Today's News

"Ticketmaster's Dark History - A 40 year saga of kickbacks, threats, political maneuvering, and the humiliation of Pearl Jam": https://bit.ly/3Wf2ICE

This is what happens when reporters tell a story. They may get the facts right but they miss the essence.

And not all the facts are right.

This is a tale from thirty years ago, Fred Rosen has not run Ticketmaster for decades. And there's a lot of heinous info in this column but it misses the essence.

The acts and the fans are to blame.

WHAT????

Ticketmaster is a front for the acts. They take all the revenue, the promoter makes money on the fees, which all don't go to Ticketmaster. I could go deeper but it wouldn't matter. People just can't consider their heroes guilty. Did all those complaining Springsteen fans sell their tickets on the secondary market? Of course not. And Taylor Swift can't be criticized for putting all her stadium dates on sale on one day to generate a gigantic number for publicity. Sure, Ticketmaster said it could do it, but this had never been done before. (And once again, Ticketmaster can't say no to the acts, without the talent they've got no business, never mind profits.)

As for the fans... They want a ticket up front for cheap and want to scalp the extras they purchased on the on sale date as part of the mania.

Separate Ticketmaster from Live Nation and...

Ticketmaster is still going to have exclusive deals with buildings. No building exec is going to give up that cash. And is the government really going to outlaw this practice? And the deals have years to run. And even as a separate business Ticketmaster is entitled to a profit.

And are we going to get rid of pre-sales? And what about the scalpers?

Ticketmaster is doing exactly what it's paid to do here. Take all the heat for the artists. Want to go see Taylor Swift in a stadium? No problem, wait until the date when all the punters who bought extra tickets try to unload them for face value at best. They won't be the best seats in the house, but a lot of the best seats in the house weren't even available on the initial on sale date. Let's talk about tickets not on the manifest, holdbacks. Let's not. It's complicated and you think supply and demand doesn't apply to ticketing and that everything done for the first time should work perfectly.


Trump's Tax Returns

How do you lose a reputation? Very slowly and then all at once.

Few people really care about the details of Trump's tax returns, the "New York Times" printed the truth years ago. But the cumulative effect of all this bad news... There comes a time when people jump off the ship and that time is now. Trump's candidates lost and he no longer has his bully pulpit, there's no 24/7 news corps following him around.

The ship has sailed. It's over for Trump. Protest otherwise, that just means you missed the memo.

As for the nitwits in Congress, about to relitigate Afghanistan and...

They're out of touch with the rank and file. The rank and file care about bread basket issues, Afghanistan was years ago, in internet time, decades ago. Congress is clueless when it comes to Ticketmaster, it's also clueless as to the temperature of the public. Hell, there was no red wave. People are sick of Trump and sick of gridlock. The Republicans could gain an advantage by legislating, what a concept. But they'd rather fight past wars, which is akin to debating the flaws of Windows 95.

Today you don't want to lose touch, you want to be in touch.


Elon Musk/Tesla

"What Riding in a Self-Driving Tesla Tells Us About the Future of Autonomy": https://nyti.ms/3PKsuMC

It doesn't work. Tesla's charging for it, but self-driving cars are not only not here, Tesla's system is substandard, because it has no lidar.

We need heroes. Elon Musk became one. The details were irrelevant. In other words, Musk has clay feet like the rest of us. Not everything he does works, not everything he says comes into being. It's just that our usual heroes are so suspect, like the politicians and the musicians, that we need someone to put our faith in, someone who can get things done.

But now the tide has turned on Musk. Like Trump, he's only got himself to blame.

As for all the reporters talking about the hit to the stock price and image of Tesla... This was obvious months ago, I wrote about it and was castigated, how could these supposedly in-touch people be so blind?

Everybody's so focused on the now that they can't see tomorrow. They want to be part of the action. They pay attention to what the inside bloviators have to say and miss the point.

Tesla will never recover. Musk will have to sell his shares or at least step down or the entire company needs to be sold to another entity. The stock price has always been out of whack. And the company acted like it had a first mover advantage that could never evaporate or be squandered.

People want reliability, and they want to believe. It's very hard to believe in Elon Musk and Tesla today. Oh, forget the vocal right. They make a big noise but there just aren't enough of them, never mind not ponying up for Teslas to begin with.

This is what happens when cult of personality eclipses reality, i.e. truth.

