Corporations are the enemy.

I would have expected this message to come from the arts first. But the arts have been infiltrated like PBS. Whether it be corporations supporting that which the public does not, or musicians sucking up to the man to get paid.

But AOC doesn’t get paid. She was a bartender before.

I didn’t see this coming. The youth stole America from the man in the sixties and then retreated after Kent State, licking their wounds. Then Reagan legitimized greed and for forty years we’ve seen a separation between corporations and the regular folk, between rich and poor, the income inequality gap keeps widening and we’re told to pay fealty to the “job creators” as we lower their taxes and incentivize them while they laugh all the way to the bank.

Then again, it was Mario Savio and the rest of the student protesters who ignited the sixties, the musicians came later, in an era where you didn’t think you could make that much money. Actually, the money came later, with albums and 90/10 live deals. But music reaches people better than speech, can you say “Eve Of Destruction” or “Ohio”?

But for the past few decades its been about sponsorship in the music business. Get some of that corporate money. Whether it be the Amex or Citi pre-sale or the whiskey or telco signage. Acts thought there was no cost. Never mind the chilling effect, they’ve been left behind, lost to the change of time as the wheels of society keep grinding.

Trump illuminated the change. That America wasn’t what the pundits and media said it was. Instead, there were millions of voters disenchanted with the way things were going who were angry that they were left behind in an era of globalization. Sure, they liked their flat screens and smartphones assembled elsewhere, but they were wary of not having jobs, angry at those who took them away, blaming not the corporations themselves as much as the foreigners and immigrants.

And then came the Trump blowback. When the enlightened youngsters were sick of their forefathers selling out to the middle, and the aforementioned corporations. Yes, it’s a left and right issue, both take the corporate money, are beholden to the man. But the youngsters…we’ve been reading about their college debt, their inheritance of the national debt and their lack of opportunity for years, but like digital photography, it took this long to reach maturation, Kodak went out of business overnight, as did the old way of thinking of things, the old guard and the corporations.

First it was #MeToo. They went after untouchable men who were powerful icons. The DAs didn’t believe them, odds were stacked against them. But one after another “legends” fell. From Bill O’Reilly to Harvey Weinstein to Charlie Rose…the most trusted men in America weren’t. And the strange thing is they were not missed when they were gone. Ratings for the “Today Show” held steady without Matt Lauer.

But prognosticators believed the sexual harassment kerfuffle was contained, that it was a limited fire, not a conflagration, boy were they wrong.

There are a lot of things that don’t make sense. Like the carried interest rule. And government incentives.

Hollywood is the best place to make movies, because of the weather and the location of infrastructure. But now production has waned as filmmakers chase credits across the nation. They’re laughing, but when the credits dry up, the state’s business craters.

An opinion piece in the “New York Times” claims this is the way it’s been since the thirties, when companies moved south for the money and lack of unions. And sure, the past is prologue, but it’s not set in stone. Why are we paying these wealthy entities to come? If they want to move, money should be no part of it. Kinda like sports. Turns out the stadiums don’t pay for themselves, best the billionaire owners build them themselves, as Kroenke is doing in Los Angeles.

The wheel is turning.

As for tax rates… Why do corporations end up paying less than the top rate, if they pay anything at all? Sure, the rank and file is unsophisticated, thinking a 70% income tax rate would be from dollar one and apply to them, just like the “Death Tax,” but the truth is there are smart youngsters, who do know they’re being scammed, and they’re informing their constituents, and the whole world is changing as the old guard is clueless.

It is not business as usual in America anymore. The youth may not have money, but that does not mean they’re unintelligent, without the power of reasoning. It no longer adds up. Corporations are not people. PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE!

Then again, Depeche Mode said that as country artists work to blend products into their songs.

We haven’t discovered a way to break Mark Zuckerberg’s hegemony, but we’re working on it. It’s not gonna come from D.C., too wowed by the success and the money.

As for Cuomo and DeBlasio negotiating in secret… Homey don’t play that no more. The internet is all about sunlight. And if you tell someone what’s best for them they question it.

