Apple built its business on being late to the market but better. Starting with CD burners and iTunes, then the iPod and iPhone. All had predecessors, all worked better than they did. Furthermore, Apple worked best when it was a de facto monopoly. Like with the iPod and then the initial years of the iPhone. WHAT IS THE COMPANY’S STRATEGY NOW?

One person can make a difference. Look at AOC, working in a bar before this. And despite all the income and the money in the bank, there’s no one with vision at Apple. That’s Elon Musk at Tesla. Sure, he’s insane, uncontrollable, geniuses oftentimes are. And at this point it looks like Tesla might not survive, but he single-handedly made electric cars the norm. You don’t know it, but your gasoline-powered car is heading for the scrapheap. Lease, don’t buy, because the value of that expensive iron is about to crater. So what we’ve got here is a company playing catch-up, poorly, where there’s a first-mover advantage if the company keeps innovating, and in this case it’s Netflix.

The real innovation here is in news. Apple has already purveyed all magazines for one low monthly price via its purchase of Texture, but no one knew about it. Now all those subscriptions are integrated into the News app, and…

Analysts are reading it wrong, quizzing the hoi polloi. The truth is this is a value proposition for those magazine and news addicted. If you’re a voracious reader of periodicals, this is a deal. Is it enough to keep magazines alive? And are magazines better in print? As for the inclusion of the “Los Angeles Times”…a brilliant move by the new owner who is behind the 8-ball on digital subscriptions. And it’s different content from the WSJ, although they’re ADDING reporters to fill the niche. Either you can go it alone, like the NYT or the WaPo, or you need to be on this service.

But most people won’t pay. Most people won’t pay for ANYTHING! That’s the freemium model in a nutshell. So, this $10 a month news tier is for junkies. Magazine junkies primarily. Not a huge segment of today’s population. How many people subscribe to multiple periodicals, making $120 a year worth it? Few.

As for TV…

If the new app simplifies things, Apple couldn’t simply get its message across. Let me see, you can log in to all your favorites via the Apple app. That’s not that big a deal, one fires up their smart TV or Roku and all the apps are there. As for remembering passwords, that’s cool, but usually you set it once and are done, even if you do tend to forget the passwords. There’s just not enough innovation here.

As for Apple’s TV service, its originals… What is it again? Apple has a whole event and nobody knows the price, the launch date…

All they know is Tim Cook paraded a bunch of aged celebrities to show credibility.

Let’s see, Spielberg, the man who wants to exclude Netflix from the Oscars. Very prescient and up-to-date. As for “Amazing Stories,” it wasn’t a big hit the first time around.

Oprah… Isn’t she just Johnny Carson? Someone fading in the rearview mirror who the younger generation is unaware of? If you’re not on TV every day… Ellen DeGeneres is bigger than Oprah, it’s just the oldsters in the media did not get the message. Apple is famous for bringing out hip acts in its music events, shouldn’t we have seen Jordan Peele?

Oh, he’s too edgy for the PG-rated Apple.

Boobs are just a click away on Netflix. HBO had the Khaleesi topless. But Apple wants to be wholesome in a world so coarse, just watch and listen to the rappers. Then again, Cardi B is hipper than anybody in Cupertino.

I’m not paying another subscription fee for limited inventory. That’s HBO, and compared to Netflix it’s a rip-off. Netflix has a huge catalog of licensed material and is making new stuff at a ragged pace to create its own catalog. They’re spending, but furthermore it’s not always about money. TV is about story and people and it’s a crapshoot. Apple used to be a distributor, still is in news. But becoming both maker and distributor? That’s a recipe for failure usually. Facebook counts on users populating the site with content. Amazon makes the most money selling other people’s wares. Google search is just a vehicle to sell ads.

As for the music paradigm…

Apple’s got a long history in music, not in television. And the brand only means so much, especially these days. People used to testify about their Apple products, now even diehards are questioning their functionality. Why is it my iPhone screen always gets stuck in the horizontal position? And it’s not only me, I’ve seen it on other phones.

And why in Mail do I click on a message and get no content? Happens all the time, and on others’ Macs too. But Apple is so busy moving forward, it’s not taking care of what it’s already built.

And we criticize the behemoth because we expect it to lead. We expect Jobs’s mantra IT JUST WORKS to continue. But oftentimes it does not.

