Apple’s gonna win the smartphone war.

I’m never going back to AT&T.  Some of the worst voice connections (or should I say DISCONNECTIONS) I’ve ever experienced.  As for the vaunted 3G…every time I use someone’s iPhone they’re on EDGE, even though I’m getting 3G on Verizon.  Yes, I’m on Verizon.  I switched back in 2003, and I’m HAPPY!

Except for the fact that I can’t get an iPhone.

I use a BlackBerry.  It’s the king of e-mail.  After that…

I’m rationalizing my plight by saying it’s all about voice anyway.  But I’ve got a bad case of handset-envy, I want an iPhone.  But I’m not gonna get one.  Not yet. Not until you can get one on Verizon, when the company goes to 4G and uses the standard GSM protocol.

They sell you these two year contracts, but these devices don’t LAST two years!  The BlackBerry I’ve got, which I actually got as a gift, after I dropped my previous one in the gutter and fried it, is barely two years old.  I had to replace the trackball.  But the off button?  For the last week it’s been almost unusable. I’ve been waiting for my new BlackBerry, the Tour 9630, which arrived today, at 3PM, via FedEx.

I’m gonna be cool for about a month.  Unless people think it’s a Bold.  The Tour is the latest and the greatest, the best BlackBerry made, only to be eclipsed in the fall when they add in Wi-Fi to the same device.  But I can’t wait.

So I activated the thing and then…

My e-mail accounts didn’t show up.

Finally, I called Verizon.  After layers of voice mail prompts I got someone real who couldn’t possibly answer my question but wanted to take down all my vital signs as if she was going to perform a lobotomy.  I hate to get angry with people who are just doing their job, but what’s the point in giving her all this information she doesn’t understand, describing a problem that she’s already demonstrated she doesn’t comprehend?  I made her transfer me immediately.

To someone who started troubleshooting and then told me…I was paying too much.

Here’s where it gets complicated, here’s where you can skip ahead.

I can save ten dollars, even though it should be fifteen, if I switch to a cheaper BlackBerry plan, since I don’t use an exchange server.  I actually know what an exchange server is, but what I’m most concerned with is the unlimited data.  The cheaper plan does not say unlimited.  The woman says to trust her.  ARE YOU KIDDING?

I ask her to show me where on the Web it says unlimited, ’cause I can foresee getting a $500 bill that I won’t be able to escape from.  She can’t find it, she says to trust her again.  I ask to be bumped upstairs.

Where the guy understands my problem and says there’s confusion yet convinces me it’ll all be cool and gives me a one month credit since they changed the plan eons ago, I could have been saving ten dollars for a year and a half!

As for why it’s ten not fifteen…  I’ve got a legacy account, and I’m paying five dollars less.  But to go to this new, cheaper plan, they’ve got to change my voice plan.  Which the previous woman said was no different but this guy says is different, just not in applicable ways.  Huh?

I may be too informed.  This is how they screw you.  Getting you off legacy plans and then informing you you can’t switch back.  But life is too short, I said o.k.

Meanwhile, during all this haggling over price my e-mail suddenly works!

But try getting contacts on the damn thing!

I’ve got to delete the old Missing Sync, buy and install the new one, both on my computer and BlackBerry, and I hit so many holes I feel like Princess Diana, I want to protest the existence of land mines, but finally I get the BlackBerry contacts transferred.

But it gets worse.  Try customizing the settings!

The device does not come with an extensive manual.  And there may be one on the disc, but it’s not Mac-compatible!

And for this I paid the equivalent of $500 and $100 a month?

And I’m TECH-SAVVY!

As for the masses…

I’m sure they can get someone to set up their e-mail.  Maybe even get someone to customize their profile, so the phone rings and when you get e-mail it buzzes, after that…  A smart computer?  The BlackBerry is dumb!

You don’t have these problems on an iPhone.  You sync to iTunes, which is platform-independent.  And if you’ve truly got problems, you can go to the Genius Bar…

So, if you’re locked into AT&T, get an iPhone.  And don’t even bother wrestling with the phone company, go straight to Apple.

And if you’re on Verizon…  If you want e-mail only, stay with the BlackBerry.  If you want more…  Shit, can I say to go to AT&T??

Blackberry Tour

Am I the only person sickened by the overhype on this movie?

