What I love about old media is how clueless it is relative to the ways of the Net.

Old media believes it’s the decider, that it gets to choose what the public needs to know, gets to know. Mainstream media believes the firing of the U.S. attorneys isn’t consequential and barely reports it. The blogs pick up the story and it turns into a conflagration. Old media goes on the story after it’s blown up on the Web.

Furthermore, old media believes the public should know a story when it chooses. A record’s release date is sacred. As is that of a movie. They have marketing campaigns. Their old way of selling is not only the best, but set in stone. Rather than adjust to the reality of the Web, they rail to the old wave press in the same boat that they’re being ripped off, that this is not only piracy, but immoral activity, which must be stopped to save the nation.

The movie stars have gotten the memo. If they leave their house, they’re open season. For not only TMZ.com, not only PerezHilton.com, but a whole host of blogs they’ve never even heard of. A star’s image is no longer managed by Pat Kingsley, it’s no longer massaged, leaving the ugly, blemished parts out, it’s constantly in flux, dissected on the Net. Movie stars are no longer icons, but entertainment fodder, often more interesting than the formulaic films within which they appear.

But newspapers. They’re the ones caught most off guard. The news gatherers (TV gathers very little news other than crises). They’ve been caught flat-footed in the new era.

"The Wall Street Journal". If sold to Murdoch it will be because the owners have been convinced that they screwed up the Net play. And Murdoch has said if he gets his prize, he’s going to make the paper’s Website free, you’re no longer going to have to pay to subscribe. More eyeballs are more important than a de minimis number of people paying.

Kind of like the music business. The recent announcements of heritage acts making deals with Starbucks illustrates the ignorance of their managers. Paul McCartney’s album isn’t going to go platinum in America, and Joni Mitchell won’t come close to the million selling figure and James Taylor might reach that plateau at best, which in a country of three hundred million is piss poor. They need to, as George Strait says, give it away! Raw stupidity. Akin to the WSJ charging for subscriptions to its site, leaving all that real money on the table. Rather than being the financial paper of record for the elite, the WSJ needs to be the financial paper of record for everyman. Millions of people need to own James Taylor’s record. Because the money is not in the record, but the ancillaries, the overpriced tour and merchandise. The key is to make new fans, not to try to get more out of those that already exist.

But the music business has demonstrated its ignorance for the better part of a decade. Now the dying L.A. "Times" demonstrates why it is falling in the dumper. Not only because like the managers of heritage acts they don’t see the larger picture, don’t see how giving away CDs with the paper might goose circulation, but by believing that Patrick Goldstein’s story suggesting this wasn’t going to out anyway!

Too many people had access. How ignorant of the Web do you have to be to believe the story wouldn’t come out? And then do more "damage" than if it had been printed in the newspaper to begin with. Yes, now it’s a story, whereas if it had been in the paper on Tuesday it would have been a shrug.

The L.A. "Times" has a shitty Website. Outclassed by the Yahoo News. Even bested by the built by computer Google News. Because those in charge at the paper see the Web as an afterthought, an ancillary market, as opposed to the real thing. Just like the record labels continue to hold on to the CD as it’s evident files will dominate, that people want files. Hell, if you include P2P, the acquisition of files already far outstrips the sale of CDs. How much more evidence do you need?

The watchword for the Net age is transparency. The days of manipulation, of covering up heinous activities, are done. If it happens, and it’s interesting, it will out. So don’t squelch the story, get it out yourself, first, before the Net wolves get ahold of it and tear both it and you apart.

Embrace the Web. Try to impose limits, control, at your peril. Not only regarding the blowback on a single album, movie or story, but your whole business model.

If only Kelly Clarkson had the talent of Missy Higgins.

We want our artists to contain a spark. Something deep inside that we can touch and ultimately hold, bonding us to them.

We live in a land of sold-out corporations telling us who to be and how to feel. And none of it registers with us, none of it reflects what we truly feel inside.

Life isn’t about being famous, partying with Paris and Lindsay. Life is oftentimes drudgery, doing what you’re supposed to, seemingly ad infinitum, until you get out of school and are free and can make your own decisions and find that no one cares. We need someone to give us hope, to speak to our alienation, to guide us through as we drift along in the river of life with more questions than answers.

They call these people artists.

That’s what’s lacking in mainstream music in the United States, artistry. Everybody’s so whored out to the man, so busy making money, that the relationship with the fan has been sacrificed. And it’s only this relationship that counts. We want to be fans. We need to be fans. We need to believe in something.

