One Love Manchester On Spotify

Oh, what a wonderful world we live in, where what happened yesterday is available today, which means the show is not over and done, but lives on. And maybe, just maybe, the world will need to listen to these tracks to relive the moment and cuts will fly up the chart, dominating, illustrating that the manipulated chart we see in the newspaper is hogwash and that streaming rules and is the only definition of popularity and it’s not about goosing the numbers, manipulating the marketing for one week of glory, but tapping into the true desires of the public, what they really want to hear, and extolling that.

Now at first when you start to listen you’ll miss the video, you’ll want to be there, and isn’t that the goal of a live album, to get you to go to the show next time? And as is the case with any true live production there are imperfections, but there’s an undeniable energy. Start with “Happy” from Pharrell and Miley, they turn it into a soul number closer to Motown than Disney, they turn it into something more than it ever was, which is hard to believe since it’s been played to death already.

“Get Lucky” isn’t quite nailed, but it’s great to see a track from four years ago resuscitated, in a world where what happened this morning is already forgotten. And it’s funny how Pharrell now owns it instead of Daft Punk, that’s the power of a vocalist, of the lead singer.

And when the assembled multitude cheers and joins in you feel the joy of music, the joy of being a believer, a member of the crowd. We haven’t had this spirit here since Woodstock, but in that case the album came first and the movie second. This is not the 9/11 tribute with the commercial product months later, this is positively instant, on demand, once again sacred cows are slaughtered, you no longer dribble out music, get it perfect, rather you release it instantly, warts and all, and people forgive imperfections, because in today’s world we know everybody’s compromised, no one gets it right every time, you get honors just for playing.

And maybe acts like Little Mix and Take That will get the boost in the U.S. which they’ve never gotten.

Maybe Ariana Grande’s rendition of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” will dominate radio. Oh, don’t expect that, that outlet is moribund, waiting for consensus before it does anything, but maybe AC will go for it, stations should. Can’t someone in America champion the moment?

No, we have to rely on a Swedish streaming service.

Ah, those immigrants and millennials, ruining our business.

No, THEY’RE SAVING IT!

Apple – World Wide Developer Conference – June 2017

You’re either a member of the ecosystem or you’re not. Either you own Apple products or you don’t. And if you do…you can bitch all you want, but you’re not about to switch.

This was the best presentation since Tim Cook took over. Now that the audience is burned out, now that these keynotes are seen as de rigueur, they lifted the presentation to a new level yet few cared, there was little advance excitement, a few of the breakthroughs leaked in advance, but still…

AR is a breakthrough. And Home Pod could be a sleeper hit.

So what did we learn today?

It’s not about hardware. Software is key. Yes, they introduced the Home Pod, but if you’re looking for a device to send Apple into the stratosphere it’s probably not gonna come, it’s all about convincing people to join the cult and then giving them so many features they will not switch.

Now what are those features?

Well, the ability to not be tracked online in Safari. You know all those ads that creep you out, you clicked once and you’re haunted for eons? The new browser in the new operating system, High Sierra, eliminates that. Apple is all about privacy, whereas Google is all about the opposite. Do people care? Some do, but I’m not sure it’s enough to make a huge difference. Still, it’s fascinating to watch this all play out. Google is about prediction, do we want to sacrifice our privacy to make our lives easier? Unfortunately, I think so. Then again, Google is the land of failed products. Like Glass, like Home. My main problem with Home…IT CAN’T HEAR ME! Echo has no problem. And the speaker in Home is lousy. If you’re late to the party, you’ve got to be better, and that’s what Home Pod promises, but it’s really late.

So you get a free OS upgrade on all your devices. And this is important. Because less than 10% of users are employing the latest version of Android and over 80% are using the latest version of iOS. Which means… Developers are happier on iOS, that’s where the breakthroughs occur. And since the user base is balkanized with not only operating systems but devices, Android is hampered. But it’s cheap. But it looks like Apple’s strategy of going upmarket and maintaining margins and profits is working. Because it’s not so much like buying a BMW but a Buick. Pay just a bit more and you get no headache. Apple is the Hotel California, you can enter but you can never leave, even if you think you want to, almost no one does.

