The Past Doesn't Matter

Feeling anxious about Dallas? How about Hillary's e-mail scandal? Or are you still too busy bitching about Apple Maps.

Forget your faux pas. Don't even bother apologizing, especially if you don't think you're guilty and you're only doing it for the crowd. What we admire most these days are those with a backbone who keep soldiering on. Taylor Swift may be a two-dimensional phony creating content for a brain dead audience but she knows the game, you've got to keep on creating, stay in the public eye, or you're forgotten.

This is so different from the old three year album cycle. If you're staying at home creating an opus to drop on the public you don't realize that classic acts' albums last a day, not even a weekend, and if you're not already famous, you're putting out your work to crickets, it's your audience and your audience only. You need an awareness campaign, but the truth is in moments you're no longer new, and please, only have that campaign when you're selling, advance press is for dummies, if I can't click and buy it immediately you've lost, kind of like the book business, which issues all its reviews a week or more before retail availability, WHO CAN REMEMBER?

And then you've got the Republican Congress that just can't believe they got beaten, that the FBI director did not favor indictment for Hillary Clinton. They want change, they want justice, they want someone to pay... THAT'S AN OLD STORY, FORGET ABOUT IT!

As for Dallas, et al, in the back of our minds we're thinking it's bad to be black in America, and no rational person wants cops dead, but we've already moved on to making our living, updating our Facebook page, watching Snapchat stories...

If you think today's paradigm is all about world domination, you're still living in the seventies. No one has a sustained hold on the public consciousness, NO ONE! At best you can own the dialogue for a week. Like Beyonce did with "Lemonade." But was that really just a press story? I know about it, but I didn't listen to it, and the real story is not that many did. Old wave media needs something to trumpet but we go more for the spontaneous, the new, that which we adopt as opposed to having shoved down our throat, like Pokemon Go.

And speaking of Go, you don't collect $200, you're now just in the game. Releasing a record is like walking into first grade. Okay, now you're in school, but how are you gonna get traction, how are you gonna pass? And he not busy learning is dying. But the great thing is you can adjust on the fly, because no one is paying attention. And if they are, they've already forgotten your mistakes anyway.

So forget gotcha moments. They're so last century, so Republican in a world where that party's clock was cleaned by outsider Donald Trump, who speaks to their rank and file better than they do. We want what resonates now, we don't care about playing a game of tag in the past.

And are you in the news business or the career business anyway?

If the latter, don't worry about hitting a peak, don't worry about starting off slow. Just know if you're willing to do the work you can make it, assuming the indicators are there. If your listens and views aren't climbing, you missed the target. Publicity won't help. Subsequent to launch it's all about word of mouth and you've got none. Better to go back to the drawing board.

And now creation is your full time job. You come to bat as much as a baseball player. Who hits .300 and is a superstar. Not everyone knows Drake's deep tracks, but his hits are more ubiquitous than anybody's and he puts out multiple projects a year, he gets it.

And the young do too.

It's only the old farts still playing by the old rules, demanding the game change back as they put their head in the ground, who don't. Tech eats itself. And so does entertainment. Don't fight the last war, establish a new front. WME owns the UFC, it may not pay off, but sitting in Beverly Hills trying to package movies in an industry that's moribund...that's death.

And he not busy being born is dying.


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