Is single-handedly putting a dent in drunk driving in Los Angeles.

Do you know this service? Wherein you order up your car via a smartphone app? It’s the rage amongst hipsters.

If you’re waiting for established industries to change, if you’re expecting an advertising campaign to break your new product, you’re dreaming, that’s just not how it’s done these days.

Uber is the brainchild of Travis Kalanick. Who got his start in file-trading, via Scour… You don’t hear much about this P2P site these days, it’s been lost to the sands of early twenty first century antiquity, but once upon a time Kalanick was a junior Shawn Fanning, with more smugness than Sean Parker.

But then he got out. And looked for new businesses to disrupt. Yes, that’s what the techies do that the musicians do not, they look for opportunities, unopened holes, to enter and turn the whole landscape upside down. Kind of like the Luddites who want to make albums… Do they not realize that the Beatles turned the whole singles paradigm upside down by refusing to put singles on albums, by making full length statements like “Sgt. Pepper”? Yes, once upon a time the Beatles led, today’s acts just follow, even the biggest, as for the wannabes, they’ve never even heard of the road less travelled.

Did Travis Kalanick foresee problems. OF COURSE! Did he expect taxi companies to roll over and say fine? OF COURSE NOT! But musicians are just looking for a deep pocket to fund their me-too music, meanwhile complaining that nobody cares.

Want someone to care? Create an undeniable product that people can’t stop talking about, like Uber.

I first experienced it in New York, back in May of 2012. That’s how they told me to get from the airport. But I was using a BlackBerry, which the twentysomethings booking this gig couldn’t fathom, and there was not a BlackBerry app. Which is why if you’re using that antiquated POS from the north you should trade it in right now, because it’s not about keys on a phone but apps, that’s where the future lies, and once you get used to word prediction on an iPhone or Android…it’s good enough.

But it turned out you could pull up Uber on your laptop. So I booked a car in the rain. It didn’t come.

But Uber kept sending me discounts. Looking for my business.

Oh, what’s their business again?

USING AN UNDERUTILIZED RESOURCE! All those black cars combing the city with nothing to do. Kind of like Napster unearthed all those out of print records. Physical retail couldn’t stock everything, but online…suddenly albums you searched for for years were available.

But, you said the quality wasn’t high enough, there was no artwork!

The artwork has sucked since the advent of the CD and progress always is a step back as well as forward. In other words, we need lousy quality to get to good, which is coming, with faster broadband, files/streams will sound as good as CDs.

And, of course, the New York cabbies and their San Francisco brethren woke up way too late. That’s what’s fascinating about the entrenched, not only are they unable to see the future, they don’t even see it when it’s here! And when they do become aware, they can’t fathom that their business model can be replaced. It took nearly a year for record labels to see that Napster was a threat. Who’d want to download lo-res files on the Internet? EVERYBODY! Kind of like how hipsters want to pay a premium for a ride in a black car without stains on the back seat and a defiant driver, one that comes when you desire, that does not require you to risk life and limb by standing on the corner and trying to hail…the often unhailable.

Have you used a cab in L.A?

It’s almost like they’re doing you a favor. You call and they put you on hold and then can’t spell your name and can’t get your address right and you hope and pray the car arrives on time. As for hailing… Ever been to L.A? It’s a giant SUBURB!

But with an app, the info is never wrong, unless you can’t type yourself, and you’re pulling someone who wants the gig right to your door.

Utterly amazing.

They can’t be rich so they want to be famous.

That’s what you can’t understand. Why you’re inundated with the “artwork” and musings of boring people whose only asset is the megaphone known as the Web.

It’s comical to watch. The underclass infects the Internet with reams of data and the oldsters complain that no one’s paying attention to them anymore. People only pay attention to those who can make them famous.

They don’t want news. They just want instruction on how to be known.

Once upon a time you studied for a faceless career.

Now your goal is to get a profile, to be invited to the party, if you’re lucky, get rich.

