I am now a Chris Brown fan.

Wait, didn’t he beat up Rihanna?  Or was it someone else?

Only dedicated readers of TMZ and PerezHilton can keep score.  And isn’t that the point, that gossip has moved online?

Perez may be hatable, but he’s the guy who got a deal with Warner because he realized the Web is where the action is (why he’d want a deal with the old wave company is a different question).

I read an opinion piece in I believe the "Financial Times" stating that people still go to New York to make it, but not to become Broadway stars, or work in advertising, but to leave their mark on the Web.

The tide has turned.  The only people paying attention to old media are…OLD PEOPLE!

What did the guy on the "Daily Show" tell the "New York Times"?  That it was selling "aged news"?  Even when the "Times" does online, it gets it wrong.  The site’s interface resembles a newspaper.  Which is like an iPod being controlled by a giant CD (actually, the click wheel IS round, but the interface is totally different.)  The HuffPo generates little news, but it’s a PHENOMENAL linking device.  One glance tells you more about what’s going on in the world than a perusal of the "Times" site.  But we should be saving newspapers?

Why?

For the same reason we should be saving record labels?

And Sony?

And all those other entities that missed the future?

The key is to leave your mark online.  And you do that via sheer creativity.  Losers think you do it via spamming, via marketing campaigns.  But no one pays attention to advertising online, just ask Facebook! (Google delivers ads you WANT to see, so it’s a completely different paradigm).  Will the resulting hits deliver more than instant fame?  Excellent question.  Monetizing online notoriety is oh-so-difficult.  But that’s where the game is going.

And the old rights holders just want to hold it back.

The labels have been putting themselves out of business, but a video of a fish tank helped sell music by Barcelona. 

Original video here

the band’s response here

And now we’ve got this JK Wedding Entrance video.  With over 14 million plays!

Do you get that?  That far eclipses not only the viewership of SNL (and Dave and Conan), it exceeds the viewership of almost ALL network television shows (never mind HBO).

And the reason the clip is so successful?  THE RAW CREATIVITY!

Watch the dad dance and crack up.  Like all great art, you watch this and say WHO CAME UP WITH THIS?

That’s the essence.  Not hiring the usual suspects to create a soundalike.  That’s why bloviating Clive Davis’ albums never have any catalog legs.  There’s no SOUL! It’s all manipulated.  We don’t care if someone misses a step in this video, we like WHERE IT’S COMING FROM!  Just like we love the records of yore, with their mistakes, the warts and all give them their humanity.

But, this video does not work without Chris Brown’s song "Forever".  It’s the grease that makes the whole thing move.  That’s the power of music.  Google is trumpeting on its blog how this video has sold Chris Brown tracks.  Notice how they don’t give a number…  In other words they didn’t sell many.

I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study

But more than revenue has been generated here.  Chris Brown’s career has been REJUVENATED!

More than that.  He’s reached someone who wasn’t paying attention… ME!

Say YES!

If someone wants to use your music, don’t bother saying no.  They’ll either use it anyway or use a competitor’s and you’ll miss out on the advantages.

And know that most of those old wave prognosticators saying no band ever broke on the Web are probably still using AOL.  Today EVERYTHING starts on the Web!

Now the concert business is imploding.

It’s not like promoters, managers, agents and acts couldn’t see this coming.  They just didn’t want to believe it.  They’re just as ignorant as their major label brethren. It’s just that their comeuppance is occurring a decade later.

How long did you think it was going to last?  Did you really think people were going to want to overpay to see the Stones, believing this was the last tour, when that whisper campaign began TWO DECADES AGO?

Do you really have to go see Aerosmith?  Sure, they outlasted their seventies contemporaries, had hits in the MTV era, even played the VMAs year after year, but you don’t even want to hear those lame Geffen hits, you want the Columbia classics, and you’ve been able to hear them year after year.  So, you say NO MAS!

It’s not only Aerosmith that’s having problems selling tickets.  AC/DC is papering stadiums.  Paul McCartney is essentially giving tickets away.  Springsteen’s tour is a joke.  Come on Bruce.  You’re on a closing buildings tour?  Just call it what it is, a going out of business tour!  You’re just so greedy, you want to get the money before it evaporates.

Ticket sales are not in the dumper because of the economy.  That’s like saying major labels are in trouble because of piracy.  Sure, piracy put a dent in the Big Four’s bottom line.  But what about the fact that people hate the crap they’re purveying, and where they’re purveying it most people aren’t paying attention anymore? Sure, the economy is hurting ticket sales.  But that’s just the cover-up.  The true story is the business has broken very few superstars, and the old ones are on overpriced tours, blaming Ticketmaster while they scalp their own tickets.

