I awoke today and found
The frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
Then it gobbled summer down

Greetings from Vail, Colorado, where it’s the final week of the season and I’m using zinc oxide on my lips to prevent blisters.

Just a moment ago it was winter. I was wearing my 3.0 underwear and my down mittens, and now there’s bare spots on Pepi’s Face and everybody in town can’t wait until the tourists leave and they can too, for a hard-earned respite in Cabo or Moab…anywhere where it’s hot.

But I still want it to be cold.

Funny this skiing thing. It’s the only constant in my life. I’ve wandered from the faith, but upon my return I find the sensation is still the same, exquisite, sensational…literally, it’s all about feeling, and I tend to live an intellectual life.

And when I want to disconnect from this life I pull up the tunes that mean so much to me but not necessarily to others. Like Tom Rush’s rendition of “Urge For Going.”

You see I’ve been playing all my favorites on WIMP.

It’s kind of like getting a new stereo, only in this case it’s a streaming service, but this is the only one that streams in lossless, i.e. CD quality, and it sounds fantastic.

I went to their office in Oslo and told them I didn’t understand their business model, that online only one service triumphs, there is no number two, Bing has lost billions, but they’re convinced they can make it. They’re part of a much larger company, that owns the Craigslist of Europe, only this one charges, they’re not playing the IPO game, they think a certain number of people will pay for higher quality audio, as well as editorial.

I said Spotify could squash them in a minute.

They said Spotify’s investors would not allow the investment for lossless streaming, that they’re eager to cash out.

And we can discuss business models all day long, all I can tell you is the sound of WIMP is blowing my mind.

The tracks don’t queue instantly. Maybe that’s because the company’s in Norway, maybe that’s because of the amount of data, although they said 4G is sufficient for streaming, that you need very slow broadband to be good enough, I think it was 2.5, which just about everybody has these days, except maybe those still paying bupkes for DSL.

So I put the app on my phone and was instantly astounded. I played all my favorites, all the songs I knew by heart. And I heard stuff I never heard before, or forgot, because I never fire up the big rig anymore, even though it’s right by my computer, it’s easier to play files. But suddenly, with WIMP, everything old is new again.

And I played “Blue,” to hear Joni’s dulcimer is to believe it’s all you want.

And then I pulled up Tom Rush’s “Circle Game,” which contains his rendition of Joni’s “Urge For Going,” for decades it was the definitive statement, before Ms. Mitchell released her own.

I’ll ply the fire with kindling now
I’ll pull the blankets up to my chin
I’ll lock the vagrant winter out and
I’ll bolt my wanderings in
I’d like to call back summertime
Have her stay for just another month or so

I want her to stay away. Not forever, just a few more months. The older you get, the faster time moves. Remember when it was forever to Thanksgiving, and the end of school? Now the world seems like those plates that guy used to twirl on “Ed Sullivan,” you can see time evaporate.

And it’s like we’re all on that platter. And when you’re young you’re in the center and you barely note its rotation.

But then you get older, you graduate from college, and you realize life is not forever.

And then people start sliding off. I’ve reached that age where dinner conversation revolves around health, I know a couple of people with terminal Big C.

And you know you can hasten your demise, or it can be the luck of the draw, but that no one here gets out alive.

So, so long winter 13/14. I know easterners are sick of it, but we Angelenos don’t live in it, we just visit it, and we wish it would last forever.

And so long MP3s, you were always an imperfect medium.

And so long candy music, without meaning. We can’t live on empty calories for long.

Now the warriors of winter
They gave a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying
And all that lives is gettin’ out
See the geese in chevron flight
Flapping and racing on before the snow

See them? Coming back? Bringing the warm weather with them?

You think it’s a rebirth, but something is always lost as time transpires.

Sometimes it’s your parents, sometimes it’s your best friend.

If you’ve got a lover who stays, congratulations, but eventually one is gonna go.

And on Sunday the lifts will grind to a halt and I’ll be forced to move on.

But I’ve got no urge for going.

