“How Fox News women took down the most powerful, and predatory, man in media”

It’s much worse than you think.

I’ll never forget my ex-wife telling me a close family friend was a dirty old man. We were in Vermont and Harry told Kim to twirl around, like Vanna White on “Wheel Of Fortune.” I grew up with the man, I thought he was harmless. But she knew…the iceberg was huge beneath the surface.

“New York” is a challenged magazine. Not long ago it went to every other week publication. It’s making headway with its website, but it’s fallen out of the national discussion, it no longer captures the zeitgeist, as it did in the Clay Felker years. But it’s not alone, the same thing can be said of “Rolling Stone,” all the rest of the mags run by old men who are protecting their print product despite all the action moving to the web. If you think that money is everything, then you know nothing. Roger Ailes was far less rich than Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, but he shaped the national discussion, he was far more powerful. And isn’t it interesting that Facebook is now a hotbed of news and Bezos bought the “Washington Post”? He who controls the dialogue owns America. It’s about hearts and minds, not wallets, which those who have no chance of earning what the Wall Street titans do would be smart to realize.

And speaking of Wall Street titans, “New York” was purchased by Bruce Wasserstein, Wendy’s brother, who made a fortune in banking but was always more interested in writing. He’s dead now, pursue your dream or come to realize you’ve wasted your life, or left too much on the shelf, even if you did get some spoils.

So we live in an era where everybody’s fighting for attention and as a result fewer messages are ultimately heard, certainly not at length. You know Hillary Clinton’s talk of “deplorables”? Turns out that was only half of the quote, read Charles M. Blow’s piece yesterday to find out that Hillary was lamenting the state of the disadvantaged:

“…but that other basket of people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t even really matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.'”

About the ‘Basket of Deplorables’

Bingo! If only those who felt Hillary didn’t care about them heard that. Here Hillary is saying the right thing, and that gives me hope.

But the story is only about her health.

We’re inundated with lists of articles to read. As if these wankers are providing a service. They’re not. Because I don’t click through, almost nobody does, and when they do they oftentimes find stuff written so poorly it’s unreadable.

But Gabriel Sherman’s article on Ailes is not unreadable, it’s RIVETING!

LOOKS

Good luck making it if you’re not beautiful. That’s all Roger was interested in, gorgeous women. If you played by his rules, which included touching, degradation and maybe even sex, not only could you get on the air, you could get a William Morris agent… And once you stopped playing ball, the opportunities evaporated. William Morris never called back. You lost your shift, your contract was not renewed.

CIRCLE THE WAGONS

Everybody’s afraid. Call it Michael Jordanism. The most famous athlete of the nineties, who refused to take a side because it might piss off some sponsors. Is that the American Way, being beholden to the man? I think it’s great football players are kneeling down for the National Anthem. It shows they’re THINKING ABOUT IT! Instead of my country right or wrong, a nation of groupthink, they’re cogitating and expressing an opinion. Good for them. Dialogue always illuminates the issues. Does wearing a flag pin make you a better American? Does saying “God Bless” in every speech make you righteous? Whenever people refuse to think different, to test limits, the country is doomed.

TALKING POINTS

The war on Christmas, gay marriage, Fox News set the agenda, quite consciously. And he with the biggest microphone wins the war. Because in a factless world we vote with our emotions, and we align with those we believe in, and believe everything they say. It’s scary that most people are unable to discern the truth, unable to analyze facts, but not as scary as the power of one man to sway our entire nation.

We have institutionalized sexual harassment. Baby boomers and Gen X’ers think it’s par for the course. And they’re too afraid to speak up. This is a more pervasive problem than rape, not to denigrate that crime, but the truth is the average male may not undress you, but he’ll ask for untoward favors and halt your progress in the organization and if you complain he’ll say something about it being your time of the month, even call you a whiny bitch. And if you push hard enough you might get a check, but along with that comes a nondisclosure agreement so tight that you can never talk about what happened, ever.

There is hope for the future. Millennials seem to be more enlightened. And the next Murdoch generation is not as right wing as the prior, never mind not blindly going along with anything that makes money.

And I believe the departure of Ailes will cripple Fox News. That’s the story of organizations, leaders make a difference. They usually cannot be replaced. And when they’re gone the operation falters. Because the leader, especially the founder, built the damn thing, and has a vision for how it all works out.