You say the labels should have seen Napster coming.  That they should have authorized P2P.  When is the concert business going to have an all-in ticket price? When is greed going to be put aside for the long term health of not only the promoters, but the acts themselves?  Do you really think Live Nation can overpay forever?  Look at the company’s financials.  And no new entity is going to line up to overpay guarantees.

We’ve got to start over.

But the live business, like the recorded music business, doesn’t want to start over.  It just wants to raise prices in order to assure growth.

Hate to tell you, but music doesn’t drive the culture.  Because all the big acts are tied in with corporations, and are fearful of speaking the truth for fear of being Dixie Chicked.  Used to be the artists were beholden to no one, which is why the business blew up.  Artists lit the way.  Now techies lead.

You’ve got to start small, charge little and build an audience.  Which you nurture over time.  Trying to break a new superstar overnight is like GM believing it can save itself with a new Malibu (it didn’t, in case you weren’t paying attention).  GM drove itself towards a cliff with no consciousness of the future.  People want mileage and longevity.  GM provided neither.

Concert attendees want music.  Sure, Madonna might be able to survive selling spectacle, but how many successful circuses exist?  There’s Ringling Brothers and…

And a night at the show must not break the bank.  Broadway overcharges because it’s seen as a once in a blue moon event.  You’ve got to go to New York City…  It’s like selling tickets for a U2 show on the moon.  You can charge up the yin-yang for that!

As for U2…  They don’t sell out either anymore.  Maybe because they’re no longer seen as vital, they’re the new Stones.  U2 could possibly rehabilitate itself, by releasing a string of singles, one every month.  By releasing a live album from the tour in progress.  Instead, playing by the old rules they topped every mass media event with their lame "Get On Your Boots" and no one cared.

Just like no one cared about Springsteen’s album after the Super Bowl.

Maybe no one cares to the equivalent of a multiplatinum level anymore.  Maybe the live business has to give that paradigm up.  At least for a decade, until new acts are grown.

We want music that resonates.  And we want music.  Lady GaGa is outfits.  Katy Perry is so second rate she’s third rate.  The future looks more like the Kings Of Leon.  A band that’s been around for years that finally breaks through.  And doesn’t break the bank when it sets ticket prices.

Screw lawn tickets at a discount.  That’s like listening to music on your neighbor’s stereo.  How about getting a ticket for a developing artists show when you buy the ticket for a star.  We’ve got to get people sampling, we’ve got to get people coming to the show on a regular basis.  Now we’ve got a business of extravaganzas. We’re like North Korea, trying to blast rockets into the stratosphere, but usually failing.  To the point we’re a joke.

Last minute concert tickets hot items in recession

Well, not exactly, but iPod shipments fell 7% to 10.2 million.
To quote Tim Cook (via the WSJ):

"We sold 10.2 million iPods which was down from 11 million in the year ago quarter. There were two key reasons for this decline: First, we reduced channel inventory by over 400,000. Second, sales declined by 4% year-over-year."

Furthermore:

"We expect our traditional MP3 players to decline over time as we cannibalize ourselves with the iPod Touch and the iPhone."

Apple iPhone Sales Surge, iPod Declines

In other words, the iPod is a mature product.  Demand still exists, but the dramatic sales spikes of years past are history.  People already have one.  Or are switching to the iPhone and iPod Touch, which have less storage.

Remember the space race?  The larger and larger hard drives in iPods over the years, so you could transport your entire collection? At one point, Apple was selling a 160 gig iPod, now the largest the company offers is a 120.  The largest iPhone and iPod Touch you can buy is 32 gigs.  We’re going backwards.  In more ways than one.  People need less because they want to carry less, and what they want to carry is oftentimes not even music.  And music is becoming something you stream…

Spotify is in front because of its user interface, which mimics iTunes and is almost as easy to use, proving once again, that it’s not about concept, but execution, not about hardware, but software.  MySpace says you can stream anything…  Can you find anything? Napster and Rhapsody sport ancient interfaces.  As for Web-based competitors, it appears we’re moving towards standalone apps…

So, Apple is winning the hardware race because of software.  You can make a hand-set that looks like an iPhone, but it won’t work like an iPhone (even the Pre, which Apple excluded from synching with iTunes last week).  So, we can see that Apple is one step ahead of everybody else, because their products work, in a way that their competitors’ don’t.