WIMP lossless streaming

Tom Rush “Urge For Going”

Joni Mitchell “Urge For Going”

Spotify playlist

“Why It’s EDM’s Fault Outkast Flopped”

Customers trust the banks.

Fans trust the acts.

Therefore, high speed electronic trading could not be eradicated and we can’t go to all-in ticketing.

You don’t want to believe your banker is ripping you off. But that’s what these big brokerage houses were doing in their dark pools. Selling access to high speed traders. Making trades that were less than satisfactory to the customer.

In order to get people to change, you’ve got to bring them across the divide of disillusionment.

Acts scalp their own tickets on a regular basis. They refuse to go to all-in ticketing because then the price will appear higher, better to have Ticketmaster take the blame.

Actually, the situation with high speed electronic trading and Ticketmaster is very similar. Each developed to fill a vacuum.

I won’t recite the history of Ticketmaster’s development. But I will tell you the fees are so high because they’re a way to prevent revenue from being commissioned by artists.

You see the artists are the culprits.

BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO BELIEVE THIS! You’ve stayed up all night listening to their music, you’ve signed up for their mailing list, you can’t fathom that they’re part of the problem.

But the truth is they want to commission all revenue. But the fees are not commissionable. So, the promoter gets kicked back from Ticketmaster, the fees are his profit, otherwise he would not be able to be in business.

This is the way it works. The promoter guarantees a huge sum to your favorite artist and he’s got to get it back.

The artist could play for a small guarantee and a percentage of the net, but he doesn’t want to, and doesn’t have to, because people are lining up to pay him, unless they’re not. The truth is if you’re nobody, you can’t make any money.

But let’s stay with the hit acts. The promoter takes all the risk and the act makes all the money. No one shows up and the act still gets paid.

But the act wants even more. So this Ticketmaster game was developed in order for the promoter to make a profit. Sure, Ticketmaster takes a bit, but nowhere near as much as you think.

As for the insane fees on developing acts… Welcome to the real world, where blockbuster acts get paid and you don’t make money until you’ve truly broken through. Usually these acts play clubs, and the club has overhead, and winning and losing nights, they want to stay in business. Used to be the labels supported the clubs, but that went out the window with Napster and the Internet.

But you don’t want to hear all this. Or you already know it and see it as the normal way of doing business.

But the point is, fees could be eliminated tomorrow, if only the acts said so.

When a ticket is twenty bucks plus another twenty in fees, it’s really FORTY BUCKS! But the act wants you to believe they care about you, that they don’t want to charge too much, and it’s the big bad boys at Ticketmaster who are to blame. But the truth is, if the tickets were really twenty bucks, the gig wouldn’t happen, because costs wouldn’t be covered, no one could make a profit.

And I’m wasting my breath here. Because I’ve written the above numerous times and my inbox still fills up with people blaming Ticketmaster.

But the point is… Some people know how this world works.

And some people don’t.

And if you’re one of the latter, I hope you’re employed by someone else who doesn’t fire you, because if you’re forced to live by your wits, you’re going to be in trouble.

ADDENDUM

Many people have e-mailed me Jesse Winchester’s performance on Elvis Costello’s “Spectacle.” It illustrates the power of television and also the fact that traditional metrics truly don’t capture the status of an artist.

An artist’s worth is not his sales, either recordings or tickets, never mind merch and sponsorship, but the impression he makes, whether it’s indelible, whether it sticks with people.

Based on the amount of e-mail I’m getting linking to this clip, Jesse Winchester was a star. No joke.

So I’m sitting on the floor of a Starbucks in Idaho Springs waiting for I-70 to reopen. Electrical outlets are at a premium and our driver said he’s waited for four hours for the highway to clear, so we might be in for a long haul.

Meanwhile, there are a few things on my mind.

First, Coachella.

I’m sure everybody there is having a good time, but I’m not sure it has much to do with the music. When did concerts devolve into a place to see and be seen? Probably when the festival paradigm took over. Now they’re events, not concerts. As for the headliners…if you can’t miss the reunion of OutKast then I fear you’re still living in the aughts, using a flip phone and unaware we’ve got tablets, never mind LTE.

Second, breaking rules.