But the truth is you can’t get rich without having a rich parent or paying a ton of dues. And that’s just too hard for most people. But most people can afford a computer, a mobile phone and Internet access. And even though they might delusionally believe the end result will be cash, they’ve seen enough reality stars crash and burn to know that’s not really possible, they’re happy being a footnote in the culture.

Everybody wants to be somebody.

I want to be somebody too.

And they make it look so easy. What do Snooki and JWoww have that I don’t. Maybe bigger breasts, but I can fix that, that’s easier than getting a good score on the LSAT, then again, you can owe $300,000 to the bank and end up with a law degree that won’t get you a job.

What came first? The end of the American Dream or the Internet?

Maybe both.

In the eighties it was all about wealth. If Michael Milken had raised cash in the sixties and seventies, no one would have known his name. But learning he’d made half a billion dollars in a single year…that got people’s attention. Suddenly, all those kumbaya baby boomers cast aside their care for the common man, their so-called brothers, and decided to get some for themselves. Didn’t matter how you made your money as long as you had it. And you spent it on ever bigger homes and automobiles.

And then these self-focused nitwits had children. And not only told them they were geniuses, but that they could do whatever they wanted, greatness was at their fingertips, whereas when I grew up if my dad wasn’t hitting me, he certainly didn’t constantly remind me I was a winner, nothing of the sort, he kept telling me what  a big bad world it was out there and that I needed to be prepared, I needed to go to college so he wouldn’t have to worry about me when he was gone.

But that was back when college cost one tenth of what it does now. And you went to enrich yourself intellectually as opposed to getting job training. Yup, today parents call their kids’ colleges and complain. Can you imagine that in the seventies? Then again, professors were distant, they didn’t have e-mail addresses, you went to school so far away you were lucky to speak to your parents once a week, instead of connecting multiple times a day as kids do now.

So if you’re texting your mom ten times a day, asking her how to do the laundry and make macaroni, do you really expect to graduate and be ignored?

You can’t get a job. That’s for the chosen few. And despite the work being so boring, they’re seen as heroes. You work at a bank, how lucky! Whereas bankers were buffoons on sitcoms in the sixties.

So you use the tools at your disposal to…

Spam the universe. Tell people how important you are. Will yourself to a success you’re not sure the character of but believe you’re fully entitled to.

And those not playing the game are seen as losers. Not even the art chicks of yore. In a society of winners and losers you’ve got to be the former, otherwise you’ve got no friends.

So everyone’s got a song or an app or a blog and they’re constantly inundating the rest of us with missives all about it.

And the end result is the rich pull even further away from the poor. Because the rich are educated and the poor are not. And the rich conserve their money and the poor think an ATM card represents an unlimited account.

Media institutions can’t fathom it. Don’t people want to read the work of experts in newspapers? Of course not, they’ve got no control over the paper, they’d rather read the words of the social studies student with the popular affairs blog. And the TV stations can’t understand the success of the YouTube stars, who seemingly have no talent and little story. But these clips are instructional, they point the way to success for their viewers, a path much easier than convincing overpaid suits that they deserve airtime on their dying channels.

And as a result of this worthless cultural tsunami, those who rise above are bigger than ever. We only have time for hit musicians, hit TV shows, hit movies. Otherwise you’re seen as part of the great sea of wannabes, and no one wants to attach themselves to that.

In other words, in the Internet era it’s harder to make it than ever before. Sure, you can start on your own, but the road to success is a gauntlet no one has the patience for and few have the skills to navigate. You can get a bunch of Facebook friends and Twitter followers, but then you hit a wall, you’ve hit the cyber-ceiling. Unless you get on a reality program, you’re never going to rise above.

Unless you’re supremely talented. And work hard.

But despite the protestations of tens of millions that they embody these qualities the truth is they do not. Because not everybody can play for the Yankees, not everybody can go up against LeBron.