And what we believe in isn’t what’s plastered all over the media. Because then it’s not ours. It’s got to feel like ours. Even if everybody else has it. And when we go to the gig and see the sea of faces we believe that we have commonality with the assembled multitude, that we’re an army more powerful than any sponsored by a government, we’re like the North Vietnamese, we won’t be beaten, we can’t be beaten. Because oppressive forces can never take over our hearts and minds. Rock and roll used to be a nation separate from the system, impenetrable by the forces of commercialism, where we and our feelings ruled. And what kept us together was the artists.

We cut our hair like theirs. We wanted to look like them. We wanted to be them. Free from the constraints, being who we truly wanted to be.

And at the core is the artist. Not the executive, whether it be Clive Davis, Michael Rapino or Judy McGrath. The suits were all subsidiary to that waif who poured out her heart.

But we’ve had a lack of waifs. Certainly ones with a sense of melody, who touched our hearts with their truth.

Missy Higgins fits the bill.

I discovered Missy not from the press, not from the machine, but a listener.

Bob:

I love your emails and suggestions, you have led me to some really good tunes and I’m glad you’re finally on board with some country music, I’ve been listening to Keith Urban for awhile now and love where artists like him and the Dixie Chicks and Dierks Bentley and others in that same vein are going with their music and live shows. Rascal Flatts had a show in the building I work in last night and had one of the more innovative stage set ups I’ve seen in a long time, and I work at or attend about 100 shows a year if not more.

So I got the song by Colbie Caillat you were talking about and it’s good, but it isn’t anything Missy Higgins hasn’t done on her last two albums. Check her stuff out if you like Colbie Caillat.

Cheers,
Just another music fan
John VanderHaagen

And as I was listening to Missy’s "Where I Stood" on her MySpace page, I received the following e-mail from Toby Mamis.

i like the clarkson album. just got back from australia, where i couldn’t get enough of "where i stood" by missy higgins…

We don’t need Sony BMG. We don’t need Clear Channel. We don’t need LiveNation. We just need each other. While the labels are decrying the death of their business model, trying to frighten us by saying music won’t survive as they release pap, we’re keeping the flame alive.

Listen to "Where I Stood" at night, when it’s dark, when you’re alone.

We’ve all been in love. Or thought we have. And when the inevitable breakup happens, we’re at loose ends.

Our friends tell us to come out and party, find someone new. There are images in visual media of us eating ice cream and watching movies. But really, what we want to do is stare at the ceiling and listen to music. It provides understanding and a link back to health. We know the artist has felt like we do. And he or she has made it through. We can too. And this bonds us to them.

We’re not bonded to the flavor of the moment. They come and go. They contain no hooks to catch our Velcro loops. Hooks aren’t something catchy you hear in the track but something emotional, that speaks to us. Won’t someone speak to us?

I started researching. Wikipedia says Missy’s sexuality is in question. Her Website tells me that she played Live Earth. I launch Firefox and find her singing on a big stage in the Olympic stadium with a candelabra on her piano. But somehow it doesn’t seem fake, doesn’t seem manipulated or dishonest. Because there’s no dancing, no elaborate backdrop or video, no melismas, no histrionics. Just a young woman at the piano. In a long line, a continuum reaching from Laura Nyro to Tori Amos to her.

Music will survive. Not everyone is sold out to the machine. The Internet has allowed us to fan a spark into a flame. The rules tell us we can’t buy "Where I Stood", that it’s only available Down Under.

But we can hear it on Missy’s aforementioned MySpace page. We can download it P2P. It’s readily available in a world that doesn’t understand us.

And that’s why we’re going to win. Because of the tools. Steve Jobs has only created tools. The computer, the iPod, iTunes. Adobe and Web Companies have contributed their little part. The labels’ part is the music. Assuming we need labels at all. It seems that now acts can go directly to their fans. Doing what they do best, which is speak from the heart. Sans the filter of septuagenarians, jaded fucks wedded to the old model who aren’t versed in the ways of the Net, who don’t know we’re experiencing a revolution, that nothing will ever be the same again.

Missy Higgins Myspace

Missy Higgins Website

Missy Higgins Wikipedia

Today Prince’s new album, "Planet Earth", hits retail. Most Americans will never hear it.

How do I know this?

Because his previous album scanned 520,000 copies.

The way it used to work was radio led the charge. You tuned in your favorite station to discover what you needed to own. But this paradigm ruled when you had no other listening option, there were half the commercials and you actually cared about what the stations were playing. Back in the last century. Back when the good music got airplay. Prince’s album is going to get no significant airplay.

Well what about TV, which broke the purple one?

