody here is so young and so innovative, it would spin the heads of the old farts who believe they control this business.
Oh, one more thing, these channels only post a new clip once every two or three days. They're not overloading their subscribers. How can these nobodies get it so right and Beats and Songza get it so wrong?
THE ELEVATOR
"Are you here for EDC?"
YUP!
From D.C. The Electric Daisy Carnival is a destination unto itself. And when someone travels across the country, it's a commitment.
THE FOUNTAIN
I'm right by the Bellagio, whose fountains blow up on a regular basis. I Shazamed the song that accompanied the explosions. It was Faith Hill's "This Kiss." Who knew?
IMPLANTS
Are rampant. Along with tattoos. Everybody's trying to advertise their desirability, at various class levels. The ultra-rich employ their private jets. The upper class wears designer items. The lower classes are all about their bodies, their looks. And if you grew up on the east coast and believe it's all about your mind, you've got no place in Vegas, maybe not America.
THE WYNN
It's like the classes are self-separating. The lower go to Planet Hollywood, which was packed. The Wynn was completely empty. Especially the high end shops, from Vertu (who'd want one?) to Louis Vuitton.
GAMBLING
The tables were next to empty. Once upon a time the rooms were cheap and it was about getting people gaming. Now the rooms are expensive, as are the experiences. I'm not sure of Vegas economics, but if your impression is one big smoky gambling floor, you're wrong. At the Cosmopolitan, gaming is almost a sideshow.
ABSINTHE
The producer tracked me down to go. I'll say that the roller skating act was positively scary. Wherein they spin on a five foot diameter platform and if someone lets go whole swaths of the audience will be wiped out.
ROSE. RABBIT. LIE.
The same Australians who produce "Absinthe" produce this. A cornucopia of vaudeville acts and personal experiences. These are independents, they're doing it for themselves, they're the team that toured "Puppetry of the Penis."
What was fascinating was the ticketing. Only twenty percent of tickets are sold in advance in Vegas (not including Celine, Britney, et al, the destination performers...the head of Caesars' gave me a primer, turns out Caesars is owned by Harrahs and this guy oversees double digit venues). It's about relationships with concierges and resellers and if you're coming to Vegas and want to see a show, you'll do best if you do your web research.
CLOTHING
Believing it's all in the mind, I'm happy to dress down. But walking the Strip made me want to upgrade my wardrobe, to separate myself from everybody else.
SCALE
Come to Vegas to get an idea of how many people there are in the world. How much money you can make with a good idea. This is not L.A., the people don't look like it, what I like most are the hanging bellies over the Daisy Dukes, do they not know or where they come from does no one care? It's hard to fathom 300 million people. But they're out there. And that's the power of art. Steve Wynn may be a hospitality genius, but one hit track will reach many more people.
7UP
Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5FRxlHs93s
They showed the long iteration yesterday, wherein Valparaiso, Chile is turned into...well, just watch it.
This deal was hatched at EDMBiz last year. 7Up saw its market shrinking. They were gonna focus on Latinos, who are heavy drinkers. But they learned that EDM skewed millennial, and they decided to invest in EDM instead. Their whole site is now EDM-centric: http://www.7up.com
Tatiana from Nielsen said sponsorship should not be overdone. What I mean is, the length of time the product is exposed in the clip doesn't matter. An instant of organic presence far exceeds extended airtime that is unnatural.
This deal is paying off for 7Up financially.
7Up was there early, others will soon follow.
JAKE UDELL
He's all anybody would talk about, the manager of Krewella who spoke the first day, when I was still on Southwest.
I caught up with him yesterday.
He graduated from the entrepreneurship program at Indiana. He made a million before school hawking autographs on eBay. He quit his candy job because the big shots couldn't understand his plan to make millions. He broke Krewella by piggybacking on a Skrillex track that was released without vocals or dubstep elements.
Jake is a new Shep Gordon, maybe a new Irving or Geffen. Because suddenly, kids are interested in the music business because they see money. And they don't fit into the corporate world. And they're innovative and limit-testing just like the titans of yore.
PASQUALE ROTELLA
He did the layout. In the big time music business, everybody's too far removed, they're not hands-on. It didn't even occur to me that the number one guy at Insomniac would be in charge of designing the stage placement, etc.
10 PM
That's when we're leaving for the gig.
The traditional festivals begin early and end at midnight. Just like in Ibiza, it doesn't really start happening here until the early morning. And if that's too late for you, it proves the point, this music, this scene, is not for you. And the adherents, the fans, DON'T CARE!
THE HELICOPTER
That's how we're getting to the gig tonight. Yes, I'm afraid. Wish me luck!
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Rhinofy-Cream Primer
I FEEL FREE
The best song off the debut, "Fresh Cream," which only hipsters were aware of, mostly because of Clapton's history with John Mayall. Credit its minor impact to the production, which was attributed to Robert Stigwood, the tracks just didn't jump out enough, there was mud in the grooves, except for this one, which is so infectious it would be a smash if released today.
N.S.U.
Most Americans had no idea it was a car. Very hooky, with the line about only being happy when he played his guitar...no Facebooking for Jack Bruce!
I'M SO GLAD
Sure, check out the original studio takes of "Spoonful" and "Toad" on "Fresh Cream," but they were rendered superfluous by the live iterations on "Wheels Of Fire," however the original "I'm So Glad" stands on its own, it's an interesting curio next to its ultimate smash incarnation on "Goodbye."
SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE
The riff. Which played in bedrooms and on FM radio long before it penetrated AM in the summer of '68. So simple, yet so satisfying. Is there anybody who plays guitar who doesn't know this?
TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES
My favorite cut on "Disraeli Gears," credit the band's new producer Felix Pappalardi for the darker, more vibrant sound. I remember playing this for my mother and imploring her to like it, ah, the myopia of youth.
STRANGE BREW
It really was all about "Disraeli Gears," which built over the course of a year to be one of the biggest albums extant. The English cover was superior, it was slick to the U.S.'s matte. This was the opening cut, proving once again you should grab people immediately, only the Stones seem to have hung on to this lesson.