But that’s what’s great about music and art, unlike sports they’re not easily quantifiable, if you hit a roadblock you don’t question yourself but those impeding your progress, they just don’t get it, they’re haters, you’ll show them. Whereas a 5’2″ paraplegic would never say he could star in the NBA. Oh, he could be a fan, but now that’s not good enough, because you’re on the sidelines, you can’t get on the court, and you can’t afford a ticket to the game anyway, you’re closed out, better to play in the unrestricted arena known as the Web.

We’ll look back at these days with wonder, how we endured such a chaotic, incomprehensible society. Just like we think back to the days of AOL, never mind chat, never mind all the other detritus in the ditch by the side of the information superhighway.

Some things are immutable. Education and talent and perseverance are king. And the best marketing can’t sell a lousy product.

But try telling this to today’s generation.

You can’t. BECAUSE YOU’RE PISSING ON THEIR DREAM!

They didn’t care about music.

We’re in the tech era. But what they don’t tell you is one day it’s gonna run out of gas, it will be replaced by something heretofore unseen, dominated by nerds who were poor and got no attention and will suddenly rule the earth. Kind of like how the techies replaced the musicians.

Last night I watched the film “Downloaded,” the story of Napster. Which seems like ancient history, even though it occurred little over a decade ago. But what would stun the music execs if they pulled their heads out of their rear ends is that their audience, today’s teens, never knew any different, the free music/YouTube/Spotify/digital world is all they’ve ever experienced, and despite inane protestations from the boomer-driven media that vinyl is making a comeback, akin to stating that Model T’s are replacing Teslas, the past is never ever gonna return.

Sure, Shawn Fanning wanted free music, prior to his app you could never afford everything, certainly not if you were a college student, but what motivated him even more was the challenges, and the riches, yes, Shawn Fanning wanted to be rich and famous and if you look back at the turn of the century landscape you can see that he’s only slightly less known than Eminem and Justin Timberlake. A youngster watching this documentary would wonder who in the hell Fred Durst was.

So that’s not much different from musicians, the desire to be rich and famous, it’s just that Fanning achieved his goal and most musicians do not, what happened here?

Fanning knew it was about the code, that marketing came second, and he knew that the essence of virality was the wow factor, something absent from almost all music today.

In other words, music’s heyday is done, it’s a backwater.

Send me hate mail! Click away! Tweet that I’m an idiot. But the truth is Shawn Fanning was testing limits and musicians are not.

There, I said it. Shawn Fanning wanted to change the world, musicians just want to sit around and complain how nobody is listening, and if someone is, how they can’t get paid.

You see music is bankrupt. Not financially, but emotionally, creatively.

Oh, don’t e-mail me the exceptions. Certainly don’t tell me about your band of shoegazing white boys who can’t sing, or the wannabe rappers going on about drinking, drugging and driving. Where’s the mass appeal in that?

Then again, the masses never know what they want, they arrive late. It starts with early adopters. Who glom on to something so damn cool they have to tell everybody about it.

Napster was that cool. Facebook and Twitter in the beginning. Music?

The difference between Facebook and Twitter and music is the former are built upon the public’s information, without it they’re nothing, whereas music stands alone, if anything, the public gazes in adulation. Same deal with Apple. The product is tangible, not elusive, instead of chasing Wall Street dreams Apple is actually making stuff, that you can use to your advantage. So when you tell me how many Facebook friends and Twitter followers you’ve got I’m not impressed, I want to hear your music, and I want it to challenge and elate me all at the same time.

This is why Jay-Z screwed up. He subjugated the music to the tech, turning it into a data-mining expedition along the way. Yes, to unlock the lyrics from the Samsung app you’ve got to tweet that you’re doing so. This isn’t about music but commerce, and that’s what’s been the problem ever since…Napster eviscerated the music business.

Yes, feel triumphant RIAA, you killed Napster. But you also forced tons of music previously buried, unheard, from the Internet.