This is why we hate the mainstream press.  Isn’t there a single outlet that can say no to hype?  That’s what this was, pure and simple.  Endless stunts that would make Lee Solters smile in his grave.  But this isn’t the 1950’s anymore, when we’re victims of few news outlets and what we know is controlled by a small coterie of power-mongers.  Today, we have a more flattened society.  The stars have been pulled down to earth and the hoi polloi have risen from their buried positions to roam amongst the so-called he-men of the universe.  Imagine some nut appearing in front of your high school dressed in a bizarre outfit every day for months. Would you think he was cool?  You’d avoid him, and if the school newspaper covered the story at all, they’d report how creepy he was.  Instead, in the real world, we’ve got a zillion dollar media eating up all this bullshit with no discernment whatsoever.  Like seeing any film will truly change our lives, never mind some improvised comedy.

Is it improvised?  I don’t know.  "Borat" was.  So this one probably is too.  I didn’t love this guy as Ali G, I thought there were a few moments of laughter in "Borat", I spend little time thinking of Sacha Baron Cohen and his "creativity".  But, then I’m bombarded with his bullshit, I just can’t steer clear!  Michael Jackson dies and mourners can’t reach his star on Hollywood Boulevard, there’s a "Bruno" promotion!

But I thought maybe I was too old.  That the younger generation, which hasn’t been subjected to decades of market manipulation, could be convinced "Bruno" is the hot new thing and flock to the theaters.

But they didn’t!

Do not believe the press stories, that "Bruno" opened at number one!  Grossing $30.4 million!  They’re true, but they don’t prove the point.

Point is, "Bruno" is an amazing failure.  How do we know?  By the steep decline in ticket sales over the weekend.

The "Wall Street Journal" reports that on Friday, "Bruno" sold $14.4 million worth of tickets.  But, when word got out what a stinker it was, receipts fell 39% on Saturday to $8.8 million.  And if you expect sales to steady hereafter, with months worth of lucrative playdates across the nation, you haven’t been alive for the last decade.  Only the best films can play for weeks on end.  Like "The Hangover" and "Up".

Now if you know you’ve got a stinker, best to refuse to show it to reviewers and make as much money as you can before word gets out.  But today, word gets out almost instantly!  Read this article about the Twitter effect:

Social Networking Making Friday The Only Day That Counts

In the old days, you could text to one person saying the movie sucked.  Today you can tell thousands, instantly!

So when you create that marketing campaign for your new record, carefully scripting all the hype, the underlying product better be fantastic, or you’re going to have a sales day of one.  When the hard core purchase it out of sheer pent-up demand.  Because everybody else is going to get the word and stay away.

In other words, the nineties paradigm is dead.  Wherein Clive Davis or Tommy Mottola orchestrates TV appearances and print pieces trumpeting the new release by a star and a dumb public pays up to twenty dollars for a CD and finds out there’s only one good track.  Homey don’t play that no more.  If I’ve never heard of you, I want the track at best.  To buy more, I’m going to have to hear more.  To overpay to see you live I’m going to have to be convinced you’ve got a career, that you’re here to stay.  You can’t jam anything down people’s throats anymore.

Unlike films, records only succeed if they’ve got a long shelf life.  You just can’t sell enough in a day or a week to recoup your costs. So better to create product that sells itself!  That is so good, people will embrace it and tell others about it!

At least the movie studios are not ignorant enough to blame their customers when a film fails.  The record companies say it leaked before release date, that their marketing was undermined, that the game just isn’t fair.  It was never fair!  It was rigged in their favor! But now the customer has power, and is using it.

I’m down on Sacha Baron Cohen.  I’d like to see him take his millions and retire.  The constant overhype, for over a year before release date, has made me hate him.  Yes, I’m on backlash.  He’d have to earn my trust before I’d give him another dollar.  Or create something great, that stands on its own merits, that I hear about from others.  Yes, there’s a cost to jamming.  We burn out on you by seeing your mug in front of us at all turns.  We want to see you fail.  The mantra of the Internet age is slow and steady.  Actually, you’ve got to be afraid of the reverse.  A sudden explosion that makes you famous overnight and creates unreal expectations.  The dreaded Pitchfork syndrome.  The site makes you, you sell product and tour to many, then the site says your next album is not as good and you’re OVER!

Be careful what you wish for.  If you do happen to blow up on the Net, don’t go on your publicity cleanup tour.

Nobody at the company will tell you any of this.  They don’t give a shit about you.  They just need someone to sell.  If your career burns out, they’ll find someone else.  Agents want their ten percent, labels want their billing…  Long term thinkers are few and far between in the business world.  Not only on Wall Street, but in music.  We hear about monetization, we hear all the business bullshit.  But the public has a fine-tuned bullshit detector that will kill your income overnight.  Never forget it.  An artists is in business with his fans, not his manager, not his agent, not his label and not his promoter.