WORLD OF PAIN
You'll never hear this on the radio, but it was so satisfying in the bedroom, because of its INTIMACY!
DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY
It almost sounded like it came from a Doors album.
SWLABR
You can surf the Internet to find out what the title stands for, in rock's prehistoric, non-connected era, we had no idea.
WHITE ROOM
Ah, the majesty! The feel, the sound, a simple track driven forward by Ginger Baker's drums. A hit, deservedly so.
SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD
The old blues chestnut, evidencing the band's roots. The first disc of "Wheels Of Fire" was cut in the studio, the second live, the double album was an unforeseen victory lap, something that everybody bought and you heard everywhere.
POLITICIAN
Almost sounds like a West, Bruce and Laing cut. Plodding, but the changes make it a winner.
BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN
Another blues cover, the original was done by Albert King. The truth is most Americans learned about the blues not from their country's progenitors, but the long-haired English boys, who devoured this sound and fed it back to us.
CROSSROADS
The definitive statement, if you didn't pick up a guitar after seeing the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan," you did now, if you were ever gonna.
Most Americans' first exposure to Robert Johnson, this was long before the two CD set compilation, and it was one of their first exposures to Eric Clapton's voice.
How could he play so fast, how could he get it so right?
SPOONFUL
Nearly seventeen minutes long, and other than "White Room" and "Crossroads," probably the most played track on "Wheels Of Fire." The soundtrack to drugs.
TRAINTIME
The other short song on the second, live disc, most notable for Jack Bruce's harmonica work. Totally forgotten today.
TOAD
You don't have to listen to it, we did, a few times, but "Toad" is most notable for ushering in the era of the drum solo. Before this, there were no fifteen minute interludes where you could leave your seat and go to the bathroom. Alas, Ginger Baker was a great drummer, he did it first, everyone else thereafter was an imitation.
I'M SO GLAD
So, the band is excoriated by the critics, and gets so much notoriety, that it implodes. But announces a farewell tour before this. I went to see the band in a barn in New Haven that no longer exists. I sat six feet from the speakers. I smuggled my Norelco cassette recorder inside. They mixed all the instruments through the PA. That tape still sounds exquisite today.
We had no idea there'd be a resulting album, with studio cuts and live recordings from the Forum, yes, the Los Angeles arena that was just remodeled and reopened.
This live take of "I'm So Glad" renders the original nearly irrelevant, there's Jack's intimate vocal, Eric's incredible playing, this was heard everywhere.
POLITICIAN
Less plodding than its studio take. You can also listen to "Sitting On Top Of The World." And know that truly everybody owned "Goodbye," even those who'd managed not to purchase the three previous albums.
BADGE
The apotheosis, the final statement. Sung by Eric Clapton and written by him and George Harrison, this was a harbinger of what was to come, Eric's solo career.
This was the album's obvious killer, but it got no airplay. If you asked someone back then, they'd have no idea this would be the only cut from "Goodbye" that would survive half a century later, the one that's a staple of Clapton's show.
As for the title, it's got to do with guitar...a chord progression, not a physical badge. I wince whenever I hear Clapton sing "Where is my badge?" when he performs it today.
But the reason the track is so incredible is...
Let me just say that Eric performed the legendary solo on the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and George Harrison plucked the strings on "Badge." Credited to L'Angelo Misterioso, we all know who it was, because the sound was so familiar, it was UNDENIABLE!
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/1iznuDj
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The best song off the debut, "Fresh Cream," which only hipsters were aware of, mostly because of Clapton's history with John Mayall. Credit its minor impact to the production, which was attributed to Robert Stigwood, the tracks just didn't jump out enough, there was mud in the grooves, except for this one, which is so infectious it would be a smash if released today.
N.S.U.
Most Americans had no idea it was a car. Very hooky, with the line about only being happy when he played his guitar...no Facebooking for Jack Bruce!
I'M SO GLAD
Sure, check out the original studio takes of "Spoonful" and "Toad" on "Fresh Cream," but they were rendered superfluous by the live iterations on "Wheels Of Fire," however the original "I'm So Glad" stands on its own, it's an interesting curio next to its ultimate smash incarnation on "Goodbye."
SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE
The riff. Which played in bedrooms and on FM radio long before it penetrated AM in the summer of '68. So simple, yet so satisfying. Is there anybody who plays guitar who doesn't know this?
TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES
My favorite cut on "Disraeli Gears," credit the band's new producer Felix Pappalardi for the darker, more vibrant sound. I remember playing this for my mother and imploring her to like it, ah, the myopia of youth.
STRANGE BREW
It really was all about "Disraeli Gears," which built over the course of a year to be one of the biggest albums extant. The English cover was superior, it was slick to the U.S.'s matte. This was the opening cut, proving once again you should grab people immediately, only the Stones seem to have hung on to this lesson.
WORLD OF PAIN
You'll never hear this on the radio, but it was so satisfying in the bedroom, because of its INTIMACY!
DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY
It almost sounded like it came from a Doors album.
SWLABR
You can surf the Internet to find out what the title stands for, in rock's prehistoric, non-connected era, we had no idea.
WHITE ROOM
Ah, the majesty! The feel, the sound, a simple track driven forward by Ginger Baker's drums. A hit, deservedly so.
SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD
The old blues chestnut, evidencing the band's roots. The first disc of "Wheels Of Fire" was cut in the studio, the second live, the double album was an unforeseen victory lap, something that everybody bought and you heard everywhere.
POLITICIAN
Almost sounds like a West, Bruce and Laing cut. Plodding, but the changes make it a winner.
BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN
Another blues cover, the original was done by Albert King. The truth is most Americans learned about the blues not from their country's progenitors, but the long-haired English boys, who devoured this sound and fed it back to us.
CROSSROADS
The definitive statement, if you didn't pick up a guitar after seeing the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan," you did now, if you were ever gonna.
Most Americans' first exposure to Robert Johnson, this was long before the two CD set compilation, and it was one of their first exposures to Eric Clapton's voice.
