If only tracks had cost a nickel, or a dime.  Do you really think everybody would have jumped through hoops to steal them?

Pretty soon, music’s gonna be free.  Call that Spotify.  As for labels pulling Spotify licenses, isn’t that like the government enacting Prohibition?  It would be one thing if no one had ever gotten drunk, if the effects of alcohol were not known.  But once they were, people needed to get high, damn the law.

So I just don’t understand this ten year period.  What did the rights holders prove?

That the public doesn’t care about internal bickering?  That licenses require publishers and labels to agree on terms, and they can’t?

That ten years of revenue not only went uncollected, but never will be?

That’s why the rights holders are fucked.  They continue to live in a world they want to see, not the one that actually exists.  Eric Garland proffered at NARM that the rights holders were not prepared for terabyte transfers offline.  I.e. hard drive swapping.  As for three strikes laws, intimidating both ISPs and traders, oops, there’s a question of legality.  As the French court said, you can’t mess with someone’s basic rights without a full legal proceeding.

When are the rights holders going to get off their high horses and realize they’re in the pit with their customers.  That the day of dictation is over.  Or, are they going to be like their brethren in the newspaper business, crying it’s just not fair until the very end.  And even Letterman took a cut when he re-upped with CBS.  Network ratings aren’t what they used to be, and ad revenues certainly are not.

Rights holders could have reaped revenue for a decade, and then sold consumers the same damn tracks all over again.  Instead, they fought downloading until it became streaming.  This is like losing out on the revenue of cassettes waiting for the CD.

End result?  Labels will have less power and less income.  Why go with the major label who will restrict you, yet want to take all the revenue?

Today it’s not about being married to the past, but fighting for your place in the present.  iPhone has to adapt, even lower prices, to compete with not only the Palm Pre, but Android and RIM.  As for Nokia…  Remember when everybody had one in the U.S?  I don’t know anybody who’s got a Nokia phone today.  And Motorola is going down the tubes.  Their RAZR was a one hit wonder.  They booked tons of revenue for a short period of time, now what?

Point is, Apple tells app writers to price their iPhone programs extremely cheaply, to make them impulse buys.  As a result, a billion apps have been downloaded in a month, and irrelevant of the revenue generated, it’s these apps that have made the iPhone such a dominant platform.

Let me explain this to you…  The more people who have your music on their hard drive, the more people who want to see you live and buy your merch and keep your career going.

If you’re overpriced like the Pre, and no one wants to utilize the declining Sprint, you’re dragged down the drain.

Most people can’t figure out how to steal.  Napster was easy, even KaZaA, but BitTorrent is too daunting for them and the RIAA anti-piracy campaign has got them afraid to steal.  Yes, the RIAA campaign worked!  It took millions and millions of people who were consuming mass quantities of music via Napster completely out of the game.  Left them with their money and time to watch TV, buy DVDs and play video games.

The way you deal with shrinking margins is to cut costs, not to raise prices.  Raising prices when your product can be obtained for free is like charging $100,000 for a Hummer.  Huh?

Utterly ridiculous.

Snow Leopard Takes a Page From the App Store Playbook

Is this alternative versus classic rock?

That’s what the music business says, we’ve got to be young and hip, the kids demand it!  We’re a youth business!

Then why is it that Led Zeppelin is still bigger than any act hatched in the MTV era?

NBC should have paid off Conan and left Leno at 11:35.  This is a gigantic mistake.  Although Conan will be profitable, the costs of these shows are miniscule relative to the advertising revenue, he will never dominate.  Hell, astute observers notice that Craig Ferguson was already denting Conan’s numbers at 12:35.  And if you can be beaten by Mr. Wick…

Actually, Ferguson is quite good.  It’s his irreverence, his lack of self-consciousness.  Everything the vaunted Conan is supposed to bring to the table, yet Ferguson does better.  Ferguson knows it’s 12:35, he knows his audience.  Conan was the late night guy of college students…almost twenty years ago!