So, there are new operating systems. Which provide tweaks that most people will never use. We’ve got feature creep, and although many users have now grown up with computers, most are still not power users. They use just a few apps. But that’s ok. If there’s a breakthrough product, it can march to the pinnacle immediately. And that appears to be AR, not VR. In the VR demo the woman with the headset stumbled. Anybody who’s used VR has experienced this. Whereas AR gives you no headache and is super-cool. You’ve got to see the demo… It’s from Wingnut AR and it starts at about 90 minutes into the presentation, fast-forward to it.

And then there were the Mac upgrades. Somehow, Apple finally got religion! After being criticized for years for not upgrading anything but the iPhone, suddenly Apple upgraded EVERYTHING! Kinda pisses me off I missed out on Kaby Lake, having just bought the new MacBook Pro in November, then again, we’ve yet to have capabilities so eye-catching that you need to upgrade immediately. That’s a nineties paradigm. My laptop is just fine. And that was an element of this presentation that was palpable, it was not the first, we’ve seen the trick before, they’ve been doing this for two decades already. Computers are long in the tooth, but we still depend upon them. Politics rules the day, income inequality, hatred of others… Music and tech have forfeited their leadership role. But music and tech are now integrated, you make your tunes on computers and participate on social media, and tech is integrated into our society, there’s no going back.

And there were new iMacs and even an iMac Pro, which we have to wait for until December, WHY?

And Cook was more at ease and barely participated. There were multiple women, but no people of color. Craig Federighi is a natural, and it’s fascinating that everybody involved is an oldster. We keep being told that it’s a youth culture, but except in music, experience counts.

And they didn’t trot out Jony Ive or Jimmy Iovine. We got none of those futuristic phoney-baloney product movies with a voice-over from Oz, and none of that street urchin b.s. about music. But music was featured, primarily with the Home Pod.

Lousy name. Me-too product.

But better than all the rest.

First and foremost, Apple has 27 million Music subscribers. I still think the interface sucks, I don’t know how many are on a free trial, but that shows the power of the Apple brand. If the company were smart, and it’s not, it would convert to Spotify’s freemium model, because that has been shown to work, conversion is high. But still, if the Home Pod works…

Apple Music has got lousy sharing. And who’s gonna send a link to a walled garden? But most people still don’t have home music systems and…

In the nineties, your stereo was a boombox.

In the twenty first century, your stereo was an under $100 two or three-piece system attached to your computer.

All the people bitching about sound quality would love a higher level of reproduction, but Apple’s $349 Home Pod has multiple tweeters and a big woofer and it has Siri integration and it adapts to your room and you can have two for stereo and…

I’m not sure how Sonos is gonna compete. It’s the voice integration I’m worried about, not sound, not the ability to have different music in different rooms, Sonos is a genius product, but today it’s all about ease of use, and that means voice control.

Which is owned by Amazon. And to tell you the truth, the Echo doesn’t sound that bad. But I’m sure the Home Pod will sound better. And $349 is expensive, but not that expensive when you compare it with Sonos product, it’s affordable, then again, Apple failed with its music system when Steve Jobs was still alive. And Apple failed with social networks TWICE! But it’s not like Google, which hired Lyor Cohen and just pissed everybody off. Does anybody subscribe to YouTube Red? YouTube is a bad way to listen to music, listenership on clips is already exceeded on Spotify. But…

Apple hasn’t always been first. It wasn’t the first MP3 jukebox and it wasn’t the first portable music player. But its iterations were so much better than the competition that they won. Can Apple win again?

The iTunes/iPod juggernaut was helped by copy protection, it was a walled garden. But now you can get what Apple is selling elsewhere, from Amazon, from Sonos, from Google. But if Apple’s product is just a bit better, and it appears to be…

Then again, we’ve got to wait until December for Home Pod. When Amazon is already on second generation product. And Amazon has shopping, which Apple does not. And you’re gonna shop with your Echo, if you’re not already. And Amazon is an open system, you can use Spotify, and there was no announcement of Spotify inclusion with Home Pod. But there will be a new Amazon app on Apple TV.

But Apple TV is moribund. As is the Watch, which is losing mainstream developers.

