THE VIRTUES
We had to sign up for Topic to watch the second season of "Lykkeland," which I'm getting very positive feedback on, so you should check out the first season on Amazon Prime, which seemingly everybody has access to but now I'll get e-mail from people who don't, who hate Amazon or have an issue with the price. It's hard to judge truth based on feedback, because usually it's a particular kind of person who feeds back, one who wants to be heard or one who needs to show you you're wrong or both, not that there aren't those who agree, like with "Lykkeland" above, which I got no negative feedback about.
I'm a researcher. As Logan Ury puts it in her book, I'm a "maximizer." I'll research everything. Because I want the best and usually the best costs no more than the rest. Research will tell you this, but it takes a lot of time. And the question becomes whether the time is worth it. Even worse, it's oftentimes hard to make a decision and I go without, at least for a while. Whereas Felice can make a decision in an instant. And if she gets it wrong... I'm afraid to get it wrong, and this works against me.
Having said that, I recently bought a new electric shaver, after twenty-odd years. And buying a shaver is like buying a mattress, you can't comparison shop. So the research was hell, and took several days, hours really, and I'm not proud of that. But triangulating I found out the top of the line was the oldest, and a younger model was actually more fully-featured. The shaver CLEANS ITSELF! Well, you've got to put it in this pod and turn it on, but this removes an electric shaver headache. And now I'll get people telling me manual razors are better, and they might give you a better shave, but I haven't got time for the pain, or time at all. So I get a lot of satisfaction from this shaver.
Also, I had to buy a new electric toothbrush. Man, that's even worse than razors. But I'll bottom line it, I ended up with a Bluetooth connected one with an app. Yes, overkill. HOWEVER, the app taught me how to brush properly, which I'd never known previously. And my health is important, and although I overpaid, it's worth it.
So, we had to pay $5.99 for a month of Topic. And after finishing the second season of "Lykkeland" I went into deep research, to find out what was worth watching on the channel. And when it comes to foreign shows, they oftentimes don't have RotttenTomatoes ratings, which makes it harder.
So, Topic said its most binged series was "Arctic Circle," a Finnish show. I figured that was worth something, but we're stuck in the first episode of the second season and probably won't complete it. It's not great, and really I want great, it is my time, and they're making no more of it. So...
The "New York Times"'s recommended "Nox."
WOW! These French shows are so far superior to the American ones. Better, much more believable actors. But the core of the plot is a bit unbelievable, so you're on your own. Although the main character, the mother...despite being a pain in the ass, she goes on about testing limits, not coloring inside the lines, not doing what you're told, not playing by the rules. If you want to be truly successful, don't obey the rules if they constrict you from doing your job. But maybe you know this...
Then we watched "Deceit." Which is based on a real English crime story from the nineties. Just when you think it's paint-by-numbers... But, you should first watch "Nox," not that either of these shows are long, "Nox" is six episodes, "Deceit" is only four, whereas too many Netflix shows are too long for the plot.
Which brings me to "The Virtues."
Chances are you'll never subscribe to Topic, but if you do and you hate depressing shows, won't watch them, DON'T watch "The Virtues."
"The Virtues" is only four episodes, and it's heavy, and I don't really want to tell you much about it because I don't want to ruin it for you, but let me just say it involves family and...
Real life, we don't usually see it on TV, certainly not on "reality" TV. But what about those who are working for a living, living to hang out at the pub and drink. What about those burdened by the past. We always see shows about the unbelievable, the winners, but...
Stephen Graham as Joe you might know, he's got American credits, even music video credits, but he's 100% believable in this role. A good sot who has had some hard knocks, not that he's innocent in the direction of his life.
Joe's sister... Is loving, but she's got a limit. Like real people.
And her husband... He first appears to be a prick, but turns out not to be. He's capable of raising his voice, but is not to be feared in everyday doings, he's compassionate.
As for his sister, Niamh Algar...she's the star of "Deceit." And she's wholly believable and...
If you're interested in real life, in the visceral, if you're looking for more from entertainment than escapism, if you want to feel someone's pain and joy too, if you want to see real people in real life situations unaffected by global issues...
Then put "The Virtues" at the top of your list.
I'm not the only one, it's an award-winning show, I just want to incentivize you to watch it. I did the research, please benefit from it.
Trailer: https://bit.ly/3QWc2c7
THE CONDITION
"Mercy Street," Jennifer Haigh's latest, released February 1st of this year, is her best.
Not that "Heat & Light" from 2016 is not good.
And needing a book that resonated, that I wanted to read throughout, I read 2011's "Faith," which I mentioned previously. Great family story, but the ending left me hanging a bit, too often the case with literary fiction.
In any event now I'm on a Haigh jag, I want to read everything, not to be a completist, but because her work is just that good. This is how it used to be with bands, you bought an album, savored it, and went back and purchased the catalog. Many acts these days don't even have a catalog, irrelevant of whether it's good.
Which brings me to "The Condition," Haigh's 2009 novel.
Did you grow up on the east coast in the era of bluebloods?
Did you grow up in a family that revered education, where where you went to school was mega-important?
Did you grow up in a family with unwritten rules, ones that must be obeyed?
Did you grow up in a family where the mother stayed home and the father worked all the time?
If you resonate with any of the above, you're going to LOVE "The Condition."
It's about family, it's about relationships, but about the upper middle class as opposed to the lower class Joe in "The Virtues."
Maybe you had to grow up in the last century, before income inequality skewed the classes, when it was all about getting ahead via education, which yielded status, when money was just a factor.
God, everybody in this book is flawed, just like regular people. We're imperfect, three-dimensional.
Now when you get together with your family and talk you don't broadcast it on the internet, it's personal and private. But mega-important.
You'd be stunned how many people my age did what their parents wanted them to and are not happy with the results all these years later. There was a path, you could smoke a little dope, drink some beer, but you hewed to it. And these people are not famous, and they're not rich, but they're far from poor, they're not thinking about money every second. They're thinking about fulfillment, status...
Wow, I guess what I'm saying is if you like to read a book about people, relationships, fiction that has more truth than nonfiction, I highly recommend "The Condition." You'll get involved, and the rest of the world won't matter.
Just like the essence of your regular life.
https://amzn.to/3pLvr3o
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Friday 26 August 2022
Hope
Today I'm feeling optimistic, and I haven't had that spirt here for a very long time.
Let's start with France banning private jets:
"As France Swelters, Private Jets Come Under Attack - Politicians are proposing regulating or banning flights by such planes after a summer of extreme heat and soaring energy prices prompted growing calls to tackle the causes of climate change.": https://nyti.ms/3Ks9AaH
I like to fly private as much as the next person, but not at the cost of burning up the planet.
Now the interesting thing is this has been a bottom-up effort. It started with that kid tracking Elon Musk's flights, and evidence came out of the short trips taken by a Kardashian, Drake and Taylor Swift and... We have been told for decades that money rules and there's nothing we can do about it other than to try and get ours. But the truth is the game is rigged, and in most cases we can't get ours, and certainly not enough money to influence policy.
So the hated California goes all electric in 2035, and what do the car companies say? FANTASTIC! What kind of bizarre world do we live in where Detroit is ahead of the population? Yes, Detroit has historically had to be dragged into the future, with average fuel economy standards as the Japanese and even the Koreans continue to eat their lunch in terms of quality and longevity. But now Detroit realizes if it doesn't go electric, it's going to go out of business. You either disrupt yourself or you get disrupted, and fall by the wayside, like Kodak, like even tech companies. The news is a sideshow when it comes to business, it doesn't matter how many ignorant people support fossil fuels, Ford and GM don't want to go out of business.
And then there's the IRS and the tax situation.
My favorite story on this comes from today's "Washington Post":
"Leaked audio of a billionaire GOP donor hands Democrats a weapon": https://wapo.st/3AMUk58
Most people don't even itemize deductions, their tax forms are simple, and they can't be rigged, these filers can't cheat. But if you do itemize deductions, which usually means you're making beaucoup bucks, or if you're a billionaire not making most of your money via salary, IT'S OPEN SEASON!
This is the Trump tax issue. And I'd delineate it but most people still wouldn't understand it. The point is, if there'd been oversight the shenanigans never would have passed muster. But there weren't enough IRS agents to dig down deep into the returns!
That's right, the odds of ANYONE getting audited have decreased dramatically over the past decade plus. Because the IRS has been starved. I mean if there's no law, there's going to be many scofflaws.
I mean you don't want to intentionally cheat on your taxes, because that's a CRIMINAL matter. It's not just a matter of paying what's owed plus interest, you go to jail. And nobody wants to go to jail, not even to save a few bucks, which you end up paying anyway.
Wesley Snipes got caught in a cockamamie the government doesn't deserve my tax money scheme and the end result? HE WENT TO JAIL! And his career was decimated. There are no good optics in being a tax cheat.
So, the Republicans are trying to say that the addition of IRS agents is going to hurt the hoi polloi, when this is patently untrue, unless you're avoiding taxes by taking cash and not declaring it, when in truth it's the rich who have something to lose.
But every time they pursue what they perceive to be a winning theme, the right loses!
2022 is going to be like 2018. As in Democrats are going to do much better in the midterm elections than predicted. Because polls have failed and now it has turned into a one issue election, abortion! And the dyed-in-the-wool Republicans are not going to switch parties, but those on the fence and the previously unregistered...are registering and will come out in droves, that's the story of Kansas. Women are mad as hell and ain't going to take it!
As for Trump... This isn't about his anointed candidates winning primaries, this is about Rupert Murdoch and Fox pulling away from him. Fox is already being sued by Dominion, every person who supported Trump's bogus claim that he won the election seems to have been subpoenaed, and some have lost their right to practice law and nobody wants to go down with the ship, not even Trump himself. I don't agree with the Democrats supporting far right candidates in order to make elections more winnable, because you never really know, and if you're wrong the result is heinous, but it's turning out the only people supporting Trump are those with blind faith desirous of living in the past, and the past never comes back, even if an authoritarian is in power, that's the power of the people, it's just a matter of when.
We thought it was about elections, we thought it was about money, but really it's about people. People have the power, they just have to exercise it. And once some victories emerge, other people get optimistic and take action.
Not that I don't expect the pendulum to swing back at some point, I've learned this in so many years of life, but the tide is turning as I write this, and if you're rich and flaunting your wealth...
You'd better shut up right now. Because you're out of touch and out of time. Boasting about your lifestyle, your yacht, your cars, your trips...you thought it was aspirational for the public, but it turns out the public is pissed it can never get there, and sees that in order to live your large lifestyle you're oftentimes exhibiting not only bad behavior, but even illegal behavior.
How come there's not more publicity about Fetty Wap pleading guilty?
"Rapper Fetty Wap pleads guilty in drug-trafficking case, faces minimum 5 years in federal prison": https://bit.ly/3ThdZBo
Bottom line? There's not enough money in one hit to live large for the rest of your life. And you might think the life of an outlaw is admirable, but in truth those who continue to flout the law get caught. Being a billionaire helps, but you'd better not advertise your wealth, this is how Trump got into trouble to begin with. If he hadn't run for president, if he'd kept a lower profile, his business dealings, his tax offenses, would have gone unexamined.
It's only the newly wealthy who boast about what they've got. They think they've earned the attention, it's part of their success. Whereas those with older money have learned there's no upside in going public, none!
So we've got an entire music industry based on money. Quality is irrelevant. Hell, sign that TikTok star with a zillion views. But people are sick of this, what does it have to do with music?
Which is why all the excitement, all the innovation, is coming from outside the major label system. And if that's where you live you'd better stop bitching about what you're getting paid and start emphasizing values because the enemy is not Spotify, but the major labels, and in truth you just can't make that much money in music, but you do have a big voice if you choose to exercise it, speaking truth to power.
Sponsorships, perfumes, clothing, that's all short term money. I hope you invest wisely, because it won't last forever, a few years at most, and your image, your credibility, will be undercut by selling out. All this b.s. about people not caring about their favorites selling out is just that, b.s.
So what we have here is a change in public consciousness. And too often the Boomers and Gen-X are out of touch. They keep saying that Millennials and Gen-Z don't want to work, want to be paid more, want unions... Now let me see, just because you crapped in an outhouse does that mean everybody else must continue to do so?
And Djokovic not playing in the U.S. Open because he refuses to get the vaccine?
Well, all the rest of the players have been vaxxed, and you don't hear them complaining it's hurt their game. And irrelevant of whether they personally want to get vaxxed, most Americans want foreigners who come into this country to be vaxxed. So how is Djokovic winning here?
He's not! Not in either court, public opinion or tennis.
The Covid vax wars are history. That's not what people talk about anymore. He could get vaxxed and declare victory, but instead he feels required to stand his ground, continue to state beliefs that are out of date.
This is what happens when you believe you can't change, that you must be consistent forever. The world changes, if you're not changing with it, you're left behind. It's a badge of honor to change your mind.
And we can all see climate change. Yes, you can doctor a video, but you know when it's 120 degrees out, when it doesn't stop raining and it floods. It's not about convincing the deniers, it's about knowing that others are on your side, waking up too.
The times truly are changin'. The wheels of change move slowly, but they gain momentum overnight, impossible change suddenly becomes obvious, and then happens. I mean who would have predicted the legality of marijuana? Not me! They've been fighting for that since the sixties!
And Putin... If Zelensky and Ukraine can hold their ground against them, do we really have to be afraid of Russia? And in truth, Russia is not the economic power of China, nowhere close.
So if you're confronted with the issue of standing your ground, making decisions based on the past, or going into the unknown... Now is the time to go into the unknown, now is the time to take the temperature of the public as opposed to the corporations and the rich. Hell, the mainstream missed the Trump phenomenon back in 2016, no one really knows what's going on, including me.
But change is in the air.
I can feel the wind blowin'. That's where you get the answer, not from those preaching falsehoods in order to get people to sacrifice their futures in order to hold on to a past that never existed in the first place.
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Let's start with France banning private jets:
"As France Swelters, Private Jets Come Under Attack - Politicians are proposing regulating or banning flights by such planes after a summer of extreme heat and soaring energy prices prompted growing calls to tackle the causes of climate change.": https://nyti.ms/3Ks9AaH
I like to fly private as much as the next person, but not at the cost of burning up the planet.
