Since so many enjoyed my Buyer’s Guide…

I just got an e-mail from a friend of mine:

“My computer is dead, dead. Luckily everything is backed up. The bad news is I don’t have the time and money for this…

I need to go buy a computer first thing in the morning. No more PC’s. Which Mac would you recommend? I don’t need the fancy displays…I use my computer for Microsoft office, Internet, blogging and social…which is also Internet…I’m thinking that’s it..except Skyping, and crap like that.

Thoughts please. Going to bust a move as soon as they open.

Sorry for typos…sent from mobile device.”

This is what I said in response. You might find it useful:

(Note: I’m giving you ALL the information below. Don’t get overwhelmed, I give you an easy conclusion at the end…)

1. I assume you want a laptop, something you can travel with, otherwise buy a 27″ iMac, which will blow your mind. Don’t buy the smaller one…that’d be a mistake.

2. But, you want a laptop.

For the record, I’m one of the few people who travel with a laptop anymore, everybody else travels with an iPad…this is the way the world is going. You’ll be traveling with an iPad soon, you just don’t know it yet.

3. If you had another computer, I’d tell you to buy a MacBook Air. Instant on, very fast because of the solid state memory, but it can’t be your only machine.

4. So you want a MacBook Pro.

Although some buy the 13″, since it’s your only machine, I wouldn’t. I’d buy a 15″. Don’t skimp, it’s not worth it when you’re at home, squinting, with so little screen real estate.

The best MacBook Pro 15″ is the one with the Retina Display. Unbelievably sharp, but you pay for it. I’ll let you make your own decision here, based on what you think when you look at it and how much cash you want to spend.

5. Caveat…

Rumor is they’re going to be updating the MacBooks at next month’s Worldwide Developer Conference… If you buy, you can return at no cost, usually within 14 days, sometimes they let you stretch…no new breakthroughs, but computers just get faster and cheaper, it’s supposed to look the same, but with the newer chip, which you probably won’t notice, since you’re just surfing and e-mailing as opposed to crunching movies/video.

6. So, having said all that, buy the 15″ MacBook Pro with the 2.3 GHz chip. I’d really recommend against getting the 13″, but if for some reason you must, they’re blowing  out the 13″ MacBook Pros with Retina Displays at other companies.

I see they’re now blowing out the 15″ MacBook Pros with Retina Displays too.

One company doing it is Mac Mall, they’ve got a retail outlet on Wilshire in Santa Monica, as well as mail order, check prices here:

MacBook Pro – MacMall

BUT DON’T BUY ANY OTHER MACHINE AT MAC MALL OTHER THAN THE HEAVILY DISCOUNTED RETINA DISPLAY MACBOOK PROS!!

It’s worth it to pay a hundred dollars more at the Apple Store, because if anything goes wrong, they treat you right, like if you get home and in a couple of days you realize you bought the wrong machine, the Apple Store will make the exchange no questions asked.

But Mac Mall is selling some of these machines at $500 off. I’d go for that offer if that’s the machine you want.

7. The machines at the Apple Store can be custom ordered. If you were doing this, I’d say to pay an extra $150 for a 7200 RPM drive and I’d pay $100 for 8 gigs of RAM too…I would not pay extra for a faster chip.

8. DON’T BUY A DISCONTINUED MACHINE! They’ve got some at Mac Mall, not at the Apple Store. With Apple, you always want the latest, because they supersede these machines after a few years and you can’t update/upgrade them.

9. Just to make you crazier, the Retina Display models come with a faster chip, 8 Gigs of RAM and flash storage, which is light years faster, although smaller in size, but you store so much in the cloud these days.

10. P.S. Get the educational discount, buy in one of your child’s names and you’ll get approximately 10% off. Very simple to do.

I always buy AppleCare. But it’s very expensive. Laptops break, but the one I have now has not, but on my previous machine I got the screen replaced twice, in two days, via AppleCare. Also, you get 3 years of phone support as opposed to 90 days. Then again, you can always make an appt. at the Genius Bar for free…

BOTTOM LINE!

Buy the best MacBook Pro you can afford.

If it were me, I’d buy one with a Retina Display, since you get the screen, more RAM and flash storage, but you will do fine with one with a regular screen. A faster hard drive and more RAM help, but they’re not dealbreakers, if you want to save money, you can go with 4 gigs and a 5400 RPM hard drive.

Twitter is a news service.

It’s been shaking intermittently on the Westside for a month now. And if you were here during the ’94 big one, and it was pretty big, let me tell you, you’re afraid.

We like to feel in control. But during a quake, we’re at the mercy of the world, there’s nothing we can do but hang on for the ride. And there’s no confidence, like at Disneyland or the ski area, that the government has tested the experience and no matter how fearful you might be, you’ll be o.k.

