Jermaine Dupri: A Good Album is More than Just a Collection of Singles

What, is Universal a gang?

I think so, because that’s how they operate.

This is the kind of bullshit I want gone from this business. Rich businessmen who believe they’re ENTITLED!

Hey Jermaine, APPLE DIDN’T SAY YOU COULDN’T BUY THE ENTIRE ALBUM!

I’m just waiting for Doug Morris to break the Apple cartel. I want to see what happens. All of a sudden revenues are gonna jump back up and the CD business will be replaced and we’ll all be drinking champagne? Yup, when Apple allows us to sell our music as albums, the way we make them, then we’ll be in nirvana.

Horseshit.

Jermaine Dupri’s misunderstanding of Apple’s place in the music landscape needs to be commented upon. APPLE figured out a way to charge for online music. Not Doug Morris. PressPlay was a money pit. Apple didn’t invent the hand-held MP3 player, it just perfected it. Even if the iTunes Store is shut down, Apple’s gonna sell a fuckload of iPods. Because of the player and software integration. No other company comes close! Apple’s success isn’t built upon selling tracks at a buck apiece. It’s built on giving people what they want, all their music on one handy device, to go!

I’m sick and tired of the bullying. And that’s what Universal is up to. That’s what Doug Morris specializes in. And you’ve got to ask, HAS IT WORKED?

They were behind suing file-traders. File-trading HAS GONE UP!

They have said no to so many people, believing their music is priceless, that it must be sold on their terms, that their business has been decimated. It’s not like Universal’s overall sales haven’t dropped this century, just like everybody else’s.

No wonder the business is in trouble. All Universal knows is behind the scenes dealings, winning through intimidation. But now that fewer people are listening to their paid for radio, and Steve Jobs is not playing their retail distribution games, they’re crying. They don’t want to save music, that’s utter bullshit, they want to save their private jet lifestyles!

You want to keep earning the bucks? Figure out how to charge for music! If iTunes were such a big fucking success, people wouldn’t still be stealing P2P. Apple isn’t the problem, it’s a drop in the bucket sideshow. To focus on Apple is to ignore the much larger landscape, where revenue can be collected. And how are you going to do this? By selling music the way people want it.

I doubt Jermaine Dupri is buying music. Or maybe it’s that he’s so wealthy, he doesn’t feel the pinch. He needs to live in the customer’s shoes. The customer can only afford so much. What if he buys someone else’s wares instead of yours, Jermaine? What then? Wouldn’t you rather a person buy ONE of your tracks, to get a taste? That’s how we converted people back in the day, before they cut out singles. You purchased the 45 and became addicted, you then bought the album.

The problem with Steve Jobs is he’s living in the digital world. Where it’s about how smart you are. It’s about excellence, not intimidation.

Jermaine, I’d love to see you have success in the future. And the way to do this is to cut great records. If you do this, people will want EVERYTHING the act has ever recorded. That’s the addiction of music.

Music is a drug, akin to heroin. You’ve got to start people, get them hooked. Imagine if the first hit cost $1000! Then many people would never partake. But the drug dealer usually gives the first hit free. Make the first hit cheap Jermaine, 99 cents. Or as part of a bucket of tracks. Get people involved.

CD sales were at their greatest at the height of Napster. The country was music crazy! People tasted music and wanted to own it. The more we’ve tried to lock up the music since, the more sales have plummeted. I say sell it however the public wants it. Get them to pay for it. That’s what every other marketer does. They don’t insult their customers, they treat them like gold, because they depend on them.

It’s a free country. Jay-Z can sell his album however he wants.

But if you’re telling me restrictions are the way of the future, I gotta tell you, you’re DREAMING!

I’m deleting tracks from the iTunes library on my PowerBook.

You see I’ve got the last Titanium, and it’s not worth upgrading to a new machine, because really it’s only a road and bedroom computer, I don’t use it that much. It’s got a 1 GHz G4 processor and a gig of RAM, but it’s only got a 60 gig hard drive, the largest available at the time. And I need space to install Leopard. They just announced the first update/bug fix on Thursday, I always wait for the .1 version to upgrade, why be a guinea pig, so now I’m ready to take the plunge.