Respect those who’ve been to war and come back triumphant.

But don’t accept their success at face value. Dig deep. Look for the flaws. We’re all human, we all have foibles, and the more winners are torn down from the pedestal the more they’ll be humanized and will worry about what the public thinks.

Roger Ailes nearly single-handedly moved the United States to the right. That’s the power of media, that’s the power of news.

Meanwhile, music and film keep chasing bucks instead of power. They can move mountains, sway opinions, but they’re too afraid of alienating one damn person.

Roger Ailes alienated plenty and he won.

Until he lost.

But there are so many other males in corporations who have not been caught. Whose bad behavior has been tolerated because coin has rained down.

That’s not enough.

Then again, if the average person knew how many corners were cut to achieve success… Play by the rules and you lose, cheat and you win.

But that does not mean we can’t push back.

And we can start by pushing back against sexual harassment.

Jews know not to tolerate anti-semitism, they speak up, challenge people whenever they see it and are despised for it.

But let the Jews be a beacon. The oppressed have to stand up for their rights, they have to cry foul.

And, oh yeah, Roger Ailes made anti-semitic remarks too.

We’re all victims here.

We all need to inform ourselves and stand up for what’s right.

We can start by reading this article.

“IFPI Makes Stream-Ripping Latest Front In YouTube Row”

The CD killed home taping. Did you really want to spend all that time making an inferior copy when the original sounded so much better?

Of course not. Never mind that CDs were vastly overpriced, didn’t compensate creators for said increase and singles were cut from the catalog, forcing you to buy a whole album to get the one good song you wanted.

In other words, the music industry fought the battle of the past by entering the future.

In case you’ve been on a news blackout, the story du jour is stream-ripping, apps that allow you to turn YouTube streams into files. It’s killing the industry according to IFPI and the RIAA. But the truth is it’s killing the credibility of those organizations, which refuse to give up any fight that might make them look like the petulant crybabies they truly are.

Let’s go back to the beginning, how we got into this crisis. Confronted with new technology that allowed one to just get the songs one wanted, for free, via Napster, the recording industry ultimately lost 60% of its revenues. It played whac-a-mole with file-trading sites, bitched about the dismemberment of the album on iTunes and is now carping about the free tier on Spotify. You’d think the end was coming…

But it’s not. Recorded music revenues have stabilized. Streaming share has gone up dramatically. Everything’s heading in the right direction. But greedy old people who don’t know LTE from 3G are still fighting the last war.

Have you seen a dial telephone recently? How about a phone booth?

The dial telephone disappeared because push buttons were much more efficient, faster, and the public paid for them. But the music industry would rather bitch about people reproducing the workings of a dial telephone as opposed to selling them the future.

YouTube sounds horrible. We learned that quality is a feature, that’s how the CD killed the cassette. Those stream-ripping will never pay. And they go against the storage wars. That’s right, storage is decreasing, the old iPods had much more capacity than the average iPhone. BECAUSE WE LIVE IN AN ON DEMAND CULTURE!

Instant.

On demand.

Those are the watchwords of today. When you rip it isn’t instant, you have to expend energy. The history of the universe is reducing the workload of the proletariat but IFPI and the RIAA believe that more work is the future. Amazing!

Ignore these stream-rippers! Going after them is akin to Disney over-enforcing its licenses re cartoon characters. Your goal is to get people interested in overspending in Orlando, not making it so they can’t get involved to begin with.

That’s right, the fact that someone steals the music is a good sign, shows they’re interested in a world where gaining traction for your product is nearly impossible. I’m not condoning it, just pointing out the silver lining.

We’ve done a lousy job of selling streaming services. People don’t know how they work, they don’t get the value proposition, they don’t know they can synch files for offline use and exclusives are reducing the incentive to sign up. If every retail outlet sold a different brand of cassette deck, what were the odds home taping would have burgeoned? Especially if everybody used a different brand of tape. But you could buy Maxell and TDK everywhere, they were the standard!

Major labels feel screwed.

Artists feel screwed.

The public feels screwed.

And this has caused gridlock.

The industry can’t stop bitching it doesn’t make as much as it used to. Forgetting that CDs were a bubble built upon catalog replacement. And once AOL started flooding us with free disks we realized the CD was overpriced.