But when something happens in today’s world and you need to connect with other human beings, you need to know what’s going on, you need to have your anxiety assuaged, you don’t go to TV or radio or even the newspaper site, you go to Twitter.

Twitter got a bad rap. That’s where you went to find out about people farting and eating dinner, minutiae we just didn’t care about.

But that is untrue. Twitter is where you go to find out about what the mainstream media doesn’t report, immediately.

That’s the dirty little secret of the media, it’s limited. With sinking financials and ever fewer people working there, they only report what is pitched. It’s a veritable cornucopia of press releases. Old wave publicists pitching stories that most don’t care about. Along with some big time disasters everybody’s anointed as important.

Now stories break online and then cross over to the mainstream media.

And the mainstream media is not an independent reporter of reality, but gloms on to trends like a prepubescent follows a boy band. Kids get shot in Newtown and suddenly the mainstream media reports on every school and child shooting. And it’s not that there are more, just that the media is now reporting them. Is this any world to live in?

And the oldsters don’t get it. They pat themselves on the back and call themselves gatekeepers. But there are no gates, they were torn down years ago, when the Internet took hold and everybody got broadband. Just ask the music business. Trying to put its finger in the dike it was overrun by a rush of water before it realized it wasn’t a hole, but the whole damn wall had come down.

You don’t try to mold the future to your past, you adapt.

Streaming services are already putting a dent in piracy. But the RIAA’s disinformation campaign would have you believe otherwise. Innovative solutions are the way out, not a giant megaphone imploring everybody to return to the past.

Not that the titans of yore will be victorious in the future. Otherwise, we’d all be driving Oldsmobiles, and typing our missives to each other on Smith-Coronas.

Crowdsourcing not only works on Kickstarter, but in news too. Now we’ve got a reporter on every street corner, in every home, nothing goes unexperienced. And nobody’s interested in all of it, but in case we are, there’s a permanent record, a trail of information that we can pick through and decipher. Instead of a clueless reporter calling the usual suspects to spin the story, we’ve got citizens with no skin in the game calling it as they see it.

And maybe Twitter fails. Maybe we want more than 140 characters.

That’s not the point.

The point is something has changed. The public is now in charge of the story. You go to the people to learn what went on.

And this is good. Because the more facts the better.

And sure, it’s incomprehensible if you grew up in the old world of scarcity. But you’ve got to adapt, no one can read everything, no one can know everything, but you can know what you need to, there are no blackouts. And ignorance of trending subjects is no longer an excuse. He who knows most wins.

Remember that!

P.S. It shook, I e-mailed my girlfriend, I tweeted, I searched on Twitter to find out I was not alone, everybody else was shook up too. I no longer bother to turn on the TV, there’s no one there other than the talking heads, assuming it’s a news show, otherwise they just wait for someone to phone in the story so they can run a crawl, eons late. I went to the L.A. “Times” website, nothing, but on my Twitter feed people were weighing in with their experience. As for radio, it’s taken itself out of the loop, I’ve given up checking, I’m now all Twitter all the time for breaking news, just like kids have cut the cable cord and have gone to the Internet. You can deny the future, but it’s gonna happen anyway.

He runs his business like a family. With Daniel Glass you’re either in or you’re out. You don’t want to get on his bad side, he’s got a very long memory, but if you’re in the family, there are no limits to what Daniel will do for you.

Tuesday I went to the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to see Daniel Glass honored as the International Music Person of the Year at Musexpo. Interviewed by Jimmy Kimmel, Daniel kept telling stories of his relations, from his supportive parents to his wife to his children. There was no separation between work and downtime. Because there are no vacations in the music business, you’re working 24/7.

And Daniel’s been working for a very long time. Since his days at the college radio station in Brooklyn.

You never know where your passion will lead you. It was by championing an obscure record that Daniel got a call from its writer, inviting him into her lair, offering him his first gig, as a publisher.

Don’t be so worried about where you’re going next, do a good job where you are, people will notice. And what they notice most is not your ability to market yourself, but your depth of knowledge and your passion. Getting in the front door, getting the job, is the easy part, sticking is a whole ‘nother matter.

So Daniel parlays this gig into a job at Chrysalis. After pitching the writer’s songs to Vic Damone and other geriatric performers in the Catskills. No job is too small to do right. You’re learning all the while. And while at Chrysalis, Daniel pitched Spandau Ballet’s “True” to Frankie Crocker, who played it multiple times during his shift, and the song went on to become a smash, because Crocker was a tastemaker, people paid attention to him, not only his listeners, but other professionals. That’s the way the business works, there are always leaders. Right now, Daniel is one. But he’s doing it differently from everybody else. Sure, he’s got hit records. But everybody can discover talent these days, nothing is hidden, but can you sign it, can you make it hit, especially if it’s left of center? That’s Daniel’s specialty.