Now the interesting thing is this has been a bottom-up effort. It started with that kid tracking Elon Musk's flights, and evidence came out of the short trips taken by a Kardashian, Drake and Taylor Swift and... We have been told for decades that money rules and there's nothing we can do about it other than to try and get ours. But the truth is the game is rigged, and in most cases we can't get ours, and certainly not enough money to influence policy.
So the hated California goes all electric in 2035, and what do the car companies say? FANTASTIC! What kind of bizarre world do we live in where Detroit is ahead of the population? Yes, Detroit has historically had to be dragged into the future, with average fuel economy standards as the Japanese and even the Koreans continue to eat their lunch in terms of quality and longevity. But now Detroit realizes if it doesn't go electric, it's going to go out of business. You either disrupt yourself or you get disrupted, and fall by the wayside, like Kodak, like even tech companies. The news is a sideshow when it comes to business, it doesn't matter how many ignorant people support fossil fuels, Ford and GM don't want to go out of business.
And then there's the IRS and the tax situation.
My favorite story on this comes from today's "Washington Post":
"Leaked audio of a billionaire GOP donor hands Democrats a weapon": https://wapo.st/3AMUk58
Most people don't even itemize deductions, their tax forms are simple, and they can't be rigged, these filers can't cheat. But if you do itemize deductions, which usually means you're making beaucoup bucks, or if you're a billionaire not making most of your money via salary, IT'S OPEN SEASON!
This is the Trump tax issue. And I'd delineate it but most people still wouldn't understand it. The point is, if there'd been oversight the shenanigans never would have passed muster. But there weren't enough IRS agents to dig down deep into the returns!
That's right, the odds of ANYONE getting audited have decreased dramatically over the past decade plus. Because the IRS has been starved. I mean if there's no law, there's going to be many scofflaws.
I mean you don't want to intentionally cheat on your taxes, because that's a CRIMINAL matter. It's not just a matter of paying what's owed plus interest, you go to jail. And nobody wants to go to jail, not even to save a few bucks, which you end up paying anyway.
Wesley Snipes got caught in a cockamamie the government doesn't deserve my tax money scheme and the end result? HE WENT TO JAIL! And his career was decimated. There are no good optics in being a tax cheat.
So, the Republicans are trying to say that the addition of IRS agents is going to hurt the hoi polloi, when this is patently untrue, unless you're avoiding taxes by taking cash and not declaring it, when in truth it's the rich who have something to lose.
But every time they pursue what they perceive to be a winning theme, the right loses!
2022 is going to be like 2018. As in Democrats are going to do much better in the midterm elections than predicted. Because polls have failed and now it has turned into a one issue election, abortion! And the dyed-in-the-wool Republicans are not going to switch parties, but those on the fence and the previously unregistered...are registering and will come out in droves, that's the story of Kansas. Women are mad as hell and ain't going to take it!
As for Trump... This isn't about his anointed candidates winning primaries, this is about Rupert Murdoch and Fox pulling away from him. Fox is already being sued by Dominion, every person who supported Trump's bogus claim that he won the election seems to have been subpoenaed, and some have lost their right to practice law and nobody wants to go down with the ship, not even Trump himself. I don't agree with the Democrats supporting far right candidates in order to make elections more winnable, because you never really know, and if you're wrong the result is heinous, but it's turning out the only people supporting Trump are those with blind faith desirous of living in the past, and the past never comes back, even if an authoritarian is in power, that's the power of the people, it's just a matter of when.
We thought it was about elections, we thought it was about money, but really it's about people. People have the power, they just have to exercise it. And once some victories emerge, other people get optimistic and take action.
Not that I don't expect the pendulum to swing back at some point, I've learned this in so many years of life, but the tide is turning as I write this, and if you're rich and flaunting your wealth...
You'd better shut up right now. Because you're out of touch and out of time. Boasting about your lifestyle, your yacht, your cars, your trips...you thought it was aspirational for the public, but it turns out the public is pissed it can never get there, and sees that in order to live your large lifestyle you're oftentimes exhibiting not only bad behavior, but even illegal behavior.
How come there's not more publicity about Fetty Wap pleading guilty?
"Rapper Fetty Wap pleads guilty in drug-trafficking case, faces minimum 5 years in federal prison": https://bit.ly/3ThdZBo
Bottom line? There's not enough money in one hit to live large for the rest of your life. And you might think the life of an outlaw is admirable, but in truth those who continue to flout the law get caught. Being a billionaire helps, but you'd better not advertise your wealth, this is how Trump got into trouble to begin with. If he hadn't run for president, if he'd kept a lower profile, his business dealings, his tax offenses, would have gone unexamined.
It's only the newly wealthy who boast about what they've got. They think they've earned the attention, it's part of their success. Whereas those with older money have learned there's no upside in going public, none!
So we've got an entire music industry based on money. Quality is irrelevant. Hell, sign that TikTok star with a zillion views. But people are sick of this, what does it have to do with music?
Which is why all the excitement, all the innovation, is coming from outside the major label system. And if that's where you live you'd better stop bitching about what you're getting paid and start emphasizing values because the enemy is not Spotify, but the major labels, and in truth you just can't make that much money in music, but you do have a big voice if you choose to exercise it, speaking truth to power.
Sponsorships, perfumes, clothing, that's all short term money. I hope you invest wisely, because it won't last forever, a few years at most, and your image, your credibility, will be undercut by selling out. All this b.s. about people not caring about their favorites selling out is just that, b.s.
So what we have here is a change in public consciousness. And too often the Boomers and Gen-X are out of touch. They keep saying that Millennials and Gen-Z don't want to work, want to be paid more, want unions... Now let me see, just because you crapped in an outhouse does that mean everybody else must continue to do so?
And Djokovic not playing in the U.S. Open because he refuses to get the vaccine?
Well, all the rest of the players have been vaxxed, and you don't hear them complaining it's hurt their game. And irrelevant of whether they personally want to get vaxxed, most Americans want foreigners who come into this country to be vaxxed. So how is Djokovic winning here?
He's not! Not in either court, public opinion or tennis.
The Covid vax wars are history. That's not what people talk about anymore. He could get vaxxed and declare victory, but instead he feels required to stand his ground, continue to state beliefs that are out of date.
This is what happens when you believe you can't change, that you must be consistent forever. The world changes, if you're not changing with it, you're left behind. It's a badge of honor to change your mind.
And we can all see climate change. Yes, you can doctor a video, but you know when it's 120 degrees out, when it doesn't stop raining and it floods. It's not about convincing the deniers, it's about knowing that others are on your side, waking up too.
The times truly are changin'. The wheels of change move slowly, but they gain momentum overnight, impossible change suddenly becomes obvious, and then happens. I mean who would have predicted the legality of marijuana? Not me! They've been fighting for that since the sixties!
And Putin... If Zelensky and Ukraine can hold their ground against them, do we really have to be afraid of Russia? And in truth, Russia is not the economic power of China, nowhere close.
So if you're confronted with the issue of standing your ground, making decisions based on the past, or going into the unknown... Now is the time to go into the unknown, now is the time to take the temperature of the public as opposed to the corporations and the rich. Hell, the mainstream missed the Trump phenomenon back in 2016, no one really knows what's going on, including me.
But change is in the air.
I can feel the wind blowin'. That's where you get the answer, not from those preaching falsehoods in order to get people to sacrifice their futures in order to hold on to a past that never existed in the first place.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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Thursday 25 August 2022
Logan Ury-This Week's Podcast
Logan Ury is a behavioral scientist turned dating coach, and the author of the book "How To Not Die Alone." As the Director of Relationship Science at the dating app Hinge, she leads a research team dedicated to helping people find love. After studying psychology at Harvard, Logan ran Google's behavioral science team—the Irrational Lab. Her work has appeared in "The New York Times," "The Atlantic," "TIME," "The Washington Post," "GQ," "Glamour," "Vice," and on HBO and the BBC. If you're looking for love, or just interested in relationships, you'll be riveted and inspired to take action. Do you know how to fill out your dating profile? Do you know your profile photo can change an empty inbox into a full one? Are you wondering whether to continue or end a relationship and how to do it? Logan is the expert, you'll love listening to her!
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/logan-ury-101309249/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/logan-ury/id1316200737?i=1000577315189
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Z82kgD1aYeh4alMWQY8Mt?si=BfLRxlY8QqO9JSRpyl8a0A
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/a9936ff0-8a23-44ec-909c-43bb4cbaf750/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-logan-ury
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/logan-ury-206105839
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Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-30806836/episode/logan-ury-101309249/
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/logan-ury/id1316200737?i=1000577315189
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Z82kgD1aYeh4alMWQY8Mt?si=BfLRxlY8QqO9JSRpyl8a0A
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/a9936ff0-8a23-44ec-909c-43bb4cbaf750/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-logan-ury
https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/logan-ury-206105839
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Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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Wednesday 24 August 2022
The Virtual Rapper
"Capitol Drops "Virtual Rapper" FN Meka After Backlash Over Stereotypes - The record company apologized to 'the Black community' for insensitivity in promoting an AI-backed artist that critics said was 'appropriative' and included 'slurs infused in lyrics.'": https://nyti.ms/3QUBLli
I can't tell you how many times people e-mailed me this story, about this "virtual rapper." Talk about making news... This story was EVERYWHERE!
Kinda stuns me that Capitol did no due diligence, was unaware of what they were signing, but that's not what stuck out in this article, that was THERE WAS NO ADVANCE!
In other words, there was no there there. Capitol made no commitment, laid down no dollars, had no investment. Maybe there was a recording budget, but it sounds like this operation was self-contained, and Capitol's only obligation was to distribute and promote.
And we all know distribution cost is de minimis. Just ask all those nobodies posting their music to streaming services each and every day. And it's not like Capitol was going to do a run of physical product, at least not until the act actually had traction.
IN OTHER WORDS THIS WAS A PRESS STORY! And if you read the above article you wonder if the act was what was claimed. The impression was this was a robot act, created by machines. But it turns out there was a human voice and...
This has been the music business's concern for decades. More on the creative side than the business side. The business side would LOVE virtual/robot acts, because robots don't talk back, they don't get hooked on drugs, they don't call you in the middle of the night... But creators are afraid of being usurped, disrupted, by machines. But the dirty little truth today is that in a mechanized, digitized society what people are looking for most is humanity. Want to succeed with the public? Don't comp the vocals, leave the mistakes in. It's not only your music, it's YOU! The more you excise your personality, the less the audience can identify with you. And to have a long career it's got to be about you, not only the music.
I won't say the live business is honest. But instead of reciting the b.s., like changing capacity figures to say a show was nearly sold out when in truth it was a disaster, I will say it all comes down to the money. No concert promoter would promote a deal like this. Because everybody knows you do the show and you get paid. And if you're nobody, you start at the bottom. You build it from the ground up. There are no turntable hits live, there are no press stars, live is where the rubber meets the road. And sure, grosses can be manipulated to look good, but good luck trying to get a big guarantee next time around, promoters have long memories, they can lose a fortune on you, especially with Live Nation being a public company and acts not wanting to give money back.
So the entire recording industry lost with this story. Capitol lost credibility, but it infects other labels. If you're not paying an advance, what are you really committing to? This signing is more like a trial balloon, let's put out the story and see what happens, if it gets traction.
So what other record company stories are b.s? What is the label's commitment?
It used to be different, acts trumpeted the advance. Oftentimes misunderstood by the public, a twelve million dollar deal might be for five years and five records and the label could drop you after one, after you got only a couple of million, but at least the label paid something.
Getting a record deal was the Holy Grail, you'd made it. Now acts are weary of the major labels, if for no other reason than they don't want to give that much up, especially when so much of the revenue comes directly from digital and there are no big gatekeepers.
This all started back in the nineties, when Mo Ostin left Warner Bros. The new regime would sign acts for one record, whereas Mo believed in careers. And oftentimes they only lasted one record. Investment, artist development, OUT THE WINDOW! Today's labels specialize in blowing things up, from big to bigger, not starting from scratch, and when they say they're starting from scratch...we get bogus stories like this.
And you wonder why the record business has a bad reputation...
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I can't tell you how many times people e-mailed me this story, about this "virtual rapper." Talk about making news... This story was EVERYWHERE!
Kinda stuns me that Capitol did no due diligence, was unaware of what they were signing, but that's not what stuck out in this article, that was THERE WAS NO ADVANCE!
In other words, there was no there there. Capitol made no commitment, laid down no dollars, had no investment. Maybe there was a recording budget, but it sounds like this operation was self-contained, and Capitol's only obligation was to distribute and promote.
And we all know distribution cost is de minimis. Just ask all those nobodies posting their music to streaming services each and every day. And it's not like Capitol was going to do a run of physical product, at least not until the act actually had traction.
IN OTHER WORDS THIS WAS A PRESS STORY! And if you read the above article you wonder if the act was what was claimed. The impression was this was a robot act, created by machines. But it turns out there was a human voice and...
This has been the music business's concern for decades. More on the creative side than the business side. The business side would LOVE virtual/robot acts, because robots don't talk back, they don't get hooked on drugs, they don't call you in the middle of the night... But creators are afraid of being usurped, disrupted, by machines. But the dirty little truth today is that in a mechanized, digitized society what people are looking for most is humanity. Want to succeed with the public? Don't comp the vocals, leave the mistakes in. It's not only your music, it's YOU! The more you excise your personality, the less the audience can identify with you. And to have a long career it's got to be about you, not only the music.
I won't say the live business is honest. But instead of reciting the b.s., like changing capacity figures to say a show was nearly sold out when in truth it was a disaster, I will say it all comes down to the money. No concert promoter would promote a deal like this. Because everybody knows you do the show and you get paid. And if you're nobody, you start at the bottom. You build it from the ground up. There are no turntable hits live, there are no press stars, live is where the rubber meets the road. And sure, grosses can be manipulated to look good, but good luck trying to get a big guarantee next time around, promoters have long memories, they can lose a fortune on you, especially with Live Nation being a public company and acts not wanting to give money back.