It would be one thing if NBC jetted completely into the future, and installed a twentysomething in late night.  That would be an adventurous move, that would truly be looking to the future.  But chances are taken on cable, at best.  And the younger generation looks to YouTube for cutting edge visual entertainment.  The networks are just continuing to bury themselves, playing by rules that no longer exist.

You’ve got to be good.

I’ll say that Letterman is not as good at 11:35 as he was at 12:35.  Back when he wore his Adidas and sports coat, Dave was the ringleader, the guy who’d play a prank on the teacher and smirk, the Bill Murray character in "Stripes" who could never be co-opted.  Now, he’s on some weird victory lap as an elder statesman.  Some people can never grow up.  If only Dave stopped wearing those high-priced suits and stopped calling Paul’s group "The CBS Orchestra".  Dave tries to live in Johnny’s era, but there was only one Carson.

Still, there’s only one Letterman.

People forget that everybody’s doing Dave’s show now.  Carson wasn’t about wall to wall comedy.  He had serious interviews, there were fewer set pieces and remotes. Carson’s program was three-dimensional, like life.  Letterman has always purveyed a "Little Rascals" show, one that could have emanated from a garage.  Granted, he got so good that we’ve got the slick product at 11:35 today.  But, there’s still a juvenile element, and when Dave gets serious, he tests limits, he’ll actually criticize Bill O’Reilly.

Conan is the guy who started a rival show down the street.  Who has skills, but no vision.  Conan didn’t reinvent late night, he just followed in the footsteps.  And it’s tough to beat the progenitor doing that.

Meanwhile, Leno imitated Dave too.  He turned the "Tonight Show" into wall to wall comedy.  But Leno beat Dave because he was more open and lovable.  Who’d you like to hang out with, Jay or Dave?  Howard Stern said the other night that Dave didn’t come to his wedding, even though invited.  Dave goes nowhere, he’s self-conscious, it’s about the show.

But it’s still a damn good show.

The music business was ruined by people who thought they were hip, even though aged.  Who were so desirous of being young, that they purveyed evanescent crap that few were interested in.

But the real story of late night network TV is its decline.  There are numerous alternatives, not only on cable, but the web.  These other choices capture the zeitgeist in a way Conan never did and never will.  If Conan revealed his troubles, if Conan were more real, he’d have a chance. But he’s still the overeducated guy with nothing at the core. You can say Jay had little inside, but he was a great standup comedian for years before he got the gig.

To be successful today, you need honesty.  Dave’s most precious moments are when he reveals his uncomfortableness.  Conan’s too cool to do this.

If NBC were smart, it would immediately pay off Conan and reinstall Jay at 11:35.  But it won’t, it’d rather lose the franchise and blame it on something other than its ineptitude.  Just like the record business!

Letterman beats NBC’s ‘Tonight Show’

What if he had a megaphone.  And implored those in attendance to join in, telling them he was the new dance king and they’d enjoy participating?

He’d have been shouted down, if not stoned to death.

I won’t say the gentleman in this viral video dances as poorly as Elaine on "Seinfeld", but the moves he’s busting are not attractive.  And his appeal is not his handsomeness, rather it’s his joy and his lack of self-consciousness.  We’re drawn to those who are not sheep, who do their own thing, who BELIEVE in what they’re doing.

He’s dancing alone.  For almost twenty seconds.  And rather than being right down front, where everybody can see him, he’s in Siberia, on the side of the lawn, way in the back.

Those two geeks dance together for fully thirty seconds, not needing more people to continue.  Then, a guy looking like Dan Schneider, the fat kid on "Head Of The Class", comes down and joins them.  THIS is not a party you want to attend by mainstream parameters.  These are geeks, they’re to be ignored!

But twenty five seconds later, new dancers join in.  They were not recruited, were not sent text messages, were not victims of promotional e-mails they didn’t sign up to get, rather they joined purely on the desire to be a part of the fun!

Suddenly, a handful of seconds later, it’s a party.  Then people are RUNNING to join in.  By the two minute mark, it’s a CONFLAGRATION! It’s the highlight of the gig!  People don’t want to be left out, they’re trampling others to join in!

