Enough already.

Tidal is a nonstarter, its only benefit is it shines light on the sphere, i.e. paid music streaming services. But the way the industry is talking about it you’d think it was a savior, it’s not.

Because it doesn’t put the consumer first.

That’s our goal. To get the consumer to pay for music.

Instead, the whole industry is jockeying for position, putting money first and leaving so much on the table.

Tidal’s flaw is it is not user-friendly. All it’s got is a bunch of stars crowing about getting screwed and taking power and a few exclusives which are readily available where people now consume music, i.e. YouTube and BitTorrent. We’ve already seen this movie before. Put the content in a walled garden, tell people to be honest and support rich people, and they ignore this willy-nilly and steal to their hearts’ content, assuming they’re paying attention at all.

And the disconnect is…

We’ve got uber-rich artists complaining they’re just not making enough.

And a plethora of unknown wannabes saying the same thing.

And you wonder why people are confused and turned-off.

Meanwhile, the holy grail of the industry is to give Jimmy Iovine exclusives and get everybody to pay Apple. Jimmy’s track record ain’t that good. He got Apple to pay a lot for Beats, but his music service was inept and laughable. And let’s not forget the Farm Club.

In other words, we’re keeping a scorecard for a game that the public is not paying attention to.

First and foremost know that the public only cares about the stars and rising artists who break through. They don’t care about much else. Sorry, mid-tier artists, it’s not Spotify that’s screwing you, but consumer indifference. When everything is available, no one’s got time for you, the same way they’ve got no time for BlackBerry or Windows Phone, they’re just not good enough, they just don’t have critical mass.

And if you’re a winner, you’re making more money than any artist has in the history of the music business, because of endorsements and ticket prices, never mind being able to reach the whole world easily. This is actually a dream, allowing everybody to sample your music without paying an intermediary, i.e. radio and retail, and at no cost to boot! You give away the razor to sell the blades. But don’t expect anybody in the music business to be smart.

And if Taylor Swift were so damn powerful, Spotify subscriptions would have tanked. But they didn’t. BECAUSE HER AUDIENCE IS NOT PAYING! How do we get the youngsters to abandon YouTube, which is free, for paying streaming services? At first by getting them to sample them, then by convincing them their friends are all there, then by ultimately charging them. Kids don’t have disposable income. They have to beg their parents for cash. They only do when they really need something and can’t get it any other way. Now, there are a zillion ways to get music for free, even legally, on YouTube, and you want to change this by collecting rich superstars who want to get richer and providing miniscule content that can be had for free almost immediately? You must be dreaming!

And how is the CD still a thing? Apple launches a computer with no USB 3.0 ports, and we’re still selling a disc no one has a drive to play? You look forward, not back. But the truth is the entity getting screwed here is the label. But don’t cry for them, they’ve got catalog which will never expire, at least not in the U.S., where copyright keeps extending. Meanwhile, the acts are getting richer, they’re even squeezing the promoter! No one writes about that, how the acts get all the money from live shows.

So the focus is all wrong. The focus has to be on listeners, the public.

If Tidal wants to win, let people stream for free for a year. Allow them to sample. And it may be part of the rap ethos to rip off the man, the corporation, but Tidal’s ethos seems to be to rip off the public, because the musicians are supposedly being screwed. This is like having sympathy for a CEO because his options are underwater, huh?

Tidal is a bad tech play. It’s just about gaining traction to get someone with a deep pocket to buy it. Something the music business does poorly. These are amateurs playing a professional game. And no one is stupid enough to pay. The reason Apple bought Beats is because it was way behind on music streaming, the company was myopic and hadn’t developed a service. That’s right, even tech companies can get it wrong. Just like the music business has been getting it wrong time and time again, because it just wants to jet back to the past, where people buy overpriced albums like lemmings.

But those days are through. And I say good riddance. People have all the time in the world for great music, but they don’t like a gun to their head, forcing them to pay for that which they don’t want.

Want to help the music industry?