So the entire recording industry lost with this story. Capitol lost credibility, but it infects other labels. If you're not paying an advance, what are you really committing to? This signing is more like a trial balloon, let's put out the story and see what happens, if it gets traction.
So what other record company stories are b.s? What is the label's commitment?
It used to be different, acts trumpeted the advance. Oftentimes misunderstood by the public, a twelve million dollar deal might be for five years and five records and the label could drop you after one, after you got only a couple of million, but at least the label paid something.
Getting a record deal was the Holy Grail, you'd made it. Now acts are weary of the major labels, if for no other reason than they don't want to give that much up, especially when so much of the revenue comes directly from digital and there are no big gatekeepers.
This all started back in the nineties, when Mo Ostin left Warner Bros. The new regime would sign acts for one record, whereas Mo believed in careers. And oftentimes they only lasted one record. Investment, artist development, OUT THE WINDOW! Today's labels specialize in blowing things up, from big to bigger, not starting from scratch, and when they say they're starting from scratch...we get bogus stories like this.
And you wonder why the record business has a bad reputation...
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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Harry Styles At MSG
I'm stunned how much ink Harry Styles is getting for his residency at Madison Square Garden.
Dennis Arfa, agent for Billy Joel, quibbles with that term, but the game remains the same, playing an extended run at a venue over a period of time. Billy can do MSG once a month, because he lives in the area, but many acts are not close to NYC, never mind their bands.
But Billy Joel is a legendary superstar. Harry Styles is a twentysomething in the heart of his career.
But all the buzz has been about fans coming to the gig, a la Las Vegas, as opposed to the record...
Yes, want publicity, GO FOR THE RECORD!
Now the truth is many arenas have a limited number of dates available, because of their sports teams. But the Forum in L.A. has none, it's music only, so theoretically 365 days are available. Who can play the longest?
That's another reason new arenas are being built. Because of the demand and availability. Comparing yesterday to today is apples and oranges. You see there are a lot more people, never mind a lot more acts.
I guess too many people miss the news. This was the essence of my SiriusXM show yesterday.
Let me start with the residency concept. The big story here was in the "New York Times" last week:
"Why Pop's Biggest Stars Are Staying Put for Long Residencies - Extended runs in one venue, once associated with legacy acts, have become popular with stars including Harry Styles and BTS, lowering bills and building hype as touring costs rise.": https://nyti.ms/3R3yU9L
This is not news to anyone in the business, then again we haven't seen an exhaustive article about this in the business. But how many people saw this article? That's the issue. Used to be if it was in the New York or L.A. "Times" everybody saw it. That's not the case these days, they don't reach those in the business. And "Billboard" has become a nearly useless consumer facing publication. You can get some inside information from HitsDailyDouble.com, albeit in many cases biased by payments, but I'm stunned how many people don't read it, aren't even aware of it. You see when "Hits" started 36 years ago, record companies ruled. Now they're a sideshow. Just read about the executive movements, you won't know who the people are and you won't care.
And then there was an article in the "Wall Street Journal":
"Look Out Boomers: The Next Generation of Arena Stars Is Coming - While the Stones and Springsteen show few signs of slowing down, newer and younger artists are selling out massive venues.": https://on.wsj.com/3AKmKwA
Once again, those in the business know all this, but to see it in one place puts the situation in context. Many of the classic acts are starting to ride into the sunset, they're not going to be able to play live forever. And in the earlier part of this century, when files replaced CDs, it was thought that the era of the arena act was dead. That it would become a theatre business. But this has turned out to be untrue. Irrelevant of their mindshare in the country at large, there are enough fans to support today's artists to the point where they can play arenas and sometimes stadiums. You see today's youth have a different perspective. They didn't live through the ladder of yore...from clubs to theatres to arenas over a number of years, never mind stadiums. Today kids want to go and they expect their act to play in a large venue nearly immediately. You see there are two tiers of acts, those that break right away and those that take years in the marketplace and maybe don't ever make it to arenas. And the young acts have a shorter shelf life, but the demand is huge. But, once again, there is a population increase, and also more disposable income. Talk about economic challenges all you want, but if they truly existed in the concert sphere prices would come down and instead they keep going up. We are approaching a challenging time in the concert business...with the Covid demand having been fulfilled, will a potential recession hit sales? Sales dipped a few months back, but then they recovered. In any event, in a digital, virtual world, the experience of live music is unique and desirable, one you cannot get anywhere else.
And then there was that story in the L.A. "Times":
"After Astroworld catastrophe and Drakeo's stabbing, Live Nation faces mounting questions over concert safety": https://lat.ms/3KppWRt
No one is talking about this, it's got no legs. If for no other reason it's got no juice. Live Nation's PR person fielded the questions as opposed to Michael Rapino. Rapino quotes travel, those of the PR person do not. This is the Springsteen issue... If you're a celebrity, if you have a profile, don't enter the fray without knowing anything you say will be repeated around the world and will never disappear. Whereas if you say nothing...people's memories are short, if they even know the story to begin with.
And there is one gotcha in the L.A. "Times" article:
"CSC job listings for event staff show that typical pay is under $20 an hour, and its own advertising for job openings has told candidates, 'Why pay upwards of $100 for a ticket when you can experience the event with the CSC family and be compensated for it?'"
How well can a security person do their job if they're incentivized to see the show as part of the gig?
CSC is Contemporary Services Corp. I.e. a security company. Yes, security for these big events is OUTSOURCED!
This is what killed GE, this is what is still killing America, this is what is hurting so many workers, that are shadow employees, even in tech. They do all the work for the well-known company, but they're paid by an intermediary, and they don't get the same pay and benefits. You can be working for Google, but paid by a third party.
So, the buck stops with Live Nation, but they are not the hands-on party.
And you must watch the Woodstock '99 documentary on Netflix to see the character and quality of these third party security people, it's not much better today, but the reason I mention it is a member of the audience offers a big buck for the security person's t-shirt and he sells it to him! He got money in his pocket, and the person with the shirt now has access and other powers. It's akin to a backstage pass.
Security is a huge issue. Something we should all be discussing. But this exhaustive article in the L.A. "Times" had no reach, no impact. Even the L.A. "Times" is its own private backwater. To reach everybody is impossible. We have a zillion verticals, and oftentimes those who need to be reached are on TikTok, where the mainstream media has no presence or impact.
But getting back to the residency...
It can be a badge of honor. Akin to a Grammy, but better. How many nights did you play at the arena, do you hold the record? And was every gig sold out?
You see fans will flock to the residency not just to see the act, but to be part of an event, to say they were there! It's one thing to say you saw the act at your local arena, it's quite another to say you were at show 16 at the residency. This is part of fandom, you want to own the act and the experience! As far as flying or driving to the arena...you go on vacation, don't you?
Sure, there is a business touring the country, but it will never get cheaper. You don't have to pay for hotels if you stay in one place, never mind all those trucks. And it doesn't have to be in Las Vegas, in Vegas music is secondary to gambling and having a good time. But at the Forum, IT'S MUSIC ONLY! Adding gravitas.
Don't expect change overnight, but there will be an evolution.
God, most of Billy Joel's ink in the past decade has been about his residency, without it there would have been a lot of less press and maybe fewer ticket sales not only at Madison Square Garden but elsewhere.
And it's not like Harry Styles's record just came out. It was released on May 20th, but now he's on the cover of "Rolling Stone"...which no one reads anymore, because it's behind a paywall, but quotes are pulled by other news media and it makes a good tweet...and now there's another article in the "New York Times" reviewing the show:
"The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to New York - The first two nights of a 15-concert run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.": https://nyti.ms/3Tb3Q9k
It doesn't stop! The Harry train keeps rolling. And, once again, Harry's fans are not reading this story, but advertisers and film producers are, they see the impact Harry has. Harry Styles might be the biggest superstar in music today, along with Bad Bunny, but the aged think it's Beyoncé. Now they know otherwise. And as far as Beyoncé goes, not being on the road hurts her purchase on society at large, there was the buzz around the release of the album, now what? The experts here are the Kardashians. They're online and in the news every damn day. Did you see that Apple has even got Kim Kardashian earbuds? And they're sold out, but Apple has full page ads and the bottom line is people still think the Kardashians are a sideshow, but if you're involved with Apple...that's the top of the heap, that's the Holy Grail!
There's a lot going on. But no one media outlet has a hold on it, never mind having little reach and almost no legs. In a world where you can reach everybody instantly, they're reaching ever fewer and what's here today is gone tomorrow.
Which is why the mainstream media is only part of your plan. Why the record is only part of your plan. Live, the fan can feel the connection, once again it's a unique experience, capitalize on that. Harry Styles has.
Dennis Arfa, agent for Billy Joel, quibbles with that term, but the game remains the same, playing an extended run at a venue over a period of time. Billy can do MSG once a month, because he lives in the area, but many acts are not close to NYC, never mind their bands.
But Billy Joel is a legendary superstar. Harry Styles is a twentysomething in the heart of his career.
But all the buzz has been about fans coming to the gig, a la Las Vegas, as opposed to the record...
Yes, want publicity, GO FOR THE RECORD!
Now the truth is many arenas have a limited number of dates available, because of their sports teams. But the Forum in L.A. has none, it's music only, so theoretically 365 days are available. Who can play the longest?
That's another reason new arenas are being built. Because of the demand and availability. Comparing yesterday to today is apples and oranges. You see there are a lot more people, never mind a lot more acts.
I guess too many people miss the news. This was the essence of my SiriusXM show yesterday.
Let me start with the residency concept. The big story here was in the "New York Times" last week:
"Why Pop's Biggest Stars Are Staying Put for Long Residencies - Extended runs in one venue, once associated with legacy acts, have become popular with stars including Harry Styles and BTS, lowering bills and building hype as touring costs rise.": https://nyti.ms/3R3yU9L
This is not news to anyone in the business, then again we haven't seen an exhaustive article about this in the business. But how many people saw this article? That's the issue. Used to be if it was in the New York or L.A. "Times" everybody saw it. That's not the case these days, they don't reach those in the business. And "Billboard" has become a nearly useless consumer facing publication. You can get some inside information from HitsDailyDouble.com, albeit in many cases biased by payments, but I'm stunned how many people don't read it, aren't even aware of it. You see when "Hits" started 36 years ago, record companies ruled. Now they're a sideshow. Just read about the executive movements, you won't know who the people are and you won't care.
And then there was an article in the "Wall Street Journal":
"Look Out Boomers: The Next Generation of Arena Stars Is Coming - While the Stones and Springsteen show few signs of slowing down, newer and younger artists are selling out massive venues.": https://on.wsj.com/3AKmKwA
Once again, those in the business know all this, but to see it in one place puts the situation in context. Many of the classic acts are starting to ride into the sunset, they're not going to be able to play live forever. And in the earlier part of this century, when files replaced CDs, it was thought that the era of the arena act was dead. That it would become a theatre business. But this has turned out to be untrue. Irrelevant of their mindshare in the country at large, there are enough fans to support today's artists to the point where they can play arenas and sometimes stadiums. You see today's youth have a different perspective. They didn't live through the ladder of yore...from clubs to theatres to arenas over a number of years, never mind stadiums. Today kids want to go and they expect their act to play in a large venue nearly immediately. You see there are two tiers of acts, those that break right away and those that take years in the marketplace and maybe don't ever make it to arenas. And the young acts have a shorter shelf life, but the demand is huge. But, once again, there is a population increase, and also more disposable income. Talk about economic challenges all you want, but if they truly existed in the concert sphere prices would come down and instead they keep going up. We are approaching a challenging time in the concert business...with the Covid demand having been fulfilled, will a potential recession hit sales? Sales dipped a few months back, but then they recovered. In any event, in a digital, virtual world, the experience of live music is unique and desirable, one you cannot get anywhere else.
And then there was that story in the L.A. "Times":
"After Astroworld catastrophe and Drakeo's stabbing, Live Nation faces mounting questions over concert safety": https://lat.ms/3KppWRt
No one is talking about this, it's got no legs. If for no other reason it's got no juice. Live Nation's PR person fielded the questions as opposed to Michael Rapino. Rapino quotes travel, those of the PR person do not. This is the Springsteen issue... If you're a celebrity, if you have a profile, don't enter the fray without knowing anything you say will be repeated around the world and will never disappear. Whereas if you say nothing...people's memories are short, if they even know the story to begin with.
And there is one gotcha in the L.A. "Times" article:
"CSC job listings for event staff show that typical pay is under $20 an hour, and its own advertising for job openings has told candidates, 'Why pay upwards of $100 for a ticket when you can experience the event with the CSC family and be compensated for it?'"
How well can a security person do their job if they're incentivized to see the show as part of the gig?
CSC is Contemporary Services Corp. I.e. a security company. Yes, security for these big events is OUTSOURCED!
This is what killed GE, this is what is still killing America, this is what is hurting so many workers, that are shadow employees, even in tech. They do all the work for the well-known company, but they're paid by an intermediary, and they don't get the same pay and benefits. You can be working for Google, but paid by a third party.
So, the buck stops with Live Nation, but they are not the hands-on party.
And you must watch the Woodstock '99 documentary on Netflix to see the character and quality of these third party security people, it's not much better today, but the reason I mention it is a member of the audience offers a big buck for the security person's t-shirt and he sells it to him! He got money in his pocket, and the person with the shirt now has access and other powers. It's akin to a backstage pass.
Security is a huge issue. Something we should all be discussing. But this exhaustive article in the L.A. "Times" had no reach, no impact. Even the L.A. "Times" is its own private backwater. To reach everybody is impossible. We have a zillion verticals, and oftentimes those who need to be reached are on TikTok, where the mainstream media has no presence or impact.
But getting back to the residency...
It can be a badge of honor. Akin to a Grammy, but better. How many nights did you play at the arena, do you hold the record? And was every gig sold out?
You see fans will flock to the residency not just to see the act, but to be part of an event, to say they were there! It's one thing to say you saw the act at your local arena, it's quite another to say you were at show 16 at the residency. This is part of fandom, you want to own the act and the experience! As far as flying or driving to the arena...you go on vacation, don't you?