How could he play so fast, how could he get it so right?
SPOONFUL
Nearly seventeen minutes long, and other than "White Room" and "Crossroads," probably the most played track on "Wheels Of Fire." The soundtrack to drugs.
TRAINTIME
The other short song on the second, live disc, most notable for Jack Bruce's harmonica work. Totally forgotten today.
TOAD
You don't have to listen to it, we did, a few times, but "Toad" is most notable for ushering in the era of the drum solo. Before this, there were no fifteen minute interludes where you could leave your seat and go to the bathroom. Alas, Ginger Baker was a great drummer, he did it first, everyone else thereafter was an imitation.
I'M SO GLAD
So, the band is excoriated by the critics, and gets so much notoriety, that it implodes. But announces a farewell tour before this. I went to see the band in a barn in New Haven that no longer exists. I sat six feet from the speakers. I smuggled my Norelco cassette recorder inside. They mixed all the instruments through the PA. That tape still sounds exquisite today.
We had no idea there'd be a resulting album, with studio cuts and live recordings from the Forum, yes, the Los Angeles arena that was just remodeled and reopened.
This live take of "I'm So Glad" renders the original nearly irrelevant, there's Jack's intimate vocal, Eric's incredible playing, this was heard everywhere.
POLITICIAN
Less plodding than its studio take. You can also listen to "Sitting On Top Of The World." And know that truly everybody owned "Goodbye," even those who'd managed not to purchase the three previous albums.
BADGE
The apotheosis, the final statement. Sung by Eric Clapton and written by him and George Harrison, this was a harbinger of what was to come, Eric's solo career.
This was the album's obvious killer, but it got no airplay. If you asked someone back then, they'd have no idea this would be the only cut from "Goodbye" that would survive half a century later, the one that's a staple of Clapton's show.
As for the title, it's got to do with guitar...a chord progression, not a physical badge. I wince whenever I hear Clapton sing "Where is my badge?" when he performs it today.
But the reason the track is so incredible is...
Let me just say that Eric performed the legendary solo on the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," and George Harrison plucked the strings on "Badge." Credited to L'Angelo Misterioso, we all know who it was, because the sound was so familiar, it was UNDENIABLE!
Spotify link: http://spoti.fi/1iznuDj
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Thursday 19 June 2014
Gerry Goffin
"Loco-Motion" was the second record I ever bought. Yes, I remember it's hyphenated. Do you know how much I stared at that label? That's where I first saw the words "Goffin/King." At the time, I didn't even know those were the writers!
But how I loved that track. What is that sound? A saxophone? It went straight to my gut, got me moving, and the lyrics might sound stupid but dance crazes were all the rage back then, and really...they weren't that stupid. They were conversational, they made sense, I felt Little Eva was singing just to me.
And I had no idea the same duo wrote "I'm Into Something Good," which introduced Herman's Hermits to America, it wasn't until weeks later that the label put a sticker for "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" atop the album, which came from the print shop with "I'm Into Something Good" emphasized. "Mrs. Brown" was the bigger hit, but it's "I'm Into Something Good" that lasts.
And it's funny, because the song means much more to me today than it did back then. That's the power of an exquisite lyric, you grow into it, you know it by heart, but as you age you come to understand it.
"Woke up this morning feelin' fine"
What could be better? Waking up with a smile on your face, knowing that you can't wait to eat life up.
"There's something special on my mind
Last night I met a new girl in the neighborhood"
It was only a year and a half later that I met Betsy at the camp social. She was my first ever girlfriend. Suddenly the song made sense.
But really, the number is even more powerful as I age, because when you walk out of their front door after the first night...you feel just like this song.
Of course Gerry Goffin was Carole King's husband. But back then we knew neither of them, this was long before Carole broke through as a solo act.
They got the music bug early, long before the Beatles. Because despite wars and tech, one thing always sustains, music. It comes right after food, water and sex. At the top of a mountain, around a campfire, you can't show a movie, but you can sing your favorites at the top of your lungs.
And back then life was different, we all knew those songs atop the hit parade. They're part of our DNA.
And Goffin was no one hit wonder. He racked up classics both with Carole and without. Illustrating that success in life is not about the right parents or a degree, but the ability to capture the zeitgeist, to communicate to another human being what you feel inside.
"I think I'm goin' back
To the things I learned so well in my youth"
That life is all about passion, about following your dream.
"I think I'm returning to
Those days when I was young enough to know the truth"
Society is about eradicating your essence, making you conform. Education is not about liberation, but constriction. I've always marched to the beat of my own drummer, instructed by my dad, an iconoclastic loner who lived to connect but was hampered by a tragic personal life who found his refuge in music.
And he found my mother, who shared the same musical values. My father picked her up hitchhiking on the way home from Tanglewood.
In my house there was unlimited money for piano lessons and concert tickets, because my 'rents knew that art was the spice of life.
"Now there are no games to only pass the time"
No time to play the same album endlessly to get into the deep tracks, no time to discover who I am as opposed to being the person I've become.
"No more electric trains, no more trees to climb"
My mother tossed mine. Then she moved out of the house I grew up in, where I nailed a ladder to the tree in the backyard.
"But thinking young and growing older is no sin
And I can play the game of life to win"
That's the truth about this music game, we never grow up, we're young forever, and nothing is as satisfying as listening to the songs from way back when, which remind us of who we used to be.
And I used to be different. I used to be alone. I used to be depressed. But by following my musical dream, my whole life opened up. The songs led me there. I've played the game of life, and I've come to win. And it's thrilling.
But not as thrilling as the music coming out of the speakers this very second, Dusty Springfield's rendition of the Goffin/King composition "Goin' Back."
That's where I'm going right now. Back to the sixties. Before illness, before tragedy, when life was all about opportunity, when the sky was the limit.
Gerry encompassed all of this in the lyrics to a pop song.
So long Gerry! Your body might be gone, but your soul lives on, your music lives forever, in our hearts and minds.
And thank you Carole too!
