Otherwise you lose.

This is an axiom in sports, where defense scores no points, but it’s also a truism in music. Want to date yourself, want to stop having hit records? Keep on doing the same damn thing. It’s only when you change that you have longevity, but this is so risky most people just can’t do it.

Innovation, new, it’s anathema. That’s what’s wrong with America, no one can sacrifice, no one can lose their job. A bigwig told me file-trading had to end, not because of equity, not because of the artists, but because of what would happen to him! He needed his job running a label. That’s how myopic this person was.

Change is inevitable, and either you change or you die, you become irrelevant.

The number one example here is the Beatles. Believe me, “Sgt. Pepper” was a surprise. And people are too young today to remember that the Beatles’ so-called White Album came with a blank cover as a comment on over-produced record packages, gatefold covers, hype, everything but the music. The Beatles wanted to say it was about the music. And they ended up achieving their goal. Either you keep on pushing the envelope or you die, it’s over. You may even keep your job, but you become increasingly irrelevant. Irving Azoff is a prime example. Once a record label titan, he got back into management, but then created GMR, a competitive performing rights agency that lobbies for better returns for artists, and the Oak View Group, which builds and manages venues. Record labels are at the tail end of the music game today, even their paradigm is suspect, sans their catalogs they’d be dead in the water, they don’t even know how to break an act, they’re the opposite of nimble. And that’s what the internet, the digital tools afford. Used to be creation involved heavy lifting, now you can acquire many of the building blocks for free, nearly anybody can compete, and they do, disruption has been the mantra for the last two plus decades. It’s especially prevalent in social media, we went from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook to Instagram to TikTok with a stop at Snapchat along the way. The only way Facebook can compete is by purchasing its rivals. Isn’t that the story of Threads, that Facebook can’t win if it starts from scratch? Threads started without bedrock Twitter features and therefore it missed its window, never mind being tied to Instagram. Putting out half-baked software might work if you’re a startup, if you own the field, but if you’re me-too not only must you have everything everybody else has, but more.

Kind of like electric cars. Castigate Elon Musk all you want, but Tesla is so far ahead of the traditional auto manufacturers it’s laughable. You’ve got to read Dan Neil’s take on the new Mercedes…

“Mercedes-Benz Introduces Hands-Free Driving. How Does It Compare to Tesla? – Drive Pilot, the first Level 3 autonomous system to be state-certified for use on public roads, underscores the difference between Mercedes-Benz’s and Tesla’s approach to driver-assist technology.”: https://tinyurl.com/mxp2zm6t

That’s a free link and you should read the article, Dan Neil is the #1 auto writer in America, he’s at the “Wall Street Journal.” Neil is raving about this Benz, about its auto-driving. But if you read what Tesla is doing…you might not even understand it:

“To cross this uncanny valley of autonomy, Tesla has moved to a deeper kind of processing based on generative artificial intelligence. FSD V12 (using the fourth-generation hardware, HW4) effectively abandons the bulk code front-loaded into previous versions, even a map, relying instead on a series of neural nets daisy-chained together, tasked to learn and mimic human driving behavior by watching video clips. FSD V12 was never told to stop at stop signs; it just knows how humans respond to them, and does that.

“Initially trained on video clips and telemetry curated from millions of Teslas already on the road, FSD V12 will continue to observe and learn. More data is always better. To that end Tesla has built Dojo, a supercomputing neural-network trainer. Dojo is designed to turn millions of terabytes of video data, gathered from hundreds of millions of driven miles, into something like instinct, reflex, wisdom and experience, to be imparted to succeeding generations of self-driving cars.”

Tesla is leapfrogging its own technology. Tesla understands cars are not about iron, but software. And its competitors still don’t understand that. VW can’t even retool for it. They don’t get it. Because they’re not willing to invest and risk. Software is an adventure based on vision. That was Steve Jobs’s expertise, vision, not coding. You have to know the landscape in order to solve the problem. The questions of yesterday are not those of today.

So it’s not only the Beatles, it’s Madonna. She kept changing her sound and she survived. Had a long run of hits when everybody else became an oldies act. There might be money in being an oldies act, but there’s very little glory, musicians want to create and have their new work accepted. It’s one thing to triumph in an era, it’s quite another to triumph in another. And I’m not talking about using disco beats, or employing rappers, that’s me-too. What you’ve got to do is continue to innovate. But very few people can do this, and that’s why they’re icons.

And this is what the public responds to. Always. It wants the new and fresh. You age quite quickly in today’s world, you have to shake up yourself before you’re replaced. That was the essence of Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma,” a legendary book most people still haven’t read. Yes, you must disrupt yourself.

The label wants more like the old. But that’s not what the audience wants. As a matter of fact, the audience can’t even tell you what it wants, that’s your job.

