Re: Pandemic Changes

Bob, you are so correct about the pandemic killing off cash.

My daughter armed her first lemonade stand in our middle class neighborhood this Friday; she needed to post my wife’s Venmo, and after the experience, she told me she needs to take credit cards or Apple Pay for next time. People assumed she could accept credit cards.

“Dad, we need this card reader thingy…”

She’s seven.

Mike Vial

In March 2021, I got $500 from the bank.

I still have $300.

And I’m kind of uptight, because it’s all in C-notes, which are traditionally hard to break. But I never need to, because I can pay with my credit card or Apple Pay EVERYWHERE!

I predicted back in 2014 that Apple Pay was the hit, not Taylor Swift’s “1989.”

“Is Apple Pay Bigger Than 1989?”: https://bit.ly/3Aa7Eit

When was the last time you heard “Shake It Off,” never mind another cut from “1989”?

First and foremost, modern music does not last. It’s made for the moment. And if you don’t have a moment, it’s like it never existed. Whereas tech, money…

“Wait, When Did Everyone Start Using Apple Pay? – It took longer than expected for the iPhone to become a wallet. But the patience of Apple is slowly paying off.”: https://on.wsj.com/3PEkRpt

You see Apple Pay was new and different, like a classic rock band. Starting slowly and then eventually not only triumphing, but becoming dominant and lasting. The faster the ascension, the quicker the descension, and vice versa.

Paying with your phone was new in the U.S. Apple fanatics and early adopters instantly used Apple Pay, and now the numbers have increased dramatically.

But the real story here is cash is dead. The pandemic killed it. Nobody in real life wanted to touch your hands or your money, and you need a credit card to buy online and…

There has been a low level backlash to the elimination of cash. Saying that the underclass doesn’t have access to cards. But the solution here is to get them cheap cards, not to try and keep cash alive. Why is it governments always want us to slow down for the minority, oftentimes small, instead of jumping into the future and ultimately satisfying everyone. Yes, even homeless people have phones. This is how tech triumphed, by pushing the envelope. Steve Jobs abandoned the old to implement the new. I still cannot see why Apple included two USB-A ports in their new Mac Studio. They were excised on previous product, and the Mac Studio is for pros, who have all the new stuff, and now they’re accounting for the laggards? This sounds like Microsoft as opposed to Apple.

But… The pandemic killed cash. Not completely, please don’t nitpick. The world has turned into gotcha, avoiding the bigger truths in evidence.

And it’s not only the death of cash…

The media is inundated with stories of a return to normal, to what once was, before the pandemic, when in many cases this is untrue. Sure, people might have given up masks, but they’re still not going back to the movies.

Have you checked the grosses? Only a few pics hit, superheroes and franchises like “Top Gun.” Everything else fails. And box office still hasn’t returned to the pre-pandemic levels. Evidenced by Regal Cinema having to declare bankruptcy: 

“Regal Owner Cineworld Nears Bankruptcy as Theater Comeback Lags – Theater admissions aren’t recovering fast enough for the world’s second-largest cinema chain to keep up on its debts”: https://on.wsj.com/3pxwx2D

Movie theatres will continue to exist, but going to the movies is a bad proposition time-wise and financially. The pandemic lockdown illustrated how much time everybody was wasting, commuting especially. Time is precious, they’re not making more of it, and there’s so much to do now. So to drive and park and overpay to see a movie with others who keep talking, even on their phones… You’re paying the same amount, if not less, for a month of Netflix. And you can stop a flick whenever you want. And if what you’re watching sucks, you can just can it, you don’t feel ripped-off like you do when you see a bad movie.

As for Netflix and streaming…

For four months now we’ve been subjected to the story that streaming is in crisis, it’s fallen off a cliff, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, in America there is saturation. But there are still opportunities in the rest of the world. And there’s a ton of dollars waiting to be hoovered up by eliminating password sharing. Who knows why they don’t. Are the people sharing passwords gonna bitch and cancel their subscriptions? No, they’re not subscribed to begin with!

But the truth is streaming has already won:

“Streaming Tops Cable-TV Viewing for the First Time – Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video and other platforms set records for share of U.S. viewing time in July”: https://on.wsj.com/3pFfyva

“Streaming services captured 34.8% of total U.S. TV viewing time during the month, while cable TV attracted 34.4%, the ratings company (Nielsen) said in a release published Thursday. People spent 23% more time streaming content than a year earlier and 9% less time watching cable”

A return to normal? Just the opposite!

