I discovered this in a ski video:

JaPaos ski video

One of the great things about the internet is you can pursue your passion, I’m combing skiing sites incessantly, and knowing they got 48″ in Taos last week I clicked through to see what was going on. And I heard a track playing in the background which infected me. So I pulled out my iPhone and Shazamed it and lo and behold it was Hozier. You know Hozier, the guy with the international hit that all the girls liked, the sensitive guy I was overworked on and didn’t get until now.

Maybe because the iteration synched with the video was a live take and the immediacy stung me, that’s life, when it’s just lived and not premeditated. That’s what’s wrong with the modern music business, nothing sees the light of day before its time, and by that time, after they’ve added so much and streamlined it, you no longer relate to it, all the humanity has been eliminated.

If you listen to this iteration of “To Be Alone” you’ll know what it was like back in the midsixties when we discovered Clapton and the bluesbreakers. Not that Hozier exhibits Slowhand’s prowess on this track, but the soul, it’s there. Along with a dash of Cat Stevens, before he got too cute.

Check it out.

P.S. How am I supposed to find this stuff? It’s not like Hozier hasn’t been in the news, but the two tracks they promoted didn’t do it for me. There’s something radically wrong with the music business infrastructure, and it’s got nothing to do with piracy or Spotify payments. It’s become so money-focused that the music takes a back seat. We’re promoting what appeals to the head but not the heart. Music lovers don’t count. Not that I give the makers a pass. Their bitching and self-promotion turns me off. But thank god for the youngsters who’ve got enough time to dig deep and uncover this stuff. And synch it to their homemade productions. That’s right, technology is not the enemy. Remix culture is good. It raises that which deserves attention above the surface. If only we could have a weekly playlist of what we need to hear as opposed to what we’re supposed to hear. But blame corporate radio too, read this story in “Billboard” how Brandy Clark didn’t have a chance on country radio:

“Why Must Country Singles Be ‘Worked’ By Labels to be Played on Commercial Radio”

P.P.S. I’m including the studio take and the live Spotify Sessions take in this playlist. The studio version is close, but just doesn’t capture the magic. The Spotify iteration is very close. Because if you’ve got it, you can replicate it, all you need is yourself.

P.P.P.S. All you oldsters bitching that this is not new, that the lyrics are good but not spectacular…remember that the English blues cats were a sore imitation of the Delta bluesmen at first. You’ve got to start somewhere. Once again, there’s positively someone real singing this song, no machines. And this is only something music can do, only music can touch you in this way.

More like this please.

Hozier “To Be Alone” Spotify

Life doesn’t unfold like you expect it to.

Oh, I’m not talking about accidents so much as expectations. That’s right, people die before their time. You get sick and you never really recover. You don’t get into the school you want to…

But you meet people who change your life. They take hold of your hand, mostly your mind, and pull you in an unforeseen direction. All the hopes and dreams of your youth evaporate and you end up somewhere different, that you could not perceive, which feels uncomfortable but just right all at the same time.

That’s the funny thing about people, they have an influence.

Or maybe you’re an influencer. You know who you are. You’ve got big plans. Nothing’s gonna get in your way. You’re a leader, not a follower. But without a flock, without someone to pay heed, you’re lost, you feel empty inside. And when you gain adherents, suddenly your path starts to wobble, you’re no longer going in the right direction.

That’s what they don’t tell you about life. How plans can be laid and hoops can be jumped through and still it doesn’t work out as you planned. I’m not saying to give up and go with the flow, certainly not today, in these challenging, economic times, but the truth is you never know what will be built upon the foundation.

The foundation… That’s important. Who you are. Both morally and your resume. People can tell if you’re honest and trustworthy. And even if you’re not, there will be people who will appeal to you, who’ll grab hold of your avarice and take you right down. That’s right, you’ve got to beware of who you hang with. Which is quite the conundrum, because you get nowhere without other people, and how are you supposed to choose? You think you know what’s right, but then your mother and father pooh-pooh these people, or they reject you. What do you do when the person you put all your hope and faith in abandons you? How do you handle that? You just march forward like a zombie and re-evaluate who you hang with. Do you want the person who can make you laugh all night or the one who’ll come to your rescue when your car breaks down, when you need a friend…

Friends are everything. And loyalty counts too. We want people we can depend upon. If there’s no one you can depend upon life gets lonely. And the truth is so many people don’t know this, that we’re looking for trustworthiness. Not only someone to pick us up when we’re down, but to listen to us without judgment. Not without feedback, no one gets to pass through life without hearing opinions on their efforts. But we’re all so insecure and vulnerable and our desire is to reveal ourselves and if we don’t feel we can with you we’re always gonna keep you at a distance.