And what is the price? The rank and file are sick of paying the price for these corporations.

This is a wake-up call for all of America. This is not an isolated event.

Now we’ve got pushback.

Tread lightly, for your footing may be shaky.

As for musicians…

They seem to be the last to know.

Then there were cellphone cameras.

Despite Cameron Crowe depicting the backstage life of a rock star as a pajama party, the truth was completely the opposite. Flawed men abusing women.

You’d land in a town, play a show, and there would be groupies willing to service you. They wanted a piece of stardom, they wanted a story. And some got it.

And then the boys were gone.

I know, I know, you can’t say the girls were eager, you can’t say they were willing participants, but if you were there you know that’s the truth. You’re living in the middle of nowhere, Sweet Connie in Arkansas, going nowhere, and then a world famous band shows up in your town? This was pre-internet, pre-free long distance phone calls. When acts were much bigger than they are today. Drake…nowhere near as big as Frampton. Or even Boston! The digital age allows you to reach everybody, but everybody is not interested.

Still, messed up musicians have their desires.

Messed up. That’s the key word here. When no-talents like Jennifer Lopez succeed it makes it look like music is a business, that you can plot it all out, hire the right people, and have a hit. That’s what was wrong with music from 1990 until the mid-aughts. It was manufactured, fake…

Unless it was made by artists.

No one chooses to be an artist, just like no one chooses to be gay. Art chooses you. You sense you’re different. The usual steps don’t appeal. You find like-minded people and you create. Sure, fame looms. But most don’t make it. True artists rarely give up, they keep coming back, and you don’t read about them pivoting to tech success or becoming professionals, they can’t do that, they can only write and sing and play.

How did they get this way? Was it nature or nurture?

Usually there’s a sordid family background. Maybe as simple as not getting the love they wanted.

So they try to get it from their fans.

Classic rockers, especially those from the U.K., continually testify they did it to pull girls. Ever go backstage and hang with these true artists? Frequently they’ve got absolutely nothing to say. And are shy and reserved to boot. Maybe if you hang for eons, you can stumble upon a topic that interests them, get them talking, but the odds are low.

And then they’re gone.

But most people never get to meet their heroes, and they’ve got the fantasy and…

Give Ryan Adams credit, he figured out the paradigm had changed. You cannot go on the road and love ’em and leave ’em. Because they’ve got documentary evidence, pictures, you’re gonna get in trouble, the odds are against you. But if you reach out and touch them on the internet…

That’s right, all artists have fans. Because artists express what you feel. They make you feel understood. And if you could only meet them. And then Ryan Adams DM’s you?

You’ve got no idea what he’s looking for, how messed up he is. You’re posting selfies on Instagram and instead of sending roadies into the audience, having a brief period of time to ponder the pickings, Adams sits on his phone and takes his time, who does he want to prey on today?

And they are willing victims.

Because Adams is gonna make them a star.

The oldest trick in the book. The Hollywood casting couch. But movies aren’t like music, Ryan Adams actually wrote those songs, he’s speaking from his heart directly into yours so…

You dive in, you’re anything but reluctant. And when the behavior goes off the rails…

It’s like any relationship, only more intense. You’ll do things you normally wouldn’t for quite a while before you’ll pull the plug. You’re addicted to the connection, the sex, the comfort, and in the case of Ryan Adams, the fame and the opportunity.

And it used to be the bands were gone from the venue not long after they finished playing. In time for a blow-job, a quickie, then they were outta there. But in the internet era, you’re never gone, you can always reach out and touch somebody.

And Ryan Adams did.

And unlike backstage, he didn’t lead with sex. It seemed like he was interested in your talent…that was the bait before the switch.

And then he was incredibly needy. Seemingly all artists are. They’re so disconnected and so alone that if they get any attention, they can’t live without it. Attention is the drug. That’s what keeps them performing, they’re hooked.

Now you wouldn’t expect a music publication to reveal this truth. Most are on the payroll. “Billboard” sanitizes the stories and “Hits” won’t print anything negative unless the person isn’t paying them. So unless you’re on the inside, you’ve got no idea what’s going on. And even if you are on the inside, and young and inexperienced, you still might be vulnerable, like Mandy Moore.