That was Napster’s magic, the unearthing of live and rare tracks. This was healthy for both the artists and the music business. Because it got people excited about music, they wanted to hear this stuff, not the authorized pap put out by self-satisfied stars. Yes, we want to hear the work tapes, the unfinished version, that’s how dedicated we are. New groups get this, they post rehearsal tapes on YouTube, but the problem is…there’s nothing so cutting edge we need to hear it. Is “Blurred Lines” that good without the video? As for Justin Timberlake putting boobies in his new clip… Isn’t that like trying to replicate the name your own price paradigm employed by Radiohead, which no one ever did?

Then again, I dare you to name two tracks from “In Rainbows.” Radiohead’s breakthrough was “OK Computer,” since then?

Used to be music was a plethora of breakthroughs, before MTV made it about image more than sound and the CD was so expensive money rained down on record companies. Now everybody’s about the money and there just isn’t enough in music, which is why Bono is a VC and all the managers have tech investments.

But the techies knew the riches came last. At least the old school ones. They were mesmerized by the problem. That was the genius of Steve Wozniak, without him, Steve Jobs had no product to sell. Woz could solve the unsolvable overnight. Kind of like writing a hit song in ten minutes. But today a hit song is written in a camp and massaged by a ton of producers, the music’s got no soul, and that’s why it doesn’t resonate.

Sure, there are occasional hits. But instead of recording another one this good, the artists make albums which no one wants to hear. We need another “Call Me Maybe,” not nine more B grade versions.

Isn’t it funny in tech the apps have to be totally usable, without glitches, but in music everybody complains the public doesn’t want to listen to substandard music ad infinitum, especially when the greats of history are right next door.

Forget Doug Morris. Forget the labels. Their hearts are not in the right place. They’re first and foremost about money, they’re only interested in that which will sell, tonnage, instantly. Tech takes years to reach critical mass.

Until today. Yup, we’re back in the dotcom era in tech. Everybody wants an instant hit. And what’s great about the techies is they’re not about music, only money, which leaves the playing field completely open to musicians…who have fumbled the ball.

The goal is not to be an overnight success. The goal is not to sell out. The goal is to establish a career, that goes on for decades. It requires years and years of woodshedding, developing your skills to the point where you can find your voice. And then refining said voice.

In other words, you wouldn’t expect a monkey to type “War and Peace” in his first sit-down with a typewriter and very few people know who they want to be when they’re ten.

You’ve got the tools, but none of the inspiration. Leaders in tech are few and far between. Steve Jobs killed the floppy, the record labels are still invested in the CD.

How can you create something so interesting, so riveting, that we’ll all pay attention?

That’s what “Gangnam Style” was all about. Unfortunately, it was the MTV paradigm replicated in cyberspace, it was not about the music but the visuals.

But music is really damn hard to do.

And so is coding, building a great app.

The key is to be so skilled, so versed in the basics, that you’re open to inspiration.

But today anybody with any skill is doing it the corporate way, playing to an ever shrinking Top Forty audience.

In the wake of income inequality and the focus on wealth, nobody wants to take the road less taken in the pursuit of genius. Oh, some say they do, but then they don’t stop imploring us to pay attention.

That’s what you hear again and again. It takes money and marketing to make a hit.

Hogwash.

It only takes music.

There are very few great things in this life. And if you find one, you tell everybody you know.

Tell me the track in your library that will blow the minds of two hundred million Americans. It’s not Rihanna, it’s none of the usual suspects, but it was the Beatles, who were fresh and new and different. And if you asked the Beatles back in Hamburg if they were gonna conquer the world, they’d say they were honing their chops, getting laid and avoiding day jobs.

You’ve got to get on the road to get to the destination. You cannot travel by thinking about it.

We need a reset in the music business. We need it to be about the tunes, we need to get rid of the corporations, players need to believe in themselves.

And take us on a heretofore unseen journey.

Not the one we’ve been on again and again and again.

It’s toast. Over. Done. History. Soon to be as behind the curve as Facebook, someday completely forgotten like Friendster.