The flight attendant said we could not go to the bathroom, they were ready to serve drinks. But the problem was they weren’t going down the aisle yet, could I steal a run to the loo?

My dad was a rule-breaker. Alternatively he stated if everybody jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should too?

Bottom line, are you coloring inside the lines or outside them?

All the winners color the exterior, while insisting you remain interior.

Kind of like all that business b.s. you read from CEOs, informing you how to make it. Sean Parker never says he stole the e-mail addresses from Napster to start Plaxo, as the legend goes, and no one winning will go on record about the corners they cut. Cash flow is everything. Independent labels don’t pay royalties because they need the money.

Now I’m not telling you to rob banks. But if you see a stupid rule, maybe you should break it. All innovation is about breaking the rules, which is why Coachella falls so flat. All the innovation is non-musical, it’s about food and sculpture. Whereas the acts paint by numbers (thank you James McMurtry!) Isn’t it funny the last ten years have been dominated by TV singing competitions where people tell you how to perform, where you’ve got to run the gauntlet to get noticed. Artists don’t do this, entertainers do.

New musical stars will emerge that will rivet the public. But they’ll be different. They won’t be focusing on sponsorship or fashion shows but causing us to look at the world just a little bit differently. That’s what rule-breakers do, make us challenge our preconceptions. Coachella is a celebration, it’s not art.

Third, there’s a very interesting interview with Fred Wilson on BusinessInsider:

FRED WILSON Q&A: The Legendary Investor Talks Retirement, Tumblr’s Exit, And Getting Over A Tough Year

I hate to admit I’d rather read the musings of a VC as opposed to the blathering of nitwits in “Rolling Stone,” but that’s the truth. Fred is a thinker who has something to say. The people in RS are fame whores eager to promote their next forgettable project.

Furthermore, Fred’s got a better track record.

But what fascinated me most were Fred’s comments on Instagram:

“A lot of the stuff that was on Instagram has now moved to Snapchat. It doesn’t mean that people are not using Instagram, but if I go back and look at my Instagram feed a year ago versus today, there’s a lot of people who were in my Instagram feed a year ago who aren’t there today. They’ve been replaced by brands.

So now my Instagram feed is full of things like the New York Knicks and restaurants posting amazing photos of food. The young Facebook user base who left Facebook to go to Instagram has now seemingly moved mostly to Snapchat and my generation plus brands are what’s on Instagram now.”

Old people are the ones still on Facebook and now using Instagram. Youngsters move on. For all their supposed love of brands, when ads appear, they disappear.

In other words, by time the mainstream starts touting something, it’s done. Just ask Fred, his company Turntable.fm died right after an insane wave of publicity.

Point is if you’re in the tech game, if you’re in the popular culture game, you’re concerned with where the people are going. The music business is primarily concerned with where people have been, believing they’re going to stay, buying CDs, listening to radio…

Building something from nothing. Seeing the future. Changing the world. That used to be music’s job, now it’s the VC’s. In other words, Fred Wilson is a bigger rock star than everybody appearing on stage at Coachella. He’s reaching more people, and thrilling them all the while.

Finally, there was an article in “BusinessWeek” that the convertible is dying.

I’d give you the link but now I’m writing from the back of a CME van moving slowly in a twelve mile line of cars on the east side of the Eisenhower Tunnel. The wifi is not working.

But the point is, convertibles are baby boomer dreams. Hell, they’re still buying expensive ones, Mercedes makes many. But VW is stopping. And Chrysler. You see kids don’t care about cars.

But they care about going to the festival to see and be seen, to take selfies and upload them.

It’s a completely different world these days.

Baby boomers think they run it.

But they just live in it.

Time is passing them by.

Because they’re all about leisure and lifestyle, and it’s very hard to keep your finger on the pulse when that is so.

Once upon a time music led change and adapted to the new world.

The concert companies are doing an incredible job of extracting dough from customers. Give AEG credit for making Coachella a foodie paradise.

Just don’t tell me it’s about the music…

Wifi is working!- “Convertible Car Sales Have Plunged as Image of Fun and Freedom Dims”