And that’s when I met Daniel. In the waning days of Chrysalis. Which was sold by its founders, leaving Daniel pondering his next move. Which ended up being with SBK.

Daniel wasn’t a pop guy. He liked rock and dance, hell, he was the DJ at Regine’s. But when he heard Wilson Phillips he knew he had a smash, and he executed, he made it a hit.

And what’s fascinating is the team Daniel employed was never stolen from another label, it was always home grown. He hired green people and taught them his method, and always gave them credit.

And after SBK blew up, Daniel had a long time in the wilderness, working for Doug Morris at Rising Tide, going indie, working with Danny Goldberg at the hedge-funded Artemis. He was king of the world at SBK, but now he was starting over. Most people don’t have the wherewithal, they certainly don’t want to invest in themselves.

Who implored Daniel Glass to start the hugely successful Glassnote?

His wife, Deborah.

We’re all unsure. We all need someone in our corner. We need validation, we need to be pushed, we need to be comforted when things go wrong, we need to be told to soldier on.

And suddenly, thirty years later, when everybody else is out of the business, Daniel is at his peak.

But he’s doing it the same way. Hiring a bunch of passionate nobodies who he molds to his system. This is the opposite of the major label model. The majors are all about the kingpin. Who works for Lucian Grainge? Doug Morris? They’re all about being king, taking all the credit. Whereas the great bosses give their charges leeway, and let them get the kudos. I learned this from Tom Freston, when he ran MTV. Tom too ran his business like a family. And he would never tell his people what to do. Freston wasn’t about trading favors, he’d link you up with the appropriate person, but it was their decision whether to play ball or not.

In the corporatization of the music business something has been lost. Homage is paid to the “team,” but really it’s every man for himself. Just like America. We’re not in it together, I’ll step on you to get ahead. And then I won’t respond to your e-mail once I’ve left you behind. It’s funny money. No one is an owner. So everybody’s playing an endless game of Monopoly, trying to win. And when the board is wiped clean and put away, then what?

Mmm…

It’s more than being in it for the long haul. It’s about people, relationships. Doing right so right will be returned unto you. And those who don’t play this game have very short shelf lives, when they hit a bump in the road, no one’s there to rescue them.

So the reason Glassnote is so successful is not because of the acts, but because of Daniel Glass. If you take a meeting with him, you’re gonna sign, because he’s so different from everyone else. Everyone else tells you how much money they’re gonna give you, send a limo, try to dazzle you. Whereas Daniel exudes passion for your work, tells you how long a road it’s gonna be, and then has his team of no-names work hard on your behalf. You can either buy a BMW with no gas, or a Prius that won’t break down and will get you there. Flashy and shiny went out with the nineties, today it’s all about the work.

It used to be about muscle.

Now it’s about smarts.

That was the majors’ ace in the hole. The ability to squeeze radio, where records were broken, and retail, where they were sold. But now radio, although important, means less than ever before. And iTunes is not about shipments and dating and all the other shenanigans of the past. Anybody can play. But everybody’s afraid. Or not interested, since the amount of money in music pales in comparison to finance and tech.

But it’s about the artists. Imperfect yet transcendent. That’s what Daniel told Jimmy, it’s the only reason to be in this business, to shepherd great talent to its deserved audience. And so many say they want to do this, but they don’t have the patience, never mind the skill, to deal with these impossible acts who can make great music but are frequently thorns in your side.

But it’s much easier if there’s trust.

A family is not without arguments. It’s not without a father. But it contains a bond transcending any business relationship. You know your back is covered. You know if you get in trouble there’s someone to bail you out.

It’s no wonder Daniel Glass is successful. He’s there for you.

Seven weeks. That’s how long David Bowie’s “The Next Day” has been on the chart. It’s perched at number 99, having moved 4,060 copies in its latest week, putting it right above Matt Maher’s debut and four spots below Darlene Zschech’s “Revealing Jesus.” Never heard of them? That makes two of us, I don’t know who they are either.

What were the two biggest musical stories of this not so nascent year? Justin Timberlake’s “The 20/20 Experience” and “The Next Day.” Timberlake sold his album via endless television appearances. He believed if we never lost sight of him, we’d be forced to purchase his LP, just to find out what the hoopla was all about. And Timberlake’s endeavor succeeded. Because he got traction at Top Forty radio.

Bowie got no such gift.