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But how I loved that track. What is that sound? A saxophone? It went straight to my gut, got me moving, and the lyrics might sound stupid but dance crazes were all the rage back then, and really...they weren't that stupid. They were conversational, they made sense, I felt Little Eva was singing just to me.
And I had no idea the same duo wrote "I'm Into Something Good," which introduced Herman's Hermits to America, it wasn't until weeks later that the label put a sticker for "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" atop the album, which came from the print shop with "I'm Into Something Good" emphasized. "Mrs. Brown" was the bigger hit, but it's "I'm Into Something Good" that lasts.
And it's funny, because the song means much more to me today than it did back then. That's the power of an exquisite lyric, you grow into it, you know it by heart, but as you age you come to understand it.
"Woke up this morning feelin' fine"
What could be better? Waking up with a smile on your face, knowing that you can't wait to eat life up.
"There's something special on my mind
Last night I met a new girl in the neighborhood"
It was only a year and a half later that I met Betsy at the camp social. She was my first ever girlfriend. Suddenly the song made sense.
But really, the number is even more powerful as I age, because when you walk out of their front door after the first night...you feel just like this song.
Of course Gerry Goffin was Carole King's husband. But back then we knew neither of them, this was long before Carole broke through as a solo act.
They got the music bug early, long before the Beatles. Because despite wars and tech, one thing always sustains, music. It comes right after food, water and sex. At the top of a mountain, around a campfire, you can't show a movie, but you can sing your favorites at the top of your lungs.
And back then life was different, we all knew those songs atop the hit parade. They're part of our DNA.
And Goffin was no one hit wonder. He racked up classics both with Carole and without. Illustrating that success in life is not about the right parents or a degree, but the ability to capture the zeitgeist, to communicate to another human being what you feel inside.
"I think I'm goin' back
To the things I learned so well in my youth"
That life is all about passion, about following your dream.
"I think I'm returning to
Those days when I was young enough to know the truth"
Society is about eradicating your essence, making you conform. Education is not about liberation, but constriction. I've always marched to the beat of my own drummer, instructed by my dad, an iconoclastic loner who lived to connect but was hampered by a tragic personal life who found his refuge in music.
And he found my mother, who shared the same musical values. My father picked her up hitchhiking on the way home from Tanglewood.
In my house there was unlimited money for piano lessons and concert tickets, because my 'rents knew that art was the spice of life.
"Now there are no games to only pass the time"
No time to play the same album endlessly to get into the deep tracks, no time to discover who I am as opposed to being the person I've become.
"No more electric trains, no more trees to climb"
My mother tossed mine. Then she moved out of the house I grew up in, where I nailed a ladder to the tree in the backyard.
"But thinking young and growing older is no sin
And I can play the game of life to win"
That's the truth about this music game, we never grow up, we're young forever, and nothing is as satisfying as listening to the songs from way back when, which remind us of who we used to be.
And I used to be different. I used to be alone. I used to be depressed. But by following my musical dream, my whole life opened up. The songs led me there. I've played the game of life, and I've come to win. And it's thrilling.
But not as thrilling as the music coming out of the speakers this very second, Dusty Springfield's rendition of the Goffin/King composition "Goin' Back."
That's where I'm going right now. Back to the sixties. Before illness, before tragedy, when life was all about opportunity, when the sky was the limit.
Gerry encompassed all of this in the lyrics to a pop song.
So long Gerry! Your body might be gone, but your soul lives on, your music lives forever, in our hearts and minds.
And thank you Carole too!
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Fire Phone
Cool, disruptive, cheap.
Pick one.
Pick two and you've broken the paradigm.
Pick all three and you're a ubiquitous product that eliminates all comers and has established companies scratching their noggins in the dust.
The Fire Phone has none.
One of the main reasons people rush to buy the new iPhone and Galaxy is because they're cool. They may be highly functional, but they're also fashion items. You get to brandish them for up to a year and feel superior, create envy. Which is why people line up to buy them on day one.
Disruptive. That's what the iPhone was back in 2007. It didn't matter that it was on the inferior network known as AT&T. It didn't matter that at first the price was exorbitant, it wasn't subsidized, people had to have it.
Cheap... Well, Apple rarely goes there. But Windows 95 was cool, disruptive and cheap and it almost put Apple out of business. If only Microsoft could see that the desktop would not rule forever.
Yes, we live in a mobile world. Yes, more shopping will be done with handsets. But do we need an Amazon device to do this?
The Kindle was a breakthrough, which is why Amazon still controls the e-book market today. Apple came later, with iBooks, which look cool, run seamlessly, and featured page numbers when Amazon's Kindle did not. But Apple's an also-ran in books.
Furthermore, as the Kindle gained traction, Amazon kept lowering the price. It was no longer an exotic item, but an everyday one.
Ditto with Apple and the iPod. $400 for 5 gigs might have been out of the reach of many, but soon you could buy a much cheaper iPod Mini, and then a Shuffle for under a hundred bucks.
Not that Apple and Samsung are not vulnerable in phones. Smartphones are on the brink of becoming commodities. Cameras are good enough, they all run the apps. If the iPhone were not subsidized by carriers, few would be sold every September when the new model is launched, especially now that the LTE barrier has been broken. In other words, you truly only need a new iPhone if you've got a 4/4s, if you're pre-LTE, otherwise, you're buying a 6 as a fashion statement.
Which is why all the Wall Street analysts are skeptical about the Cupertino company. They're awaiting a new breakthrough product, something cool and disruptive.
Apple specializes in cool, at least under Steve Jobs. The original iMac was the same damn computer in a better package, talk about marketing, talk about cool...
So the Amazon phone is not cool. It takes branding to extremes. Never a company you wanted to broadcast an affiliation with, especially now that they're beating back rights holders, does Jeff Bezos really expect us to advertise his enterprise 24/7? Most people are going to be embarrassed if they whip out this phone, the subject of ridicule.
And sure, there are some nifty features, but how usable are they, how necessary are they, or are they like that button on your television remote which you're not sure what it does...
But if the Fire was free. Or if it came with free data... Then there'd be an incentive to buy one.