Sure, there is a business touring the country, but it will never get cheaper. You don't have to pay for hotels if you stay in one place, never mind all those trucks. And it doesn't have to be in Las Vegas, in Vegas music is secondary to gambling and having a good time. But at the Forum, IT'S MUSIC ONLY! Adding gravitas.
Don't expect change overnight, but there will be an evolution.
God, most of Billy Joel's ink in the past decade has been about his residency, without it there would have been a lot of less press and maybe fewer ticket sales not only at Madison Square Garden but elsewhere.
And it's not like Harry Styles's record just came out. It was released on May 20th, but now he's on the cover of "Rolling Stone"...which no one reads anymore, because it's behind a paywall, but quotes are pulled by other news media and it makes a good tweet...and now there's another article in the "New York Times" reviewing the show:
"The Harry Styles Show (and Some Music) Comes to New York - The first two nights of a 15-concert run at Madison Square Garden were heavy on charisma, banter and nods to the past.": https://nyti.ms/3Tb3Q9k
It doesn't stop! The Harry train keeps rolling. And, once again, Harry's fans are not reading this story, but advertisers and film producers are, they see the impact Harry has. Harry Styles might be the biggest superstar in music today, along with Bad Bunny, but the aged think it's Beyoncé. Now they know otherwise. And as far as Beyoncé goes, not being on the road hurts her purchase on society at large, there was the buzz around the release of the album, now what? The experts here are the Kardashians. They're online and in the news every damn day. Did you see that Apple has even got Kim Kardashian earbuds? And they're sold out, but Apple has full page ads and the bottom line is people still think the Kardashians are a sideshow, but if you're involved with Apple...that's the top of the heap, that's the Holy Grail!
There's a lot going on. But no one media outlet has a hold on it, never mind having little reach and almost no legs. In a world where you can reach everybody instantly, they're reaching ever fewer and what's here today is gone tomorrow.
Which is why the mainstream media is only part of your plan. Why the record is only part of your plan. Live, the fan can feel the connection, once again it's a unique experience, capitalize on that. Harry Styles has.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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Tuesday 23 August 2022
China
Hyundai was a joke. The maker of the cheapest cars with the oldest technology. The only thing that you could buy that was worse was a Yugo.
But Yugo tanked, and Hyundai and its sister company Kia improved and then thrived over the ensuing thirty years they have played in the American market. And not only has Hyundai expanded into luxury, with its Genesis line, most analysts consider the Ioniq 5 and its sister Kia, the EV6, to be the only reasonably priced challengers to Tesla in the American market.
And then comes BYD:
"BYD, Tesla's Chinese Rival, Is Coming Into Its Own - China's top electric-vehicle maker has emerged as a formidable force—one that could soon be felt globally": https://on.wsj.com/3R5PIfO
But Bob, you say, GM and Ford are moving into electric vehicles!
And I'll respond with the tiny recalled Chevy Bolt, a statement car as opposed to a usable automobile. As for Ford's triumphs with the Mustang and F-150 Lightning... I'll tell you they're essentially conversions, gas cars made electric, as opposed to clean slate vehicles like those of Tesla and BYD.
But we don't need no stinkin' electric cars in America. Drill, baby drill. And why combat climate change, even if it exists, because look at how China pollutes!
But this is an old story, the truth is China is addressing climate change more directly than the U.S. these days, that's the essence of electric vehicle penetration in the country, China wants to clean up its air.
You see as Americans lobby for a return to the past, the Chinese are moving directly to the future, in many cases eating our lunch.
We don't need no stinkin' foreigners here, keep 'em out. Everyone thinks of migrants at the southern border, but this also includes technologists, who are now staying home in not only China, but India, so innovation is coming out of those countries now as opposed to the U.S. We've shot ourselves in the foot.
The belief is all innovation comes from America, especially in social media. Our hero/enemy is Mark Zuckerberg, who superseded MySpace to build a colossus with Facebook.
Now give Zuck credit, he saw the penetration of WhatsApp in the rest of the world and purchased it when most Congresspeople had no idea what it was, never mind blow a whistle.
And Zuck ended up buying Instagram, but innovation petered out and...
Twitter was a revolution. Pooh-poohed to this day, it's where the news is batted around and built. You may not be on Twitter, but all the people who create the news you consume are.
And then Twitter became a hotbed of discussion over free speech. Forget that it's a private company and can do what it wants, the concept was that free speech could eclipse truth.
And then America's tech hero Elon Musk, the heir to Steve Jobs for those who did not live through the Jobs era, the bros who Jobs could never relate to, said he was going to purchase the whole thing and turn it into the free-for-all it was supposed to be.
But that ended up being a sideshow.
And today's show in America is the whistleblower, talking about Twitter's security lapses. And the whole issue becomes whether Musk will be forced to buy the company or not.
But the truth is America is one big security lapse. Twenty years after 9/11 and our infrastructure still goes unprotected. Our water supply, our electric grid.
As for the corporations, whether they be traditional, brick and mortar, or online, or even banks, security breaches are a regular occurrence, kind of like school shootings. You get an e-mail telling you to change your password and life goes on.
So Zuckerberg wakes up and realizes there's nothing left to buy and he comes up with his meta concept, the virtual world. Something which is not brand new, and has never scaled previously. Meanwhile, China comes up with Musical.ly which turns into TikTok.
America had an early competitor, Vine, but it was allowed to wither under the ownership of Twitter and was eventually killed while Musical.ly was seen as kids' stuff. Young kids' stuff. After all, the money, the gravitas, was in the full-length song marketed by the music industry.
And then Musical.ly was purchased by ByteDance, and the product evolved into TikTok and now not only is TikTok the primary social medium, it's where young people go to shop and just like with Twitter, to this day, oldsters, those who think they know better, decry TikTok, see it as a sewer populated by the young and ignorant not realizing the joke is on them.
Oh, they'll get uptight about the Chinese ownership of data, but understanding what the platform represents...IMPOSSIBLE!
We live in a land of Luddites. As far as their plan for making America great again, it seems to be focused on making the rural dominant and halting progress to ensure that America continues to lose not only status in the world, but power, with innovation not supported, certainly not with government money. That's the number one bitch on the "Wall Street Journal" editorial and opinion pages, the government supporting electric automobiles. But without the government, we wouldn't even have this internet I'm using to communicate with you.
We're so caught up in the penumbra in the United States, that we're missing the main point. All these social issues, bathroom access, gay marriage, they're just sideshows ginned up by monied interests who want no change so they can continue to rape and pillage and reign. That's the number one goal of the corporation in America, to sustain. Innovate? Hopefully they can kill competition to avoid it. Look at Amazon, if you come up with a new idea they haven't they compete and kill you or buy you.
As for innovation...
This electric car thing is just like photography, with a lot more zeros and cultural, financial and environmental impact. It's going to flip seemingly overnight. Buzz has already started, you don't want to buy a new gasoline powered car because when electric reaches critical mass it'll be worth nothing. All this blowback about the lack of charging stations... You don't hold back the future because its evolution is bumpy.
Let's be clear, China is an authoritarian state. Therefore decisions can be made and implemented quickly. Whereas America is something akin to democracy.
Now one party is leaning towards autocracy, but once again its goal is not a great leap forward, but a theoretical leap back. Putting its finger in the dike of progress, which happens elsewhere and then the dam breaks and America is overwhelmed by the flood.
We used to have national goals, like putting a man on the moon.
Now all we've got is gotcha. That's what the news is. This or that person was caught in flagrante delicto.
Most Americans have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world. Forget having a driver's license to vote, every American needs a passport. And a national program taking every American citizen to a foreign country, so their horizons are widened, discussion is fomented, and a path forward can be created. Instead, we're arguing about teaching race in school, removing books from libraries. All that does is create an ever more ignorant populace, which those in power like, know-nothings are easier to control.
In truth, we're in the equivalent of a space race with China. Never mind the Asian nation buying up natural resources to make electric automobiles while Americans debate their utility. We're debating the present with no vision into the future. And if anybody wants to push the nation forward they're a crank. Yes, it happens on the left too.
We need a national reset. Instead of patting ourselves on the back, telling ourselves how great we are, we must realize that our self-professed title as the greatest country in the world is in jeopardy, if not already history. I don't want to hear about everybody wanting to immigrate here... Sure, America is still great in some aspects but we need to stop trumpeting those and see what we're missing, what we need to achieve!
This is what leaders are supposed to do.
And the tired old man in the White House can't, because he's not digitally native.
As for his opponent...he doesn't even appear smart enough to understand the concepts, never mind take appropriate action. He'd rather share state secrets with our enemies, become friends with dictators while the countries run under democracies run circles around them. Can you say North Korea and South Korea, can you say Russia and Western Europe?
We are at a critical point in American history. We cannot survive without the rest of the world. The pandemic taught us this. Furthermore, we cannot bring all manufacturing back to the States, it does not make economic sense. No, what we need to do is strengthen ourselves, create new bargaining chips. And for the past few decades that's always been intellectual property, whether it be entertainment or technology. Not only is the biggest social media company the Chinese TikTok, but the biggest musical act is Bad Bunny, who sings in Spanish!
That's why we can't make our country smaller, but bigger. We need to look outside our boundaries, see the advancements of others, the changes. We can't be so nationalistic that we close the doors, that's economic death, never mind cultural decline.
But we want to debate whether Elon Musk, a myopic bro, should be forced to buy Twitter.
Our entire nation has a security issue. And it's not only e-mail addresses and passwords, it's raw economics. We're fighting over social issues while China is eating our lunch.
We need to wake up, get our priorities straight and take action.
NOW!
--
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But Yugo tanked, and Hyundai and its sister company Kia improved and then thrived over the ensuing thirty years they have played in the American market. And not only has Hyundai expanded into luxury, with its Genesis line, most analysts consider the Ioniq 5 and its sister Kia, the EV6, to be the only reasonably priced challengers to Tesla in the American market.
And then comes BYD:
"BYD, Tesla's Chinese Rival, Is Coming Into Its Own - China's top electric-vehicle maker has emerged as a formidable force—one that could soon be felt globally": https://on.wsj.com/3R5PIfO
But Bob, you say, GM and Ford are moving into electric vehicles!
And I'll respond with the tiny recalled Chevy Bolt, a statement car as opposed to a usable automobile. As for Ford's triumphs with the Mustang and F-150 Lightning... I'll tell you they're essentially conversions, gas cars made electric, as opposed to clean slate vehicles like those of Tesla and BYD.
But we don't need no stinkin' electric cars in America. Drill, baby drill. And why combat climate change, even if it exists, because look at how China pollutes!
But this is an old story, the truth is China is addressing climate change more directly than the U.S. these days, that's the essence of electric vehicle penetration in the country, China wants to clean up its air.
You see as Americans lobby for a return to the past, the Chinese are moving directly to the future, in many cases eating our lunch.
We don't need no stinkin' foreigners here, keep 'em out. Everyone thinks of migrants at the southern border, but this also includes technologists, who are now staying home in not only China, but India, so innovation is coming out of those countries now as opposed to the U.S. We've shot ourselves in the foot.
The belief is all innovation comes from America, especially in social media. Our hero/enemy is Mark Zuckerberg, who superseded MySpace to build a colossus with Facebook.
Now give Zuck credit, he saw the penetration of WhatsApp in the rest of the world and purchased it when most Congresspeople had no idea what it was, never mind blow a whistle.
And Zuck ended up buying Instagram, but innovation petered out and...
Twitter was a revolution. Pooh-poohed to this day, it's where the news is batted around and built. You may not be on Twitter, but all the people who create the news you consume are.
And then Twitter became a hotbed of discussion over free speech. Forget that it's a private company and can do what it wants, the concept was that free speech could eclipse truth.
And then America's tech hero Elon Musk, the heir to Steve Jobs for those who did not live through the Jobs era, the bros who Jobs could never relate to, said he was going to purchase the whole thing and turn it into the free-for-all it was supposed to be.
But that ended up being a sideshow.
And today's show in America is the whistleblower, talking about Twitter's security lapses. And the whole issue becomes whether Musk will be forced to buy the company or not.
But the truth is America is one big security lapse. Twenty years after 9/11 and our infrastructure still goes unprotected. Our water supply, our electric grid.
As for the corporations, whether they be traditional, brick and mortar, or online, or even banks, security breaches are a regular occurrence, kind of like school shootings. You get an e-mail telling you to change your password and life goes on.
So Zuckerberg wakes up and realizes there's nothing left to buy and he comes up with his meta concept, the virtual world. Something which is not brand new, and has never scaled previously. Meanwhile, China comes up with Musical.ly which turns into TikTok.
America had an early competitor, Vine, but it was allowed to wither under the ownership of Twitter and was eventually killed while Musical.ly was seen as kids' stuff. Young kids' stuff. After all, the money, the gravitas, was in the full-length song marketed by the music industry.
And then Musical.ly was purchased by ByteDance, and the product evolved into TikTok and now not only is TikTok the primary social medium, it's where young people go to shop and just like with Twitter, to this day, oldsters, those who think they know better, decry TikTok, see it as a sewer populated by the young and ignorant not realizing the joke is on them.
Oh, they'll get uptight about the Chinese ownership of data, but understanding what the platform represents...IMPOSSIBLE!
We live in a land of Luddites. As far as their plan for making America great again, it seems to be focused on making the rural dominant and halting progress to ensure that America continues to lose not only status in the world, but power, with innovation not supported, certainly not with government money. That's the number one bitch on the "Wall Street Journal" editorial and opinion pages, the government supporting electric automobiles. But without the government, we wouldn't even have this internet I'm using to communicate with you.
We're so caught up in the penumbra in the United States, that we're missing the main point. All these social issues, bathroom access, gay marriage, they're just sideshows ginned up by monied interests who want no change so they can continue to rape and pillage and reign. That's the number one goal of the corporation in America, to sustain. Innovate? Hopefully they can kill competition to avoid it. Look at Amazon, if you come up with a new idea they haven't they compete and kill you or buy you.
As for innovation...
This electric car thing is just like photography, with a lot more zeros and cultural, financial and environmental impact. It's going to flip seemingly overnight. Buzz has already started, you don't want to buy a new gasoline powered car because when electric reaches critical mass it'll be worth nothing. All this blowback about the lack of charging stations... You don't hold back the future because its evolution is bumpy.