You don’t ask for everybody’s attention and then fail to deliver. Then people will stop paying attention. And Apple is on the verge of this.

And sure, video games are hot, but Google announced play in a browser and Apple…wants you to pay to play, when hand-held games are all about getting people to play for free and then getting them to pay for upgrades, can you say FORTNITE?

The days of gadgets are gone. All you need is a smartphone.

We’re living in the era of software and services.

But, once again, Apple is coming from behind and delivering little.

Jobs showed us you pick a lane and overdeliver.

But Apple is trying to do a little bit of everything half-heartedly and that’s a recipe for…

Failure.

That’s right, twenty-odd years of internet tech has shown us that one player gets the lion’s share of the market, the rest play for scraps. We’ve got Google, we’ve got Amazon, we’ve got Facebook…

We used to have Apple.

We don’t anymore.

It doesn’t matter.

It’s kinda like hip-hop. You either love it or hate it and there’s no track that’s gonna change your mind.

That’s America in 2019. Polarized. But it’s even worse, not only are we on two sides, we can’t even agree on the rules. One side watches Fox and reads Breitbart and the Daily Caller and the other watches MSNBC and reads “The New York Times” and Daily Kos. We get different facts, different opinions, and we’re not about to change our minds. It’s like one side is playing football and the other baseball.

Oh, there are those on the left saying the right is playing unfair and employing falsehoods, but their exhortations are falling on deaf ears. Nobody on the other side is listening. Although I will say for the past few decades the left has been vulnerable to the right’s criticisms, although that is changing.

So the report is out. Sure, we felt there might be a bombshell. But when there wasn’t, we just switched the channel, believing the report was no different from a prize fight or Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon. Endless hype, and then the event happens and we move on.

The rank and file didn’t believe Trump colluded with the Russians anyway. They don’t perceive him to be that smart and that Machiavellian. Trump’s like a pinball and we keep expecting the machine to tilt but he keeps bouncing off the rubber bands and bumpers, wreaking havoc, but now we’re used to it.

We’ve got outrage fatigue.

For a while we were excited by the Democrats’ control of the House, but that’s now faded too. We’ve found out that the individual has no power, it’s a game and we’re left out, and now that the Dems control the House there’s gridlock, a brake on the system and we can stop paying attention.

We’re dying to stop paying attention. It’s been three years already where we’ve been focused on the news, we want to get back to our regular lives. The only movie that’s interesting is the Presidential election of 2020 and the Democratic nomination process. We know Trump will run as the Republican candidate, we know his minions will support him, but can the left beat him?

It’s not looking good. There’s chaos. Nancy Pelosi looks like Jeremy Corbyn, refusing to sanction Ilan Omar for her anti-Semitic trope about Jews having dual loyalty. To the point where the left is afraid to show up at AIPAC, even though the organization’s total lobbying expenditures amounted to $3.5 million and it’s not even in the Top 50.

The Case for Aipac

But I bet there are lefties who don’t believe this, it’s not only the right that picks and chooses facts.

And that’s just damn sad.

The point being is the left experiencing a Trump moment, or is it shooting itself in the foot? Has the Democratic base moved far left, or is the far left just getting attention?

The mainstream media missed Trump, those left behind, those who are racist. Are they missing people who don’t want to move that far left?

And then we’ve got the Green New Deal. Sounds good on paper, but then read John Hickenlooper’s opinion piece in today’s “Washington Post”:

John Hickenlooper: The Green New Deal sets us up for failure. We need a better approach.

Hickenlooper says it’s not possible, that we must move in that direction, but realistically.

But realism has left the discussion. Trump’s wall will never be built and there won’t be a Green New Deal. Trump is agitating for the wall to solidify his base. The left is for addressing climate change, but are we on the verge of a guaranteed income? I doubt it when everybody’s bitching about welfare and Betsy DeVos wants to defund the Special Olympics.

That’s the nation we live in today. A narcissistic one. You might say the youth are different, with their school loans and hobbled futures, but they’re busy posting on Instagram and trying to be influencers. Meanwhile, it’s now de rigueur to move back in with your parents after graduating from college and actresses want a minimum wage for waiters and waitresses but they say they don’t want it. The actresses’ hearts are in the right place, they just don’t know the inner workings of the restaurant world. Just because you eat that doesn’t make you an expert on food service.

