The best thing that ever happened to Spotify was Apple Music. Competition lifts all boats. Which is why malls have two anchor tenants, two department stores.

But that was back before malls cratered and turned into festive dining areas that feature shopping as a sport, if the mall hasn’t closed completely.

We live in the streaming era. Who’s going to win?

The uninformed and uninitiated would bet on Apple and Google. But it appears the former has hit a ceiling and the latter is moribund. Spotify is adding twice as many subscribers than Apple per month. Spotify is adding 1.7 million, Apple, 875,000. Spotify has 40 million paid subscribers and Apple 17. So the two-thirds rule still applies, or close to it.

That’s right, online, one outlet ends up with two-thirds of the market. There are always people who won’t shop at the big kahuna. Google has about two-thirds of search and Spotify’s got nearly two-thirds of streaming music subscriptions. As for competitors…Napster and Deezer, they’re sideshow also-rans with acolytes who will eventually migrate to the big two just like Beta users went to VHS.

The final chapter has not been written. Amazon has a play here. We heard that Apple had everybody’s credit card number, that can’t compete with Amazon’s 63 million Prime subscribers. There’s an offering here that might work, but maybe not. Maybe Spotify was just too early and kept on improving.

Yes, Spotify had first mover advantage. There were streaming services before, but none with a free tier. Not only did the free tier cause conversion, it begat buzz, people started talking about Spotify.

But then, when Apple illustrated to everybody that streaming was here to stay…

Spotify innovated.

This is what is hurting Apple in general. This is the story of the iPhone 7, which never should have come out. Remember when the iPhone migrated to Verizon mid-cycle? Apple extended the cycle, kept selling the 4… Because you don’t want to screw your customers, you couldn’t eclipse the purchase of Verizon users six months later. Sure, the bottom line would have taken a hit, but if we got the iPhone 8, with an OLED screen and other innovations in January or March, all would be forgiven. Never forget, Apple was late to CD burners, music software and music players. But then it won with its Rip/Mix/Burn campaign and the iPod. Better to get it right than to alienate your fan base.

And Apple Music was a disaster in functionality. When every other service was better, even the now defunct Rdio, which was purchased by Pandora. In today’s marketplace you don’t get a second bite at the apple, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.

Discover Weekly put the stake in the heart of Apple Music. Music discovery was supposed to be Jimmy Iovine’s domain. He testified he was gonna fix it, using real people, but then the algorithm came along and beat him and…

Then Spotify came up with Release Radar, a way to discover brand new music. Apple not only did not have a similar product, whatever products it is coming up with are locked behind a paywall, so those who checked the service out once are now completely unaware, and don’t care.

So, competition heated up adoption, but there was a war between Yahoo, HotBot, AltaVista and Google once upon a time. And Buy.com was competing with Amazon. Turns out one player pulls out from the pack, and competing after the fact is impossible. Bing is a disaster, a great percentage of its market share was purchased, but it’s still got a de minimis percentage of search and the losses are legendary.

Apple took its eye off the ball. Stayed with files for far too long. It’s a chapter written right out of Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma.” He not busy being born is busy dying. If you’re doubling-down on your edifice instead of knocking it down with the wrecking ball, your business is time-stamped.

Which is why Apple so badly needs a new product in a sphere within which it can dominate. MSN could never topple AOL and Apple will never beat Spotify, never.

So, what have we learned?

Never bet on yesterday’s giants.

Functionality is everything.

Innovation is key.

And products grow when there’s a light shined upon them. All this anti-streaming nonsense is just keeping you broke. Never forget the cell phone business, it burgeoned when prices fell through the floor and everybody played. When everybody’s talking about streaming music…

Spotify will be even bigger.

Politics is the new tech.
And for those scoring at home, tech usurped the throne from music.

It’s hard for those not there to understand. Music was everything from 1964-1976. Everybody knew the bands, not only did you know who was in town, you went. And musicians were kings whose pronouncements mattered, you hung on every word.

Now they can only talk about their sponsorships, they’re as soulless as the brands they emulate. Bland entities afraid of alienating any potential customer, they’re uneducated automatons who are vehicles for profit, rarely anything more.

And then the techies came along and tipped over the table. Not only did we not anticipate it, we wanted some of it. Remember the summer of ’95, when seemingly everybody bought a computer and signed up for AOL? It was a national mania, with new hits constantly on the horizon. The music may have stayed the same, but overnight there were new websites and apps and it was all very exciting and then we get the iPhone 7. An incremental improvement we don’t even need. As for apps… Uber’s cool, but that’s been around for years. Marc Andreessen keeps telling us the future is so bright we’ve got to wear shades, but Silicon Valley is now an overpriced club of self-impressed wankers who get too much publicity you don’t care about.

But politics…

You could say it’s Donald Trump. But really, it’s Bernie Sanders. How did a septuagenarian socialist from Vermont get such traction with young people? By speaking the truth, dreaming of a better tomorrow where those without hope could get ahead, where the nation could get back on track and all could flourish.

Maybe you don’t agree. Doesn’t matter. It’s just like music and tech. Many stayed on the sidelines. Then they got in the game.

The United States is the best country in the world, but it’s pretty messed up. There’s income inequality, racism, and everybody’s complaining that someone stole their cheese. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. is gridlocked, with a Republican Congress that won’t even hear out a new Supreme Court nominee. It’d be like losing Eddie Van Halen and still booking Van Halen shows. With the band getting paid even though they didn’t play. Bitching that today’s staging is inadequate and until Live Nation heeds their wishes they’re on strike.

Wouldn’t be good for the music business.