As for his faux polls and stepping down at Twitter... This was what Musk said he was going to do months ago, big deal. In other words, he's playing the fanboys, and in many cases us.

But it's the best movie we've got, better than anything on Netflix, never mind in the theatre. This is why Hollywood misses, this is why the music business fails. We're looking for visceral. Edge. Something that demands we pay attention to it, that we can have an opinion on. You can read about SZA's new album, but do you have to listen to it? Being aware of it is enough.

"ChatGPT Wrote My AP English Essay. I Passed - Our columnist went back to high school, this time bringing an AI chatbot to complete her assignments": https://on.wsj.com/3WzGKdh

This is why you've got to stop teaching to the test. America has to make a great leap forward in creativity or...

This is the dividing line folks. The machines can do so much, but not everything. They say eventually they'll be able to create the new out of thin air, but I don't buy it, at least not yet. That's the one thing we rely on humans for.

Also, let this be a warning to the close-minded and dumb. It's only through a plethora of influences that you can widen your horizons, cogitate, make a difference. This has been happening for decades now. The machines are coming for your jobs. All that's left is low level service gigs. You want to hone your skills now, you don't want to bank on retraining. It's all about being able to think, but many people don't want you to. As for banning books... You can't ban them from ChatGPT. This is what blows my mind, these people think you can push minds into the ground when all the info is at one's fingertips online. Parental controls? Kids are savvy enough to evade them. As for your fear of porn, better than puritanical hypocrisy.


TikTok

Everybody wants it gone.

But the users.

You'd think it's fentanyl. If only the government focused as much on the drug killing not only Tom Petty, but the infamous and unknown. But just like with Ticketmaster, legislators don't understand the landscape and think they can hold back the future.

TikTok is everything today's mainstream entertainment is not. It oozes humanity and surprise, you never know what you'll get. It's like the internet in the late nineties, just surfing was enough.

To ban TikTok is like Xi having a zero-covid policy in China. The people won't stand for it. This is what happens when the government is steps behind the public. And this has been happening ever since the tech revolution. The people in D.C. don't understand it, never mind regulate it.

What is the solution here?

Certainly not shutting TikTok down. That's like Just Say No to drugs, or telling kids to save themselves for marriage. Might sound good on the surface, but...

China has the data. How big a deal is that? Not as big as those wanting to shut TikTok down think it is. However, measures can be taken. Servers in the U.S... Why is it western companies cave for China, like all the big tech companies self-censoring to do business there, but we can't get ByteDance to do the same thing? And if America is so damn great, how come nobody can replicate TikTok?

I don't want to get into the specifics, but if you believe they're going to shut down TikTok you probably watch C-SPAN.

And good way to get the public on your side. These TikTokkers are all voters, or will be soon. Don't alienate them, engage them.

The truth is despite surveillance, governments have less power over their constituents than ever before. There's just too much data in the system, too many ways to communicate, too many opportunities, too many blind spots. If Facebook missed TikTok, what are the odds some doofus in Congress is gonna see the technological future? The government has blown it again and again in tech.

But Lina Khan at antitrust... She wants the Microsoft/Activision deal neutered because of what's coming, because of cloud-computing, gaming in the future.

Interesting. A step beyond whether the acquisition violates antitrust laws on its surface today.

But all the business people are mad at Khan. But that's the power of the individual. Sure, Khan was appointed, but she's got history, experience in the field, she just wasn't a patronage appointee.

We need more individuals not beholden to money, who want to do the right thing. There can be no real change in ticketing because the monied interests control the Congresspeople, who can't pass laws to begin with.

If you want to know what is going on today read the newspaper. Learn how to analyze.

Oh, that's right, you didn't learn that being taught to the test and studying business at college.

Not only does the United States need a rethink, it needs to learn how to think! Now that's a national program I could get behind. Forget the Twitter polls, how about national quizzes, national discussions, a college bowl of analytics. But the truth is they don't want you to know, they don't want you to think, they want to keep you dumb, just like the acts want you to think they're innocent and it's all Ticketmaster's fault.

Experts can be wrong every day. But they're much more accurate than the self-appointed bloviators online, spewing falsehoods and hatred. Want to get a leg up? First start with the experts, sift through the info, learn how to analyze, because one thing is for sure, in America today you're on your own, best to develop the skills to survive and thrive. It's no longer about assets, it's about what's inside your brain. This is a huge shift. I don't want to underestimate the power of money, but the power of thought is always superior, just look at Lina Khan!


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