But what’s most interesting for the music business is that rights holders are always arguing about the past, losing valuable revenue while the future arrives.

In other words, decline of iPod sales is a harbinger of the reduction of P2P music acquisition.  True, the iPod market is saturated, but why do you need a bigger one if you don’t have to carry around your music?  The labels could have licensed P2P, beginning with Napster, and reaped all that revenue before the window on file-trading started to close, entering its sunset years like 8-tracks and cassettes before.  To license P2P now is akin to regulating CB radios.  Huh?  Time has marched on, the behavior has been eclipsed. We’re moving to a streaming world.  So best to license streaming apps and try to gain as much revenue as possible, before the next technology arrives.

It looks like streaming/on demand is going to have a long run.  It’s just a matter of how the music is delivered.  So play now, earn now, or forever leave that money on the table.

Going back to the iTunes Store…  Instead of raising prices, the labels should have a going out of business sale!  Dropping prices to ten or fifteen cents, loading customers up on files before they realize they don’t need them anymore!

Apple is no longer dependent on the major labels.  The App Store is driving the sales of their next technology, i.e. iPhone/iPod Touch. Apple moved on before the previous technology peaked.  This would be like the labels embracing file-trading before CD sales tanked. But we know that didn’t happen…

The tech world moves very fast.  Today’s hit is tomorrow’s rubbish.  Resurrect AOL and Yahoo?  Revive MySpace?  Are you kidding? That would be like everybody who got a divorce getting back together with his old spouse.  And that ain’t gonna happen.  You don’t go back, you move on!

As for revenue generation of streaming services…  Fascinating question.  The key is to make everyone a customer, charging a low price for everything.  Still, the market for recorded music may never hit its old heights.  But that doesn’t mean that the music business won’t grow.  Will Page at PRS says it already has!

Music industry back on right track, says report

It’s about songs.

You can be as beautiful as Beyonce, as desirable as Angelina Jolie, and it won’t mean shit in this business unless your songs are good.  You can create atmospheric music that will garner you a sizable audience, but if you want to break through and stay there you’ve got to have a stable of singable songs.  Stuff your audience sings along with in the car, that they break into when amongst friends.  That’s what bonds us to you, why we love you so much, those songs.  And we love the version you’ve laid down on wax.  But what truly gets us off, makes us feel totally alive, is hearing you perform these songs live.

If you think the audience wants perfect recreations of the studio recordings, you’re wrong.  You can go into the extravaganza business, with million dollar sets and music on hard drive, but what we truly want is a bit of humanity, to make us feel not so alone.

The opening act last night was Lady Antebellum, sitting in for an ailing Sugarland.  They covered "You Shook Me All Night Long" and "Boys Of Summer".  If AC/DC were starting off today would they have to go country?  The Eagles ARE country.  The Nashville market is the last bastion of real music.  Actual songs played on real instruments.  And that’s what you got with Keith Urban, real music.

On one hand it hearkens all the way back to the sixties and seventies, all the way back to the Allman Brothers.  Keith Urban’s shirt had a few sparkles in it, but everybody in the band, including the front man, could walk down the street unnoticed, other than for their fame.  They looked like you.  And me.  Only they could do what we cannot…PLAY!

They started with "Hit The Ground Runnin’", from the new album.  Which sounded better live.  There’s a sterility in the studio takes.  But the songs had energy in Staples, they were like a well-worn pair of jeans, they were broken in, they were suddenly attractive.

And Keith played most of ’em.  That’s the way it was and still is in the country world.  A fan can’t miss a tour, some of these songs from the new album might never be performed again.

But as much as I enjoyed the new material, the classics blew my mind.

Early in the set, "Stupid Boy", with even more force than the original.

And, of course, "Raining On Sunday".

But the killer was "You’ll Think Of Me"…

"I woke up early this morning around four a.m.
With the moon shining bright as headlights on the Interstate
I pulled the covers over my head and tried to catch some sleep
But thoughts of us kept keeping me awake"

You can eventually fall asleep, after watching late night TV, catching up on that boring book, but you can’t STAY asleep. Suddenly, you’re startled awake.  You look over to the alarm clock, praying it’s late enough to get out of bed.  But it’s not. It’s still the middle of the night.  You can’t get up now.  You’ve got to lie in bed, reviewing your life, trying to figure it out until you fall back asleep.  To awake again, sans enough shuteye, to face the day.