This is the arc of an act’s career today.

You’re doing your own thing, seemingly in the wilderness, with the goal that a spark ignites others to join in.  Your main sales point is the fact that you’re doing it.  It’s not about marketing, new media just allows the word to spread faster if you catch fire.

All those great bands of yore…  They sounded NOTHING like anything else.  They weren’t an instant hit, but suddenly Jethro Tull was selling out arenas.  They weren’t jammed down people’s throats, but word of mouth as to their difference, as to their uniqueness, as to their QUALITY, caused an audience to form.

The Tommy Mottola/Clive Davis marketing technique is now a sideshow.  Wherein you ramp up the publicity to a fevered pitch, so everybody has to buy in!  Few are paying attention to the mainstream media, album sales are abysmal, people want something different.

But we’ve still got an industry that’s looking for the secret, how to tap into today’s audience and make a fortune.

It’s very simple.  You create something different, that’s good, and hang in there until you hit critical mass.  And this mass will be decided by the audience!  If you do anything to goose it, you’ll kill it, or at least cut down its longevity.

This is anathema to American business.  We’ve got stockholders!  We need short term results!  Wring more money out of the customer!

Charge more, and people won’t bother experimenting.  It didn’t cost anything to join this dance party, just like it shouldn’t cost anything to hear your music.  But if an attendee has a good enough time, he’ll come back NEXT YEAR to Sasquatch!  Just like someone who loves your music will come see you LIVE!

Everything’s slow now.  It’s about perseverance and credibility.  If you can’t wait…  If you’re not willing to continue polishing your act, getting better and better, with little revenue to show for it, you don’t belong in this business.

Just like Phil Schiller got better at giving Apple presentations by doing them, you’re going to get better by doing more shows, by making more recordings.  Initially Phil was lame, like the kid in the back of the class asked by the teacher to do a social studies presentation.  Now, years later, forced to take over Steve Jobs’ gig as spokesman, he’s finally good!

Don’t expect to be good immediately.  Don’t follow, don’t do what other people already are.  Seth Godin nailed that re Bing…  Do we need another Google?  NO!  We need something new, and different, that speaks to us, that we couldn’t FORESEE!

The next Google

Your goal is not to do market research, to ask the public what it wants, but to believe in yourself.  But belief is nothing without practice, without quality.  And the focus is on music, not marketing.  So, if you’ve got a great Facebook page, it’s not as good as a great song.  As for practicing…  Read "The Talent Code" to understand not all practice is the same.  It’s when you challenge yourself, make mistakes, do something new, that you get better.  Not when you get together in the garage and rehearse the same damn songs over and over and then play Xbox.

This video is a metaphor for the music business.  It happens slowly, you can’t give up.  But if you’re electric, charismatic, singing material the public can relate to, you can become gigantic overnight!  (After ten years/10,000 hours of working in the trenches!)

There’s the news…  The new MacBook Pros and iPhones, with the concomitant price drops.  But what wowed, in typical Apple fashion, was software.

Ever lose your phone?

Well you can dial your misplaced iPhone, make it beep, display a message where to call you to redeliver it and if you’re truly paranoid, you get the ability to delete all its contents, WIRELESSLY!

Or maybe it’s the ZipCar app…  Wherein not only does it locate your car, IT OPENS IT!

Or maybe it’s the voice control…  Which not only lets you command calls, but operate iTunes, telling it to play songs SIMILAR to the ones you just heard.

The Palm Pre is no competition.  Not only because of features (yes, video on your iPhone with the ability to transmit the results is quite astounding), but because of the installed base and the available apps.

There are almost no apps for the Pre, because the SDK (software developer’s kit) was not ready.  Then again, iPhone apps dwarf those of Android and RIM, BECAUSE OF THE INSTALLED BASE!

The key to the success of the app store is not the iPhone so much as the iPod Touch, which allows EVERYBODY to play.  To the point where there’s now an installed user base in excess of forty million.  TRY COMPETING WITH THAT!