Let's be clear, China is an authoritarian state. Therefore decisions can be made and implemented quickly. Whereas America is something akin to democracy.
Now one party is leaning towards autocracy, but once again its goal is not a great leap forward, but a theoretical leap back. Putting its finger in the dike of progress, which happens elsewhere and then the dam breaks and America is overwhelmed by the flood.
We used to have national goals, like putting a man on the moon.
Now all we've got is gotcha. That's what the news is. This or that person was caught in flagrante delicto.
Most Americans have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world. Forget having a driver's license to vote, every American needs a passport. And a national program taking every American citizen to a foreign country, so their horizons are widened, discussion is fomented, and a path forward can be created. Instead, we're arguing about teaching race in school, removing books from libraries. All that does is create an ever more ignorant populace, which those in power like, know-nothings are easier to control.
In truth, we're in the equivalent of a space race with China. Never mind the Asian nation buying up natural resources to make electric automobiles while Americans debate their utility. We're debating the present with no vision into the future. And if anybody wants to push the nation forward they're a crank. Yes, it happens on the left too.
We need a national reset. Instead of patting ourselves on the back, telling ourselves how great we are, we must realize that our self-professed title as the greatest country in the world is in jeopardy, if not already history. I don't want to hear about everybody wanting to immigrate here... Sure, America is still great in some aspects but we need to stop trumpeting those and see what we're missing, what we need to achieve!
This is what leaders are supposed to do.
And the tired old man in the White House can't, because he's not digitally native.
As for his opponent...he doesn't even appear smart enough to understand the concepts, never mind take appropriate action. He'd rather share state secrets with our enemies, become friends with dictators while the countries run under democracies run circles around them. Can you say North Korea and South Korea, can you say Russia and Western Europe?
We are at a critical point in American history. We cannot survive without the rest of the world. The pandemic taught us this. Furthermore, we cannot bring all manufacturing back to the States, it does not make economic sense. No, what we need to do is strengthen ourselves, create new bargaining chips. And for the past few decades that's always been intellectual property, whether it be entertainment or technology. Not only is the biggest social media company the Chinese TikTok, but the biggest musical act is Bad Bunny, who sings in Spanish!
That's why we can't make our country smaller, but bigger. We need to look outside our boundaries, see the advancements of others, the changes. We can't be so nationalistic that we close the doors, that's economic death, never mind cultural decline.
But we want to debate whether Elon Musk, a myopic bro, should be forced to buy Twitter.
Our entire nation has a security issue. And it's not only e-mail addresses and passwords, it's raw economics. We're fighting over social issues while China is eating our lunch.
We need to wake up, get our priorities straight and take action.
NOW!
--
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Music News-This Week On SiriusXM
What do you read/hear and where.
Tune in today, August 23rd, to Volume 106, 6 PM East, 3 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive
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Tune in today, August 23rd, to Volume 106, 6 PM East, 3 PM West.
Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863
Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive
Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive
If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive
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Monday 22 August 2022
Mailbag-Cash/Pickleball/More
RE: PANDEMIC CHANGES
Travel to Europe lately? Essentially cashless with the occasional exception such as a mom and pop convenience store. For years Europe accepted credit cards at the table when tabbing out at a restaurant. What took the U.S. so long? We are not the progressive society we posit to ourselves and the world.
What is laughable is Ralph's does not accept Apple Pay because Kroger has their own mobile payment app…Kroger Pay!?! Have you been to any Farmer's Market lately? If Apple Pay is not accepted, Venmo certainly is. One of the valets in my building that washes my car every two weeks accepts Venmo.
Lol…I never hear anyone mention Samsung Pay. Don't get me started on Android. Give me a break. Apple owns my conveniences and I embrace all of it, thank you very much.
Andrew Paciocco
_______________________________________
just walked two miles to my nearby Ralph's
turns out - they do not take Apple Pay. you need to download "Kroger Pay" instead, which i tried to do (along with two Ralph's employees) but couldn't get it to work, so i left.
having just read your article, i just wanted to yell "But Bob said so!"
love the letter. keep 'em coming!
biff butler
_______________________________________
I just spent a month in Iceland and Norway. Never got a penny of local currency. Tapped my card everywhere, for everything. Makes travel a breeze.
Bob Langlie
_______________________________________
A colleague of mine took her 4 year old daughter to a coffee shop and gave the girl a $10 bill to pay for the drinks. The girl tried to tap the money on top of the credit card reader.
Cash is dead.
Mark McMillan
_______________________________________
Amen, my trip to UK last year and more travel so far this year proved the point about the irrelevance of cash. Quite a few shops in London, Portugal etc. had signs saying 'cash not accepted'. I got used to 'tap and go' and loved it. I don't bother getting Pounds or Euros anymore. I get a better exchange rate with a good credit card. You just have to remember to make sure you have a card that doesn't charge a foreign transaction fee. I didn't realize the first time and ended up with charges of 4 cents for a coffee here and $2.15 for lunch there. It was ridiculous.
John Brodey
_______________________________________
I went to the BOA cash window yesterday. I wanted 60$ in my wallet cause a was gonna fly a friend down to Lawrence, MA to grab breakfast at a place that takes cash only.
I drop in the card, enter my pin and the prompt tells me it only doles out C-notes. I'm like "WTF"? Is this part of inflation or is the state of Maine short on 20 dollar bills?
Seriously?
Will Eggleston
_______________________________________
The problem with not accepting cash, however is that we are now down to where even the mere act of doing anything related to commerce involves a fee, which is just kinda insane on the face of it. Taxes are one thing, but a 7 year old should be able to sell lemonade without incurring credit card fees. I call it the ticketmasterization of society, people are just used to getting jacked for literally everything.
Jeff Gorlechen
_______________________________________
It's totally true.
I no longer use cash at all anymore.
Okay, at the car wash; they love cash. But really, that's it!
It's only Apply Pay, in several different EU countries I travel though regularly.
Cash is pointless. I have numerous cards in AP in several different currencies, and it's super smooth and basically perfect; never fails. They totally nailed it!
And, do I worry about being tracked?
Really!!
Is that even a thing?
And do I really give a shit??
Hmm, they're tracking me anyway, so you know..,
No!
Hiding is a fallacy…
What difference does it make anyway? None
Come on, are you really "at large"??
Of course you're not!
There's way larger issues then that one, really; look around
Maybe that's the point, right??
No, of course it's not!
Who f'n cares, not me. And I'm 60!! Technically inept.
This is reality, this is the future, this is 2022. Just f'n wait!
Five years, tops. Then what??
Oh man, you will see, yes…, all of us will.
Sacha Spindler
_______________________________________
Without cash, we can't buy weed. So, until it's federally legal, cash is necessary. In fact, cash is necessary for most things illegal…
Drew Ferrante
_______________________________________
During the pandemic I was made redundant from my chosen profession and spent some considerable time doing other things before I settled on working for the cinema chain currently in dire straits.
First off, we get a BBC report online long before we hear anything from above in the UK. Y'know, the usual BS, 'everything's fine' 'keep trading' 'we're gonna get thru this' and 'business as usual.'
Of course, we are in the building every day, and it's been dead not just because of the poor fare that's coming out of Hollywood, but because of the weather here these past 6 weeks.
Everybody decided to forgo the cinema and enjoy a very different kind of British Summer. We had a solid month of late 20s and early 30s weather. Honestly, July was a wipe out, cinemas were a ghost town.
So what happens next? Well Cineworld, and the chain the 'local' chain they own, Picturehouse, have quite a few top rented sites in London. And I mean big rents. Many of them were underperforming even before the last month of the heatwave.
Supposed tent pole movies like Nope, Dr Strange and Thor have failed to get the crowds needed to keep paying the bills, we're chronically understaffed, we're still one of the lowest paid sectors in the UK. I could go on…
Remember cinemas rent these movies from distributors. They control the price and they take up to 80% of all ticket prices. Wanna show Thor on first week of release? Good. Distributors take 80% of the ticket price you charge, and you gotta show it an allotted number of times. Also that hard drive with the digital file the distributors send you locks after a week, so you can only show it with the code they send: weekly!
Cinema survived TV when it first popped up, survived VHS and DVD, but it won't survive streaming. It's too expensive, screening rooms are still largely full of morons on their phones, and why spend money on tickets, food and a babysitter when you can stream whatever you want, with the kids tucked up in bed in the next room?
I love cinema and I still love going to see movies, mostly old ones tho, but cinema is taking too many punches, pre and post pandemic to survive
Gary James Clarke
_______________________________________
When I swapped my first iPhone for my 2nd one, many years ago, I did so at a T-Mobile shop because I'm a longtime T-Mobile user (since it was Omnipoint and Voicestream, over 20 years now), but they said they couldn't add AppleCare, I had to do that through Apple (they've since been able to do so more recently). So I drove over to the Apple Store where one of their floating reps offered to help me, and sold me AppleCare and then asked me how I wanted to pay for it. In the Apple Store. I said, "I have ApplePay," to which he sheepishly responded, "oh, right."
I have a $5 bill in my pocket that's been there for weeks. Just in case. I think I've used cash almost exclusively for service-related tips (shuttle van drivers, hotel bellman) for years now.
As for movie theatres, I said two years ago that I wouldn't invest in movie theatre chains but that individual theatres in major cities, mostly probably owned by studios (including Netflix, Amazon, etc), would survive as launch locations for major films, especially big-budget action and comic-based ones, where a live audience can trigger word-of-mouth. Films for adults, script-driven, will primarily launch and live on cable/satellite/streaming.
Speaking of streaming, I think you've said this before, but I'll say it now. Too many separate subscriptions. At least with music it's pretty much all on the major services. But HBO, Paramount, Disney, Discovery, Netflix, etc. Too complicated to manage.
Toby Mamis
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
RE: E-MAIL OF THE DAY
My niece's 8-year old son wanted some sort of lizard for a pet, which cost something like $150 at PetSmart. She told him he'd have to earn the money, so the first idea he had was a lemonade stand. He set up in front of their house. She figured he'd learn a little about money, and give up after a short time. He did a little cash business, but when my niece put a picture of him on Instagram and told the story of what he was doing, friends and relatives started Venmo-ing money to her on his behalf and he had his lizard paid for within about 15 minutes, to her astonishment and chagrin! He got his lizard and didn't even have to sell much lemonade.
Mike Blakesley
_______________________________________
Hey, Bob,
For Mike's daughter and all enterprising people out there… we won't need a separate card reader as the emerging technology is "Tap to Pay" as part of Apple Pay. You can transform your phone into a card reading device to accept payments!
Here:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contactless-payments-via-tap-to-pay-on-iphone/
I've been in the music and media industry since 16. I'm 41 and transitioned full-time into Tech and start-ups for the past five years. Music is my part-time thing now, my hobby. The Business is elsewhere.
Ciarán O'Toole
_______________________________________
Was just at the Hollywood Bowl tonight, second time since the pandemic (didn't try buying anything the first time). Stacked parking took cash, but inside the bowl Satan's Cashless Society!
Cheers, Mark Southland
_______________________________________
I just wonder when bank cards will be gone! We don't need them in a digital age.
In Sweden we have Swish which is very secure as it is connected to an electronic ID (BankID). When will this happen in US? Like a secure digital SSN approved as an offical ID, just as a passport. We can't use apple ID or facebook or any account as an ID in the digital age
With a digital eID a lot of innovation will happen.
In Sweden Mike's daughter would use Swish to receive payment from 'customers'
Even beggars in the street uses Swish as nobody is carrying cash any longer.
Br
Mikael Codiqo
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
RE: PICKLEBALL
That is not to say pickleball is easy, potentially. Like badminton. It's based on progressing IF you have the desire to improve. Then it becomes a matter of reaching one level and then learning a whole other set of strategies and skills to take you up. Everybody's max is different. You can also, just stay at the same level if you desire.
Think about all the public tennis courts sitting mostly idle. Up here we converted two private tennis courts into six pickleball courts. So in the same space, instead of maxing out with 8 tennis players (doubles), with PB you can have 24 playing at the same time. Shorter games=more people can have court time. Inner cities need to think about this. It is exploding. I play 5 or 6 days a week. In the last three years, our club membership has gone from 55 to 205. It's more social than tennis and people kibbitz have fun etc. I'm not surprised this woman invited you. That's the nature of the game. I'm a 3.5 player and addicted.
John Brodey
_______________________________________
This is my 5th summer and first year of full Pickleball play. The sport has changed a bit since the pandemic, but is still very social. The bigger issue is the "fight" coming from tennis in a resort town like Park City. There is limited space left to put in recreation facilities and tennis is putting up a huge stink about Pickleball lines on their courts, or even converting less used tennis courts to Pickleball courts.
While I don't share the sentiment that tennis will die, it will certainly wane in popularity. Anecdotally in Summit County (where Park City is located) most of the surrounding areas can't build enough courts fast enough. Just outside of Park City there's a venue where 2 tennis courts were converted to 8 Pickleball courts; every morning (when there isn't snow or rain) the courts are packed 8 courts full and usually about a 6 courts of players waiting to rotate on after each game. In the afternoons it's usually very similar. While the two other tennis courts at that venue that still exist are rarely if ever used.
One venue in town is now exploring putting up acoustic fence covering to help mitigate some of the sound. As a musician and sound engineer I've been helping with that process. When playing indoors in an untreated space I will wear my custom Westone earplugs to help me stay focused on my court of play. But outdoors I don't have an issue.
The Park City Pickleball club started with about 25 members 3 years ago. It now has a membership of over 1,000. The sport has definitely exploded in popularity. I believe it is due to the social aspect of the game and that a player can find any level of game from beginner to 5.0 and enjoy it. For more advanced players there is definitely a skill factor and high speed pace that keeps the game interesting. I view Pickleball like Othello. It's pretty easy to learn, but can be hard to master.
The fun part for me is getting to an advanced level and much like music, some companies start taking notice and endorse or sponsor players. I might be the first career musician with a Pickleball sponsorship, which is pretty exciting - much like the first music endorsements I got in my music career. It's a fun game and chances are it will hit the olympics soon.