Artists can’t get over the fact that label signings have decreased in volume and compensation and in a world where everybody plays it’s hard to get attention and compensation. Streaming pays quite well, if you’ve got double digit million plays, if you’ve got a reasonable deal. But artists would rather sit on the sidelines instead of agitating for better deals. Bitch that no one is listening instead of making something people want to hear.

And the public has no trust for the infrastructure. It hates the labels and believes they’re out to rip them off. Which the IFPI and RIAA actions reinforce.

We want people to give us their money. Imagine if Tesla complained you were using your car for Uber, shuttling more passengers in the car than just yourself. Hell, Uber doesn’t charge you more if you fill up the car, they’re just glad you use the service.

I hate to tell you, but recorded music revenues are gonna go up. They’ve already stabilized, subscriptions keep climbing. More people are jumping into the pool. So what are the labels gonna say when there’s more money? THAT THEY STILL WANT MORE AND THE PUBLIC IS SCREWING THEM! Ditto on the acts.

That’s insane.

Forget about stream-ripping. It’s a zit on the ass of the business. Don’t these execs have something better to do? Like release a manifesto telling how streaming services really work, a how-to with FAQs, and having artists testify about these cash cows instead of decrying them?

Every day we hear that Spotify is going out of business. Do you want to buy a concert ticket to a show that might not happen?

Enough with the naysaying. Enough with the disinformation.

The public loves the future and is willing to pay for it. It might take a while to figure out the business model, but in a world where World Of Warcraft earns ten plus billion dollars in revenue selling a virtual experience, a universe in which people cough up for virtual Pokemon goods, do you really want to focus on selling physical objects, complaining that some people would rather sew at home than buy pre-made clothes?

I’m not sure what the right price point is. Maybe ten bucks a month is too much. Most people never spent the equivalent of $!20 per year on music.

I’m not sure whether Apple Music has improved, only those paying can find out, which is crazy in a world where you can check out everything on an extended free tier.

And speaking of free… YouTube is great for music. It single-handedly brought back music video. It built stars. And it’s on its way to being eclipsed.

The future always realigns those who win and those who lose. The game is to adjust your offerings so you can succeed in the new world. The majors are part owners of Spotify. But those sitting at home making badly sung rock music think it’s 1972 and they’re about to triumph.

INSANE!

Stream-ripping is not the future. Because files are not the future. I never even launch iTunes anymore, because I never listen to files. And Apple fought the future with one hand behind its back by integrating files and streams in one product. I don’t even listen to the files I’ve got on my iPhone, it’s just too damn hard.

I just stream.

Jump in with both feet.

And know you can fight the battles of the past, you can enrage those who are not your customers to begin with, or you can focus on those with dough in their wallets who are just waiting for someone to extract it.

We want to spend.

But we don’t when we feel cornered, but when we feel ENTICED!

Buff up streaming, make it attractive to those who’ve yet to subscribe. Don’t demonize people for living in the past.

Here’s To The Farmer – Spotify

I discovered this on Release Radar.

Once again, this is PERSONALIZED! I say that because I got e-mail asking me to send last week’s to a reader, he forgot to save it, which I find pretty hysterical, not only that he thought we all have the same songs but that he feels it’s my obligation to aid him, maybe that’s not the best example, it’s just that people always ask me questions that are easily answerable on Google, we’re all in it together but we’re all in it alone, there’s no tech help, if you don’t know how to find the answers you’re lost in today’s world.

Anyway, the biggest challenge today is awareness, letting people know you’re out there, have a new record, in a nation where we can’t keep our facts straight re the Presidential election…what are the odds people can keep up with a popular culture overwhelmed with options, even hard core fans are out of the loop.

Luke Bryan is the biggest star in country music. Or, at least in the top three, with Kenny Chesney and Jason Aldean, and let’s include Carrie Underwood, but I’m not sure she can sell out stadia, and Miranda Lambert is a giant, but…we live in a hip-hop nation. That’s one thing streaming has told us, hip-hop is even bigger than we thought, it’s got a larger piece of the pie than it has in the sales world, whereas country is nowhere in streaming, proven by the fact that “Here’s To The Farmer” only has 112,321 streams on Spotify, and it’s not much bigger on YouTube, where there are 450,659 views as of this writing, think about this, a superstar is nowhere online, what are the chances you can get traction, bupkes.