And these rules don't only apply to phones. They apply to music too.
Let's start off with cheap. New and developing bands always go on the road for bupkes. You can go see them for under twenty bucks, furthermore, you get the advantage of being able to say you were there first, and now with Instagram, etc., you can document your early allegiance.
And what these bands are usually selling is cool. Otherwise, why go?
But the truly big acts in music are disruptive. They have names like Beatles, Hendrix, Grandmaster Flash, Kurt Cobain... And contrary to popular press, they are not popular at first. They hone their craft for years, removed from scrutiny, and seem to emerge fully-formed when that is far from the case. Which is why the teen of the moment usually fades.
But Taylor Swift was disruptive because she sang truthfully about her own personal life. Sure, the tunes were catchy, but she became a superstar because girls could relate to her story.
So while you sit there at home plotting world domination, contemplate these categories.
Roxy Music was cool and disruptive.
Justin Bieber was disruptive because he started on YouTube and created a new paradigm.
The Fire phone is not a bad product. But you want me to pay the same as an iPhone or Galaxy and be restricted to the substandard AT&T network for what?
I can't see any concrete advantage.
And that's why the Fire is dead on arrival.
P.S. Amazon will keep improving the Fire, will keep lowering its price. And the more mobile handsets become a commodity, the more they lose their cool, the greater the chance for Amazon penetration. But Prime is disruptive, the shipping service, not the video service, Netflix was the first mover there, it's got all the eyeballs. We pay attention to the first, the progenitor, the disruptor. And then it's their ball to lose. If they keep innovating, if they keep dropping the price, if the product is still cool, they own that category. But categories are not forever.
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Pick one.
Pick two and you've broken the paradigm.
Pick all three and you're a ubiquitous product that eliminates all comers and has established companies scratching their noggins in the dust.
The Fire Phone has none.
One of the main reasons people rush to buy the new iPhone and Galaxy is because they're cool. They may be highly functional, but they're also fashion items. You get to brandish them for up to a year and feel superior, create envy. Which is why people line up to buy them on day one.
Disruptive. That's what the iPhone was back in 2007. It didn't matter that it was on the inferior network known as AT&T. It didn't matter that at first the price was exorbitant, it wasn't subsidized, people had to have it.
Cheap... Well, Apple rarely goes there. But Windows 95 was cool, disruptive and cheap and it almost put Apple out of business. If only Microsoft could see that the desktop would not rule forever.
Yes, we live in a mobile world. Yes, more shopping will be done with handsets. But do we need an Amazon device to do this?
The Kindle was a breakthrough, which is why Amazon still controls the e-book market today. Apple came later, with iBooks, which look cool, run seamlessly, and featured page numbers when Amazon's Kindle did not. But Apple's an also-ran in books.
Furthermore, as the Kindle gained traction, Amazon kept lowering the price. It was no longer an exotic item, but an everyday one.
Ditto with Apple and the iPod. $400 for 5 gigs might have been out of the reach of many, but soon you could buy a much cheaper iPod Mini, and then a Shuffle for under a hundred bucks.
Not that Apple and Samsung are not vulnerable in phones. Smartphones are on the brink of becoming commodities. Cameras are good enough, they all run the apps. If the iPhone were not subsidized by carriers, few would be sold every September when the new model is launched, especially now that the LTE barrier has been broken. In other words, you truly only need a new iPhone if you've got a 4/4s, if you're pre-LTE, otherwise, you're buying a 6 as a fashion statement.
Which is why all the Wall Street analysts are skeptical about the Cupertino company. They're awaiting a new breakthrough product, something cool and disruptive.
Apple specializes in cool, at least under Steve Jobs. The original iMac was the same damn computer in a better package, talk about marketing, talk about cool...
So the Amazon phone is not cool. It takes branding to extremes. Never a company you wanted to broadcast an affiliation with, especially now that they're beating back rights holders, does Jeff Bezos really expect us to advertise his enterprise 24/7? Most people are going to be embarrassed if they whip out this phone, the subject of ridicule.
And sure, there are some nifty features, but how usable are they, how necessary are they, or are they like that button on your television remote which you're not sure what it does...
But if the Fire was free. Or if it came with free data... Then there'd be an incentive to buy one.
And these rules don't only apply to phones. They apply to music too.
Let's start off with cheap. New and developing bands always go on the road for bupkes. You can go see them for under twenty bucks, furthermore, you get the advantage of being able to say you were there first, and now with Instagram, etc., you can document your early allegiance.
And what these bands are usually selling is cool. Otherwise, why go?
But the truly big acts in music are disruptive. They have names like Beatles, Hendrix, Grandmaster Flash, Kurt Cobain... And contrary to popular press, they are not popular at first. They hone their craft for years, removed from scrutiny, and seem to emerge fully-formed when that is far from the case. Which is why the teen of the moment usually fades.
But Taylor Swift was disruptive because she sang truthfully about her own personal life. Sure, the tunes were catchy, but she became a superstar because girls could relate to her story.
So while you sit there at home plotting world domination, contemplate these categories.
Roxy Music was cool and disruptive.
Justin Bieber was disruptive because he started on YouTube and created a new paradigm.
The Fire phone is not a bad product. But you want me to pay the same as an iPhone or Galaxy and be restricted to the substandard AT&T network for what?
I can't see any concrete advantage.
And that's why the Fire is dead on arrival.
P.S. Amazon will keep improving the Fire, will keep lowering its price. And the more mobile handsets become a commodity, the more they lose their cool, the greater the chance for Amazon penetration. But Prime is disruptive, the shipping service, not the video service, Netflix was the first mover there, it's got all the eyeballs. We pay attention to the first, the progenitor, the disruptor. And then it's their ball to lose. If they keep innovating, if they keep dropping the price, if the product is still cool, they own that category. But categories are not forever.
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Wednesday 18 June 2014
EDMBiz-Day One
I smell money!
I've been flying all over the world listening to an ever-decreasing number of old farts lamenting the music business ain't what it used to be. That the kids have stolen all the music, that you just can't get paid. And then I come to Las Vegas and find out we're experiencing a renaissance!