Jody Whitesides
_______________________________________
A month ago, I was visiting my hometown of Memphis and drove through an affluent, old-money neighborhood and what I saw shocked me. Two of the houses had Pickleball courts IN THEIR FRONT YARD! The landscaping around one of them was beautiful. There were chairs and benches all around the courts. It looked like it could have been on the cover of Garden & Gun. The other one was nice but not like the other house. I was aware of the game before, but seeing these courts was the moment I realized how big it is. Some of my fondest memories from youth were playing soccer and football in the front yard during the fall. It was the social hub of the neighborhood. I can see the allure of the neighbors walking up and hanging out around the court in the front yard, drinking mint juleps, smoking cannabis, and playing Pickleball.
Michael Patterson
_______________________________________
Bob, people have no idea what is coming with Pickleball. I took tennis lessons and the courts were empty and a few hundred feet away 20 Pickleball courts were constantly full. My wife and I joined 1,500 other Pickleball members in our community in 2018 and have not looked back. 2-3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Tournaments twice a month. Many of our friends are people we met playing Pickleball.
And now we have these awesome new facilities in Maricopa County like Bell Bank Park - 41 courts including a 2,500 seat center court for televised tournaments. Both the PPA and APP play there. You can play in the same tournament the pros play in, they'll be playing on the court next to you and will stop and talk to you between matches. Not many other sports offer you that opportunity. And the pros remember your name - when they see you six months later they remember you.
You can become a reasonable Pickleball player with a month of effort - not a great player but one who can keep points going and have fun with many peers with comparable skills. All for a $200 paddle and some court shoes.
And the exercise - my blood pressure improved dramatically playing this sport. Such good exercise.
It's a really fun and social sport. Thank you for mentioning it.
Thanks,
Kevin Hillstrom
_______________________________________
I played pickleball 3x a week for most of 2020 and well into 2021. I could play outdoors with other people and we all wore masks while playing. Doubles is the most popular and the most fun. It does not take a lot of running around, but a skill set is required and one can improve with a reasonable amount of practice. We even set up a net and chalked the court lines in an empty parking lot, while the official courts were closed during lock-down. Its increased popularity is definitely pandemic-induced.
Susan Rosenbluth
_______________________________________
Ha! I play every day. Every. Single. Day.
Great community, lots of laughing, in a word: satisfying. These divisive days, it's great to find a place with zero politics, all fun.
Lesley Bracker
_______________________________________
It's about time you mentioned the worlds fastest growing sport! Thank you!
BTW in pickleball world we say: "I drank the kool-aid".
I'm a total addict and I my mix music and humour with Pickleball (for real....) https://fb.watch/f1moZhTFnt/.
In fact I'm a bit worried about sharing this info so widely but pickleball has brought me a whole new audience.
Anyhow for anyone recently addicted, welcome to the club!
Rachael Chatoor
Pickleball addict and musician/singer/songwriter
www.rachaelchatoor.com
_______________________________________
Don't forget disc golf eventually replacing golf. It has far lower cost to buy equipment, uses less land to play on, fewer resources to maintain each course, can be built in woodlands, and is full of strategy. I got into it after seeing this 250-foot shot to force a playoff at the World Championships getting #1 on Sportscenter Top 10. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-w1TWtMsDus
Extra angles: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOhO7FfVQlE
The more you research the game, the more you realize how absurdly difficult that throw-in was. To be very brief, he basically had to throw against his body for a left to right shot, all while looking into the setting sun. Also, the course's high altitude and temperature made it very challenging to create the needed curve in the shot.
Take care,
Michael Ball
Kensington, MD
_______________________________________
There is an analogy here. As pickelball is to tennis, disc golf is to golf. I believe that disc golf is emerging much like your description here for how pickleball is growing.
They are both easier to learn than the sport they are displacing. They are sports you can take up later in life knowing you will never be great but legitimately recognizing that you can improve a lot with practice. The cost of taking up the sport is low. The cost of setting up new places to play is not significant - especially when you are displacing unused tennis courts or golf courses. Both are social, fun sports where current players are remarkably likely to invite a non-player to give it a try. Neither has any of the pretentiousness of the sport it is displacing.
In my area (the Western Carolinas), forests in public parks that were long neglected have had local players carve you disc golf courses all through them. What follows is that the broader use of a neglected forest that were once filled with litter and garbage are now clean, filled with hiking paths and dog parks all because of what the disc golf course jumpstarted.
The pandemic led to explosive growth for older adults (like me) taking up disc golf. It's an outdoor sport where maintaining distance from other players is easy. I don't know if this applies to pickleball but I bet the pandemic drove growth of that sport too.
Both are growing at a crazy pace but both are unstructured organizations with very little data to document that growth. There is an app called U-Disc where disc golf course managers can easily load their course into the app. Then, anybody with the app can easily keep their own scorecard for every round they play on pretty much every course in the world. 10 years ago, individual disc golf players recorded about 7000 rounds of disc golf using the U-Disc app. In 2022, it is estimated that 17 MILLION rounds of disc golf will be recorded in that same app. Some of that is just about the growth of the app but, nonetheless, it is a remarkable data point for the overall growth of the sport.
Mark McLaughlin
BTW - as far as I can tell, the growth of the U-Disc app is 100% word-of-mouth between players. No marketing, no digital advertising tactics.
Crazy. Crazy good for all of us.
_______________________________________
The soft drink industry used to call their wider competition "share of stomach" that being the gross amount of liquid consumed by the average person each day versus how much of that space their given product filled up.
I wonder if what the music industry is dealing with is "share of ears" - the relative amount of listening time a given consumer allots to music versus podcasts, e-books, etc. Putting aside the relative merits of today's music for the moment, it can be argued that the Beatles never had to compete with This American Life and the like.
Rob Schlyecher
Vancouver BC
_______________________________________
Pickleball, Sport of the Future Injury?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/20/health/pickleball-sports-injury.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
tjlambert
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Travel to Europe lately? Essentially cashless with the occasional exception such as a mom and pop convenience store. For years Europe accepted credit cards at the table when tabbing out at a restaurant. What took the U.S. so long? We are not the progressive society we posit to ourselves and the world.
What is laughable is Ralph's does not accept Apple Pay because Kroger has their own mobile payment app…Kroger Pay!?! Have you been to any Farmer's Market lately? If Apple Pay is not accepted, Venmo certainly is. One of the valets in my building that washes my car every two weeks accepts Venmo.
Lol…I never hear anyone mention Samsung Pay. Don't get me started on Android. Give me a break. Apple owns my conveniences and I embrace all of it, thank you very much.
Andrew Paciocco
_______________________________________
just walked two miles to my nearby Ralph's
turns out - they do not take Apple Pay. you need to download "Kroger Pay" instead, which i tried to do (along with two Ralph's employees) but couldn't get it to work, so i left.
having just read your article, i just wanted to yell "But Bob said so!"
love the letter. keep 'em coming!
biff butler
_______________________________________
I just spent a month in Iceland and Norway. Never got a penny of local currency. Tapped my card everywhere, for everything. Makes travel a breeze.
Bob Langlie
_______________________________________
A colleague of mine took her 4 year old daughter to a coffee shop and gave the girl a $10 bill to pay for the drinks. The girl tried to tap the money on top of the credit card reader.
Cash is dead.
Mark McMillan
_______________________________________
Amen, my trip to UK last year and more travel so far this year proved the point about the irrelevance of cash. Quite a few shops in London, Portugal etc. had signs saying 'cash not accepted'. I got used to 'tap and go' and loved it. I don't bother getting Pounds or Euros anymore. I get a better exchange rate with a good credit card. You just have to remember to make sure you have a card that doesn't charge a foreign transaction fee. I didn't realize the first time and ended up with charges of 4 cents for a coffee here and $2.15 for lunch there. It was ridiculous.
John Brodey
_______________________________________
I went to the BOA cash window yesterday. I wanted 60$ in my wallet cause a was gonna fly a friend down to Lawrence, MA to grab breakfast at a place that takes cash only.
I drop in the card, enter my pin and the prompt tells me it only doles out C-notes. I'm like "WTF"? Is this part of inflation or is the state of Maine short on 20 dollar bills?
Seriously?
Will Eggleston
_______________________________________
The problem with not accepting cash, however is that we are now down to where even the mere act of doing anything related to commerce involves a fee, which is just kinda insane on the face of it. Taxes are one thing, but a 7 year old should be able to sell lemonade without incurring credit card fees. I call it the ticketmasterization of society, people are just used to getting jacked for literally everything.
Jeff Gorlechen
_______________________________________
It's totally true.
I no longer use cash at all anymore.
Okay, at the car wash; they love cash. But really, that's it!
It's only Apply Pay, in several different EU countries I travel though regularly.
Cash is pointless. I have numerous cards in AP in several different currencies, and it's super smooth and basically perfect; never fails. They totally nailed it!
And, do I worry about being tracked?
Really!!
Is that even a thing?
And do I really give a shit??
Hmm, they're tracking me anyway, so you know..,
No!
Hiding is a fallacy…
What difference does it make anyway? None
Come on, are you really "at large"??
Of course you're not!
There's way larger issues then that one, really; look around
Maybe that's the point, right??
No, of course it's not!
Who f'n cares, not me. And I'm 60!! Technically inept.
This is reality, this is the future, this is 2022. Just f'n wait!
Five years, tops. Then what??
Oh man, you will see, yes…, all of us will.
Sacha Spindler
_______________________________________
Without cash, we can't buy weed. So, until it's federally legal, cash is necessary. In fact, cash is necessary for most things illegal…
Drew Ferrante
_______________________________________
During the pandemic I was made redundant from my chosen profession and spent some considerable time doing other things before I settled on working for the cinema chain currently in dire straits.
First off, we get a BBC report online long before we hear anything from above in the UK. Y'know, the usual BS, 'everything's fine' 'keep trading' 'we're gonna get thru this' and 'business as usual.'
Of course, we are in the building every day, and it's been dead not just because of the poor fare that's coming out of Hollywood, but because of the weather here these past 6 weeks.
Everybody decided to forgo the cinema and enjoy a very different kind of British Summer. We had a solid month of late 20s and early 30s weather. Honestly, July was a wipe out, cinemas were a ghost town.
So what happens next? Well Cineworld, and the chain the 'local' chain they own, Picturehouse, have quite a few top rented sites in London. And I mean big rents. Many of them were underperforming even before the last month of the heatwave.
Supposed tent pole movies like Nope, Dr Strange and Thor have failed to get the crowds needed to keep paying the bills, we're chronically understaffed, we're still one of the lowest paid sectors in the UK. I could go on…
Remember cinemas rent these movies from distributors. They control the price and they take up to 80% of all ticket prices. Wanna show Thor on first week of release? Good. Distributors take 80% of the ticket price you charge, and you gotta show it an allotted number of times. Also that hard drive with the digital file the distributors send you locks after a week, so you can only show it with the code they send: weekly!
Cinema survived TV when it first popped up, survived VHS and DVD, but it won't survive streaming. It's too expensive, screening rooms are still largely full of morons on their phones, and why spend money on tickets, food and a babysitter when you can stream whatever you want, with the kids tucked up in bed in the next room?
I love cinema and I still love going to see movies, mostly old ones tho, but cinema is taking too many punches, pre and post pandemic to survive
Gary James Clarke
_______________________________________
When I swapped my first iPhone for my 2nd one, many years ago, I did so at a T-Mobile shop because I'm a longtime T-Mobile user (since it was Omnipoint and Voicestream, over 20 years now), but they said they couldn't add AppleCare, I had to do that through Apple (they've since been able to do so more recently). So I drove over to the Apple Store where one of their floating reps offered to help me, and sold me AppleCare and then asked me how I wanted to pay for it. In the Apple Store. I said, "I have ApplePay," to which he sheepishly responded, "oh, right."
I have a $5 bill in my pocket that's been there for weeks. Just in case. I think I've used cash almost exclusively for service-related tips (shuttle van drivers, hotel bellman) for years now.
As for movie theatres, I said two years ago that I wouldn't invest in movie theatre chains but that individual theatres in major cities, mostly probably owned by studios (including Netflix, Amazon, etc), would survive as launch locations for major films, especially big-budget action and comic-based ones, where a live audience can trigger word-of-mouth. Films for adults, script-driven, will primarily launch and live on cable/satellite/streaming.
Speaking of streaming, I think you've said this before, but I'll say it now. Too many separate subscriptions. At least with music it's pretty much all on the major services. But HBO, Paramount, Disney, Discovery, Netflix, etc. Too complicated to manage.
Toby Mamis
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
RE: E-MAIL OF THE DAY
My niece's 8-year old son wanted some sort of lizard for a pet, which cost something like $150 at PetSmart. She told him he'd have to earn the money, so the first idea he had was a lemonade stand. He set up in front of their house. She figured he'd learn a little about money, and give up after a short time. He did a little cash business, but when my niece put a picture of him on Instagram and told the story of what he was doing, friends and relatives started Venmo-ing money to her on his behalf and he had his lizard paid for within about 15 minutes, to her astonishment and chagrin! He got his lizard and didn't even have to sell much lemonade.
Mike Blakesley
_______________________________________
Hey, Bob,
For Mike's daughter and all enterprising people out there… we won't need a separate card reader as the emerging technology is "Tap to Pay" as part of Apple Pay. You can transform your phone into a card reading device to accept payments!
Here:
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/apple-unveils-contactless-payments-via-tap-to-pay-on-iphone/
I've been in the music and media industry since 16. I'm 41 and transitioned full-time into Tech and start-ups for the past five years. Music is my part-time thing now, my hobby. The Business is elsewhere.
Ciarán O'Toole
_______________________________________
Was just at the Hollywood Bowl tonight, second time since the pandemic (didn't try buying anything the first time). Stacked parking took cash, but inside the bowl Satan's Cashless Society!
Cheers, Mark Southland
_______________________________________
I just wonder when bank cards will be gone! We don't need them in a digital age.
In Sweden we have Swish which is very secure as it is connected to an electronic ID (BankID). When will this happen in US? Like a secure digital SSN approved as an offical ID, just as a passport. We can't use apple ID or facebook or any account as an ID in the digital age
With a digital eID a lot of innovation will happen.