It’s common wisdom that MTV airs no music. Doesn’t matter if they actually do. No one’s paying attention.

No one’s paying attention to the usual outlets at all.

Where is Prince’s album being championed? THE PRESS!

Newspapers are dying, yet the record business believes people will buy discs if they read about them. If this was a good formula, "Rolling Stone" wouldn’t feature TV stars on the cover and its pages would be riddled with record advertisements.

No one hears the new music. And therefore, no one buys it. It’s just that simple. The question isn’t how you’re going to SELL the music so much as how you’re going to expose the music. Maybe you should do both at the same time.

If Prince’s record is as good as all the writers say it is, the lives of listeners will be enriched by hearing it. Shouldn’t they hear it?

How about a deal with iTunes. The new album is free! Yes, go to iTunes and download it.

Apple has to pay for the privilege. And, if the star is big enough, they will. Or maybe it’s an all-in-one package. Prince does iPod spots. And I’m not saying Prince should do iPod spots, it’s just that he’s doing Verizon ads, for a service most people can’t utilize and most people don’t want to.

And then there’s the cover mount model employed in Britain. Rather than a regional newspaper, how about a deal with "Time" or "Newsweek". They’re challenged by the Web. They need to expose people to their product, they’ll pay.

Oh, but what about the taint to Prince?

Not really. This is like Neil Young playing Staples Center. The name of the building doesn’t rub off on him, consumers don’t believe he has the right to change it for his appearance. And, in the U.K., with a different album or CD every week, there is no implied endorsement of the underlying newspaper.

Retailers are screaming. The same retailers single-handedly holding back movies on the Web. Well, in this case, one retailer, Wal-Mart. So, a whole industry beholden to bricks and mortar kills its long term prospects to placate one of today’s retailers.

Well, the movie business is just a couple of years and a couple of changes behind the music business. In the music business, physical retail is in steep decline. And the Net is how many acquire music.

But you wouldn’t know this experiencing the new Prince release. I guarantee you Procter & Gamble or some other Fortune 500 company would pay handsomely to give away UNPROTECTED MP3s of Prince’s album on their Website. It would be a great story, millions of visits would be logged, TENS OF MILLIONS, and everybody would end up happy.

Once again, I’m not saying a corporation should be involved. I’m against that. But if you’re not, why not embrace the opportunities?

Even Wilco, licensing their music for advertisements. Why aren’t their songs downloadable free at Volkswagen’s site?

What’s going to happen here? The CD is going to go extinct and Warner and Sony/BMG and the other two sisters are just going to close their doors? Stating that there’s just not enough money in per track digital sales?

That’s the movie. Albums sell ever less. And sales and profits go down. And executives turn their palms up. And say they’re hopeless. And want to talk about ringtones.

How about the underlying music?

Oh, I know, these are corporations, about making money. Which they’re not doing so well. But they used to be public trusts as well. Bringing the best tunes to the public.

Bringing the tunes to the public. Why not focus on that?

No one wants the new music of most heritage acts. Rather than release a CD to no sales, they should make sure the music is free to the end user, and that the story of this acquisition opportunity is a big one, to drive users to download.

And don’t talk to me about the value of music. The value of music that no one hears is zilch. So focus on people hearing it first, figure out how to get paid second. If you do the opposite, you’re just RUNNING TOWARDS EXTINCTION!

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where acts apologize to their labels?

We’ve come full circle now. From the acts taking control in the late sixties to the executives being the talent, believing they’re the acts.

Oh, too young to remember the sixties? Well, one of the big advances was that the acts gained control of the inner sleeve. Rather than promoting the other wares of the label, the inner sleeve could contain artwork, or lyrics, whatever the act wished.

Which is what the rest of the album cover looked like too. Whatever the act wanted it to. Oh, there were some battles, over perceived obscenity, like with the Stones’ "Beggar’s Banquet", but never forget that the Beatles released an album with no artwork, now referred to as the "White Album", a commentary on how over the top other packages had become.

As to what came inside, on that shiny round disc, by the seventies, the acts just delivered the records. They recorded them by themselves and all the label did was release them. And, the label had no choice! That was in the contract, that they had to put them out.

And what happened? An unprecedented run-up in sales. To the point where major conglomerates swooped down and purchased record labels, for the cash they threw off. Yes, most of Warner Communications’ growth was funded by its record labels. That Time Warner Cable bill you pay every month? A cut should go to Ahmet and Mo, it’s their acumen that generated the profits that allowed what is now known as Time Warner to lay the pipe.

And how did Ahmet and Mo do it? By fucking with the acts?