You need 9 gigs. And I’m gonna do an archive and install. To render any bugs in the last system superfluous. So I need room.

And going through the tracks, I’m wondering why I need music on my PowerBook anyway. I never travel without my iPod. And I can just log on to LimeWire and take what I need on the road anyway. I’ve done this. Been in T.O. and wanted a JT track I own in multiple formats but didn’t have on my laptop.

So, I started at the A’s. And I’m singing the songs in my head as I decide to delete. Actually, if I can’t sing it, I delete it. And then I come to Billy Satellite’s "Satisfy Me".

Billy Satellite was the beneficiary of a minor push back in ’84. I bought the album, but it never caught fire. It disappeared. It never came out on CD.

And when Napster launched, I downloaded the radio track, the one some people had familiarity with, "Satisfy Me", but I could never find "I Wanna Go Back".

Eventually Eddie Money did a cover. But his version had too much bluster. His rendition was easily findable, but not the original.

I searched for years. Then I gave up. It was futile.

But coming across the band’s name in my iTunes library today I got inspired. Did they have a MySpace page?? Every band’s got a MySpace page!!

Billy Satellite still doesn’t have its own site, not one that comes up instantly in Google. But when I added "MySpace" to the search window, a page came up instantly.

My heart started to beat a bit faster. I clicked through. There it was!

It comes back. I was aware of Billy Satellite because they were on Capitol. And this was when I had regular contact with the employees, when I ran the U.S. office of Sanctuary Music.

I listening to the radio
Heard a song reminded me of long ago

By this time, the radio had been stolen from my 2002 five times. I didn’t bother to replace it. I went to ABC Premiums and bought a $20 battery-operated portable, which I left in the passenger seat, and tuned into the stations with my right hand.

Eventually, the antenna broke. Then I clipped on a wire.

Of course I put the radio under the seat when I parked. But, it rendered the tunes for almost a year, until my beloved automobile was totaled by a drunk driver on St. Patrick’s Day.

But there was this one weekend, when we went skiing, when we borrowed the boom box from work, so we could listen to cassettes on the trip. And on one of those cassettes was "I Wanna Go Back". I used it as a temp track in the movie I was doing music supervision for. It didn’t make the final cut, the producers didn’t want to pay ten grand for something that had never broken through.

The woman who ran shotgun in that car with me… I eventually married her, at her request. Then she left. Fucked me up royally.

For so long I wanted to go back. No longer.

It’s a different century. The memories have faded. But they’ve never gone away. They never go away.

I listened to Eddie Money’s EP with "Trinidad" and "Give Me Some Water" on a trip to Mt. Waterman the day before my birthday, not quite a month after my father died. It was a different car, with a fully-installed stereo system. And later that evening I drove to the Variety Arts Center to see Phish for the very first time. My ex was long gone. But it all comes back, listening to "I Wanna Go Back".

In the eighties you had to go to the movies to communicate with your youthful brethren. There was no MySpace, we had "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" and "Valley Girl". Songs like "I Wanna Go Back" played as our heroes drove, as they left their girlfriend’s house.

That’s what "I Wanna Go Back" is. A soundtrack to life.

I’ve never forgotten "I Wanna Go Back". But I haven’t played the vinyl version in eons. To hear it right now is bittersweet. I’m so much older now, I was younger than this then.

Don’t think this was a wimpy band. Play "Satisfy Me" for the other end of the spectrum.

Still, "I Wanna Go Back" is the song that remains. A great record is never forgotten. Like our histories. We can bury them, we can try to ignore them, but then we hear a record and they come flooding back. What are we supposed to do with all these thoughts? These people we no longer have contact with? Some living, some dead. That’s why chances are taken by the young, they’re not burdened by loss, they don’t have more questions than answers, they haven’t been crippled, their memories are far from full.

I wanna go back
And do it all over
Can’t go back I know
I wanna go back
‘Cause I’m feeling so much older
But I can’t go back I know

Actually, you can go back. Not by going to your old haunts, not by ringing up old buddies, not by going to see your old heroes play live. But by spinning the records. They never change. They remind us of who we once were.