So we end up with people who we trust, who tug at us, who pull us in directions we could never foresee. This is how you go on the journey of life.

And the truth is money makes the trip easier. And everybody has to make some. And you envy those who inherit it but you cannot see the burden they carry. Just like you cannot see the burden of the beautiful. With every advantage comes a cost. And the goal is to feel comfortable in your own skin. To know that there’s something in you that shines as brightly as another’s bank account or looks. And until you truly believe this, you’re at a disadvantage. Always believing you got the short end of the stick and if you could only be them…

But the truth is you can only be you.

Maybe it’s your eyes. Maybe it’s your compassion. Maybe it’s the way you can turn everything into a joke. Maybe it’s your disposition. Embrace it, and let others hang on to it.

But maybe other people scare you. You’ve been burned too many times. That’s the downside of age. As you get older you’ve got less angst, you know how the game is played, but you’ve had so many losing experiences that they hobble you. And it happens to everyone. Maybe you married your high school sweetheart, had three perfect children, but then your spouse gets cancer and dies and you haven’t been on a date in decades and you suddenly understand all the loneliness others spoke of. You thought they were weak when they were only human.

And you yearn to connect, we all yearn to connect. But somehow our humanity doesn’t square with a world where money and fame are paramount and who you know is about getting ahead as opposed to making a life.

I don’t know everything. Nobody does. But a lot of people act like they do. Then again, many people want to impart wisdom that will prevent pitfalls. But pitfalls are the way of life. If it all worked out we wouldn’t be happy.

And you know what happiness is. When you’re driving in your car or walking down the sidewalk and a tune is playing in your head and there’s nowhere you’d rather be, you’re thrilled to be alive.

But it won’t last forever. Neither the mood nor your life.

So get up off that couch. Roll the dice. Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Because good only comes from bad. Motivation comes from adversity. You ascend mountains you thought unclimbable. To find on the other side things you could never foresee. Where your parents didn’t want you to go, where you didn’t want to go. Where you’re thrilled and comfortable until…

It all goes topsy-turvy again.

Anne Tyler Author

A Spool of Blue Thread: A novel

DLD15 – The Four Horsemen: Amazon/Apple/Facebook & Google – Who Wins/Loses (Scott Galloway)

Scott Galloway is on the road to being a bigger star than Kanye. Because Galloway is smart, he oozes intelligence, he doesn’t have to tell us how great he is, we can see it.

I got this video from Vince Bannon. A music business refugee. That’s right, Vince ran out of options. He went from concert promotion to label (Sony Music) to retailer (Best Buy) and then he got out. Or maybe he was forced out. But the truth is now Vince survives, because he saw the writing on the wall, he realized music ain’t where it’s at, Vince went to work for Getty Images, that’s right the company that eviscerated the prices for photos and made everybody a professional. Vince acquires companies. He sent me this video.

Ian Rogers told me about an app. Called NextDraft, I’d never heard of it before. It’s Dave Pell’s compilation of the top ten stories of the day. And not only does Dave curate, he gives an introduction, he gives context, NextDraft is warm and addicting, you feel you’re getting a phone call from a friend, and you can sign up for e-mail or put the app on your phone, as I did, nothing is a better time-filler. That’s right, downtime is history. When we’re waiting for the Uber, when we’re in the doctor’s office, we spend time on our phone. Who owns that time? Dave Pell is making inroads.

And the point of the above is that entry points are delivered by friends. That’s your currency, who you know. People you trust will lead you to wealth. And Vince has done that here.

The clip above was posted on January 20th of this year. Only the music business is idiotic enough to believe it’s all about the launch date, the first week. How many people are listening to the hyped albums of last year? Few. But when something is great, people find it and it gets its time. Like this clip.

I had to watch it twice. I wasn’t paying close enough attention the first time through.

You know how you watch recommended videos…while you’re doing something else. So you can tell your friend you checked it out. And you’re never honest and say it sucks because that would engender conversation, and you don’t have time for that, especially over opinions about what is good and bad, that’s so last century. We just have time to gravitate to the great and partake.

And what I like about this clip is right up front Scott Galloway says he gets it wrong. This is so different from the entertainment world wherein everybody tells us they’re the greatest when it’s obvious they’re not. And when a flaw is revealed they apologize profusely and go to rehab for stuff we didn’t know there was rehab for. Whereas in tech you admit your mistake and pivot. And I could poke holes in a number of Galloway’s theses, but his presentation is so stimulating you realize why Troy Carter pivoted from music to tech, why every entertainment company from WME to Universal Music makes tech investments, because tech is where the action is.

How did this happen? How did getting an MBA deliver more opportunities and stimulation than being a musician? Few want to screw the itinerant broke musician crashing on the basement floor, whereas they’re lining up to have sex with the techies with brains.