And speaking of competition, via peer-to-peer technology, you can now play games with unknown people in your vicinity.  We live in a social society, if only you could send SONGS this way!  Imagine how it would boost careers!

But the rights holders want to jet us back to the nineties, whereas games are all about the now.  And now anybody can write a game app. And get paid.  Kind of like in the music business…  Although the getting paid is harder, since we’re married to an ancient model.

And while the major labels worried about Apple’s power in the music industry, music is now a footnote in the company’s portfolio.  The iPhone would function just fine WITHOUT music!  You’d think rights holders would wonder how they could integrate music MORE, instead of leaving it out…  Where is the Spotify app, which has been created yet not approved by the rights holders?  God, everybody would be talking about music THEN!

And not only the Spotify app, but the TICKETMASTER APP!  Wherein you show the bar code on your phone, and you get in!  Much better than credit cards.  Nine year olds have cell phones, but not credit cards…  Apple wouldn’t cough up a piece of the company in return, but maybe they’d execute one of their ubiquitous ads, burnishing Ticketmaster’s image so the government would allow the ticketing company to merge with Live Nation.

The presentation in San Francisco today was a geekfest.  And what mainstream media, and especially the music business, don’t understand is the world is now run by geeks!  A dumb band excoriated by Perez?  You get publicity, but no real traction.  A tech-savvy band where the members tweet and develop their own apps and interact with their fans on an intelligent level?  THAT’S GODHEAD!

Oldsters tend not to get it.  That the key to the lives of youngsters today is ACCESS!  They don’t believe in walls, they want to be able to reach out and touch EVERYBODY!  If you erect a wall, young people ignore it, or destroy it, just to let you know who is boss.  You may think the iPhone is a toy, but it’s a communications device!  It allows you to be in touch with the world EVERYWHERE!

While newspapers are trying to pull content back, while labels are trying to get performers on late night shows fewer and fewer people watch, youngsters are cutting the cord on cable, and relying on their handsets to explore the world.

Will Apple dominate in the future?

The lesson of Microsoft/Windows would say yes.  That even if Apple slips and it’s not the best, their market share DOMINATES!

But it’s not important whether it’s Apple or someone else.  A line has been crossed.  People now expect more, not less.  They’ll pay if you deliver the goods, but they expect a hell of a lot for free.

If you want to compete with Apple, you’ve got to be just as good.

What I mean is if you’ve got a pretty face with one track scored by a hitmaker and nine lame follow-ups, you’re toast.  We live in an age of EXCELLENCE!  The customer decides.  They decide which apps are popular and make money, and which ones don’t.  They decide which acts are successful, and which ones aren’t.  The purveyor has less ability to steer than ever before.  You’ve got to start with quality, all your marketing efforts are naught without it.

Last week the online buzz was about a fan who was streaming a Phish gig live from his iPhone.  I go to concerts now and find people are tweeting about what I’m experiencing faster than my fingers can tap out my feelings on my BlackBerry.  There’s now going to be viral video DURING THE SHOW!

Stop holding back.  Jump in.  And know that whereas I used to read "Rolling Stone" cover to cover, needing to get closer to the bands, today I just blew two plus hours watching highly-educated geeks illustrate the future, which is only DAYS away!

In other words, tech is what music used to be.  It’s the tribal drum.  It’s where we direct our attention.  It’s cutting edge.  It’s exciting.

Music was driven straight towards a cliff.  While the labels bitched about theft, not only did they lose fifty percent of their sales, they lost their hold on America, THE WORLD’S, psyche!  Businessmen married to the past ceded control to techies pushing the envelope, always trying to deliver the future before the public even knew it wanted it.

That’s what the music industry used to do.  Deliver cutting edge acts that we didn’t know we wanted, but came to LOVE!

What a long strange trip it’s been, from the locomotive to the caboose, from the pantheon to the scrapheap.

Apple WWDC 2009 Keynote Address