Unless you’re in my Release Radar playlist.

Did you know Tori Amos had a new song? I certainly didn’t, but it led off my Release Radar playlist which I live for every Friday, I’ve given up on Discover Weekly, it tells me where we’ve been, not where we’re going, and the last I checked, the past is history.

Now, last I checked, the farmer was not challenged, he was supported by the government, and no one ever lost their family farm despite all this hogwash about estate taxes, we live in a world of factory farming by big corporations and the indie growers are challenged, but they’re a small piece of the pie but no one ever lost in the U.S.A. by lining themselves up with old time values. That’s one of the things I hate about country music, all the fealty to what once was. Appalachia is a hotbed of drug use, Florida Georgia Line rap in their songs, but no one can come out against Trump and spew anything but redneck b.s. There’s a disconnect.

But at least this song isn’t about church.

And it’s a great cut, with excellent playing, good changes, with pandering lyrics that make the track hard to listen to, but…I do enjoy listening to “Here’s To The Farmer,” because it’s catchier than most of what was on Luke’s last album, which was a step down from what came before, it’s hard to deliver when all eyes are upon you.

But I do applaud Luke for releasing new music, “Here’s To The Farmer” is part of an EP, just a year after an LP sporting hit singles is still in the marketplace. This is the new era, you don’t rest on your laurels, you keep creating, delivering, your core audience is much more important than the looky-loos.

Luke used to do spring break EPs. But then that no longer felt good, he’d grown up, he turned forty, unlike the classic rockers getting plastic surgery and dying their hair to look younger than their audience, Luke Bryan decided to act his age. And not only is this EP coming soon on the heels of the last album, it’s part of a special tour, because it’s all about micro specialization these days, even if you’re huge. You may not be able to make it to one of the Farm Tour dates, but if you do…you were at something unique.

So, what have we learned?

We all know different stuff and we don’t know much. And despite grazing from hit to hit we need to believe in certain acts, it’s the natural way, and I’m a Luke Bryan fan, which makes me laughable in the eyes of the hipsters. I’m supposed to know the rapper du jour… As a matter of fact, I feel as misunderstood as those Kentuckians for Trump featured in yesterday’s “New York Times”:

We Need ‘Somebody Spectacular’: Views From Trump Country

That’s how it is in popular culture, if you don’t bleed Jay-Z green, if you don’t think “Lemonade” was the biggest cultural event of the year, if you didn’t go see Drake…YOU DON’T COUNT!

Can’t say that I really care, but so many feel put down, when the truth is today’s country music may be behind technologically, but in terms of selling tickets, in terms of radio formats, it’s DOMINANT!

Think about that, while pop is all in the box, it’s Nashville keeping Gibson alive, it’s where how you play makes a difference. And too many of the songs are written by committee, but NashVegas is where the bleeding edge resides, in the studio of one Dave Cobb, who made Chris Stapleton a star, deservedly, not by bringing in cowriters but by letting Chris be his best self.

The truth is there’s no center left. The VMAs were a sideshow. Music has become Balkanized. And it’s hard to keep up, but Release Radar makes sense of it.

So, it’s a brand new world, where what you did yesterday doesn’t count unless you build upon it today. And you can choose to become a clothing designer, focus on being a brand, or you can build a body of work, constantly release new material, which fans will embrace, if you can just make them aware of it.

P.S. If you think country music doesn’t rock harder than most rock and roll, listen to Eric Church’s “Before She Does” from his live album, “Caught In The Act”:

Caught In The Act – Spotify

P.P.S. If you think no one knows how to play anymore, listen to Keith Urban work out on “Stupid Boy,” start off at the four minute mark if you doubt me:

Stupid Boy – Spotify

P.P.P.S And if you still think Luke Bryan is just a pretty boy who keeps his catch in his Yeti… Check the emotion, the boy meets girl and tries to keep her story of “Play It Again,” my favorite track of the decade, I keep playing it again:

Play It Again – Spotify

 

YouTube is a transitional product.