Just like credit/plastic killed cash, streaming is killing cable. It’s never going in the other direction, to think otherwise is to expect CDs to burgeon.

You see we live in an on demand culture. We want to watch what we want to when we want to and if you’re not offering your wares in that fashion they must be based on evanescence, like concerts or sports.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery is moving backward. It canceled its European development and production, killed nearly completed content and licensed existing content to third parties, which is how Netflix ate the traditional companies’ lunch in the first place! Disney+ and HBO Max were late to begin with. And although Disney+ has a lot of customers, the truth is most people still pay for HBO through their cable company, they have not moved over to the app. And the funny thing is most of these people maintain a Netflix account!

Yes, you can be too early, just like you can be too late. But is now the time to bet on the cable version of HBO? Is now the time to cut down on content for HBO Max? Is now the time to pull movies from streaming and put them in theatres? Jason Kilar disrupted the movie exhibition paradigm and got Hollywood on his page, and now David Zaslav is undoing all this progress so he’ll end up fighting this battle again down the line?

As for Zaslav… We’ve seen this movie before, with Jonathan Dolgen at Paramount. So beholden to the bottom line, Dolgen made money and decimated the studio in the process. Dolgen wanted sure shots with low budgets, genre pics. The talent went elsewhere and then so did the customers, to the point the paramount Paramount became a second tier studio that has yet to be revived, years after Dolgen’s reign.

Yes, fiscal discipline is important, but Amazon taught us you don’t go for profits too soon. Meanwhile, out of touch Wall Street is enthralled by Zaslav. Zaslav says fewer productions with higher quality is the way out. That worked for HBO on cable, but not in streaming, where you have to provide a plethora of product or the public stops subscribing.

But give HBO Max credit for offering a yearly subscription. All the streaming outlets should do this, to kill those who sign up for a month and then go. The solution is not to dribble out product, isn’t the music business an object lesson here? If you don’t give the people what they want, they’re going to rebel, and it’s going to hurt you, and it’s just a matter of when.

But the bottom line is despite Americans romping around the country sans masks, we have not returned to the pre-pandemic baseline, it is not the same country it used to be. As for those talking about a return to in-person shopping… Yes, there is a bit of a bounce-back, but in truth shopping is a huge waste of time, and once again time is of the essence.

Why is everybody with traction convinced we are reverting to a past standard. This never works in tech, why should it work in entertainment?

And it doesn’t.

But those executing the change, the cause of it, do not have an old school media mouthpiece. Oh, they do have a mouthpiece online, most definitely on TikTok, but all established business is promoting the China spying angle to kill it, and they still don’t understand it. And now the youth are using TikTok for shopping:

“TikTok is starting to disrupt search. When it comes to shopping online, the journey almost always begins via search at either Amazon or Google, with Amazon holding a safe lead. Just 5% of U.S. adults start their product searches on TikTok. But the story changes dramatically among teens and older Gen Zs, 18% of whom start their shopping explorations on TikTok – a mere six percentage points less than Google. This is a trend to keep an eye on.”

“TikTok Rising as a Go-To Search Engine Among Young Shoppers”: https://bit.ly/3wlrINM

But today’s “New York Times” printed a piece lamenting the death of landlines. Sure, landlines had some advantages, like being able to talk to your kid’s friends, if only for an instant, but the advantages of mobile so far exceed those of landlines…

But the old media, the “Times” especially, is laden with stories lamenting a past we’re never returning to. Because the writers are old.

And speaking of writers, you still get people saying they prefer ink and paper to the computer. Well, it takes a minute to adjust to a computer, bur writing and editing on a computer compared to paper is like writing on paper as opposed to chiseling the words in a rock.

I mean come on, not only is the future coming, in many cases it’s here!

But too many have an investment in the past and believe that if they just keep telling people falsehoods, they can hold back progress. This is the right’s paradigm. Republicans still haven’t put forth a coherent health care plan to replace Obamacare. And they don’t legislate, they just put a monkey wrench in the works. As for Fox News… Its whole game is making you fearful of the present, never mind the future, to agitate you to hold on to the past, a losing game from time immemorial. We’ve got interracial marriage, we’ve got gay marriage, take away rights and see what happens, turns out the silent majority wants them and won’t give them up without a fight, which is happening right now with abortion.

“Dobbs abortion ruling leads more women to register to vote”: https://wapo.st/3dJ9xen

Want to argue about spending, fiscal issues? This is what Republicans used to do. As for Democrats, it’s a small minority who are agitating for woke ideology that most Democrats don’t agree with, but that’s become the story.