Steer them to Spotify or another streaming service with a free tier. So they can sample it, so they can see how good it is. YouTube sucks on mobile, and we live in a mobile world. Spotify is great on the handset.

And I don’t have a single share of Spotify stock, I’ve never gotten a cent from the company. But I’m realistic. There is only one winner online. And Spotify has a huge head start. Trying to topple Spotify is like trying to topple Google or Amazon, and we all have complaints about Amazon, but we all love their customer service, it’s prompt and they’ll take anything back. Just try to get a hold of someone at a ticketing company, never mind a record company, there’s no such thing as customer service in the music industry, the public pays and pays and gets screwed and screwed and you think they’re gonna wake up and “do the right thing”? Come on, don’t be ridiculous.

Apple should have a free tier. Since not everybody subscribes to a streaming service, there’s a chance Spotify could be dethroned. But not by an entity that’s a walled garden. Meanwhile, by separating exclusives we’re just forcing the public to steal. That’s a solution? Spotify has reduced piracy and now we’re gonna bring it back?

MTV was hampered by a small footprint. They gathered artists to launch the “I Want My MTV” campaign imploring fans to lobby their cable systems to add the service. What happened? SUCCESS! Where is this same campaign today? Everybody’s so worried about giving the money to someone else that they’re stuck in the past with rearguard efforts.

How are we going to get people to adopt streaming music services?

That’s the question.

Getting them to pay COMES AFTER THAT!

NEVER TRY TO CORRAL THE CUSTOMER

People balk at being controlled. Once you place limits, the public abandons you or finds a way to circumvent what you are doing. Give people the opportunity to do more, to expand their horizons, to share. Once you tell them what they cannot do, you’re screwed.

This is why no free tier music services will not dominate in the short run. The public has options. Whether it be YouTube or piracy. Trying to convince people that stealing is immoral doesn’t work, the RIAA already tried that. Don’t demonize your customers, EMBRACE THEM!

COHERENCE NOT CONFUSION

When it’s all said and done there’s going to be a ton of dough in recorded music. But the rights holders are doing their best to forestall this result. They believe competition is key, not understanding that online one service dominates and the rest carve up tiny slices. You want to have one service win. Otherwise, there’s customer confusion. No one wants to embrace what everybody else does not. That’s the lesson of the Tower of Babel society. Nitwits speak about a long tail, human beings want to belong, feel connected, they don’t want to be down in the niche alone, but together, with everybody else. Which is why there is only one Facebook, one is enough, you don’t want to build your digital home in multiple locations. And you want a good chance of being seen. Balkanization is death.

COMPETE ON SELECTION AND SERVICE, NOT EXCLUSIVES

That’s positively brick and mortar. The labels gave exclusives to Best Buy, indie retailers screamed, but it’s the indie retailers who remain. You think you’re getting a leg up by offering exclusives. You’re just pissing people off.

EVERYONE HATES BITCHING AND ENTITLEMENT

We live in a nation of vast income inequality. We don’t want to hear winners complain. Ever. And we don’t want to hear how a product benefits you, but how it benefits US!

PRODUCT FIRST, PUBLICITY LAST

Word of mouth built Google, Facebook and Amazon. In a world where it’s impossible to reach everybody via marketing, your only hope is you gain users and have them spread the word. People will listen to their friends, they ignore advertising. The key is to build something so cool, so utilitarian, that others will spread the word. And when you do publicity, it’s about explaining the growth. You don’t LEAD with the publicity, you FOLLOW with it.

This is about to whipsaw the music industry, which believes in frontloading. But no one can garner enough streams in the first week to make their numbers. The key is to get people to stream for years. How do you tell the story then? Awareness is important, but it’s all about the sustained build and the story. And the story isn’t who you worked with and what TV outlets you’re appearing on, but how people have embraced the tunes.

PEOPLE PAY LAST

They believe it’s their god-given right to check something out for free. And they eventually pay, but way down the line, because of CONVENIENCE!