In Sweden Mike's daughter would use Swish to receive payment from 'customers'
Even beggars in the street uses Swish as nobody is carrying cash any longer.
Br
Mikael Codiqo
_______________________________________
_______________________________________
RE: PICKLEBALL
That is not to say pickleball is easy, potentially. Like badminton. It's based on progressing IF you have the desire to improve. Then it becomes a matter of reaching one level and then learning a whole other set of strategies and skills to take you up. Everybody's max is different. You can also, just stay at the same level if you desire.
Think about all the public tennis courts sitting mostly idle. Up here we converted two private tennis courts into six pickleball courts. So in the same space, instead of maxing out with 8 tennis players (doubles), with PB you can have 24 playing at the same time. Shorter games=more people can have court time. Inner cities need to think about this. It is exploding. I play 5 or 6 days a week. In the last three years, our club membership has gone from 55 to 205. It's more social than tennis and people kibbitz have fun etc. I'm not surprised this woman invited you. That's the nature of the game. I'm a 3.5 player and addicted.
John Brodey
_______________________________________
This is my 5th summer and first year of full Pickleball play. The sport has changed a bit since the pandemic, but is still very social. The bigger issue is the "fight" coming from tennis in a resort town like Park City. There is limited space left to put in recreation facilities and tennis is putting up a huge stink about Pickleball lines on their courts, or even converting less used tennis courts to Pickleball courts.
While I don't share the sentiment that tennis will die, it will certainly wane in popularity. Anecdotally in Summit County (where Park City is located) most of the surrounding areas can't build enough courts fast enough. Just outside of Park City there's a venue where 2 tennis courts were converted to 8 Pickleball courts; every morning (when there isn't snow or rain) the courts are packed 8 courts full and usually about a 6 courts of players waiting to rotate on after each game. In the afternoons it's usually very similar. While the two other tennis courts at that venue that still exist are rarely if ever used.
One venue in town is now exploring putting up acoustic fence covering to help mitigate some of the sound. As a musician and sound engineer I've been helping with that process. When playing indoors in an untreated space I will wear my custom Westone earplugs to help me stay focused on my court of play. But outdoors I don't have an issue.
The Park City Pickleball club started with about 25 members 3 years ago. It now has a membership of over 1,000. The sport has definitely exploded in popularity. I believe it is due to the social aspect of the game and that a player can find any level of game from beginner to 5.0 and enjoy it. For more advanced players there is definitely a skill factor and high speed pace that keeps the game interesting. I view Pickleball like Othello. It's pretty easy to learn, but can be hard to master.
The fun part for me is getting to an advanced level and much like music, some companies start taking notice and endorse or sponsor players. I might be the first career musician with a Pickleball sponsorship, which is pretty exciting - much like the first music endorsements I got in my music career. It's a fun game and chances are it will hit the olympics soon.
Jody Whitesides
_______________________________________
A month ago, I was visiting my hometown of Memphis and drove through an affluent, old-money neighborhood and what I saw shocked me. Two of the houses had Pickleball courts IN THEIR FRONT YARD! The landscaping around one of them was beautiful. There were chairs and benches all around the courts. It looked like it could have been on the cover of Garden & Gun. The other one was nice but not like the other house. I was aware of the game before, but seeing these courts was the moment I realized how big it is. Some of my fondest memories from youth were playing soccer and football in the front yard during the fall. It was the social hub of the neighborhood. I can see the allure of the neighbors walking up and hanging out around the court in the front yard, drinking mint juleps, smoking cannabis, and playing Pickleball.
Michael Patterson
_______________________________________
Bob, people have no idea what is coming with Pickleball. I took tennis lessons and the courts were empty and a few hundred feet away 20 Pickleball courts were constantly full. My wife and I joined 1,500 other Pickleball members in our community in 2018 and have not looked back. 2-3 hours a day, 5 days a week. Tournaments twice a month. Many of our friends are people we met playing Pickleball.
And now we have these awesome new facilities in Maricopa County like Bell Bank Park - 41 courts including a 2,500 seat center court for televised tournaments. Both the PPA and APP play there. You can play in the same tournament the pros play in, they'll be playing on the court next to you and will stop and talk to you between matches. Not many other sports offer you that opportunity. And the pros remember your name - when they see you six months later they remember you.
You can become a reasonable Pickleball player with a month of effort - not a great player but one who can keep points going and have fun with many peers with comparable skills. All for a $200 paddle and some court shoes.
And the exercise - my blood pressure improved dramatically playing this sport. Such good exercise.
It's a really fun and social sport. Thank you for mentioning it.
Thanks,
Kevin Hillstrom
_______________________________________
I played pickleball 3x a week for most of 2020 and well into 2021. I could play outdoors with other people and we all wore masks while playing. Doubles is the most popular and the most fun. It does not take a lot of running around, but a skill set is required and one can improve with a reasonable amount of practice. We even set up a net and chalked the court lines in an empty parking lot, while the official courts were closed during lock-down. Its increased popularity is definitely pandemic-induced.
Susan Rosenbluth
_______________________________________
Ha! I play every day. Every. Single. Day.
Great community, lots of laughing, in a word: satisfying. These divisive days, it's great to find a place with zero politics, all fun.
Lesley Bracker
_______________________________________
It's about time you mentioned the worlds fastest growing sport! Thank you!
BTW in pickleball world we say: "I drank the kool-aid".
I'm a total addict and I my mix music and humour with Pickleball (for real....) https://fb.watch/f1moZhTFnt/.
In fact I'm a bit worried about sharing this info so widely but pickleball has brought me a whole new audience.
Anyhow for anyone recently addicted, welcome to the club!
Rachael Chatoor
Pickleball addict and musician/singer/songwriter
www.rachaelchatoor.com
_______________________________________
Don't forget disc golf eventually replacing golf. It has far lower cost to buy equipment, uses less land to play on, fewer resources to maintain each course, can be built in woodlands, and is full of strategy. I got into it after seeing this 250-foot shot to force a playoff at the World Championships getting #1 on Sportscenter Top 10. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-w1TWtMsDus
Extra angles: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eOhO7FfVQlE
The more you research the game, the more you realize how absurdly difficult that throw-in was. To be very brief, he basically had to throw against his body for a left to right shot, all while looking into the setting sun. Also, the course's high altitude and temperature made it very challenging to create the needed curve in the shot.
Take care,
Michael Ball
Kensington, MD
_______________________________________
There is an analogy here. As pickelball is to tennis, disc golf is to golf. I believe that disc golf is emerging much like your description here for how pickleball is growing.
They are both easier to learn than the sport they are displacing. They are sports you can take up later in life knowing you will never be great but legitimately recognizing that you can improve a lot with practice. The cost of taking up the sport is low. The cost of setting up new places to play is not significant - especially when you are displacing unused tennis courts or golf courses. Both are social, fun sports where current players are remarkably likely to invite a non-player to give it a try. Neither has any of the pretentiousness of the sport it is displacing.
In my area (the Western Carolinas), forests in public parks that were long neglected have had local players carve you disc golf courses all through them. What follows is that the broader use of a neglected forest that were once filled with litter and garbage are now clean, filled with hiking paths and dog parks all because of what the disc golf course jumpstarted.
The pandemic led to explosive growth for older adults (like me) taking up disc golf. It's an outdoor sport where maintaining distance from other players is easy. I don't know if this applies to pickleball but I bet the pandemic drove growth of that sport too.
Both are growing at a crazy pace but both are unstructured organizations with very little data to document that growth. There is an app called U-Disc where disc golf course managers can easily load their course into the app. Then, anybody with the app can easily keep their own scorecard for every round they play on pretty much every course in the world. 10 years ago, individual disc golf players recorded about 7000 rounds of disc golf using the U-Disc app. In 2022, it is estimated that 17 MILLION rounds of disc golf will be recorded in that same app. Some of that is just about the growth of the app but, nonetheless, it is a remarkable data point for the overall growth of the sport.
Mark McLaughlin
BTW - as far as I can tell, the growth of the U-Disc app is 100% word-of-mouth between players. No marketing, no digital advertising tactics.
Crazy. Crazy good for all of us.
_______________________________________
The soft drink industry used to call their wider competition "share of stomach" that being the gross amount of liquid consumed by the average person each day versus how much of that space their given product filled up.
I wonder if what the music industry is dealing with is "share of ears" - the relative amount of listening time a given consumer allots to music versus podcasts, e-books, etc. Putting aside the relative merits of today's music for the moment, it can be argued that the Beatles never had to compete with This American Life and the like.
Rob Schlyecher
Vancouver BC
_______________________________________
Pickleball, Sport of the Future Injury?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/20/health/pickleball-sports-injury.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
tjlambert
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Sunday 21 August 2022
E-Mail Of The Day
Re: Pandemic Changes
Bob, you are so correct about the pandemic killing off cash.
My daughter armed her first lemonade stand in our middle class neighborhood this Friday; she needed to post my wife's Venmo, and after the experience, she told me she needs to take credit cards or Apple Pay for next time. People assumed she could accept credit cards.
"Dad, we need this card reader thingy…"
She's seven.
Mike Vial
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Bob, you are so correct about the pandemic killing off cash.
My daughter armed her first lemonade stand in our middle class neighborhood this Friday; she needed to post my wife's Venmo, and after the experience, she told me she needs to take credit cards or Apple Pay for next time. People assumed she could accept credit cards.
"Dad, we need this card reader thingy…"
She's seven.
Mike Vial
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Pandemic Changes
In March 2021, I got $500 from the bank.
I still have $300.
And I'm kind of uptight, because it's all in C-notes, which are traditionally hard to break. But I never need to, because I can pay with my credit card or Apple Pay EVERYWHERE!
I predicted back in 2014 that Apple Pay was the hit, not Taylor Swift's "1989."
"Is Apple Pay Bigger Than 1989?": https://bit.ly/3Aa7Eit
When was the last time you heard "Shake It Off," never mind another cut from "1989"?
First and foremost, modern music does not last. It's made for the moment. And if you don't have a moment, it's like it never existed. Whereas tech, money...
"Wait, When Did Everyone Start Using Apple Pay? - It took longer than expected for the iPhone to become a wallet. But the patience of Apple is slowly paying off.": https://on.wsj.com/3PEkRpt
You see Apple Pay was new and different, like a classic rock band. Starting slowly and then eventually not only triumphing, but becoming dominant and lasting. The faster the ascension, the quicker the descension, and vice versa.
Paying with your phone was new in the U.S. Apple fanatics and early adopters instantly used Apple Pay, and now the numbers have increased dramatically.
But the real story here is cash is dead. The pandemic killed it. Nobody in real life wanted to touch your hands or your money, and you need a credit card to buy online and...
There has been a low level backlash to the elimination of cash. Saying that the underclass doesn't have access to cards. But the solution here is to get them cheap cards, not to try and keep cash alive. Why is it governments always want us to slow down for the minority, oftentimes small, instead of jumping into the future and ultimately satisfying everyone. Yes, even homeless people have phones. This is how tech triumphed, by pushing the envelope. Steve Jobs abandoned the old to implement the new. I still cannot see why Apple included two USB-A ports in their new Mac Studio. They were excised on previous product, and the Mac Studio is for pros, who have all the new stuff, and now they're accounting for the laggards? This sounds like Microsoft as opposed to Apple.
But... The pandemic killed cash. Not completely, please don't nitpick. The world has turned into gotcha, avoiding the bigger truths in evidence.
And it's not only the death of cash...
The media is inundated with stories of a return to normal, to what once was, before the pandemic, when in many cases this is untrue. Sure, people might have given up masks, but they're still not going back to the movies.
Have you checked the grosses? Only a few pics hit, superheroes and franchises like "Top Gun." Everything else fails. And box office still hasn't returned to the pre-pandemic levels. Evidenced by Regal Cinema having to declare bankruptcy:
"Regal Owner Cineworld Nears Bankruptcy as Theater Comeback Lags - Theater admissions aren't recovering fast enough for the world's second-largest cinema chain to keep up on its debts": https://on.wsj.com/3pxwx2D
Movie theatres will continue to exist, but going to the movies is a bad proposition time-wise and financially. The pandemic lockdown illustrated how much time everybody was wasting, commuting especially. Time is precious, they're not making more of it, and there's so much to do now. So to drive and park and overpay to see a movie with others who keep talking, even on their phones... You're paying the same amount, if not less, for a month of Netflix. And you can stop a flick whenever you want. And if what you're watching sucks, you can just can it, you don't feel ripped-off like you do when you see a bad movie.
As for Netflix and streaming...
For four months now we've been subjected to the story that streaming is in crisis, it's fallen off a cliff, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, in America there is saturation. But there are still opportunities in the rest of the world. And there's a ton of dollars waiting to be hoovered up by eliminating password sharing. Who knows why they don't. Are the people sharing passwords gonna bitch and cancel their subscriptions? No, they're not subscribed to begin with!
But the truth is streaming has already won:
"Streaming Tops Cable-TV Viewing for the First Time - Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and other platforms set records for share of U.S. viewing time in July": https://on.wsj.com/3pFfyva
"Streaming services captured 34.8% of total U.S. TV viewing time during the month, while cable TV attracted 34.4%, the ratings company (Nielsen) said in a release published Thursday. People spent 23% more time streaming content than a year earlier and 9% less time watching cable"
A return to normal? Just the opposite!
Just like credit/plastic killed cash, streaming is killing cable. It's never going in the other direction, to think otherwise is to expect CDs to burgeon.
You see we live in an on demand culture. We want to watch what we want to when we want to and if you're not offering your wares in that fashion they must be based on evanescence, like concerts or sports.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery is moving backward. It canceled its European development and production, killed nearly completed content and licensed existing content to third parties, which is how Netflix ate the traditional companies' lunch in the first place! Disney+ and HBO Max were late to begin with. And although Disney+ has a lot of customers, the truth is most people still pay for HBO through their cable company, they have not moved over to the app. And the funny thing is most of these people maintain a Netflix account!