And this is not really about politics, except to say the only way to keep a country in the past is via authoritarianism. Which is why the right lauds Orban, but now the ruler of Hungary has a huge financial problem: 

“Hungary’s Orban, a Scourge of Liberals, Faces a New Foe: Economics – The Hungarian leader is being confronted with soaring inflation and a depreciating currency linked to unsustainable spending by his government.”: https://nyti.ms/3AfVWTo

You need a video, not a static image. Which is why TikTok is killing Instagram. Instagram is late to the party with Reels and will never catch up. Meanwhile, rulers of the past, like the Kardashians, want no change, they’re no different from the established media and corporations wanting to hold back the future, spreading disinformation to try and ensure this. IT CAN’T BE DONE!

So one can argue that we’ve got a return to normal re the pandemic.

But it’s not the old normal, but a completely new one, which keeps evolving. Beware of those who try to convince you to live in the past. It might be good for them, but it’s usually not good for you, and by not disrupting themselves, by sticking to the past, media and corporations sign their death warrant, or have them playing catch-up in the future, and usually losing.

To paraphrase George Harrison… Think for yourself ’cause they won’t be there for you.

It’s gonna kill tennis.

I was riding the lift last winter and my companion was a local. So I asked the usual questions, was she retired, how much does she ski…

You see people move to the mountains to ski and stop. It’s classic. First you stop going on busy days, and then you stop going in bad weather, and then other activities supersede skiing, after all you have a life in town, and soon you may not even buy a pass, because you don’t break even.

This woman was retired, and said she skied five to seven days a week, which I thought was very good, but only half-days, because every morning she played PICKLEBALL!

And then she invited me to play the game.

This astonished me. First and foremost because she wasn’t that friendly. I didn’t even think she’d say bye at the end of the ride. And what experienced racket sport acolyte invites a newbie to participate? NO ONE!

And she was waxing rhapsodic about the group, the social scene, and she said she hoped to see me on the court soon.

Needless to say, I’m not sacrificing any skiing time to do anything else athletic. Nor did I have transportation. But the conversation stuck with me. Once again, because she really wasn’t that friendly.

And then all these stories started popping up in the news. Not that I was unaware of pickleball previously, but… First there were the stories about the noise. When the ball hits the paddle there’s a slap. And neighbors want to ban the game, at least at night, it’s driving them nuts.

Then there was the story about court conversion. How tennis courts were now becoming pickleball courts.

And then there was the story of the two competing professional leagues.

You see pickleball is a developing sport.

As was music from the Beatles until about twenty years thereafter. There was no infrastructure, it was built on the fly, via experimentation. The rollup of promoters into what eventually became Live Nation didn’t happen until 1996.

As was tech from about 1995 until five or six years ago. A constant changing of the guard. Always a new hardware item, and then software… But now tech is pretty mature itself, with a handful of companies ruling.

So there’s a vacuum, ready to be filled by something new.

In truth, for the past six years it’s been politics, because there’s so much at stake, and there are defined teams.

As for music… It’s been static. Hip-hop and pop. Just as it was TWENTY YEARS AGO!

In the seventies there was a tennis boom. Courts were built that were ultimately torn down, the real estate being too valuable. Sure, we read about Serena Williams, but most people have no idea who today’s tennis champions are and don’t care.

Like golf. Golf courses have been going out of business for years. But there is some innovation, which oldsters, the usual suspects, those who take the game seriously, positively HATE! Bigger cups, so it’s easier to sink your putt. And an emphasis on driving ranges that substitute for going to the movies, or dinner, it’s a social experience, with food and alcohol, it’s FUN! And most people don’t consider golf to be fun. It takes up so much real estate, especially in cities, it’s a hated sport. Give credit to these innovators, trying to save the sport.

Like Banana Ball. Creating new rules to make baseball faster and more enjoyable. There have been a lot of recent stories about the game, you can read one here: https://lat.ms/3T5tXON

As for music…

Music is hemorrhaging listeners. First and foremost because new music discovery is overwhelming. But even worse, what you’re listening to today…is just a variation on what you were listening to yesterday, why not just play the hits of yore?

And if it’s not hip-hop or pop, it gets very little attention, so it can’t grow. Not that there’s a specific scene that would triumph if it was amplified. But that’s what we need, A NEW SOUND!

We used to get one every three to five years, we haven’t gotten a new one in DECADES!

So what is going on?

First and foremost music doesn’t represent what it once did, whether in the sixties and seventies or the heyday of MTV in the eighties. Don’t expect those days to come back. But we don’t have to have the dreary scene we have today.