Oh stop whining.  He earned it.  By doing everything you won’t.

He used his own money to start a site made in his own vision, compromising not a whit, to the point where Warner Brothers was attracted to him.  Are you really creating unique music, doing it your way, making money to the point where the majors come knocking on your door?

It’s an American story.  Guy stumbles on to business idea, perfects it and rides the glory all the way to..?

I’m not sure.  Perez is famous.  He’s making money now.  But he’s under the illusion that people truly care about him.  They don’t care about him, they care about gossip.  And once Perez stops slewing the gossip, adding his unique brand of commentary atop it, almost no one’s going to care.  Hell, they’re going to care even less than they do about his vaunted Madonna’s acting career!

You see Perez Hilton is a twenty first century train-wreck.  Who’s hopefully intelligent enough to know his days are numbered.  He didn’t put 10,000 hours into perfecting anything, he just stumbled into the spotlight and wants to stay there.  Like that evil doctor on "Big Brother" and that nasty couple who won "Survivor".  Huh?  Who?

Exactly the point.  In order to last,  you’ve got to have substance.  Depth.  Something that appeals to people that they don’t think they can do themselves.  Kind of like Google.  Everybody wanted a search engine that could deliver the results they wanted, they just didn’t put in the years in math class learning how to write the algorithms!  Perez is far from dumb.  But talented?

As for his deal with Warner…  Do you know anything about human nature?  Do you really think Perez is going to trash Warner acts now that he’s in business with the company?  Do you really think he’s not going to hype their acts?  Shit, they should have done the deal earlier!  If nothing else,  Perez is going to be sitting in Warner offices, hearing what they’re hyping, and he’ll be prone to hype it too.  After all, we live in an attention economy.  And suddenly, Warner has Perez Hilton’s attention!

As for the deal…

Come on, is that what you really want?  A deal with Warner Brothers?  Isn’t that like the aforementioned Google selling out to Microsoft?  If you establish a beachhead, you build upon it, expanding your own empire.  If you truly believe in yourself.

Perez thinks he’s got an ear for talent.  Let’s just say he does.  That’s a small percentage of the overall pie in an act’s success.  Does Perez know anything else about winning in the music business?  Hell, supposedly his partners at Warner do.  But how long until he says one thing and Warner says another?  If he’s so confident, why doesn’t he go into business by himself?  Tying up with Ian Rogers at Topspin as opposed to a major label.

But Topspin’s not going to bankroll you, it’s just an apparatus to effect your success, allowing you to do it yourself.  The story is not sexy, there’s no gossip column angle.  In other words, Perez is completely old school!  Yes, for a guy who claims not to care what people think about him, who thinks he’s playing by his own rules, he’s playing by twentieth century rules!

He could use some of that $72,000 a day advertisers pay to be on his site to break his own bands.  And own everything.  Emulate another gay hero, David Geffen.  Do you really think if Geffen was starting out today he’d go into business with Edgar Bronfman, Jr. or Doug Morris?  No way.  Or, if he did, he’d want the lion’s share of the money.  But that’s one of the things Geffen does best, sidle up to you, making you think he’s your best friend and then executing a lucrative deal.  Perez is not famous for negotiating.  He’s just famous!

I wish him no ill will.  But there’s a date on success like his.  There’s no core in what he’s selling.  It’s all flash and no substance.  And last I checked, it’s hard to profit in the music world on flash.  You can sell a single, not an album, and no one wants to see you live.  In other words, would you rather be in business with Kings Of Leon, not even ubiquitous enough to be parodied on Perez’s site, or Flo Rida?  Flo Rida might have a hit…but in an era where so many people don’t know what’s atop the chart and just don’t care.

Watch the movie.  That’s what you’re paying for, with your eyeballs, going to his site.  Watch Perez navigate the entertainment industry, creating a new paradigm of fame, just like John Mayer.  But John Mayer took a year off from high school to study the guitar, he went to Berklee, he paid a great deal of dues.  Perez listened to a lot of records.  Welcome to the club!  If that’s all that was required, we’d all be rich record executives.  But knowing how to navigate the corridors of business, knowing everything from airplay to distribution to endorsements to…that’s how you gain money and power in the music business.

Hell, Perez would have been better off going into business with Terry McBride, who understands the new game yet is lacking a working superstar.  Perez could have done it different.

But he chose not to.  He chose to play the same old game.

