"Finally canceled my Facebook account today. That was long overdue."

http://twitter.com/#!/dhh

Sites built upon user-generated content are vulnerable.  Any day people can pick up and take their content elsewhere, or stop playing entirely.  In other words, unless people have a reason to go to your site, unless it adds value to their lives without any input from themselves, it’s probably just a matter of time before it fades away and possibly doesn’t even radiate.  Let’s see, we’ve got MySpace and Plaxo and Friendster…never mind GeoCities and…

Sure, there are some bits added onto Facebook, that glom on to the assembled audience and make money, but this is no different from the concession stand at a rock concert or a sporting event.  Sure, people need to eat and drink, but they don’t need to do it at the show or the game.

Facebook’s signups have recently slumped.  Then again, who doesn’t have an account?  Then again, have you used your RAZR or Razor, the phone or the scooter, recently?  How about that Hula Hoop?

People want to connect.  But after you’ve hooked back up with everybody you’ve ever met, then what?  And Facebook’s problem has always been profitability.  I may want to go and connect, but explain to me why I want to buy there too?  And Facebook counters this by being the enemy instead of the friend, changing privacy controls essentially without notice, angering users.

There’s absolutely no reason why Facebook needs to survive.

I’m not saying it won’t.  But I am saying that those who believe it’s the end all and be all, that it can’t die, are wrong.

It’s hard to replicate Amazon’s distribution system, never mind the infrastructure of its Website.

And never mind Apple’s stores, the products Apple purveys are the result of tons of R&D.  And Apple has to keep on topping itself, coming up with new products, or it’s…Microsoft.

In other words, iPod desire has been replaced by phone desire.  Something Apple understands but the music industry does not, record labels still wish people would buy CDs, at least albums, they refuse to cannibalize their past to survive in the future.

But at least record companies are selling something.  I.e. music.  What exactly does Facebook sell again?

It’s no different from a hot club.  A place for everybody to gather before they look at each other and say "Nobody goes there anymore." and move on.

Facebook should have gone public eons ago.  That was MySpace’s mistake.  Thinking it would last.  Give Atlantic credit.  They whored out Jewel and overexposed her and made all their money up front.  Bad for her career but good for business, Atlantic’s business.

Yes, label business and career interests often don’t align.

Just like Facebook’s interests and those of the public often do not.

There’s really no there there.

This is all about name-recognition.  Investors are stupid.  They know little about the products of the companies they lay their dollars down for.  They’re acting on buzz.

And buzz has nothing to do with profits.  Certainly not long term.

What we’ve got here is a phenomenal job of brand-building.  Tim Westergren, like a carnival barker went out and sold a service based on a combination of hucksterism and I’m on your side duplicity.  If Mr. Westergren truly cared about music, he’d be a manager.  I haven’t seen someone this dedicated to building something from zero to superstar status in eons.  But there’s too little money actually promoting music, building stars, and talent talks back, digits do not.

In other words, it’s really damn hard to nurture and break talent.

It’s much easier to build upon the hard work of others.  Which is why record labels/rights holders demand so much from Pandora, after all, it’s built upon the equity they’ve created, without the music, Pandora is nothing.

Analysts have noted this.  Pandora’s lack of scalability, its huge rights payments.

But what analysts have not drilled down upon is the service itself.

It just doesn’t work.

People become infatuated with new technology.  They love to check things out and tell others about them.  Isn’t that the key to making a YouTube clip go viral?  But just because you’ve got millions of views that does not mean you’re rich.  Or that you can replicate your success.  It just means that for a moment everybody got excited about you.

For a moment, everybody got excited about Pandora.  It was so easy to use.  But did it satiate?  Was it satisfying?

If music radio is to survive, and that’s doubtful, it’s all about curation.  Serving up music you want to hear.  Pandora fails at this.  Despite the vaunted Genome, just too many suggestions are tuneouts, some positively dumbfounding.  Do you really expect people to sit for this, pay for it with their cash or time in a world where people only want the best and have no time to waste?

In other words, the future of listening to music, of breaking acts, of exhibition, is not Pandora.

Slacker does a far better job of curation, because it’s done by human beings.  But Slacker doesn’t have a Westergren, almost no one knows the company.