The mobile industry did not force everybody to give up their flip phones for smartphones. Rather, users adopted them and convinced others to get them. And then everybody signed up for a data plan so they could play!

Mobile didn’t eliminate the flip phone, it came up with something better.  And you had to pay, handsomely, to get one and play. And you could not play without one, there was no free tier/competition.

However, people ARE cheap. Which is why T-Mobile and wi-fi calling are making inroads. Tell someone all day long that Verizon has a larger LTE footprint and they don’t care, they focus on price. Proving that some people will pay for quality, the others have to gradually get there. Kind of like cable television. There were early adopters, then everybody else came aboard and cable raised the price.

Once everybody subscribes to a music service, then you can raise the price, as did SiriusXM.

The convenience may come via bundling, i.e. with a cable or cell phone contract, or it may be about functionality, but that’s what closes users.

Right now, Spotify has learned that giving mobile away for free creates new subscribers. Don’t ignore the data. Your intellect is not always right. This is one thing tech understands and the entertainment business does not. When you’re talking about the internet, ignore your gut and go with the data.

DON’T LIE!

The truth is there to be found online. And sure, some might not Google it, but once someone does, the word spreads like wildfire. Jay Z says Tidal pays more. There is no evidence of this and it is contrary to the standard label contract. This is blowback just waiting to happen.

DON’T CONFUSE INDIVIDUALS WITH MASS SERVICES

No one person is as strong as a service. Evan Spiegel could kill someone, but it would not kill Snapchat. Taylor Swift cannot kill Spotify. Once something reaches critical mass the only way it dies is if the service itself screws up or something superior appears and supersedes it. Never yell about behavior, never complain, create something better, ahead of the marketplace, that will draw people to it.

PEOPLE DON’T RETREAT

We’re not going back to dialup and we’re not going back to flip phones. Never base your play on taking something away, that’s never ever gonna work. You always want to deliver MORE!

PAYWALLS ARE ONLY FOR THE HARD CORE

Most people don’t even know the “New York Times” has a soft paywall. Because they don’t care enough about the “Times.” Then again, Facebook users far exceed subscribers to the “Times.” If your service can sustain on the payment of a few, create a paywall. If you want everybody, start free and figure out a way to add desirable features and functionality to get those people to pay.

Furthermore, value can be unlocked in unforeseeable ways. The aforementioned Snapchat was a free messaging service, now it’s an entertainment hub. Create mass, then evaluate opportunities and pivot. If you don’t think audience size is key, you were never in a rock and roll band. Audience is everything. It will follow you and support you as long as you respect it and treat it right.

THE INTERNET IS FOR US

Especially with net neutrality. The public believes it OWNS the internet. Forget the truth, the backbone, the last mile. They see it as a democratic village where they have a voice. Impinge upon this at your peril.

DATA IS VALUABLE

It’s a fine line between privacy and data collection, but the truth is what you learn about user behavior has incredible value. Once again, this only comes from mass.

ARTISTS ARE NOT WEBSITES

Amazon is inert. Artists live and breathe. Artists are separate from services. Artists have an identity. Artists don’t just accept, they question. Tie yourself up with a service at your peril. The service functions 24/7, you don’t come to bat that often. If you’re seen as a tool, even of a good service, it will come back to haunt you. Don’t always say yes, artists gain traction by saying no.

Do you want to sleep with other people?

There’s a podcast revolution taking place. Like the digital photography revolution, its arrival comes long after the hype. We heard for ten years that digital photography was going to kill film, and then, seemingly overnight, it did. And the funny thing is a picture is no longer what it once was. You snap photos incessantly because they’re free, you forward them to friends and then you forget them. Photography is no longer expensive and rare, it’s plentiful and the most trivialized moments are being memorialized. So, will podcasts triumph overnight and change “radio”?

I’m not sure. But there’s so much fascinating listening that I almost don’t have time for music. Radiolab is the progenitor, and still great. Marc Maron has established a beachhead. And Alec Baldwin evidences erudition and insight heretofore unheard from an actor.