Galloway makes a bunch of sexual references. They’re staggering. But what he does most is analyze the big four tech companies and prognosticate.

You remember prognostication, the concept of looking to the future? All we do in music is try to put on the brakes. We’ve got me-too musicians bitching about change. And if you think that’s a recipe for success, you’re probably still addicted to your Palm Pilot.

Anyway, does Amazon have to get into physical retail?

Turns out their shipping costs are enormous.

Furthermore, did you catch the announcement of Shyp? Wherein parcels are delivered by regular folk, replacing UPS just like Uber replaced taxis? This video is six weeks old and just last week Shyp blew up. Pay attention.

As for Facebook… The amazing thing is how they have pivoted. Told you to invest in your page and are now telling you your organic reach should be assumed to be zero. That’s right, you’ve got to pay to play. And unlike Google, Facebook is mobile-ready.

As for Yahoo… Galloway is the first person I’ve heard talk about the Tumblr disaster. It went from cool to irrelevant, a backwater of porn, never mind lacking profitability. What you buy is more important than the price you pay. As for Twitter and Pinterest…irrelevant according to Galloway, they just don’t have scale.

And it’s been the buzz for a year, how Google’s search monopoly is…dying and irrelevant. Facebook search is up, but the truth is on mobile apps are king.

As for Apple… It’s a luxury brand and in one year it’s going to be the biggest watch company, old watchmakers are in denial. Galloway makes a big point about that.

And I don’t want to just repeat what Scott Galloway says, I just want to say we live for stimulation. That’s what got me listening to Frank Zappa and the rest of the icons, especially the Beatles. They weren’t happy where they were, which was pretty damn good, they kept testing limits. How do you test limits today in music? Focus on new distribution methods, new marketing methods, play privates for your bottom line? It all comes down to the tunes and innovation has taken a back seat, or it’s not being done by someone with the brains of Mark Zuckerberg, never mind Scott Galloway.

How is it going to turn out?

How are we going to get our information?

And the rise of data’s importance is staggering. NYU developed an algorithm. You use the new tools just like musicians use Pro Tools. How long did we have to hear about the death of recording studios? In music it’s all about decay, then someone makes a track in their bedroom that blows us away proving it’s all about conception, that execution takes a back seat, and in music it’s about humanity not perfection

That’s right. In tech if it’s imperfect it’s toast, we don’t want it, we expect everything to work right out of the box. But when a fat girl sings great songs well we’re drawn to her, Adele doesn’t look like Beyonce but she’s bigger than everybody. Ain’t that interesting. Meanwhile, she’s gone away. With nothing new to say why stay in the public eye?

I wish I could inspire musicians to take the other path, a new road to riches wherein you’re poor before you make it. Guns N’ Roses wasn’t successful out of the box. Sure, their album was, but there were years of struggle before that. No one wants to pay their dues in music anymore. The dues are paid by the producers and songwriters behind the scenes. The performers are just front people.

But Angela Ahrents is a bigger star than Nicki Minaj. She just may have more influence than Taylor Swift.

And I’m kidding when I say that Scott Galloway is gonna be bigger than Kanye, but if you’re having a conference I’d call him. Because the goal is to get people thinking.

And my synapses are firing like the Fourth of July.

P.S. Stay to the very end. Especially to the heat maps of OS users.

“Gartner: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus drove Apple past Samsung in Q4 worldwide smartphone sales”

Get rid of the removable battery and microSD card?

That’s like kicking out the drummer and the bass player, hard core fans are not going to like that.

Tech is not like music. In music it’s about establishing a catalogue of hits so you can tour until you die. The future is important, but it’s about the past even more. In tech if you’re not on the bleeding edge, you’re gonna die, which is what was happening to Apple, it just did not have large enough phones. And it turned out people wanted phablets. Because the whole world is going mobile, that’s where you not only surf and connect, but buy too. It’s like Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story” come to life. And Apple perfected the smartphone. Let’s not forget, once again, that the Cupertino company was not there first, nor do you have to be, that’s a big story in tech, that the bleeding edge does not often succeed…MySpace was replaced by Facebook and Rhapsody was overtaken by Spotify and the iPhone kicked the BlackBerry and Treo to the curb. And to win it’s not about marketing so much as functionality. If it just works, people will use it. Hell, we’re still fighting this war with television remotes…can someone make a device I can comprehend that will work with all my devices? (Don’t e-mail me your solution, the lack of a clear-cut winner dominating public consciousness speaks to my point.)

ANYWAY, Samsung ruled and now it’s an afterthought. Furthermore, by following the crowd they’re drowning the company. Never give up your uniqueness, it’s what adheres people to you. Whether it be the quirky, center console ignition in Saabs or the quirky boxiness of Volvos, the people keeping those brands alive loved those. But, of course, brands are not forever. Especially in tech, where ramp-up costs are smaller.