Billy Satellite MySpace

 What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where the editorial page of the "Wall Street Journal" is hipper than Gene Simmons?

I don’t read the editorial page of the WSJ. It’s against my religion. I get the physical paper, I subscribe to the Website, but I refuse to read the right wing rantings of the ideologues who compose this stuff. But now we live in the Internet age. And if anything is written worth reading, it’s forwarded to me. And I’m going to pass it on to you. Remember, this works if you do something idiotic, like Mr. Simmons, and excoriate your fans and lament that we don’t still live in the seventies, when someone actually believed you were cool. No tree falls silently on the Internet.

The WSJ isn’t much different from the record labels. The owners were so out of touch, so removed from modern publishing reality, that they had to sell the paper to Rupert Murdoch. Maybe if the Bancrofts had paid attention, they would have hired some help who would have made the Website free. Because to lock up the information is economic death. Ask the "New York Times", which just made its site completely free, after charging for select content. End result of building a wall? Not enough money generated and the marginalization of its columnists. Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman went from national players setting the agenda to Howard Stern.

Yup, remember Howard? Unless you’re a Sirius subscriber, you’ve probably forgotten him. Hope he likes his money, because he no longer means anything in the national debate.

Do you want to mean something in the music business? Then you’ve got to own up to twenty first century realities. Like it’s almost impossible to be heard.

Check the Eagles radio statistics. If you think radio is driving sales of "Long Road Out Of Eden", you must be listening to the ghettoized stations that are mildly spinning "How Long". You wonder why the music business is in trouble? In the seventies radio would have spun ALL of the album (well, the early seventies). There would have been excitement, hysteria. But unless you own the double-pack, you’ve never heard "Long Road Out Of Eden"’s title track, its centerpiece. And that’s fucked up.

But the Eagles are getting paid. How come Gene Simmons can’t figure out how to get paid? He says he can’t make new music because there’s no business left. But Prince and the Eagles figured out new models, they’re not complaining.

Then again, Gene’s been telling us how smart he is for years. And if you ever saw him on "Politically Incorrect", you know he’s out of touch and doesn’t wrestle with concepts that well. As for his A&E show, aren’t his KIDS the smart ones? Without them, the show would be CANCELED!

Meanwhile, I’ve got a bone to pick with Messrs. Henley and Frey, et al. Why didn’t you release your deluxe package simultaneously with the conventional double-pack? All you’re doing is pissing off the hard core. They would have bought the deluxe package, but not now, they don’t want two copies of the album, only one.

So what have we learned?

1. That the media, so far behind the Napster curve, has finally caught up. Probably because now their business model is threatened. The old days of the RIAA speaking to an ignorant press, which repeats what the lobby’s brass says, are done. Actually, mainstream press seems to be anti-RIAA. So, the record business has lost the war with not only the consumers, but the fourth estate. The only people left on their side are those they pay, like Congressmen.
2. Irving Azoff is smarter than Gene Simmons. Smarter than Doc McGhee too. Old wave management is dead. If you’re not Web-savvy, if you’re not up on new trends, if you don’t realize we live in a changing world, you’re going to be left behind. Gene, why are you crying? You’d be LUCKY if college students were trading your shit. That’s how you stay in business! Instead, you’re left with a dwindling fan base of old farts. Thank god they love you so much…

3. The Eagles are a conundrum. They put out what might end up being the best-selling record of the year, yet Don Henley goes on record that it’s not perfect. What a contrast to the boasting of Fitty and Kanye. Three decades later, they’ve still got dedicated fans, who are interested in what they’ve got to say. Is anybody interested in what Peter Frampton has to say? Peter’s career was killed by his manager, Dee Anthony. Who appealed to the teenyboppers who boosted sales of "Frampton Comes Alive". After "I’m In You", the hard core that supported Peter from Humble Pie through "Wind Of Change" abandoned him. Career management is not going for every last buck on the table. Then again, the release of the deluxe package by the Eagles would seem to indicate this. But this appears to be the very last Eagles album ever, so there’s less of a downside.