So first, the present rules are about streams, even though the charts factor physical higher, which is like playing occasional pickleball points with a tennis ball instead of a plastic whiffle ball.

And the streams are where the money is. So, the major labels just produce what will get the most streams. It’s business. Don’t blame them, they’ve got no incentive to do otherwise. If they’d read Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” they’d know that they need to disrupt themselves before someone else does, but the overpaid fat cats with no skin in the game don’t care. The future past their term of employment is irrelevant.

And then there are the avenues of exposure. Terrestrial radio used to be uber-popular, that’s where bands were broken. Now terrestrial radio is last, stations only play hits that were made online. And listening is tanking.

And then there’s the club and theatre business. Previously supported by the record labels, who bought tickets and drinks to support their new bands in the hope that they’d grow. But Napster hit the labels’ bottom line, and they cut back, and now they buy very few tickets to the gigs of their own acts at big venues, the acts that have already broken. And believe me, the promoters don’t give labels the tickets for free, not for years! You see those in the business know that the labels are second-class citizens, that live rules, if for no other reason than that’s where the money is.

But there is stuff happening online. Mostly by amateurs on TikTok, other social media. And the majors believe they can just hoover up those who gain traction with their infrastructure and bucks. But do you really need the major? Now less than ever. Then again, the majors need the billing so bad that they overpay and give the rights back, the deals are nearly impossible to turn down. But many don’t pan out, this can’t last forever.

And it’s good that people everywhere are creating music. But this doesn’t mean it’s music that people would rather hear than the classics. Oftentimes it’s just the soundtrack to a short clip.

And the best and the brightest are turned off, there’s just not enough money in music, there is if you’re a superstar, but for everybody else? And the odds are long that you can even quit your day job.

So where is the new music?

I’m not saying that it has to be played on traditional instruments, Kraftwerk proved that back in the seventies.

You see the public can only get excited if there’s a new scene. Multiple scenes. And the irony is there are multiple scenes today, but unless you’re making hip-hop or pop, they don’t grow.

And new scenes don’t happen overnight. It’s not like pickleball was invented three years ago, as a matter of fact it was invented in 1965! Which means that the new scene may already be out there, it just needs to be amplified. But none of the usual suspects, no one in the music food chain, wants to do this because of the opportunity cost. Promoters want guaranteed sellouts in large venues. Labels want a quick payout. And streaming services are so busy being agnostic, neutral, Switzerland, nice to all comers, that they’re a virtual Sargasso Sea, impenetrable.

So the metric can’t only be streaming numbers.

Then again, streaming services could do a better job of promoting that which is not the product of major labels, or that sounds different.

As for gigs…

There are even artificial ways to get people experimenting. The best original music and then a live tour of the winners. A la “American Idol,” but with those more talented.

So it’s a case of incentive and exposure. And the present scene has neither. And there’s no commissioner of music trying to build the business, there’s only the RIAA, a lobbying outfit that advocates for the interests of the major labels.

Something will eventually happen. It always does. Music figured out distribution with streaming, but the music itself… It’s dead in the water.

The new scene has to be a two listen smash. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” broke the Beatles, there’s not an equivalent track in today’s Spotify Top 50. For all the ink spilled over Beyonce, Drake and the Weeknd, the truth is they don’t appeal to most people.

So we’re probably waiting for spontaneous generation. Which will get started online. Remember the heyday of Napster? Agents marveled that acts could play far away states with no airplay… Students were spreading the word and then sharing the wares online. Today, there’s just too much of everything.

So ultimately, the new music scene is out of our control. But in truth, the new music scene is hobbled by an unfriendly business. Sure, you can post your music to streaming services for almost nothing, but that does not mean anybody will listen to it. You can play live for free, but from there to a sustaining business is a very steep climb.

But the usual suspects keep telling us everything is hunky-dory.

Like tennis. Believe me, the game is upset about pickleball.

Pickleball wins because it’s easy and fun. The learning curve for tennis is steep. The ladder to making it in music is unbelievably steep, to the degree it even exists.

There’s got to be a better way.

Taylor Momsen fronts the band The Pretty Reckless. Listen to how she quit “Gossip Girl” to become the lead singer and songwriter of an act that has charted five number one Mainstream Rock tracks.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/taylor-momsen/id1316200737?i=1000576471152

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/540bf789-ba90-4756-8c19-f4d2e3b90f84/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-taylor-momsen

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast/episode/taylor-momsen-205894049