But the Mac… It’s the gold standard. And now it’s up-to-date and cheaper. And the iPhone… It too is the gold standard. So, if they can win with Home Pod.

Apple plays in very few arenas. Is this going to be to their detriment?

Or will they play so well in their own verticals that they’re gonna keep adding to their cult and triumph?

Today it looked like the latter.

P.S. And they gave up on the phoney-baloney closing musical segment. They were not playing to popular culture, they were playing to geeks. And the truth is, we now live in geekdom, it’s the nerds’ world and we just follow their lead.

How did they do this?

We haven’t had this spirit here since 2001, when Jimmy Iovine used his network of superstars to present a televised concert that was roadblocked on all channels and evidenced the gravitas and grief we were all feeling while at the same time giving us hope.

But that was sixteen years ago.

A lot has happened in the interim. The internet was supposed to kill the music business, disincentivize anybody to produce, little did we know just the opposite would come true, that everybody would produce and we’d be overloaded with music and that streaming/on demand would win and the sound everybody would want to hear is hip-hop and pop, in that order. Not that the old farts like it. They’re still clinging to their CDs and their downloads, still carping that the album is the thing and they want to jet back to yesteryear but a generation even younger than the millennials doesn’t care. I’m not saying that music drives the culture the same way it did way back when, but I am saying it touches today’s fans dramatically and they go nowhere without it, it’s always in the background.

But the scene is fractured. There’s the youth market and chaos.

And believe me, the youth know the game. They’re the anti-oldsters, they’re producing all the time, uploading to YouTube, making Snapchat Stories, and putting out singles, knowing that you live and die on the track.

And showing up and putting on this amazing concert in Manchester seemingly minutes since the tragedy, just a night after another tragedy. America was staying home, scared witless back in 2001, like a terrorist was gonna come knock on their front door, but in Manchester the same people who went to the ill-fated show showed up again. Because they know life is for the living. And once you kowtow to the forces, once you run scared, you’ve already lost.

I winced when I heard Bieber invoke the name of God. Isn’t that how we got into this mess? Have we learned nothing in hundreds of years? Can we leave the deity out of it? But no one ever accused pop stars of being smart.

But you’ve got to give credit to Scooter Braun, he’s very smart, he pulled this thing off.

Oldsters say no. Oldsters are about the money. Oldsters are scared.

But Scooter and his team made it happen, just that fast.

Oldsters would have canceled after last night’s shenanigans. Oldsters wouldn’t have even committed. But no one flaked, everybody did their duty and the crowd loved it, what an INSPIRATION!

Not that everybody in America was aware, because we were praying to our true deity, sports, the NBA Finals took precedence. This show should have been roadblocked on every channel, just like in 2001, because contrary to our nitwit President we live in the age of globalization. Our pop stars are their pop stars and vice versa, we’re all in it together, but somehow America thinks it can go it alone.

It can’t.

Just like cities, states and corporations have committed to meeting the Paris climate standards on their own, these pop stars stood up for not only their art, but the American Way. You know what the American Way is? FREEDOM! Freedom to make your music and sing it and perform it and have others enjoy it, unfettered by hatred. And they might have terrorists in the U.K., but it’s America that is the land of hatred, where we cannot accept our brother, where we keep pointing our finger at perceived enemies, the immigrant, the person of color, the one with the different faith and I’m not saying the U.K. is completely absent these elements but we here are a couple of years and a couple of changes behind their society, they’ve been dealing with immigration and terrorism for years, but they soldier on.

If only we could have a concert like this in the U.S.

If only we could have a nationally televised event like Glastonbury.

If only we could rally around our music instead of arguing that others have the wrong taste. We’re a nation of exclusion instead of inclusion, and One Love was just that, about LOVE!

It’s the only way to keep us together.

And I could criticize the acts and the performances but that would be missing the point.

The point is these people showed up. They were unafraid, both onstage and off. They showed that nothing can stop our music, our love of the arts, our need to celebrate our unity.

This was not an old wave enterprise with a multi-month lead-up, with hype in every publication and faux interviews and all the detritus that detracts. No, there was an announcement just days before, the excitement never died down, it percolated and then built. No one was out of the loop. Because the word was spread online, those who truly cared found out, that’s how it is in the new game, marketing is ineffective. Which is why young stars release their work unannounced. Which is why young stars are accessible online. Which is why young stars resonate with their audience, they’re AVAILABLE!