But right now I’m hooked on Dear Sugar Radio. And it’s all because of Cheryl Strayed.

Yes, she had that chart-topping book, “Wild,” but unlike a successful rock star she’s still unfiltered, unguarded, she’s a real person giving her honest opinions, never mind revealing personal truths that we won’t even admit to our loved ones.

Like her husband had an affair.

That she couldn’t sleep before her book came out.

That a poet friend lives with her husband and boyfriend under the same roof.

HUH?

So it used to be an online advice column, started by Steve Almond on the Rumpus.

And then Cheryl Strayed took it over, albeit anonymously.

Now it’s a podcast, wherein people ask Cheryl and Steve questions about life. Should I stay or should I go? Do all men admonish women for their weight? Is it all right if I want to stay married and screw other people?

And Steve bugs me. Because he’s absent testosterone. That’s one of the things the anti-bullying, politically correct modern communications era has wrought. I’m not saying boys should always be allowed to be boys and get a pass. But the truth is women often don’t understand or misunderstand men. And by refusing to admit how they think you skew the whole discussion. Men do tend to be visual. They do tend to want to impress their friends. If Steve had only stated this there would have been a good starting point, instead he avoids the truth, for fear of offending the audience, which is primarily women. That’s right, women are focused on relationship problems, they wrangle their emotions.

Just like me.

I can’t get enough of this stuff.

And as much as Steve makes me wince, Cheryl makes me smile.

She says she learned one thing from all her e-mail. That EVERYBODY feels like an outsider! Imagine that, instead of feeling inferior you should be comfortable that you’re one of the tribe, that you’re human, that we’re all flawed and equal to boot.

And Cheryl says the number one thing people want in a relationship is ATTENTION! That’s not hard to give. Or is it? Makes sense if you think about it, if we’re all outsiders, we want at least one person, our significant other, to get us.

And I’m not sure I approve of the format. Where they make calls and get opinions/takes. But as the series evolves, the people on the line have gained in status and importance and viewpoint. I think George Saunders is an overrated writer, he’s part of the “New Yorker” echo chamber, kept alive by his teaching job, why does he get all the accolades when those more popular are denigrated? But his insight into negative feedback was wise.

Now you’re pissed. You love George.

Get over it. And know that you feel superior when you love that which has a small audience, you want to be a member of a private club. And right now, Dear Sugar Radio is a private club. But when you listen to Arielle Greenberg testify about her husband and her boyfriend you’ll want to tell everybody you know.

She and her mate were not sexually in synch. She wanted to open the marriage. She got in touch with an ex. Who was married without kids. She got attached, she made him tell his wife, he left her and moved to Maine to be with Arielle. First he lived down the street, then he moved in.

Arielle’s kids were told that people could love more than one person.

Arielle and her husband’s sex life was reinvigorated. Then it evaporated.

And I can’t believe what’s coming into my ears. Not only did you tell this story, BUT WITH YOUR NAME ATTACHED??? What will your neighbors say? People aren’t THAT tolerant!

I’m not talking about rogue Mormons, I’m not talking about scripted TV shows… I’m talking about a regular person.

Personally, I don’t buy it. I believe people become attached and they can’t handle polyamory.

Or, they’re like me. I can’t handle polyamory. I could never have an affair, the telltale heart would evidence itself, I’d have to tell, in order to survive.

I don’t think Arielle Greenberg’s marriage lasts.

But it’s one HELLUVA story!

And it’s the kind of story you get on a podcast. Where people go deep into what only gets surface treatment in major media, if it gets coverage at all.

Because mainstream purveyors believe people only want to know about the beautiful people, they don’t want to see the warts.

But we do!

We all have warts.

And an artist is one who reflects them back upon ourselves, with insight.

Will Cheryl Strayed write another hit book?

I don’t know.

But she’s an artist and she’s a star. She’s one of a kind and she’s everyman. She’s just like us, but she can not only tell her story, but give us insight into our own. She makes this crazy life just a bit more coherent. And a lot more entertaining.