Ever since you found yourself in someone else’s arms
I’ve been trying my best to get along

Sometimes you don’t even know if there’s anybody else.  They’ve been distant and secretive for far too long.  You may share the same bed, but you’re living separate lives.  But even if they don’t leave you for someone else, eventually they find a new love.  And you just can’t cope with it.  They don’t know her the way you do.  It’s like your life has ended.  Until it begins again.  Which is such a painful process, starting over.

Take your records, take your freedom
Take your memories, I don’t need ’em

The splitting up of assets.  How come they always take something treasured of yours and leave something indelible of theirs behind?  Are they that eager to leave?  Do you call them, try to retrieve what’s rightfully yours, or let it go?  The call alone is too painful.  They’re too cheery, or dealing with you as if you’re an untouchable.

Take your space and take your reasons
But you’ll think of me
And take your cat and leave my sweater
We have nothing left to weather
In fact I’ll feel a whole lot better
But you’ll think of me, you’ll think of me

And they do.  But they don’t come back.  Something you did, something you are is such that they can’t come back. Sometimes you don’t even know what it is.  They left eons ago, you just found out.

Someday I’m gonna run across your mind
But don’t worry, I’ll be fine
I’m gonna be all right
While you’re sleeping with your pride
Wishing I could hold you tight
I’ll be over you
And on with my life

They tell me breakups are equal, that both desired it.  I’ve never heard such hogwash in my life.  Somebody always wants it more.  If you’re on the losing end, it’s okay to be vindictive, if you don’t own your anger it’ll just play out in your next relationship.

I wish I was never left.  I wish no one ever left you.  It’s almost impossible to recover from.  You can no longer trust.  But once you recover, however long that takes, you’ve gone through a character-building experience.  You’re strong at the broken places.

I love being exhilarated at a concert.  But I also want to be touched.  I want to stand and sing along at the top of my lungs, those songs I’ve heard on my computer, on my iPod, that stopped me in my tracks.

There was a hi-def screen, which moved like the lighting trusses of old.  Very cool.

Keith played his guitar while walking to a makeshift stage at the back of the arena, stating "Who’s got the good seats now?" when he arrived at the less than prime seats.

And there were tons of people back there.  No one can sell out the upper deck at Staples.  It’s just not worth it.  To camp out above the three decks of skyboxes, to be reminded that you’re not privileged, better off watching the video screens than the action on stage.  But last night people needed to be inside, they needed to be there.

The whole business has inverted.  Songs are the come on for the gig.  In order to draw people live you’ve got to be honest and earnest, you’ve got to provide a human experience.  You’ve got to make us feel there’s nowhere we’d rather be.

Keith didn’t look down upon the audience.  He even spoke about the recession.  Nashville has learned that you’re in bed with your audience, not talking down to people.

And last night Keith Urban spoke to me.

With his five guitar assault.  With his stinging leads.  With his songs that I knew by heart, that I could sing along with.

And although I loved "You’ll Think Of Me", when I heard the introductory notes of "Who Wouldn’t Wanna Be Me", I was truly elated!

I got no money in my pockets
I got a hole in my jeans
I had a job and I lost it
But it won’t get to me

I gave the parking attendant my last twenty.  My expenses are exceeding my income.  But last night none of that mattered…

‘Cause I’m ridin’ with my baby
And it’s a brand new day
We’re on the wheels of an angel
Flyin’ away

I’m there with my girlfriend.  And eighteen thousand new buddies.  We got the word.  That country is the new rock and roll.  And although there are evanescent hacks, those atop the heap deliver the same experience that made us sacrifice to buy records before they were free.

And the sun is shinin’
This road keeps windin’
Through the prettiest country
From Georgia to Tennessee
And I got the one I love beside me
My trouble behind me
I’m alive and I’m free
Who wouldn’t wanna be me

They say rock and roll will never die.

Metal acts in spandex are not keeping it alive.

Oldsters overcharging in sheds aren’t either.

Rather these country acts, who grew up on Skynyrd and the aforementioned AC/DC, who refused to play the coastal game and subjugate their music to their image, have picked up Fenders and Gibsons and are playing their songs to a driving beat.  Hell, Keith even played one of his numbers solo on his Telecaster.  A great song does not need gobs of production.

And you know the power of rock and roll.  It can make you forget the economy, your romantic misadventures, all the trouble in your life.

You can sit on your bed listening to your records.

Or you can collect some cash and go to the gig.  To see your favorite act.

And when they fire up your favorite song, you look to the heavens like a hound dog, singing along, thinking WHO WOULDN’T WANNA BE ME?