And you’re pissed he stole your opportunity?

I’m laughing at you, not him.  At least he built something and tried.  You’re just bitching the world wasn’t handed to you on a silver platter.

Did you read that story about the guy who called Zappos and asked the representative where to buy pizza?

The agent was cool.  Started doing some research.  And answered the caller’s question.

The caller, of course, was a snarky Internet troublemaker.  He wanted to see if the legend was true, that Zappos gave free reign to its workers, allowed them to make executive decisions, didn’t limit the amount of time they spent speaking with a specific customer.

Turned out the legend was true.

Let me put this in perspective…  This is like a concertgoer in the upper deck complaining to an usher that the Ticketmaster fee is too high and getting upgraded to a luxury box.  I’m not sure an usher knows how to think.  Or is even aware of who Michael Rapino or Irving Azoff is.  You have a shitty experience, but you’ve got no alternative.  Or do you?

You see United damaged this cat’s Taylor guitar.  To the tune of $1500.  And United would not pay for the repair.  Dude called for months trying to get satisfaction.  But, like Mick Jagger, he couldn’t get any.  So, when United told him to call no more, he told the airline he was going to make three videos, delineating his plight.

And there the viral sensation began.

I started getting e-mail on Wednesday.  The "Huffington Post" picked up on the story.  And then the TV news!

Ain’t that fascinating.  The story breaks on the ground floor, amongst the proletariat, and the mainstream news media is last!

Now the song ain’t great.  And the video is nothing riveting either (unlike the Evian roller babies, which also started online and spread to TV news:

Roller Babies

But the sentiment?  A+!  Because we hate the airlines and we hate being on hold and we hate people who have no authority to help us out, to bend the rules, to see that our situation has merit and we deserve satisfaction.  So word spread virally, because the public was aligned!  The public makes stories now, not press agents, not media companies.  Oh, big corporations can make a splash, but they can’t insure lasting attention.  Look at the networks’ failure rate re new series.  Totally abysmal.  How about fewer stars and better writing?  And a longer commitment, allowing the show to grow?  Like music.  The vaunted artist development.  Not work one record until it goes platinum, but record five until the act gets good!

But what truly stuns me is the lack of access in the music business.  The average guy can’t get near Jimmy Iovine.  Iovine’s an insider, delivering no access.  But now no one is an insider!  Everybody’s accessible.  Everyone deals with their customers or they pay the price.

Boy is the music industry paying the price.

Every label should have a Twitter account.  Where they not only hype product, but answer questions and solve problems.  Same deal with concert promoters.  This business is upside down.  It believes it’s in business with itself, when truly it’s in business with its customers!

Ticketmaster is a front for the artists, allowing them to essentially scalp their own tickets.  The losers, the fans!

Major labels say they’re beholden to radio.

But fans are pissed they can’t get a good seat at a reasonable price and go to the black market, otherwise known as a scalper, and are rejecting radio in droves.

Where is the honesty?  Where is the transparency?  Where is the realization that we lived in a changed world?

Trent Reznor prints his manifesto

Trent Reznor

not helping himself out directly whatsoever, but it bonds fans to him, because he cares, because he’s open, because he’s playing with them, because he responds.

Can you imagine getting a response from Don Henley?  A fan getting a phone call?  No one’s interested in his new solo music because he’s too removed.  If he changed his game plan, provided access, his solo shows would grow in attendance.

That’s the story today.  Not top down marketing, but bottom up.

And you do that by providing a ton of info and dealing with people’s problems.  You don’t have to bend over backwards like Zappos and be reasonable to jerks, actually, online, you can call out the jerks, Reznor famously did this, but you do have to respond to people’s problems.  Before your image is tarnished.  United is faceless.  One mistake as a band and you’re finished.  Remember Billy Squier?  That pink video killed his career!

As for new artists…  The reason you don’t know most of the names is they’re growing slowly, their careers are in the hands of their fans.  A few acts will break through, and you’ll wonder where they came from.  Suddenly fully realized.  But there will be ten years of hard work under their belt, and thousands of hard core fans.  They won’t want to align with big label hype, that will kill what they’ve got.  Which is based on humanity, not bullshit.

United backed down.  These companies always back down.  Because when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.  The labels backed down on DRM, additional P2P lawsuits…  Now, we’ve even got reasonable Webcasting rates.  Why don’t they realize it’s better to be reasonable from the get-go?

"United Breaks Guitars"

One of 440 stories about this listed on Google now:

Singer’s airline tune YouTube hit