So subscribe to Dear Sugar Radio.

Go into the podcast app on your iPhone, it’s light purple, it’s there, it was pushed to your device by Apple.

Then touch the search button in the bottom right-hand corner.

Then type in “Dear Sugar Radio” and hit the return button.

Click on the resulting icon. And then touch the button to subscribe.

Then click the cloud icon to download “Dear Sugar, Episode 8: Big Love (Polyamory And Its Discontents) Apr 4, 2015” to your device.

Or, you can go straight to Arielle Greenberg’s story here:

Dear Sugar, Episode 8: Big Love (Polyamory And Its Discontents)

Fast-forward to 21:00.

Or start at the beginning to get the feel, the set-up.

You won’t be able to get this podcast out of your head.

Don’t believe everything you read.

Or to put it more bluntly, if “Rolling Stone” can get it wrong, what makes you so sure what’s on Fox News is correct?

In the information age, we’ve got plenty of gossip, a lot of rabble-rousing, but truth can be hard to find. Because not everyone wants to go on the record, because people shade the story to their advantage, because reporters want to become famous.

HUH?

Go back to Judith Miller. If she hadn’t been writing in the “New York Times” would liberals have voted for an Iraq invasion? A lot fewer, that’s for sure. People trusted the “Times.”

And we used to trust “Rolling Stone.”

The biggest story today is the Viacom write-down. How long did we have to hear that MTV raped the music industry? But all these years later, MTV has few salable assets and the record companies have catalogs that will seemingly never expire, and the acts built upon MTV’s base are still touring to this day. Would anybody in the U.S. want to see Culture Club otherwise? But few employ the long perspective. Because we live in an immediate gratification culture where how you look is more important than who you are. Lease a mansion and a sports car and people will think you’re rich when the truth is your bank account is empty and you’re two months from bankruptcy while the person driving a Chevy and paying down his mortgage is prepared for retirement. Then again, you never thought you’d live that long.

I never thought I’d live so long that “Rolling Stone” would have no fold, never mind be shrunk down to the size of other magazines. “Rolling Stone” was a paragon of music news, both criticism and in-depth reportage, and it made its bones on the back of the Patty Hearst story, which it got first. That’s why they made that movie “Perfect.” Suddenly our media won.

But now it’s lost.

Because the writer wanted to be a star.

That’s the story here. Not that “Rolling Stone” didn’t exhibit enough skepticism, although with Matt Taibbi off on what turned out to be a brief hejira in the online world they needed someone new they could hang their reputation on.

Turns out she blew it up.

At least “Rolling Stone” has a fact-checking apparatus, unlike so many publications. But when a writer hears something too good to be true, he never prints it without hearing it from another source, because of the spin.

That’s right, people have an agenda. That’s why famous people talk to the press, to get their viewpoint across. And sure, there are mentally ill persons like Jackie telling fibs, and everybody wants to be nationally known, but if your business is telling the story, you’ve got to get it right.

The main culprit here is Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s methodology. She had a precept, all she needed was to fill in the details. Campuses are a hotbed of rape, fraternities are bad, and if we just reveal these details there will be change. But this is not how a reporter does her job. A reporter might have the outlines of a concept, and then she fleshes out the details and finds out if she has a story. Which she might not. Which might be different from what she first believed. I’m telling you now, not every CEO is a crook. Not every politician has done heinous things. Sometimes you find out the people you hate are actually nice, when you get to know them. But most people never get access. What if Ms. Erdely had hung with the frat brothers? Would she have written the same story? Would she have found out that all of them were Neanderthals? But she didn’t do this, it would mess with her world vision. Everybody’s fearful the facts will get in the way of their vision.

Like the fact that Obamacare is working. The right wing hates this, so they just state that it isn’t.

Kind of like bilingual education. Sounded good to liberals, but the truth is its efficacy is weak at best.