You could learn something from today’s extravaganza.

Like where there’s a will there’s a way.

And people will step up for a cause.

And it’s not the baby boomers’ business anymore, the millennials have taken over, with a different ethos, one of honesty instead of duplicity, one of can-do as opposed to can-not, one of knowing when to charge and when not to, knowing that money is not everything, but image, credibility and the MUSIC are key!

There was no victory lap, only music.

Well done.

Kudos.

Is based on revealing your personal information, being an open book, detailing not only your wins, but your losses, your imperfections, this is what bonds people to you.

But just like the internet flipped the script for music, turning a model of scarcity into plentitude, the makers cannot see this distinct change.

It’s not that Kim Kardashian is famous for nothing, she may have no talent in the traditional sense, but she’s got a life, she’s got a story, and she keeps telling it again and and again, the public has not been able to get enough of it, until recently, when ratings for “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” started to fade, but she struck when the iron was hot, with a videogame, with brand extensions, she’s the new model.

Of course if you’re Adele, this model does not apply.

But how many Adeles are there? ONE!

And it’s not so different for the movie business, where the actors were two-dimensional to begin with. Movies, when done right, are larger than life, music, when done right, is life itself, but neither have been doing it right recently. And for years, publicists in the film business have kept publications at bay, negotiated for covers, kept certain topics out of print. But that’s anathema now, when performers go on Howard Stern and talk about their sex life and then the word is spread all over the internet.

This is a sea change. We no longer want to look up to you, we want to know you’re just like us, but with a bit more success!

Who can relate to the faceless acts populating the hit parade? Of course prepubescent girls align, but they’re a limited population, and if you can make bank appealing to them, good for you, but you’re leaving so much money on the table. What we want are artists we can all relate to, who are revealing their warts.

Now don’t confuse this with a “Parade” magazine profile. We don’t want to know now that you have a new project you’re pushing that you have two kids who are doing great in school and you love everybody, that don’t play no more. You’ve got to say you take Ambien to go to sleep. Because you’re up all night helping your kid with their homework that is beyond your limits. That you cheated at math to get through high school and your child has ADD. Suddenly, you’re a media star. And all this is unnecessary if you’re great, but almost no one is anymore. Before, it was enough to run the gauntlet to get a record deal, with limited product you got exposure on radio and in print, you got a leg up. But now you’re not only competing with hundreds of thousands of projects, you’re competing with the history of recorded music, all available online!

And don’t pooh-pooh this approach, it’s really no different than it was in the old days, when you were a bar band, a regional act. You weren’t good enough to make it on the national stage, but you had fans, who schlepped your equipment, who gossiped about you, who thought you were the beez kneez. Now it’s the middling acts who fulfill this role, own who you are! You’re not a superstar, you’re a vehicle for your fans’ fulfillment, give them what they want, YOUR LIFE!

TV has figured this out. With endless dramas about real life. Tons of reality shows. Sure, the movie studios are trying to appeal to kids and those who don’t speak English by making high concept superhero films, but the joke is on them, those franchises are stumbling, people want something they can sink their teeth into.

So when you read about the YouTube stars, the winners on Snapchat and Instagram, don’t laugh at them, THEY’RE SMARTER THAN YOU! THEY’VE FIGURED IT ALL OUT! You watch these clips, look at these pictures and don’t get it, you don’t see their talent.

But you do see their humanity! You get a peek into their lives.

EMULATE THEM!

P.S. This is why fans are addicted to the Taylor Swift/Katy Perry feud. Hell, Katy’s decision to tell the truth about it, the genesis on Carpool Karaoke, was far more interesting than her new track, although it does make you want to listen to hear the diss (don’t bother, it’s not worth it). But when the public sees squeaky clean Taylor Swift on the losing end of battle, they can’t get enough. Funnily enough, this is how TS won to begin with, by opening up her heart in her country songs, before she decided she was Teflon and only barked back. But she’s got it wrong, you own your flaws, you fall on your own sword, and then people embrace you MORE!