No, by supporting the acts.

And where was Clive Davis in this golden era?

Well, first he was at CBS, where he claims he single-handedly brought the company into the future. And, I might believe that, except for the fact that after being booted, and starting again at Arista, his roster looked nothing like the one at CBS. CBS continued to have credible, career acts. Arista released evanescent pop. Doubt me? Check the catalog sales of what was released on Arista as opposed to, let’s say, Boston’s debut. Or Meat Loaf’s.

And people still don’t want the stuff that Clive built. Whitney Houston’s sales per year are pitiful. Even the vaunted Patti Smith, one of the credible artists who stayed with Arista as opposed to the acts like Lou Reed who tore their hair out under Clive’s tutelage and exited the domain.

You see Clive likes control. He’s got the definition of a hit in his head. And, it works in the Top Forty world. A world where he spends a fortune to make a little. I’ve got no problem with that. Except that the whole business became skewed in his direction. Donnie Ienner, his old head of promotion, ran Top Forty records up the chart at Columbia and Charles Koppelman did the same at SBK/EMI.

End result? The stockholders, seeing this action, ousted people like Mo. Who built career acts that paid off like slot machines every few years.

And the new controlled business, where the exec is king? It has presided over an unprecedented spiral down the toilet. Yes, it’s Clive and the rest of the high-living experts that are in control as sales plummet.

So along comes Kelly Clarkson. Who like every young ‘un unburdened by history does what she feels inside. Believing she can win because the attrition hasn’t rubbed off her optimism yet.

Kelly Clarkson was RIGHT! Don’t you ever forget it. She’s the artist. She only has one career. She gets to steer.

Not Clive Davis, who only needs something to hit. Who presides over artists that come and go. Kelly was standing up for every major label artist known to man.

So then what happens? I’ve got to believe her new manager got to her. Said she had to mend fences. Keep the old man happy. In public?

Why the fuck is she apologizing on her Website. Do you think the hoi polloi, her fans, care about Clive Davis? Not a whit. Clive spreads the word he’s important, the press buys it, but the public doesn’t fucking care.

If she’s gonna mend fences, do it in private. Instead, she sacrifices all her credibility in one fell swoop pledging fealty to a tyrant running roughshod over the record business. Good move Kelly. It would be like Curt Flood suddenly going on "Wide World Of Sports" and apologizing to the commissioner of baseball. Yes, players should be indentured slaves. The crusty old men who own the teams, they must be able to rule with an iron fist. They should make all the money. Players should not be able to work for the highest bidder.

Get the analogy? Old execs should see their acts as their charges, who must do what they are told.

Kelly saying that Clive didn’t have to release her album. That’s how bad contracts have become. The people who make the music have no control! What about that famous story of Mercury refusing to release John Cougar Mellencamp’s "American Fool", saying it wasn’t commercial enough? It’s the artists who know music, who need to be in control and call the shots. Otherwise, we’re fucked. We end up with no Picassos in music. Oops, that’s what happened, the music got so blanded out, so forgettable, that sales went down and the customer spent his money elsewhere.

If this is an indication of the tack that Narvel Blackstock is taking, then I’m telling Kelly you got the old school hillbilly you deserved. Your customer is the fan, not Clive Davis. Your fans, those that exist, are with you. By apologizing to the old man, you’ve illustrated you’re a tool of the system, a laughable twit who seems to have been lobotomized, just like Jack Nicholson’s character in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest".

Kelly Clarkson released an album sans obvious Top Forty radio hits. That was her prerogative. If it ruins her career, so be it. Let her make the decisions. As opposed to complaining, like so many end up doing, that she was forced to follow the lead of her label and it killed her career.

Who thinks artists gaining control in the music industry is going to result in disaster. I say it will deliver quality music that could not be envisioned or foreseen by those who don’t make it. We’ve got to set the artists free, we can’t keep controlling them.

As for Kelly’s comments about Clive being 80 and out of touch, she’s absolutely correct. He doesn’t know what goes on in her world. And the world he is aware of, Top Forty radio and retail sales, keeps declining in importance.

After he dies, Clive will be forgotten. But great records live on forever. And great records are created from deep down in one’s soul, when one is free, without limits. Oftentimes these are not Top Forty records, although sometimes they are, like Brian Wilson’s "Good Vibrations". But one thing’s for sure, it’s these limit-testing songs that are remembered, not the fodder for the machine. Will Kelly Clarkson ever release timeless material? One thing I can guarantee you, not if Clive Davis is in control.

The Kelly Clarkson Announcement