Huh?

It’s the cacophony.

You see there are too many people on the service. As a result, very few are heard. It’s happened over the past six months, tweeting is like a stone in a waterfall, or more accurately, pissing in the wind. In other words, if you tweet and nobody reads it have you wasted your time?

Today Rick Warren tweeted something I wrote. He’s got in excess of a million followers. The fact that I can reach him stuns me. But despite his only tweeting twice since then, the retweets have not gone nuclear. Oh, there are plenty, a double digit number, nineteen to be exact, but if it had been six months ago, I’d be a hero at the Saddleback Church.

But now…

Twitter is becoming just like the rest of the world, a haven of winners and losers. Either you’re a star with an eight digit following and people are interested in what you have to say or…you’re ignored.

Interestingly, those in demand, those followed, those who have their words eaten up are musicians, if they’d only realize their power and stop selling out to the man and focus on the music itself, unlike Jay-Z.

But musicians don’t have to tweet to get their story across… Twitter is not the only platform that allows them to do this.

You see everybody wants to be a star and nobody’s got time to follow a million people. Just can’t be done. Furthermore, we don’t even want to.

Everything you hear is wrong. All this hogwash about algorithms and recommendations. Have you experienced Spotify’s new homepage? Right now, it says if I like Michael Bolton to check out Shania Twain. Isn’t that like saying if you like Cliff Richard to check out Loretta Lynn?

Yes, Spotify’s new service is laughable. Because Spotify doesn’t care about music, but money.

And the founders of Twitter don’t care about communication, but cash.

And the public is not beholden to any of these services. Which is why the story of the Internet is a few services that stick and a ton that disappear.

Why is this?

It turns out services are like bands. There are a few superstars and a ton of one hit wonders. And why no one else can see this is beyond me.

I’ve got 50,000+ Twitter followers. But I can send an e-mail covering the same stuff I tweeted about and the response can be deafening, even though on Twitter nothing happened.

Which is kind of why you see the tweets of all the famous people falling off.

Yes, someone goes on Twitter, tweets up a storm, and then…if they don’t stop completely, their number of tweets drops dramatically.

So it turns out we all want to communicate, we all want to connect, but we are endless grazers in the digital domain, making stars of services like turntable.fm and then discarding them seemingly overnight.

We want trusted filters. And we don’t want thousands of them, just a handful.

And those who will be trusted will not be those with an engineering degree, but a humanities degree.

Yes, the stars of tomorrow will be thinkers. Who will build their followings, which will migrate from platform to platform. Just like you discarded your Palm for your BlackBerry for your iPhone…you’re gonna abandon platforms continuously, until it’s no longer about platforms but content.

In other words, you don’t have to be on Tumblr or Pinterest, you just need a passing interest, a basic familiarity with Twitter, because they’re just way stations, this year’s “Call Me Maybe.” Google search is Elton John, but just like Elton can’t get on Top Forty radio anymore, there’s a good chance Google search will be superseded, since it’s a much more useful desktop app than mobile one.

There must be a reason for someone to follow you, there must be something interesting about what you say or do. And that’s got nothing to do with the platform and everything to do with who you are.

We are in an era of chaos. But stability is right around the corner. Just like Google search replaced the much less useful AltaVista and HotBot and so many other engines, this era of a million bands with few followers is going to draw to a close. Because just like on Twitter, there’s too much, the barrier to entry is too low, humans require order.

If you think you can go from zero to hero with little musical talent, you probably believe having a lot of MySpace friends made a difference when everybody jumped to Facebook!

It’s about the individual.

And your individuality is everything. Which is why Apple can create commercials in the style of Steve Jobs but they can positively suck. Because it’s not about the penumbra, but the zeitgeist. I mean what do those new Apple ads say? I can’t decipher it, and seemingly no one else cares.

So tweet away. Until you realize no one’s reading.

Then stop, read a book, become a three-dimensional person, have something to say…

And start over.