4. Radio does sell records, but there’s not a direct correlation with sales or careers. The people who buy your records are your customers, not radio PD’s. Radio hasn’t sold "Long Road Out Of Eden", "Hotel California" and "Peaceful Easy Feeling" have. Kiss the butt of your fan, not the program director, never mind the deejay. Radio could recapture the listener base by reinvesting in itself, by airing fewer commercials and a broader swath of material. But the stations are too addicted to the income, to their shareholders, they don’t want to take any risks, they don’t want to change a thing. But this doesn’t align with consumer consciousness. The public wants new, innovative music. It’s harder to sell than the old stuff, but the upside is much greater. What did Bob Dylan say? "He not busy being born is busy dying"? That’s the mantra for media today. If you’re not questioning everything you do, if you’re not willing to take a risk, you’re going to be left behind.

"Desperados_"
November 19, 2007; Page A18

One of the most popular rock bands of all time has finally managed to offend — not for its songs, but for how it sells them. There’s a lesson here in technology, new business models, and hidebound "progressives."

The first new album from the Eagles in over a decade, "Long Road Out of Eden," has already sold more than a million copies, hitting Billboard’s #1 in its first week. It’s the kind of blockbuster that used to pay Christmas bonuses at the big record companies, only this album wasn’t produced by a big record company. The Eagles released it themselves and are selling it exclusively through Wal-Mart.

This isn’t going down well in certain elite precincts. Music blogs accused the group of selling out, while a review in Rolling Stone opined that there is an "inevitable contradiction in buying a record that attacks corporate greed . . . from a superchain with a bleak record on employee rights and health care." A piece in the Boston Herald noted that "The deal will make the Eagles richer. But it could cost them cool points (if the aging rockers have any left)."

So how can Don Henley, an environmentalist who wrote a song mocking Ronald Reagan, embrace a middle-American retail colossus out of favor with enlightened opinion? How can the #1 album not be available in New York City, where politicians have blocked Wal-Mart from opening even a single store? "You would have thought we did a deal with the devil," Mr. Henley says. "People have been crying out for a new paradigm. So we did something new."

That something turns out to be good business. In cutting out the record company, the band cut itself in for a bigger share of the per-album profits. While it might have expected fewer sales from restricted availability, that doesn’t seem to be happening. Wal-Mart’s retail price of under $12 for the two-disc album has allowed smaller retailers to stock up on the album at Wal-Mart and then resell them with a markup.

The Eagles aren’t the first to try new ways to sell a record. Garth Brooks signed an exclusive deal in 2005 with Wal-Mart and has sold millions of records. Beyonce has released an exclusive DVD through the store. Joni Mitchell and Paul McCartney are selling their music through Starbucks. Billy Joel’s daughter, Alexa Ray, is trying to establish her own music career by doing an exclusive with Target.

These and others are evidence that Napster and its filesharing successors weren’t the death of the music business but a smart bomb that forced the creation of new delivery models. Apple’s iTunes is the most famous. But the Web has allowed thousands of bands to find new audiences, and even create global niche brands. Thanks to the Internet, a Norwegian metal band named Enslaved has been able to fill small town bars and auditoriums in the U.S.

Alas, some rockers sound like old fogies complaining that nothing is as good as it used to be. KISS’s Gene Simmons says he can’t be bothered to go into the studio anymore because the business model that made him rich no longer works. As he told Reuters recently, he blames filesharing: "Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there."

We believe in property rights as much as anyone, but when technology is changing, businesses have to change too — and that includes the business of music. So let’s applaud Mr. Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and the other Eagles for some creative capitalism, however politically incorrect.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119543609764897537.html

I don’t know Larry Lessig well. As a matter of fact, I’ve only met him once. But he knew who I was. You see Hank Barry had me add him to my mailing list, eons ago.

Hank Barry, head of Napster.

Hank asked Milt if he should be afraid, after I wrote that I was going to come to his house and steal all his stuff. During the initial Napster hysteria. Yes, I was on the other side. The wrong side. But unlike our President, I could admit I was wrong and switch sides.