Now I know these people. John Boyle of Insomniac for almost twenty years, he's a core member of the Aspen Live group. And I had an extended dinner with Pasquale Rotella and Jason Bentley in Amsterdam, as well as an evening out into the wee hours to see Hardwell. So when they asked me to come to Vegas, I saw it as more of a bro thing. I'd show up at their two bit conference that gets absolutely no publicity, that I've never heard anybody talk about, to do my thing.
And lo and behold the place is PACKED!
Go to the other conferences and no one shows up at the panels. It's all about networking, the schmooze. Everybody's too good to learn. And nobody says anything interesting. But here there were seemingly a thousand twentysomethings listening attentively to people doing their best to illuminate what's going on.
Not that they're really sure.
Many are lifers. They've lived through the ups and downs, from Prodigy to the nadir. And all of a sudden, EDM blew up.
Oh, they're still bitching about the acronym, as if BMW would do better if they called it Fast Car, Incorporated. Names don't matter. Never did. Your band can be called anything. It's always been about the music.
And this is the music of a generation, the millennial generation.
Their parents hate it.
Those in other genres say it's only about drugs.
Meanwhile, the shows generate the greatest attendance, and the biggest gross.
Skip Paige of Golden Voice said that a questioner was correct, that Calvin Harris had the largest crowd in the history of Coachella.
But Skip said guitars are not dead.
Oh yes they are. Because all the excitement is in computers. You grow up with them, they're tools, enablers. And anybody who believes in a rock revival is delusional.
Rock is niche.
Unless you consider country rock. Then there's a genre. But even country is employing electronic music elements these days.
And at that panel, which included a representative of Ron Burkle's Yucaipa as well as a man from Guggenheim Partners, the question came up...WHAT NEXT?
Boyle said everything that's available has been bought up. Insomniac just launched an EDM portal. Is the next land grab the penumbra, merch, etc?
Skip said it was all about tickets. But I think that's myopic. Because for the first time since hip-hop, maybe the first time since classic rock, we've got a culture.
Having a hit is one thing, having a belief system, a religion, is another.
Katy Perry is dependent upon hits. She stands for nothing.
Electronic music has its own values. It's an amalgamation of the Grateful Dead and Kraftwerk all wrapped up in a Disneyland sheen wherein your access point is your mobile phone, and you want to leave home to connect.
Yes, as baby boomers nest in front of Netflix, spending their weekends binge-watching "Orange Is The New Black," their children, their younger siblings' children, are doing what they once did...they're going OUT!
That's part of the EDM culture. Events. You want to be included. And sure, the acts rise and fall, but the raw building blocks of the sound remain the same.
And if you're interested in money, Tatiana Simonian, of Nielsen, gave a presentation that would have your head spin.
The brands want in. And all brands want impressionable people. Who are young, who still have not formed brand alliances. Well, it turns out electronic music spikes amongst millennials, and it spikes amongst not only the white males of rock, but Latinos, Native Americans... The bottom line is if you're young, you like EDM!
For a minute there, it looked like EDM might be a fad. But then its superstars crossed over to pop, they're the new hitmakers.
And suddenly, we've entered a new golden era, one with so much money that Wall Street is interested. Wall Street funded SFX. The aforementioned Yucaipa and Guggenheim are in the house. And if you think ANY of them care about music, you're wrong, they only care about one thing...money.
And this is a good thing. Because once you involve money, once people can get rich, the best and the brightest gravitate to it. Suddenly, you graduate from the Ivy and you turn down the bank, there are opportunities in music. And the envelope keeps getting pushed further and further.
It's kind of like "Logan's Run." You can count the people over fifty on one hand. The people over forty on a couple. Everybody here is young and involved and they want in, or further in.
This is not UCLA Extension, a bunch of losers groveling to be interns at dying labels. It's like either you're on the EDM path, or you're headed down the road to extinction.
I wanted to call up Cliff Burnstein. All the great rock thinkers. I wanted to tell them to book a flight and get here immediately, BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE IT'S HAPPENING!
http://www.edmbiz.com
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I've been flying all over the world listening to an ever-decreasing number of old farts lamenting the music business ain't what it used to be. That the kids have stolen all the music, that you just can't get paid. And then I come to Las Vegas and find out we're experiencing a renaissance!
Now I know these people. John Boyle of Insomniac for almost twenty years, he's a core member of the Aspen Live group. And I had an extended dinner with Pasquale Rotella and Jason Bentley in Amsterdam, as well as an evening out into the wee hours to see Hardwell. So when they asked me to come to Vegas, I saw it as more of a bro thing. I'd show up at their two bit conference that gets absolutely no publicity, that I've never heard anybody talk about, to do my thing.
And lo and behold the place is PACKED!
Go to the other conferences and no one shows up at the panels. It's all about networking, the schmooze. Everybody's too good to learn. And nobody says anything interesting. But here there were seemingly a thousand twentysomethings listening attentively to people doing their best to illuminate what's going on.
Not that they're really sure.
Many are lifers. They've lived through the ups and downs, from Prodigy to the nadir. And all of a sudden, EDM blew up.
Oh, they're still bitching about the acronym, as if BMW would do better if they called it Fast Car, Incorporated. Names don't matter. Never did. Your band can be called anything. It's always been about the music.
And this is the music of a generation, the millennial generation.
Their parents hate it.
Those in other genres say it's only about drugs.
Meanwhile, the shows generate the greatest attendance, and the biggest gross.
Skip Paige of Golden Voice said that a questioner was correct, that Calvin Harris had the largest crowd in the history of Coachella.
But Skip said guitars are not dead.
Oh yes they are. Because all the excitement is in computers. You grow up with them, they're tools, enablers. And anybody who believes in a rock revival is delusional.
Rock is niche.
Unless you consider country rock. Then there's a genre. But even country is employing electronic music elements these days.
And at that panel, which included a representative of Ron Burkle's Yucaipa as well as a man from Guggenheim Partners, the question came up...WHAT NEXT?