You’d think the music business would learn. That if you don’t like today’s business model, just wait for tomorrow’s. You’re gonna get another bite at the apple, the game is to acquire knowledge and enter the future with an agenda. Which is how the major labels ended up controlling streaming music, demanding ownership, never mind good rates.

One nincompoop crashed his Tesla in Florida and the know-nothing commentators and the behind the times government insisted we jet back to the twentieth century, when everybody drove his or her own car and we were free to get into crippling accidents.

But Elon Musk said NO!

That’s all it takes to stand up to the bullies, just say no. And that’s what Robert Kyncl is doing to the record labels with YouTube. YouTube is a challenged business. It tried to create series but it turned out Amazon and Netflix were better at that. And now youngsters are moving on to Snapchat for content. What has YouTube got? Endless hosting and bandwidth costs. YouTube invested in the wrong players. When you want a revolution you bank on those who’ve been there before to get you there. In other words, you can reinvent distribution, but as far as what goes through the pipes…you need people with experience. And despite some YouTubers getting traction, they’re not the ones dominating, it’s the old wave music stars who do this. Some newbies crossover, those specializing in makeup and fashion, but the truth is they’re transitional objects, just like YouTube itself.

You see there was no solution. Nowhere to get all the music for one low price a month. And when Warner wouldn’t license Spotify, YouTube came in and filled the hole. Sure, we had Rhapsody, but first we had to kill piracy, which was and is the goal of the Spotify free tier.

YouTube is a bad place to watch music. And it’s a miserable experience on the mobile hand-set. As for YouTube Red… That’s one thing you know for sure, when they release no numbers, the numbers are bad.

So Robert Kyncl can’t change the split because it makes bad business sense. He can’t give up the action.

But the recording industry can wait for time to pass YouTube by, which it nearly has.

Then again, nitwits want to eradicate the free tier on Spotify, which eviscerates piracy and causes paid-for conversion.

But Spotify might be eclipsed by Amazon.

You see we’re in a period of evolution. From ownership to access. And the model has now been figured out, all the music for one low price a month. We just don’t know who’s going to provide it and at what price.

Apple and Spotify are jockeying to be the provider. But they’re selling the same price point. Amazon wants to lower it.

And Amazon is baking music into a larger offering, Prime, which includes shipping.

Meanwhile, the music industry wants the government to step in and right the ship when the truth is business will figure it all out.

Remember when Pandora was the problem? Well, it turns out Pandora’s radio product is being eclipsed by the playlist, and Pandora itself screwed up by not expanding throughout the world. You think Spotify’s numbers are bad? That’s because you don’t know the company is reinvesting around the globe. Ain’t that America, where everybody thinks it’s about them, and just them, where few venture beyond the nation’s borders. No wonder all the innovation comes from Europe, those people have BEEN SOMEWHERE!

So you take a bite out of the NEXT apple!

You forget about YouTube.

You worry about Amazon.

When the government gets involved it kills innovation, cripples companies, like Microsoft. And it doesn’t save those who were eaten alive, like Netscape. Business moves too fast for the government, and the government doesn’t understand.

The music industry should be focused on streaming service adoption. Instead of decrying the new offerings, they should be encouraging people to check them out, the same way they sell a new band. Spotify is great, not the enemy. As for the naysayers… Does anybody want to listen to a David Lowery record anyway?

There, I said it. There are winners and losers in a new world. And once you start protecting the losers you’re living in the land of “Atlas Shrugged.” The revolution was built on tech, is all about the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Remember Sun? How about Osborne? Never mind Commodore and all those websites and apps that disappeared.

YouTube is not the enemy. It got the public to stop stealing.

You want the barrier to access to be low. Otherwise people will go somewhere else, there are so many offerings today. And maybe ten bucks a month, one hundred twenty a year, is too expensive. Most people never spent that much on music before. We’re figuring out the compensation model, but be sure to face forward as opposed to looking to the past.

It’s tech that allowed everybody to get a ticket to the show.

It’s the music industry that refuses to charge what the tickets are worth, or go to paperless.

Stop complaining about the bots. Stop complaining about StubHub. Certainly stop trying to get the government involved. Tweak your assets to get the desired result, the power is with you!

P.S. Napster was killed and KaZaA sprouted up to replace it. Lawsuits didn’t end P2P acquisition, legal offerings like the ITunes Store and Spotify did.