Well, it’s not quite that easily explained. As a member of the California Bar, I believed there was no way Napster was not enabling copyright infringement. And the initial position of Napster was contrary to this. But I was under the illusion that the record companies just wanted to establish this legal point, and then license Napster, or build their own equivalent. It was quite a wake-up call when neither of these actions took place.

And this was after "Newsweek" put Napster on its cover, after tens of millions of computer users had employed the software, after I had used it. Because believe me, once you used Napster, for only minutes, you were converted. Tunes that were unavailable anywhere suddenly appeared. Concerts you attended years before could suddenly be heard, shows you hadn’t even known were being recorded. To this day the music industry’s problem is its decision-makers haven’t used P2P. Because if they did, they’d see the error of their ways.

That doesn’t mean music should be free. Just that the old idea of paying a buck a track, whether as a single or as part of an album, is antiquated, outmoded. Your money should allow you access to the wealth of recorded music history. You can only listen to one track at one time, but shouldn’t you be able to surf and find what interests you?

Milt laughed when Hank asked him about me. And I ended up going to Michael’s, for lunch with Hank, after the demise of the original Napster. And Hank started discussing alternative online music services. And I told Hank to forget it, because the labels would never license music for his ideas, no matter how good they might be.

Larry Lessig fought the copyright bullies. All the way to the Supreme Court. And he lost. That’s kind of like going to spring training with the Yankees and not making the team. It puts you through the bends. But Larry hasn’t retired, he’s just addressing the issues from a different vantage point. He believes fighting the battle in court, or in Congress, is futile. He believes in a private solution.

I told Felice what I like to do most is go to the shrink. Because of the intellectual exchange of ideas.

Intelligence used to be revered. Now it’s for pussies. Now it’s solely how much money you have. How you made it is irrelevant. You’re rich, you’re a big swinging dick! And I’m not going to condemn all rich people. But too many times, they end up being bullies, not addressing the issues, only protecting their turf. Buying Congressmen, never mind creating a separate society.

Not that the hoi polloi are much better. They go to college to study business. They too are only interested in the money. You can’t talk to these people, you can only count their possessions.

I went to college. I certainly didn’t study business, they didn’t have it where I went to school. But where I went to school was bullshit. I wasn’t interested in what they were purveying. But now I have a university at my fingertips. It’s called the World Wide Web. And sure, I’ve been known to look at naked women online, but what’s most stimulating is observing the fast-moving culture, getting a pulse of what’s truly going on in this world. And that’s where it’s happening, online. You may not know it, but the kids do. That’s the generation gap.

And that’s what Larry Lessig is concerned with. The generation that is remixing culture while their parents say everything they’re doing is illegal.

I don’t know if Larry’s Creative Commons is a solution to our problems. I believe it’s close to a nonstarter, because it doesn’t have enough heavyweights behind it, because it lacks momentum. Then again, too many of the creators who could jump-start it are locked up by the copyright bullies. But the issues Larry raises… They are important.

What I’m saying here is Larry is smart. He radiates intelligence. In a world where we’re inundated with the ravings of almost unintelligible, uneducated nitwits, it’s stimulating to find someone who’s wrestled with the issues, and invites us to think about the process. Believe me, the average rapper’s got more money than Larry. But what Larry is saying is more interesting to me. Because it makes me think. Listening to him is what I wanted from college, but never got. Someone speaking about something that counts, in a way that holds my attention.

In this TED speech, Larry is talking about user generated content. All those YouTube videos Prince wants taken down. They can’t be taken down. They can only be driven underground. Because the kids have tools. And they can’t be taken away.

Watch this video. It may not be as overwhelming as the latest "Spider-Man" or other bloated Hollywood production, but it’s a hell of a lot more stimulating.

They say that the writers strike is going to drive people to the Web, that they’ll never come back to TV. Watching this speech, I tend to agree. The Web offers a cornucopia of stimulation, sliced ever more narrowly, to suit your particular taste. This is anathema to the copyright bullies. But it’s manna from heaven for the proletariat.

Larry Lessig: How Creativity is being strangled by the law