But Slacker doesn’t satisfy either.  You’re interested in what they air but you constantly want to hit the button to see what’s next.  You’re interested in the list more than actually listening!

Investors expect that in the future people will pay to listen to crap.  Huh?

The future of music exhibition does not revolve around algorithms but people.  It’s about personalities, cults, built around the deejay. Which is why all radio research is flawed.  Radio is not about the tracks as much as the trust.  Is the deejay my friend?  We hang with imperfect friends, we’ll listen to a song on their recommendation that we may not initially like because we like THEM!  We don’t really like Pandora.  There’s nothing there other than a bunch of wanna get rich suits.

Just like there were MP3 players before iPods, the future of an ad-supported streaming music service, or even a paid subscription service, is not Pandora, but something after, something later, something further down the development curve.

We see this all the time.  Techies were communicating online for years before AOL made it easy and desirable for the general public to get involved.

Windows 3.0 was a vast improvement over MS-DOS, but it wasn’t until Windows 95 was released that computer acquisition by the public went nuclear.

Hell, disc burning was all the rage eleven years ago, but the trend was brief, it was eclipsed by the iPod.

I’d love to tell you Pandora is a great service.  Aren’t we all looking for someone to turn us on to new music?  But every time I use it I’m frustrated that its suggestions aren’t better.  As for those testifying about it, I just put their opinions in the pile of the ignorant.  No one ever e-mails me about Pandora who has tried Slacker.  Pandora users are not usually SiriusXM subscribers.  What we’ve got here is a huge set of clueless adopters who will jump rather quickly to the next best solution.  Which is coming.

I mean isn’t Pandora just a list?  And I can use that same list to check out tracks on Spotify or Rhapsody or MOG or…

But everybody gets caught up in the mania.  No one wants to investigate and learn the truth, someone pointing out flaws is accused of being a downer, a naysayer, someone who doesn’t believe in the future.

But that doesn’t make the enthusiasts right.

And just because there’s a blockbuster IPO that doesn’t mean the company has a future.

P.S. I do believe adding comedy to Pandora was a brilliant move.  But they haven’t marketed this feature well.

P.P.S. If you really want to know what’s going on with Pandora, follow the tweets of David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby On Rails and best-selling co-author of "Rework".  Hansson is the antithesis of Wall Street.  He’s about building businesses that make money from day one, he’s about PROFIT!  What a concept!  All we’ve got is these corporations losing money making their executives rich.  Like Live Nation and Warner.  Come on, there are no miracles here.  Occasionally companies turn the corner but why can’t these companies make money now?  Why can’t Live Nation balance the books and pay its execs less and make money today?  Or at least say the loss is about investment in Ticketmaster, in the future.  Same deal with Warner Music.  If you can’t make money running it, maybe you’re not so smart, or maybe you’re just a crook, or maybe it’s just a bad business.  If it’s your own private company, do what you want.  But if your company is public, you’ve got a fiduciary duty to investors.  But no one believes in the law anymore.  Not Goldman Sachs, not the second rate banks. Everybody just wants to get rich.  From Westergren to the venture capitalists to the wannabe artists.  And that’s much easier to do than to make a great record, to make a truly great product.  Pandora is all about subterfuge, the same way labels sell generic music.  Get everyone excited, put down naysayers, get the mainstream to hype you and sell.  But that stuff is almost always crap.  Just like Pandora.

Follow Hansson on Twitter here

Or you can go to his homepage where he posts his most recent tweets

Or lack thereof.

The sales figures are in.  Adele beat out Lady Gaga.  At least by the "Hits" numbers.  113,000 and change to 105,000 and change.  (One can ask why the SoundScan and "Hits" numbers are so similar and SoundScan charges so much for theirs but…)

So what do we want to say here?  That sales don’t matter?

Sales are only one piece of the puzzle.

But if you play the Top Forty game you live and die by airplay and sales numbers and in both those spheres, Lady Gaga is anemic.

Now if Gaga is going to launch a new career, something based on fame more than music, she’s got a great launching pad.  Everybody knows her, if not her music (yes, today you can have a number one hit and still be unknown to many…)

But Gaga broke the number one rule of the music industry.

IT’S ABOUT THE MUSIC!

Gaga dropped the ball.  Her album just isn’t good enough.  Ask radio, ask the fans.  She garners attention, but people would rather spin something else.