Boyle said everything that's available has been bought up. Insomniac just launched an EDM portal. Is the next land grab the penumbra, merch, etc?
Skip said it was all about tickets. But I think that's myopic. Because for the first time since hip-hop, maybe the first time since classic rock, we've got a culture.
Having a hit is one thing, having a belief system, a religion, is another.
Katy Perry is dependent upon hits. She stands for nothing.
Electronic music has its own values. It's an amalgamation of the Grateful Dead and Kraftwerk all wrapped up in a Disneyland sheen wherein your access point is your mobile phone, and you want to leave home to connect.
Yes, as baby boomers nest in front of Netflix, spending their weekends binge-watching "Orange Is The New Black," their children, their younger siblings' children, are doing what they once did...they're going OUT!
That's part of the EDM culture. Events. You want to be included. And sure, the acts rise and fall, but the raw building blocks of the sound remain the same.
And if you're interested in money, Tatiana Simonian, of Nielsen, gave a presentation that would have your head spin.
The brands want in. And all brands want impressionable people. Who are young, who still have not formed brand alliances. Well, it turns out electronic music spikes amongst millennials, and it spikes amongst not only the white males of rock, but Latinos, Native Americans... The bottom line is if you're young, you like EDM!
For a minute there, it looked like EDM might be a fad. But then its superstars crossed over to pop, they're the new hitmakers.
And suddenly, we've entered a new golden era, one with so much money that Wall Street is interested. Wall Street funded SFX. The aforementioned Yucaipa and Guggenheim are in the house. And if you think ANY of them care about music, you're wrong, they only care about one thing...money.
And this is a good thing. Because once you involve money, once people can get rich, the best and the brightest gravitate to it. Suddenly, you graduate from the Ivy and you turn down the bank, there are opportunities in music. And the envelope keeps getting pushed further and further.
It's kind of like "Logan's Run." You can count the people over fifty on one hand. The people over forty on a couple. Everybody here is young and involved and they want in, or further in.
This is not UCLA Extension, a bunch of losers groveling to be interns at dying labels. It's like either you're on the EDM path, or you're headed down the road to extinction.
I wanted to call up Cliff Burnstein. All the great rock thinkers. I wanted to tell them to book a flight and get here immediately, BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE IT'S HAPPENING!
http://www.edmbiz.com
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Vegas, Baby
A woman dropped her suitcase on my head.
You know America, where everybody's time-challenged and cheap. They can't check their bag because they might lose some time, and god forbid they spend extra money. Oh yeah, on Southwest bags fly FREE! But the airline is gonna lose them and you've got no time to waste so today the essence of travel is getting on the plane first, for the bin space. So people keep traveling with larger and larger roll-ons, and this nitwit extracted hers and it fell right on my head. And my melon still hurts. Do you think she apologized? OF COURSE NOT! Winners have no time to do this, they're too busy WINNING!
So I'm here for EDMBiz and the Electric Daisy Carnival.
I'll be honest with you, my attention was drawn to Amazon's phone announcement, I was following on my phone via live blogs. And I kept thinking how this is how music used to be, how we lived and died to hear what our heroes had to say. And then I read "Rolling Stone" on the plane. You know how irrelevant the magazine is? It dedicated its entire last issue to country music and it made no ripples, there was no effect. Once upon a time, "Rolling Stone" was the heartbeat of a generation, the crier in the town square, today it's a slick baby brother to "Us." In today's world, if you have no impact, you're a sideshow silo only in it for the money. As for the profiles of the country acts... You'd just have to flip back to "Rolling Stone" thirty years ago to hear the same proclamations. We're endlessly recycling. Which is why we're losing the consumer's attention. There's no new there.
And you get off the plane and you're confronted with slot machines. As my dear friend Kenny says, Las Vegas is a monument to losers, the whole place wouldn't even exist if you could win. In other words, the odds are stacked against you.
But unlike the music business, Vegas has pivoted. It tried families, that was a mistake. And now it stands on the twin pillars of conventions and entertainment. It's where you go to cut loose when no one's watching. It's where electronic music lives in America.
You get off the plane and you see a billboard for Calvin Harris at Hakkasan. And we can debate all day long whether that club is profitable, but the truth is despite all the press for Celine, Elton, Britney and Shania, the heart of Vegas is EDM. The younger generation has taken over. And once upon a time there were music billboards on Sunset Strip, but that was back when bands broke at the Roxy and the Whisky. Today it starts in Europe, and then it comes here.
As for the aforementioned Calvin Harris, he's got the biggest hit of the summer, entitled "Summer," but you don't know this. So is it just that music is a second class citizen, or do we have a generation gap so wide that the oldsters in control of the media just can't understand?
We live in a lifestyle culture, it's all about experiences.
Despite the hogwash about everybody trying to get rich, the truth is so many realize they never will be, so they're all about drinking and drugging and screwing. Having a good time. Same as it ever was. And that's what you do at the EDM show, have a good time.
Ignore Bonnaroo. And while you're at it, forget Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza too. Let's zoom in on the only thing that matters at festivals today, let's dive into the Sahara tent at Coachella. That's the epicenter, that's where it's happening in music today.
No one wanted to see the Replacements. You can't even remember the headliners. But you couldn't get into the Sahara tent. Where deejays most people don't know did their show.
So what have we learned?
We live in a me and you universe. No one knows this better than the millennials, who were brought up to be members of the group as opposed to individual winners. They were connected at birth and now they're connected with their mobile devices and they want to go out and hang with their brethren, and if the old people don't know, they don't care.
So that's why the Amazon phone is so important. Because it cements the power of mobile, and draws attention to ecosystem.
That's what EDM is, an ecosystem. A triumvirate of deejays, audience and production. It's not where you go to buy a sawdust hotdog and hear the hit, but to have the time of your life.
I want to have the time of my life, DON'T YOU?