In other words, Bowie’s record was like a spaceship hurtling towards Earth, with news accounts trumpeting its imminent arrival, the danger, the hysteria, but at the last minute the flight path was altered, it didn’t enter our atmosphere, it sped on by and we all forgot about it and moved on to the next thing.

Some things last. Like Timberlake’s album and the Boston tragedy. But everything else in our society seems to get a fraction of time, a mere smidgen, and then it’s history.

It didn’t used to be this way. Used to be it was hard to get noticed, and if you broke through it was like walking into the backstage area of a classic rock superstar, with tapestries and gorgeous women and an endless buffet of caviar and alcohol. But today all those stars, at least the ones who survive, are sober. They don’t waste money on accoutrements. It’s all about the bottom line. They don’t tour to satiate their artistic urges, but to pay the bills.

When Andy Warhol said in the future everyone was going to be famous for fifteen minutes, we laughed, we didn’t know that it would literally come true. Last week’s viral video might as well be sealed in a time capsule. We’ve got a nation of endless grazers, always on the hunt for the next new thing, getting something to stick is nearly impossible.

But that’s what the music business is based upon.

It’s too expensive to have a momentary hit. What you want is something that lasts, that will generate ticket sales, that will sell catalog years out. But today that’s a rarity.

But it’s not only the purveyors who are clueless, but the consumers too. A fan wonders why his favorite act hasn’t gone nuclear, why everybody doesn’t like it, because he does. That’s like a stamp collector wondering why everyone doesn’t embrace his hobby. In other words, the paradigm, the structure, the fly by night world has been firmly established, but no one will acknowledge it.

Instead, we’ve got backlash.

CDs are better than downloads.

Vinyl is best, and it’s making a comeback.

Physical books are much better than digital versions.

Video entertainment is best consumed via cable, on a flat screen television.

But statistics tell us that whatever emotions are attached to the above beliefs, the trends are just the opposite. CD sales keep tanking. Vinyl is an almost imperceptible fraction of the market. Digital book sales soar as physical bookstores go out of business. Cable cord-cutting is real.

And you can read all of this, but very few embrace reality, because it scares them, it makes them feel inadequate, like they’re rootless and are unsure what’s coming down the pike.

First of all, we’re human. We don’t like anxiety, we hate not knowing what the future looks like, so we tell ourselves lies to establish order, to make ourselves feel better.

The truth is the media landscape is mirroring the economic landscape. It’s winner take all. Timberlake is victorious, he’s rich. Bowie loses, he’s broke. And you may not like this, but it’s the truth.

In order to last today you’ve got to be better than ever before. If you break through immediately, you must follow up just as good. Remember that guy with the contagious hit “Fireflies”? What came next wasn’t as good and most people have forgotten Owl City. Radio will play another one of his tracks, assuming it’s spectacular and it fits the format.

And radio is not immune to the game. All we hear from terrestrial services is a disinformation campaign, how radio is necessary and forever. Tell that to the television networks, which saw their market share plunge from 90% to less than 30%. Or Kodak, which was eclipsed by digital photography. The future is in your rearview mirror, and then it whips by you and obliterates you. Terrestrial radio will be a sliver of the future market. Its dominance is near its end. Not so much because stations were mishandled, which they were, but because no matter how good your horse and buggy are, you can’t compete with the automobile.

So you keep shoving your stuff down the pipeline, expecting a result from 1987, when MTV ruled and if the outlet played your video radio did too and you became rich and famous. But MTV sliced “Music” from its moniker and is financially challenged itself. And just like Apple and Google have all the money and you lost your job at the factory, the gap between winners and losers keeps growing.

Kind of like Brooklyn. If you read the press, you’d believe it’s a hotbed of cutting edge creativity that the rest of the nation will embrace when it pulls its head out of its rear end. But that’s the old game, where if the media says it’s true, it is. But now, the media has less power than ever before. We all gravitate to our respective niches and live in an echo chamber. In other words, the only people who listen to Brooklyn music are the ones who live there, who’ve been enraptured by the scene, the rest of us are turned off by the hype or are completely out of the loop. Furthermore, Brooklyn has never revealed its “Crazy” or “Gangnam Style.” Somehow, the hipsters believe the rest of the nation is going to work hard to embrace that which doesn’t grab them immediately, but the real story is we’re only interested in that which is easy to consume. Which doesn’t mean it’s bad, easy is not necessarily lowest common denominator, oftentimes it’s superior. But those left out of the equation don’t like this.

So what’s a creator to do?

Embrace your backwater. And realize it might be all you ever know, all you ever achieve. Yes, you can put in your 10,000 hours and not have 10,000 fans.

But the most important thing is not to embrace the old game, the one of desired ubiquity via hype. Because if it doesn’t work for David Bowie, it certainly isn’t going to work for you.