Doesn’t matter how many Twitter followers you’ve got.  If Twitter was about talent, Ronnie the Limo Driver would be bubbling up, hell, he’s got over 100,000 followers!

Ronnie the Limo Driver?

Yup, he’s Howard Stern’s driver.

Got it?

Twitter followers and Facebook friends are like MySpace friends.  A number that’s got nothing to do with talent and has everything to do with self-promotion.

It’s hard to create great music.

But when you do, the public rallies around you, especially when you’re coming off a fresh round of success.

How many times have we seen this movie?

Peter Frampton, star of the decade.  Released "I’m In You" and he’s just about over, hell, he never recovered.

Maybe if Gaga wants to start a fashion line.

Or wants to run for political office.

But if she’s interested in music she’d better stop the worldwide promotional tour and get back into the studio.  Strip it all down, sit at the piano and convince us she’s real.

Yes, this is what’s wrong with big time fame today.  It’s about marketing more than music.  Play to the middlemen, the ignoramuses at the newspaper, which are run by Luddites and are on the verge of going out of business.  Once upon a time music was cutting edge.  Now it’s just another piece of junk hawked by companies a hell of a lot less savvy than Procter & Gamble.

But one great thing about statistics is they’ll tell you where you are, but not where you’re going.

So Gaga isn’t dead yet.

But she’s pointing in the wrong direction.

And all that hogwash about Interscope picking a release date and sticking to it.  They should have put out the album the day of the first single, before the bloom was off the rose.

Enough with the set-up.

Music isn’t about set-up, music is about the NOW!

A hit touches people’s hearts.  Doesn’t matter if you tour, doesn’t even matter if it sounds like anything else.  You hear it and want to play it again. Others hear it and ask what it is.

Great music sells itself.

I’m not saying a major corporation can’t get you to GO.

But it can’t get you past NO!

The Fame Monster.

Where in that moniker is there anything about music?

What makes Gaga different from Snooki or JWoww?

What makes an artist different is the talent, the creation.

A musical star is nothing without the music.

And we love those most who create the music themselves.  They’ve got a constant well to draw upon called their life.  Otherwise, you’re just at the mercy of hired gun songwriters and businessmen interested in money, not music.

All this hogwash about Polaroid and the alternative retail venues.

Now here’s the truth.  I kind of like Gaga.  She’s us.  She’s not beautiful, she had to work hard to make it.  I’d love to see her turn it around.

But I will not sit here and listen to the bully label tell me what a great success this is.

I will not sit here as the mainstream press twists and turns and states inanities while demonstrating its cluelessness.

Everybody knows who Gaga is.

They know who Rebecca Black is too.

FAME IS NOT EVERYTHING!

MUSIC IS!

Make music your calling card.  No amount of talking about music, whether it be in e-mail or on Facebook or Twitter, is going to make a good song a hit.

Good.  That’s the problem today.

There’s more good stuff than ever before.

But we’re only interested in great.

We’re all time-challenged.  Even the prepubescent.  Music and entertainment are plentiful.

Music is the one art form that goes straight to the heart, that can resonate with a person more than any other.

Respect the music.  Make greatness your goal.

Jimmy Iovine is not a musician.  Nor Irving Azoff.  They can’t make the music and neither can I.

But we all know it when we hear it.

And it turns out most people don’t want to hear Gaga’s music.  They’ve moved on.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Nothing triumphs like great music.  Ticketmaster fees are irrelevant when the act’s hot.  People don’t care about cost, they just want to get closer.

That’s music’s power.

Doesn’t matter what you look like.

Doesn’t matter if you’re rich.

Like they used to say in the days of vinyl, IT’S IN THE GROOVES!

More people are making more music than ever before.  The barrier to entry is low.

But that doesn’t mean we want to listen to it.

People have rallied around Adele.

They’ll rally around you too.

IF YOU’RE JUST THAT GOOD!

I got e-mail telling me Buffalo Springfield did not play at Fordham University, they canceled.