So Scott Galloway, the business guru of the bros, the hottest analyst working today, talked about a soccer game he went to, in the U.K., the Premier League. His team was the underdog, but the score was tied 1-1 deep into the contest. But then his team focused on defense and the other team won. Defense is a whole state of mind. It’s about fear, it’s the opposite of aggression.

It’s worst in golf, it’s well-known if you play it safe to win you lose. You have to continue to go for it.

I can give example after example. But in politics, the Democrats say to play it safe, to go with Joe Biden. Hell, you should see my inbox, people are excoriating me. Look at the good job Joe has done! They’re drinking the kool-aid. They forgot how Trump won. Which was by speaking to the hearts and minds of the dispossessed. Biden isn’t connecting with almost anybody. Intellectually you might be a fan, but emotionally… Hell, the guy’s barely in public, for fear he’ll commit a faux pas.

Time after time a celebrity wins political office. Not always do they succeed, but plenty of time they do. Why? Because the public wants something, someone new! That’s the story of Jesse Ventura in Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California. Ventura was a bust, and forget that Gray Davis would have been better than Arnold, Jerry Brown came back and made people forget that Schwarzenegger ever held the office. Because Brown is a pro. Furthermore, Brown changed his perspective, he was no longer Governor Moonbeam, he was a pragmatist, oftentimes going against his own party. Hell, Brown is like FDR, people would still be voting for Jerry if it weren’t for term limits, Californians overwhelmingly adore what he did.

Don’t tell me you don’t. You might hate the Beatles, or Madonna. No one wins with everybody. And in the heyday of streaming, we’ve got vinyl. We’re talking about winning, that’s all. It’s rarely universal.

So by putting their faith in Biden, the Democrats are playing it safe to win. As you can see from everything I said above this is a bad strategy, because the landscape changes, never mind the fact that Biden has a record, that can be picked apart. You don’t see Biden reinventing himself.

Don’t make this about Trump. That’s playing defense. I’m talking about playing to win.

Let’s make it plain. Can you see Biden debating Trump? Donald will eat Joe alive. And Joe can’t get away without debating, it’s a bad look, it will cost him votes.

Everybody is an expert until they’re not. Just because you spent decades in a field that does not mean your opinion is right today. Usually you’re out of touch with the public, the consumer, the voter. You’re into your fat cat lifestyle, and you’re unaware, you can’t see the threats. Today the threats always come online, that’s where stories start, both Joe and Donald are jokes when it comes to tech, but I must admit Donald works social media, to his vast advantage.

The parties think it’s all about television advertising. This is identical to the majors thinking it’s about terrestrial radio. That’s an old paradigm, which still carries some weight, but the ball has moved, most records today are broken on TikTok. And it’s the same in politics, it’s all about online.

And stop asking me for money, empower me. That’s a classic story, to the Democrats’ detriment. You gave money to beat Trump in 2020, now you can’t pick up your phone, can’t check your e-mail without an ask for money. Makes you want to give nothing at all. Not to mention these companies reaching out have forgotten the story of CD Now, whose e-mails generated revenue, so they increased the frequency to the point that it put the company out of business. The audience said no mas!

How do I know all this? I’m online all the time. On that smartphone that my aged contemporaries decry. Enough with the digital detox, the denigration of the internet, online is where it’s all happening today, from calling up an Uber to ordering food to connecting with friends. And today kids have more friends than ever, and you never lose touch with anybody you ever knew, they’re right at your fingertips. Meanwhile, the “pros” in politics and fundraising are doing the same damn thing as always.

Also, I reach a whole lot of people from all over the world. And this direct feedback informs me. I know more than most politicians and writers because I’m on the front lines where the people are. I’m not going to dinner, I’m not a member of the club, I’m sacrificing a lot, but getting rewards in return. But I keep being told they know better. How? They don’t talk to the people involved!

And then there’s the reverse. Everybody complains about ticketing but there’s been no change, even after the Taylor Swift brouhaha. The government still might act, but I can tell you from firsthand experience, the government still doesn’t understand ticketing, never mind the public. And it’s one thing to identify a problem, quite another to propose a solution. And how you gonna fix the problem if you’ve got people making 20k selling Taylor Swift tickets?

“Yes, I Just Made $20,000 off Taylor Swift Tickets”: https://tinyurl.com/33e9c7wy

Yes, make it equitable and the public doesn’t like it! They want to scalp!

I don’t need to toot my own horn. You know a whole hell of a lot that I don’t know, I guarantee it. But what I’m talking about here is my area of expertise, where I live, all day long.

Go from the gut. Voting is emotional. Check the landscape for emotions. Believe me, I hear from the dyed-in-the-wool Trumpers. As for Biden? I always hear from old people telling me to shut up, not to upset the apple cart. But where would America be if it didn’t upset the apple cart on a regular basis? Biden is the apple cart. As was Hillary before him. Or as Bob Dylan put it so eloquently half a century ago…

He not busy being born is busy dying.