And the government we have in so many instances is not good for the public.

Last night I drove to Pacific Palisades for a fundraiser for Proposition 64. The legalization of pot in California. If you’d have told me pot would be legal back in the seventies, I would have told you a black man could not be President. Both seemed impossibilities. But both came to pass.

And it’s not a dope issue, it’s a human rights issue. About keeping the disadvantaged and oppressed out of jail. About eliminating crime. Gavin’s wife doesn’t want marijuana legitimized, she doesn’t want everybody smoking dope, but that’s not what Prop. 64 is about. And it looks like it’s going to pass.

And it was spearheaded by this guy Ethan Nadelmann, head of the Drug Policy Alliance. In the rest of the world the good-looking and glamorous with empty insides don’t triumph. It’s those hard-working who believe in their cause who move mountains. And Ethan has. The proposition is sixty odd pages. It accounts for economic disparities. They’re trying to get it right, having learned from experiences in Colorado and Washington. It’d be like getting Yes after the Beatles, music used to evolve, what happened?

The featured speaker was Gavin Newsom. Lieutenant Governor of California. I see him all the time on Bill Maher.

That’s what I told him. I wouldn’t have started up a conversation except he was standing next to Jason Flom. So I moseyed on over and told him just that, that I was used to seeing him on “Real Time.”

Gavin chuckled.

And then Jason said he and Gavin were working on fixing bail. Jason’s all about fixing the inequities in the legal system, you may know him as the provider of hits, but his legacy will be getting people out of jail, changing crazy drug laws.

But since the door was now open, I talked to Gavin. I didn’t want to monopolize the conversation, but this was my chance.

I’ve met plenty of rock stars. They’re rarely verbal, oftentimes uneducated. You can bask in their glory but it’s rare to have a stimulating conversation, especially with the nitwits of today who believe their social media feeds are the epitome of ground-breaking opinion.

But Gavin looked like a rock star. Without an ounce of body fat and white teeth and a flashy smile, he oozed charisma.

But he had substance.

He talked about the football team’s low graduation rate at Berkeley. He spearheaded change, now the coach is compensated by the academic achievements of his players, not their accomplishments on the field. Berkeley is a university first and foremost, correct?

But in America everything’s topsy-turvy. We keep hearing about the economic miracle in Texas but that’s run out of gas, it’s California that’s burgeoning. They raised the taxes, jobs skyrocketed, it may not be a Garden of Eden, but here in the Golden State things are moving forward.

And it’s all because of politicians.

First and foremost Jerry Brown, who Gavin called the “adult in the room.” Brown has experience, and that counts, sorry to inform you of that Donald.

And we got into football at Berkeley because of the NCAA pulling out of North Carolina. Gavin knew the guy who ran the organization, it was a good thing. We need people to take stands as opposed to constantly checking which way the wind blows so they can say that which will move their game piece down the board.

And I asked Gavin why he got into politics.

He chuckled and said it was all about his mother, needing to prove…

I told him that’s the Southern California ethos, maybe he belonged in Hollywood.

And I’m noticing… Gavin’s not two-dimensional. Sure, he’s smiling a lot, but it’s more like hanging with a bro back in the dorm as opposed to meeting someone famous who’s shaking your hand as he looks over your shoulder for an exit. This guy was normal!

And he wasn’t boasting like Kanye, nor bitching that he didn’t get his chance, rather he was rationally laying out his achievements and desires in response to the topics being brought up. It was a conversation, not a stump speech.

And speaking of speech…

Gavin was the most dynamic speaker of the night. Passionate, rational, believable and not so brief that you thought he was punching the clock. And he didn’t leave after his part was done, he stayed, as opposed to someone too busy for the rest of us, who needs to jet away to some smoky boardroom where our lives will be influenced but we get no say.

Gavin Newsom is gonna be Governor of California. This is not opinion, everyone believes this is fact. Of course he could be derailed. But we live in a Democratic state where Arnold Schwarzenegger put the Republicans six feet under and Latinos and other immigrants are ensuring the state leans left.

And from there, maybe the White House. That was the ticket being bandied about, Gavin Newsom and Cory Booker. Although it was said Cory’s no longer good at returning phone calls, but you hear from Gavin right away.

Of course you can go on Wikipedia and find fault. That’s what our races have become, one of gotcha. As if no one ever smoked dope and we all married the first girl we slept with. We’re flesh and blood people, we need to give the keys to someone, someone’s got to drive.

But no one’s been driving in Washington, D.C. for far too long.

Kansas is letting the the rich run away with the state. Taxes have been lowered to the point where the government is dysfunctional, the court keeps saying more money has to be spent on education, but that’s not as important as taxes being low, after all, the rich are the job creators.

Huh?

We all need someone to believe in. We all need hope.

And last night I found it where I least expected it.

Used to be I believed in entertainers.

But now it’s politicians who are getting things done. Who are employing new ideas. Who want to lead. Who are truly accessible.

And I know I was up close and personal, and not everybody gets the chance, but really, it was no different from going to see Elvis Costello at the Whisky back in the seventies. You too can be first, if you get in on the ground floor, if you care.

The musicians were all about expanding horizons. The techies were about testing limits. And now it’s the politicians who’ve taken over the reins. They’re the new leaders. Not those gumming up the works, but those who are willing to get their hands dirty to effect solutions.

Disaffection isn’t everything. Life is not about pointing fingers at the enemy, saying they’ve stolen your opportunity.

No, life is about hard work in search of a better world where we all can thrive.

I’d about given up hope.

And then I met Gavin Newsom.

“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.