I’ve got a very good memory.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t be wrong.  I asked the naysayer if he was at the Fordham gig.  He said yes.  And then when I a second e-mail came in, stating that the Chambers Brothers replaced the Springfield and opened for Arlo Guthrie, the headliner, I knew they were right, because I remember the Chambers Brothers playing "Time Has Come Today", as well as the closer, the Union Gap, playing their huge hit "Young Girl" twice and Arlo saying there were three versions of "Alice’s Restaurant" and we didn’t know which one he was going to play, and we didn’t, and he didn’t play the famous one involving trash and Thanksgiving but another involving LSD and then President Johnson saying he was paranoid…

But I was sure I’d seen Buffalo Springfield.  I knew they were booked twice at gigs I was scheduled to see.  And that they’d canceled one.  But I thought the other was as an opener for Sly & The Family Stone at the Garden.  But then the blocks in my brain rearranged themselves and I remembered.

It was at Fairfield University.  Stephen Stills said someone was sick.

I just read online it was Bruce Palmer.

And I also read online that the date was November 20, 1967.

It was a five act bill.

Four musical groups and a comedian in between, who I also couldn’t remember, but just read online was the Pickle Brothers.

Huh?

Who knows.

But I do know the other four acts.

There was the Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Yes, they played "Incense and Peppermints".

And the Soul Survivors.  Who did an explosive version of "Expressway To Your Heart" that just about blew the roof off the joint.

And Stills sang "For What It’s Worth".

Don’t get the wrong idea, it wasn’t hits only, the gig went on until just about midnight, I remember using the pay phone to call my dad to pick us up, every act played a set, if not full, comprising many numbers.

And the headliner was the Beach Boys.

When they were no longer hip.

They’d had the last hurrah the year before, with "Good Vibrations".  But rock and roll has a short memory, especially back in the sixties.

But I was the biggest Beach Boys fan on the planet.  I bought every album.  Even "Wild Honey", which was released shortly thereafter and not only contained the title track but a killer cover of "I Was Made To Love Her"…no one could sing like Carl.

Actually, I passed on the follow-up, "Friends", and couldn’t find it for years, didn’t own it until the CD era, but I was sick of getting shit for being a fan of this has-been band.

But they were my favorite.

The Beach Boys are why I live in California.  It’s the land of possibilities.

And after skipping "Friends" I started buying again.  With "20/20" and then the surprising "Sunflower" and then the album that brought them back, made them cool again, "Surf’s Up".

Then again, they started to be cool once more when Bill Graham chose them to help close the Fillmore East, which was simulcast on FM and was even more important than watching the video feed of Bonnaroo and Coachella because it was the last one.  Nothing ends anymore.  They just wait a while and repackage it, everybody needs the money.

The concert was in the gym.  The Springfield was good.

But the Beach Boys were transcendent.

Before we knew Mike Love was a Republican, never mind a narcissist.

When Dennis was just the drummer, never mind the coolest cat on the planet, dating Christine McVie yet befriending Charles Manson.

And when Carl Wilson was still alive.  The glue keeping the old band together.

Yes, Al Jardine sang "Help Me Rhonda".

But I needed to hear the surf hits.  And the car hits.  And they played both.  And Mike Love even broke out the theremin.

Back before Katy Perry ripped off the uncopyrightable title and changed the spelling to be hip, we certainly wished they all could be "California Girls".

Nothing popped out of the transistor like that before.  I’d have the radio strapped to the handlebars of my Raleigh and when I’d hear that orchestral intro, with the horn flourish, my heart would start to palpitate, I’d begin to swoon.

And then when the jaunty organ intro prefaced the verse I’d start to smile, believing life was all about possibilities, and if something could sound this good life would truly be an adventure.

Yes, you can go see the progenitor in ever-decreasing halls and he’ll play the music but you won’t be able to see the most important thing.  The creativity.  The writing.  The direction in the studio to get the players to lay down what he heard in his head.

A genius is someone who digests all the influences and creates something brand new.

Brian Wilson is a genius.

But the Beach Boys were a group.

And when they played this music on stage my entire fourteen years stood in relief.  From getting the gumption to ask Jill Philipson to dance to the strains of "Do You Wanna Dance?" at Camp Laurelwood to hearing "I Get Around" on the jukebox at the Nutmeg Bowl to trying to comb my hair just like theirs, mimicking Dennis’s doo on the back of "Surfin’ USA".

They say that that was a singles era.  But a true fan always bought the albums.

I knew every note.

I was elated that cold almost winter night in ’67.

And when the music pours out of the speakers today, listening to "California Girls", I’m just as happy.