Yes, you can be too early, just like you can be too late. But is now the time to bet on the cable version of HBO? Is now the time to cut down on content for HBO Max? Is now the time to pull movies from streaming and put them in theatres? Jason Kilar disrupted the movie exhibition paradigm and got Hollywood on his page, and now David Zaslav is undoing all this progress so he'll end up fighting this battle again down the line?
As for Zaslav... We've seen this movie before, with Jonathan Dolgen at Paramount. So beholden to the bottom line, Dolgen made money and decimated the studio in the process. Dolgen wanted sure shots with low budgets, genre pics. The talent went elsewhere and then so did the customers, to the point the paramount Paramount became a second tier studio that has yet to be revived, years after Dolgen's reign.
Yes, fiscal discipline is important, but Amazon taught us you don't go for profits too soon. Meanwhile, out of touch Wall Street is enthralled by Zaslav. Zaslav says fewer productions with higher quality is the way out. That worked for HBO on cable, but not in streaming, where you have to provide a plethora of product or the public stops subscribing.
But give HBO Max credit for offering a yearly subscription. All the streaming outlets should do this, to kill those who sign up for a month and then go. The solution is not to dribble out product, isn't the music business an object lesson here? If you don't give the people what they want, they're going to rebel, and it's going to hurt you, and it's just a matter of when.
But the bottom line is despite Americans romping around the country sans masks, we have not returned to the pre-pandemic baseline, it is not the same country it used to be. As for those talking about a return to in-person shopping... Yes, there is a bit of a bounce-back, but in truth shopping is a huge waste of time, and once again time is of the essence.
Why is everybody with traction convinced we are reverting to a past standard. This never works in tech, why should it work in entertainment?
And it doesn't.
But those executing the change, the cause of it, do not have an old school media mouthpiece. Oh, they do have a mouthpiece online, most definitely on TikTok, but all established business is promoting the China spying angle to kill it, and they still don't understand it. And now the youth are using TikTok for shopping:
"TikTok is starting to disrupt search. When it comes to shopping online, the journey almost always begins via search at either Amazon or Google, with Amazon holding a safe lead. Just 5% of U.S. adults start their product searches on TikTok. But the story changes dramatically among teens and older Gen Zs, 18% of whom start their shopping explorations on TikTok – a mere six percentage points less than Google. This is a trend to keep an eye on."
"TikTok Rising as a Go-To Search Engine Among Young Shoppers": https://bit.ly/3wlrINM
But today's "New York Times" printed a piece lamenting the death of landlines. Sure, landlines had some advantages, like being able to talk to your kid's friends, if only for an instant, but the advantages of mobile so far exceed those of landlines...
But the old media, the "Times" especially, is laden with stories lamenting a past we're never returning to. Because the writers are old.
And speaking of writers, you still get people saying they prefer ink and paper to the computer. Well, it takes a minute to adjust to a computer, bur writing and editing on a computer compared to paper is like writing on paper as opposed to chiseling the words in a rock.
I mean come on, not only is the future coming, in many cases it's here!
But too many have an investment in the past and believe that if they just keep telling people falsehoods, they can hold back progress. This is the right's paradigm. Republicans still haven't put forth a coherent health care plan to replace Obamacare. And they don't legislate, they just put a monkey wrench in the works. As for Fox News... Its whole game is making you fearful of the present, never mind the future, to agitate you to hold on to the past, a losing game from time immemorial. We've got interracial marriage, we've got gay marriage, take away rights and see what happens, turns out the silent majority wants them and won't give them up without a fight, which is happening right now with abortion.
"Dobbs abortion ruling leads more women to register to vote": https://wapo.st/3dJ9xen
Want to argue about spending, fiscal issues? This is what Republicans used to do. As for Democrats, it's a small minority who are agitating for woke ideology that most Democrats don't agree with, but that's become the story.
And this is not really about politics, except to say the only way to keep a country in the past is via authoritarianism. Which is why the right lauds Orban, but now the ruler of Hungary has a huge financial problem:
"Hungary's Orban, a Scourge of Liberals, Faces a New Foe: Economics - The Hungarian leader is being confronted with soaring inflation and a depreciating currency linked to unsustainable spending by his government.": https://nyti.ms/3AfVWTo
You need a video, not a static image. Which is why TikTok is killing Instagram. Instagram is late to the party with Reels and will never catch up. Meanwhile, rulers of the past, like the Kardashians, want no change, they're no different from the established media and corporations wanting to hold back the future, spreading disinformation to try and ensure this. IT CAN'T BE DONE!
So one can argue that we've got a return to normal re the pandemic.
But it's not the old normal, but a completely new one, which keeps evolving. Beware of those who try to convince you to live in the past. It might be good for them, but it's usually not good for you, and by not disrupting themselves, by sticking to the past, media and corporations sign their death warrant, or have them playing catch-up in the future, and usually losing.
To paraphrase George Harrison... Think for yourself 'cause they won't be there for you.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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
I still have $300.
And I'm kind of uptight, because it's all in C-notes, which are traditionally hard to break. But I never need to, because I can pay with my credit card or Apple Pay EVERYWHERE!
I predicted back in 2014 that Apple Pay was the hit, not Taylor Swift's "1989."
"Is Apple Pay Bigger Than 1989?": https://bit.ly/3Aa7Eit
When was the last time you heard "Shake It Off," never mind another cut from "1989"?
First and foremost, modern music does not last. It's made for the moment. And if you don't have a moment, it's like it never existed. Whereas tech, money...
"Wait, When Did Everyone Start Using Apple Pay? - It took longer than expected for the iPhone to become a wallet. But the patience of Apple is slowly paying off.": https://on.wsj.com/3PEkRpt
You see Apple Pay was new and different, like a classic rock band. Starting slowly and then eventually not only triumphing, but becoming dominant and lasting. The faster the ascension, the quicker the descension, and vice versa.
Paying with your phone was new in the U.S. Apple fanatics and early adopters instantly used Apple Pay, and now the numbers have increased dramatically.
But the real story here is cash is dead. The pandemic killed it. Nobody in real life wanted to touch your hands or your money, and you need a credit card to buy online and...
There has been a low level backlash to the elimination of cash. Saying that the underclass doesn't have access to cards. But the solution here is to get them cheap cards, not to try and keep cash alive. Why is it governments always want us to slow down for the minority, oftentimes small, instead of jumping into the future and ultimately satisfying everyone. Yes, even homeless people have phones. This is how tech triumphed, by pushing the envelope. Steve Jobs abandoned the old to implement the new. I still cannot see why Apple included two USB-A ports in their new Mac Studio. They were excised on previous product, and the Mac Studio is for pros, who have all the new stuff, and now they're accounting for the laggards? This sounds like Microsoft as opposed to Apple.
But... The pandemic killed cash. Not completely, please don't nitpick. The world has turned into gotcha, avoiding the bigger truths in evidence.
And it's not only the death of cash...
The media is inundated with stories of a return to normal, to what once was, before the pandemic, when in many cases this is untrue. Sure, people might have given up masks, but they're still not going back to the movies.
Have you checked the grosses? Only a few pics hit, superheroes and franchises like "Top Gun." Everything else fails. And box office still hasn't returned to the pre-pandemic levels. Evidenced by Regal Cinema having to declare bankruptcy:
"Regal Owner Cineworld Nears Bankruptcy as Theater Comeback Lags - Theater admissions aren't recovering fast enough for the world's second-largest cinema chain to keep up on its debts": https://on.wsj.com/3pxwx2D
Movie theatres will continue to exist, but going to the movies is a bad proposition time-wise and financially. The pandemic lockdown illustrated how much time everybody was wasting, commuting especially. Time is precious, they're not making more of it, and there's so much to do now. So to drive and park and overpay to see a movie with others who keep talking, even on their phones... You're paying the same amount, if not less, for a month of Netflix. And you can stop a flick whenever you want. And if what you're watching sucks, you can just can it, you don't feel ripped-off like you do when you see a bad movie.
As for Netflix and streaming...
For four months now we've been subjected to the story that streaming is in crisis, it's fallen off a cliff, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes, in America there is saturation. But there are still opportunities in the rest of the world. And there's a ton of dollars waiting to be hoovered up by eliminating password sharing. Who knows why they don't. Are the people sharing passwords gonna bitch and cancel their subscriptions? No, they're not subscribed to begin with!
But the truth is streaming has already won:
"Streaming Tops Cable-TV Viewing for the First Time - Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and other platforms set records for share of U.S. viewing time in July": https://on.wsj.com/3pFfyva
"Streaming services captured 34.8% of total U.S. TV viewing time during the month, while cable TV attracted 34.4%, the ratings company (Nielsen) said in a release published Thursday. People spent 23% more time streaming content than a year earlier and 9% less time watching cable"
A return to normal? Just the opposite!
Just like credit/plastic killed cash, streaming is killing cable. It's never going in the other direction, to think otherwise is to expect CDs to burgeon.
You see we live in an on demand culture. We want to watch what we want to when we want to and if you're not offering your wares in that fashion they must be based on evanescence, like concerts or sports.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery is moving backward. It canceled its European development and production, killed nearly completed content and licensed existing content to third parties, which is how Netflix ate the traditional companies' lunch in the first place! Disney+ and HBO Max were late to begin with. And although Disney+ has a lot of customers, the truth is most people still pay for HBO through their cable company, they have not moved over to the app. And the funny thing is most of these people maintain a Netflix account!
Yes, you can be too early, just like you can be too late. But is now the time to bet on the cable version of HBO? Is now the time to cut down on content for HBO Max? Is now the time to pull movies from streaming and put them in theatres? Jason Kilar disrupted the movie exhibition paradigm and got Hollywood on his page, and now David Zaslav is undoing all this progress so he'll end up fighting this battle again down the line?
As for Zaslav... We've seen this movie before, with Jonathan Dolgen at Paramount. So beholden to the bottom line, Dolgen made money and decimated the studio in the process. Dolgen wanted sure shots with low budgets, genre pics. The talent went elsewhere and then so did the customers, to the point the paramount Paramount became a second tier studio that has yet to be revived, years after Dolgen's reign.
Yes, fiscal discipline is important, but Amazon taught us you don't go for profits too soon. Meanwhile, out of touch Wall Street is enthralled by Zaslav. Zaslav says fewer productions with higher quality is the way out. That worked for HBO on cable, but not in streaming, where you have to provide a plethora of product or the public stops subscribing.
But give HBO Max credit for offering a yearly subscription. All the streaming outlets should do this, to kill those who sign up for a month and then go. The solution is not to dribble out product, isn't the music business an object lesson here? If you don't give the people what they want, they're going to rebel, and it's going to hurt you, and it's just a matter of when.
But the bottom line is despite Americans romping around the country sans masks, we have not returned to the pre-pandemic baseline, it is not the same country it used to be. As for those talking about a return to in-person shopping... Yes, there is a bit of a bounce-back, but in truth shopping is a huge waste of time, and once again time is of the essence.
Why is everybody with traction convinced we are reverting to a past standard. This never works in tech, why should it work in entertainment?
And it doesn't.
But those executing the change, the cause of it, do not have an old school media mouthpiece. Oh, they do have a mouthpiece online, most definitely on TikTok, but all established business is promoting the China spying angle to kill it, and they still don't understand it. And now the youth are using TikTok for shopping:
"TikTok is starting to disrupt search. When it comes to shopping online, the journey almost always begins via search at either Amazon or Google, with Amazon holding a safe lead. Just 5% of U.S. adults start their product searches on TikTok. But the story changes dramatically among teens and older Gen Zs, 18% of whom start their shopping explorations on TikTok – a mere six percentage points less than Google. This is a trend to keep an eye on."
"TikTok Rising as a Go-To Search Engine Among Young Shoppers": https://bit.ly/3wlrINM
But today's "New York Times" printed a piece lamenting the death of landlines. Sure, landlines had some advantages, like being able to talk to your kid's friends, if only for an instant, but the advantages of mobile so far exceed those of landlines...
But the old media, the "Times" especially, is laden with stories lamenting a past we're never returning to. Because the writers are old.
And speaking of writers, you still get people saying they prefer ink and paper to the computer. Well, it takes a minute to adjust to a computer, bur writing and editing on a computer compared to paper is like writing on paper as opposed to chiseling the words in a rock.
I mean come on, not only is the future coming, in many cases it's here!
But too many have an investment in the past and believe that if they just keep telling people falsehoods, they can hold back progress. This is the right's paradigm. Republicans still haven't put forth a coherent health care plan to replace Obamacare. And they don't legislate, they just put a monkey wrench in the works. As for Fox News... Its whole game is making you fearful of the present, never mind the future, to agitate you to hold on to the past, a losing game from time immemorial. We've got interracial marriage, we've got gay marriage, take away rights and see what happens, turns out the silent majority wants them and won't give them up without a fight, which is happening right now with abortion.
"Dobbs abortion ruling leads more women to register to vote": https://wapo.st/3dJ9xen
Want to argue about spending, fiscal issues? This is what Republicans used to do. As for Democrats, it's a small minority who are agitating for woke ideology that most Democrats don't agree with, but that's become the story.
And this is not really about politics, except to say the only way to keep a country in the past is via authoritarianism. Which is why the right lauds Orban, but now the ruler of Hungary has a huge financial problem:
"Hungary's Orban, a Scourge of Liberals, Faces a New Foe: Economics - The Hungarian leader is being confronted with soaring inflation and a depreciating currency linked to unsustainable spending by his government.": https://nyti.ms/3AfVWTo
You need a video, not a static image. Which is why TikTok is killing Instagram. Instagram is late to the party with Reels and will never catch up. Meanwhile, rulers of the past, like the Kardashians, want no change, they're no different from the established media and corporations wanting to hold back the future, spreading disinformation to try and ensure this. IT CAN'T BE DONE!
So one can argue that we've got a return to normal re the pandemic.
But it's not the old normal, but a completely new one, which keeps evolving. Beware of those who try to convince you to live in the past. It might be good for them, but it's usually not good for you, and by not disrupting themselves, by sticking to the past, media and corporations sign their death warrant, or have them playing catch-up in the future, and usually losing.
To paraphrase George Harrison... Think for yourself 'cause they won't be there for you.
--
Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
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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