But you can’t tell anybody they’re wrong these days. If you do, expect to be hectored on social media. And it’s to the point where we’ve dropped friends because they’re on the other side of the political fence.

So Trump says the Mueller report is a triumph, a complete exoneration, and the left says the devil is in the details and when we see the actual report…

And the rank and file are watching Netflix.

There’s a thin layer of people addicted to the news. The rest of us have been glued ever since the Trump phenomenon gained traction, but we’re sick of it now. With the cheerleading cable channels, the newspapers that trump up one side or the other. It’s a 24/7 circus, it never shuts down, everything’s important.

But it’s not.

That’s what we’ve learned. We only have power over our own little lives. And we want to refocus on them. Sure, we’ll vote in the next election, but one thing’s for sure, there’s always an election thereafter.

Or as George Carlin so eloquently put it, “Save the planet? SAVE YOURSELF!”

They sounded like a garage band.

And I mean that as a compliment.

I was listening to Joe Elliott tell stories of hanging with Bono and Bowie, that his favorite song was “All The Young Dudes,” and then the band fired up and played “Ziggy Stardust.”

That’s not the track that remains, not the one that gets airplay. People focus on the later hits, especially from the MTV era, like “Let’s Dance.” But before Bowie turned into a young American, he explored the rock genre, and his apotheosis was the album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” which was much bigger in the U.K. than it was in the U.S., where Bowie didn’t really break through until “Rebel Rebel”

Bowie, T. Rex, Roxy Music, they were burgeoning in ’72 while America was still caught up in southern rock. It was a veritable hotbed of exploration I tell you.

And Joe Elliott was hooked. A dreamer. Who came up with the name “Deaf Leopard” before he had a band.

At first we wanted to be baseball players. Maybe a football/soccer player in England. And then the Beatles hit and we all wanted to be in bands. And this lasted a very long time, from the Beatles to the disco encroachment of the late seventies, to the rebirth on MTV until it became how you looked more than how well you played and the video outlet was no longer an AOR station.

Oh, there was a last gasp, with Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the indie scene, but by the mid-nineties, it was all over. It’s still over.

You didn’t need lessons, only three chords. G, D and A. And when Viv or Phil, it’s hard to tell on the radio, busted out a demonstration you knew the feeling, of power and distortion.

So they’re gonna play a cover of the aforementioned “Ziggy Stardust,” the title track. I’d have preferred “Moonage Daydream,” but it wasn’t my call.

And then…

The guitars wailed. That’s one thing a non-athletic person could do well, make a glorious sound with guitar and amp.

And then you realized, they sounded just like the album, but a little bit different. And Joe started to sing and he was a bit overpowered by the guitars and he was doing his best to sound like Bowie but he too was a little bit different and it took me back to…

The garage.

Or in my case, Marc’s basement. And Michael’s living room.

We all plugged in, and then we started to play.

We looked at others for the chords, for the changes. There was always someone better in the band than we were. But we locked on to songs. Of course the Beatles, but stuff easy to play, like “Gloria,” the Shadows of Knight version, not the Van Morrison/Them original.

And we were into gear. We knew the models. The same way you used to know what was inside your computer.

And we went to gigs not to hang with our friends and meet people, but to bask in the glorious sound coming from the stage.

It was a religion, I tell you.

You went to the record store. You saw all that you couldn’t buy. A purchase was not a casual decision.

And you played those records until you knew every lick by heart. You’d sit in front of the turntable and learn the licks. Maybe slow it down or speed it up so it was in tune with your guitar.

And you’d write down the chords to remember.

And you’d dream about the guitar you were gonna buy.

And then you discovered you weren’t quite good enough. Your gear gathered dust. But the music was still in you, you were still addicted. You did everything you could to get closer to it. Became a roadie, worked in a record store, maybe even at the label, not because you wanted to get rich, but because you wanted to be closer to the dope.

It ain’t that way anymore.

Suggested by reader Rich Madow, he writes:

Bands / artists that could not top their debut album, possibly to their detriment. These immediately come to mind:

Pretenders – Pretenders
Go Go’s – Beauty and The Beat
Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill
Strokes – Is This It? (good question!!)
Moby Grape – Moby Grape
Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes
Yaz (Yazoo) – Upstairs At Eric’s

Tune in tomorrow, Tuesday March 26th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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