So Samsung triumphed as the anti-Apple, giving people what they wanted and allowing them to give the middle finger to Jobs’s company all the while. But it turns out that’s all they had. There was no there there. Despite being a Korean company, Samsung was positively Detroit, where the exterior counts and the interior is irrelevant. Detroit’s lunch was eaten by the Japanese, who knew that people would drive the ugliest cars if they just worked, and they did, and now Toyota is a juggernaut and if you’re purchasing an American car you must not have gotten the memo or are financially-challenged, because you just have to read “Consumer Reports” to know that the Japanese own reliability.

But we’re not looking for reliability in phones. We want functionality and something that lasts for two years, when we upgrade. And Samsung made a phone for all people, some for the cutting edge tinkerers and some for the poor. And now Apple has reclaimed its hold on the high end and Xiaomi has eaten up the low end and Samsung is toast. Because it’s about form not content, design not intellectual property.

It’s not so different in the music business. He who writes the songs wins in the end. Sure, ASCAP and BMI are fighting Pandora, but the truth is there’s a ton of money in a hit song still, and it lasts forever.

So what did we learn here? What are the translatable elements?

Play to your hard core. Never abandon them. Sure, change is hard, but keep what they like and add new features. The Galaxy S6 is a me-too iPhone for people who hate Apple, huh?

Content drives everything. It’s not what the phone looks like, but what it can do. Apps come to Apple first. Apple has cutting edge payment technology. Apple integrates all its devices. Apple has a culture, whereas Samsung does not. And it’s culture that keeps your company alive. The music business has focused on the exterior ever since the advent of MTV, when how you looked became the key driver. Funny how almost all of those MTV acts never lasted. But the majors still focus on looks, because it’s easier. And everyone there is brain dead, they don’t want to walk into the wilderness and invent a new paradigm. But look what happened to Samsung, their business fell off a cliff. We’ll find out if the Apple Watch is a success, but give the company credit for not only taking a risk, but one that took years and a fortune to develop. Imagine a music company doing the same. Oh no, you can’t. In content, that’s television. It’s TV that’s telling creators we’ll give you a fortune carte blanche, to do it your own way.

But the barrier to entry is so low in music! Why haven’t we seen revolution?

Because when everybody can play, the rich and talented stay out. Microsoft is getting killed in phones. Google too. You go where the people are not. Instead, in the music business we’ve got wannabes yelling about their substandard wares muddying the marketplace, causing the public to ignore the sphere or pay attention to the usual suspects. And isn’t it interesting that so many ignore what is supposedly so popular. Not only is Beyonce not that big, but neither is Kanye. As for the press lauding their efforts and puffing them up, these are the same people who kept telling us about the Korean miracle. but that’s the newspapers, constantly reporting on what has happened, not what will be.

Apple is not forever. Nothing is forever. Success is about knowing where you’ve been and marching into the wilderness at the same time. Hell, look at our dearly-departed hero Steve Jobs. He lost Apple, foundered at NeXT and then returned triumphantly at Apple, but not immediately, the prognosticators still said the enterprise was going to go bankrupt or be sold. These same people today tell us about BlackBerry’s chances. It’s over. What next, the Doobie Brothers topping the pop chart?

Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Execution is so much harder. Marrying the two is incredibly difficult. Samsung had excellent execution and lame ideas. Furthermore, they were beholden to Google for software, which is akin to not writing your own songs. Apple won by matching great ideas with incredible execution. And, over time, they’ve established a fanbase. Sure, the naysayers and media want to tear them down, but there were people who hated the Beatles in the sixties. You never react, you just go your own way. And you’ve got to give Tim Cook credit for this, he never caved into the media, never mind so many on Wall Street who wanted his head.

So we’ll all have mobile devices. Hell, we already do.

So what’s next?

That’s how you win. Knowing what’s next. Samsung has been a me-too company from its inception. They made better flat panels than Sony and bigger handsets than Apple. But innovation is not spoken there.

Once upon a time the music business was like tech. The best and the brightest challenging convention. But now it’s the dumbest of the dumb, sheeple who do what the mercenary fat cats tell them to while those with any purchase keep bitching their cheese has moved. No wonder it’s seen as a second-class scene, without a truly triumphant product, one that everyone clamors to based on its innovation and quality, it’s toast.

But you just can’t say that. Because everybody remembers what once was and is waiting for those days to return.

But they’re never coming back. Samsung is screwed, on the high end and low. Its only chance is to break new ground, but it’s seemingly unable to, remember the company’s disastrous smartwatch?

Remember the rest of the album from the artist with the hit single?

Neither do I.