Life is about the middle. The gray. And we trust our news sources to suss out the truth and bring us together.

But “Rolling Stone” pushed us apart. And now Jann Wenner says no one is going to lose their job.

WHAT?

Kill someone and you go to jail. Cheat and you get expelled from college. Perpetrate a myth that hurts real people and it’s business as usual? OF COURSE ERDELY SHOULD LOSE HER JOB! Judith Miller did.

Just because you admit you’re wrong, have an outside source investigate you, just because you go the extra mile that others will not, that does not absolve you of responsibility.

We’ve got to show people that not only are we correcting processes, we’re correcting behavior of individuals. If Erdely doesn’t lose her job, why should anyone else at “Rolling Stone” be afraid, why should anyone else worry about getting it right?

Tony Wilson taught me a lesson. You remember Anthony, the star of not only “24 Hour Party People,” but Manchester, England England, the perpetrator of Joy Division and New Order and the Hacienda. Well, Tony started off in television news. And one night the anchor read the football scores wrong. He blamed Tony, the researcher. Tony blamed the anchor. But the boss believed the anchor, and he told Tony he should fire him, but he was going to give him one more chance. Why? Not because anybody really cares about the football scores, they fade away in a day, but because if they can’t get the football scores right, viewers won’t believe they can get the big stories right, like war and diplomacy.

I’ve got no faith that “Rolling Stone” can get the big stories right. Because they had the twenty first century reaction. They apologized, went to intellectual rehab, and there were no consequences. But what about the frat brothers, what about UVA? But that’s collateral damage, the institution must live on.

Like the aforementioned Fox News, which rips reputations willy-nilly and perpetrates a false viewpoint all in the name of right wing demagoguery. Bill O’Reilly can never lose his job, his ratings are too high. But at least Brian Williams got suspended, as he should have, because the news isn’t about stardom, but TRUSTWORTHINESS!

Who do we trust in the digital age?

Not Mark Zuckerberg. He just wants your private information to sell to advertisers.

Amazon specializes in putting competitors out of business, they’re no different from a pitcher who puts tar on the ball.

And Google competes with Apple by giving away its main product, its mobile operating system, for free.

And Steve Jobs illegally rigs the employment system, preventing job mobility via agreement with Apple’s competitors not to poach.

And how do we know all this?

THE NEWS!

Brad Stone’s Amazon book is an account to be read by all.

The rest comes out in the paper. Pros dedicated to the truth more than fame.

But they’re rarely rich. And we keep on hearing that the newspapers are toast. And no one takes a long view.

And the truth is BuzzFeed is MTV. All those online news services of the moment, they’re gonna burn out, there’s nothing there. No reporting, only stealing. At the end of the day, real reporting survives.

Maybe not in “Rolling Stone,” but…

When competitors come along you don’t get down in the gutter, you climb up, you become even more of an authority. We’re hungry for facts, for truth, where are we going to get them?

“Rolling Stone” put a stake in its own heart. And by not firing Erdely they’ve become laughable. There are consequences in life, and one of them is if you screw up, you pay.

Erdely screwed up. Maybe she should never write again. Pete Rose can’t be in the Hall of Fame.

But in today’s rich and famous world we circle the wagons and defend our friends. That’s the college story, the groupthink. Not only the frat brothers, but the women labeling all men as potential rapists.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Like a very few men perpetrate most of the rapes. That was in the “New York Times.” But that doesn’t make headlines. Better to believe UVA is unsafe and you can get raped if you walk by the Row.

I don’t want to see any woman raped.

But I don’t want to live in an hysterical culture where good stories trump facts.

And it’s not only “Rolling Stone.” A scientist wanted to become famous so he falsified data and said vaccines cause autism. And now measles have returned because the so-called “educated” class has read his report and wants the best for their children. Meanwhile, no amount of data can convince them otherwise.

I don’t know what the rape situation is on campus.

But one thing I’m sure of, “Rolling Stone”‘s story has added to my confusion.

Just give me some truth.