In The News

This is positively brilliant work, reminiscent of Peter Paterno’s famous memo when he was head of Hollywood Records.

The truth hurts, but without it you’re caught in a backslapping backwater that will ultimately go stagnant and won’t support life.

My favorite part is where the guy tells his bosses to use the competitor’s product.  If the music industry honchos used Napster back in the day, we’d live in a different universe now.  Napster may have been mass copyright infringement, but it was the coolest thing to happen in music since the CD.  Even better, music came back from the dead.  Songs you’d heard but could never buy were now easily available.  And talk about the discovery element!

It’s kind of like Spotify.

It’s the interface, stupid.  Spotify’s got the best interface of any streaming music service.  Allow it to launch for free and you’ve got a chance to build a business charging people for mobile access.  The future is about the mobile, you do know that, right?

Usability is key.

Also important is the philosophy of fewer people doing a better job.  This is one of Apple’s strengths.  The more engineers involved, the more bloated and further from completion your software gets.  Record companies should be lean and mean.  And not so top-heavy.  The heads of RIM are being chided for being out of the loop.  Can you say MUSIC INDUSTRY??  Lobbying against P2P when the enemy is YouTube!

Just because you’re famous that doesn’t mean you know anything about business.

That’s the new story.  Bono, Ashton Kutcher, now Justin Timberlake.  They’re branching out!   They’re wunderkinds!

Wrong.

They’ve got famous names making us pay attention.

If you want to know the future of tech, you’re better off following Jack Dorsey.  Who?

Proves the point.

Meanwhile, click RIGHT NOW on this link!!

Sometimes the truth is simple.

Justin Timberlake has to go back to music.

Movies come and go.  Music, when done right, is the essence of life, it’s nonfiction, not fiction.

But Timberlake cannot go back to music because he just hasn’t got it.  He’s good-looking and famous and even smart, but musically talented?

It’s all about JT’s collaborators.

Music is a long sludge through a vast wasteland where no one is paying attention until you build your chops to the point where you become an overnight success.  Never equate fame with talent.

THE VOICE

The role of a record company is to shepherd fully developed talent into the marketplace.

We’ve entered a bizarre era more akin to "The Idolmaker" than "Sgt. Pepper".  In other words, Bob Marcucci is bigger than George Martin.

Huh?

Proves the point.

The business people, the producer, should be in service of the act’s art, not vice versa.

An act is not Gumby, a cartoon character flexed and molded to rip off little children in the marketplace.

So "The Voice" got good ratings.  So what?

Listen to the original material sung by the final contestants.  It’s positively awful.

Write your own songs.  They’re gonna be terrible at first, but if you stay at it you’ll have a unique voice that is only you, that people can relate to.  It’s directly from your heart as opposed to by hacks trying to appeal to the masses but first having to convince you to record their wannabe hits.

If the "artists" on "The Voice" truly had it they would have made it the first time around.  Yes, they’ve all had experience.  Even at major labels!

Don’t confuse fame with artistry.

Fame may sell product briefly, but artistry remains.

But it’s hard to be an artist.  No one’s paying attention.  And only the creme de la creme gets to make it.

But is this any different from the NBA?  Think of all those players in the Final Four who can’t even play in the NBA.  So why are you sour grapes?

Can you write, can you play, have you done 1,000 gigs before almost anybody knew who you were, like the Beatles?

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