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You know America, where everybody's time-challenged and cheap. They can't check their bag because they might lose some time, and god forbid they spend extra money. Oh yeah, on Southwest bags fly FREE! But the airline is gonna lose them and you've got no time to waste so today the essence of travel is getting on the plane first, for the bin space. So people keep traveling with larger and larger roll-ons, and this nitwit extracted hers and it fell right on my head. And my melon still hurts. Do you think she apologized? OF COURSE NOT! Winners have no time to do this, they're too busy WINNING!
So I'm here for EDMBiz and the Electric Daisy Carnival.
I'll be honest with you, my attention was drawn to Amazon's phone announcement, I was following on my phone via live blogs. And I kept thinking how this is how music used to be, how we lived and died to hear what our heroes had to say. And then I read "Rolling Stone" on the plane. You know how irrelevant the magazine is? It dedicated its entire last issue to country music and it made no ripples, there was no effect. Once upon a time, "Rolling Stone" was the heartbeat of a generation, the crier in the town square, today it's a slick baby brother to "Us." In today's world, if you have no impact, you're a sideshow silo only in it for the money. As for the profiles of the country acts... You'd just have to flip back to "Rolling Stone" thirty years ago to hear the same proclamations. We're endlessly recycling. Which is why we're losing the consumer's attention. There's no new there.
And you get off the plane and you're confronted with slot machines. As my dear friend Kenny says, Las Vegas is a monument to losers, the whole place wouldn't even exist if you could win. In other words, the odds are stacked against you.
But unlike the music business, Vegas has pivoted. It tried families, that was a mistake. And now it stands on the twin pillars of conventions and entertainment. It's where you go to cut loose when no one's watching. It's where electronic music lives in America.
You get off the plane and you see a billboard for Calvin Harris at Hakkasan. And we can debate all day long whether that club is profitable, but the truth is despite all the press for Celine, Elton, Britney and Shania, the heart of Vegas is EDM. The younger generation has taken over. And once upon a time there were music billboards on Sunset Strip, but that was back when bands broke at the Roxy and the Whisky. Today it starts in Europe, and then it comes here.
As for the aforementioned Calvin Harris, he's got the biggest hit of the summer, entitled "Summer," but you don't know this. So is it just that music is a second class citizen, or do we have a generation gap so wide that the oldsters in control of the media just can't understand?
We live in a lifestyle culture, it's all about experiences.
Despite the hogwash about everybody trying to get rich, the truth is so many realize they never will be, so they're all about drinking and drugging and screwing. Having a good time. Same as it ever was. And that's what you do at the EDM show, have a good time.
Ignore Bonnaroo. And while you're at it, forget Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza too. Let's zoom in on the only thing that matters at festivals today, let's dive into the Sahara tent at Coachella. That's the epicenter, that's where it's happening in music today.
No one wanted to see the Replacements. You can't even remember the headliners. But you couldn't get into the Sahara tent. Where deejays most people don't know did their show.
So what have we learned?
We live in a me and you universe. No one knows this better than the millennials, who were brought up to be members of the group as opposed to individual winners. They were connected at birth and now they're connected with their mobile devices and they want to go out and hang with their brethren, and if the old people don't know, they don't care.
So that's why the Amazon phone is so important. Because it cements the power of mobile, and draws attention to ecosystem.
That's what EDM is, an ecosystem. A triumvirate of deejays, audience and production. It's not where you go to buy a sawdust hotdog and hear the hit, but to have the time of your life.
I want to have the time of my life, DON'T YOU?
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Tuesday 17 June 2014
YouTube/Indies
"YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service": http://bit.ly/1ni4lbA
Welcome to the winner take all economy.
Or, to put it another way, did you really think Google and Facebook were FREE?
You can't have it both ways. Partake of the service and then bitch that you don't like the terms when suddenly it's your effort involved.
This is part of a bigger story. How our whole universe seems to be flowing to the 1%. That the blockbusters triumph and everybody else survives on peanuts.
But you can make another hit record. There's a low barrier to entry. But Google owns search and Amazon owns sales and Facebook is your home away from home. No VC with any intelligence is going to fund a competitor, especially after Microsoft lost billions with Bing.
Eventually there will be competitors. Eventually these companies will be eclipsed, just like VisiCalc and WordPerfect. But for now...
It's all about money. The rich get richer and those not already rich want to be so too.
So you can't trust a soul. Not anybody. Sayonara.
The major labels own a part of Spotify. Managers and agents care about their wallets before their acts' careers. And the acts themselves want everything for free until they turn the corner financially and suddenly their fans are the enemy, never mind these giant Internet services which keep taking our privacy under the guise of doing it for our own good. Really Facebook, you've been collecting my search history so you can serve up better ads? This is a FEATURE?
So until the public realizes there is no free lunch, and that their odds of getting rich are minuscule, expect these heinous about-faces to continue.
YouTube is laden with ads. Google is a business. What made you think otherwise?
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Welcome to the winner take all economy.
Or, to put it another way, did you really think Google and Facebook were FREE?
You can't have it both ways. Partake of the service and then bitch that you don't like the terms when suddenly it's your effort involved.
This is part of a bigger story. How our whole universe seems to be flowing to the 1%. That the blockbusters triumph and everybody else survives on peanuts.
But you can make another hit record. There's a low barrier to entry. But Google owns search and Amazon owns sales and Facebook is your home away from home. No VC with any intelligence is going to fund a competitor, especially after Microsoft lost billions with Bing.
Eventually there will be competitors. Eventually these companies will be eclipsed, just like VisiCalc and WordPerfect. But for now...
It's all about money. The rich get richer and those not already rich want to be so too.
So you can't trust a soul. Not anybody. Sayonara.
The major labels own a part of Spotify. Managers and agents care about their wallets before their acts' careers. And the acts themselves want everything for free until they turn the corner financially and suddenly their fans are the enemy, never mind these giant Internet services which keep taking our privacy under the guise of doing it for our own good. Really Facebook, you've been collecting my search history so you can serve up better ads? This is a FEATURE?
So until the public realizes there is no free lunch, and that their odds of getting rich are minuscule, expect these heinous about-faces to continue.
YouTube is laden with ads. Google is a business. What made you think otherwise?
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
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