So the truth has to be excavated on the outside, in this case the “New York Times.” Music is a backwater, it doesn’t get the respect of movies and TV, but it’s the only medium where you can do it yourself and gain traction, without the approval of white male middlemen who think they’re the talent.

So where does this leave us?

Of course Ryan Adams is a scumbag. Who needs help. But no one gives help in the music business, the artists are cash cows. You prop them up and take your percentage, wring them for everything they’re worth. You can’t even get an intervention if someone is killing themselves with heroin.

And Ryan Adams still wrote those heartfelt songs. Will listeners stop playing them?

Doubtful.

Which brings us back to the case of Jackson Browne, who twenty five years ago was accused of manhandling Daryl Hannah. We’ll never know the truth, but we do know that Jackson released his best album in years, “I’m Alive,” and it had little impact because so many of his target audience wanted nothing to do with him.

But they do now.

Was it time or the music or..?

Then again, Ryan Adams is nowhere near as big as Jackson Browne. It’s a different era, like I said, no one in this century is as big as those from the last. Jackson had multiple hits. Ryan had one.

So expect a short term dent to his business.

Then again, maybe Adams will self-destruct, like Pee-wee Herman. Remove himself from the discussion, not go on the road, not release records.

But we have the case of Louis C.K., who admitted his behavior and is now working and being excoriated by some while he does good business.

Same deal with Aziz Ansari.

And none of their behavior equals the offenses of Harvey Weinstein.

It seems the media and the non-fans have one standard, and the true fans another.

And Ryan Adams kind of apologized in his tweets. Not really, but he’s not stonewalling, although his lawyer did. He seems to have realized he’s done something wrong. Unlike the movie directors who deny it.

So, what we’ve got here is the exposure of rock star behavior in the teens. It’s ugly. But the truth is it’s been ugly for a long time.

But we live in a contradictory society. Ever listen to rap lyrics? Or those of even Aerosmith? The music is infused with sex, that’s part of its attraction.

Of course that does not excuse bad behavior, but the question is…

Where is the line, what do we want?

Meanwhile, Ryan Adams is not the only one. As the rule goes, the more successful, the more screwed up. If you’re lucky, you’ve got people protecting you.

But it’s hard to be protected in the digital age, where there’s documentary evidence of your entire life.

So you gain fame and make money by opening a vein, and then you sacrifice your career and money for the same reason.

These are the real issues. It’s more complicated than just kicking offenders to the curb. How do we change the culture? How do we inject sunlight into behavior that takes place in darkness?

Ryan Adams definitely crossed a line. He should pay for it.

But what is the penalty?

We haven’t worked that out yet.

“Ryan Adams Dangled Success. Women Say They Paid A Price”

The first decade of the twenty first century was about instant disruption, the second has been about delayed disruption.

Instant disruption is when a business is affected overnight. There was Napster, and before that digital photography, and then the death of newspapers and magazines. It was right in front of our very eyes, people were talking about it, and then it happened.

Whereas delayed disruption happens after the initial momentous event. Just when you think you’ve survived, OOMPH, you’re hit again and possibly devastated to the point of extinction.

Like the movies.

The problem is the audience got younger and streaming platforms got better.  Since they weathered the advent of television, conventional wisdom was that movies would continue to survive. But they haven’t, they’re heading for a huge cliff. Movies did what television did not. Now it’s the reverse. All the human stories are on TV, whether it be cable or Netflix or Hulu. The film companies have climbed to higher ground, in reality lower ground, with their Marvel movies. But despite the huge results for some of those pics, the type of pic that can succeed is very limited, and only one pic a week succeeds. You call this is a business? Of course not. On demand viewing at home is more convenient, with a better selection of product. The only reason to go to the theatre is to literally get out of the house. But the experience is lousy. The flick doesn’t start when you want it to. You waste time driving/arriving. So, the only people who still go are those accustomed to it. i.e. oldsters, who seem convinced that the Oscars matter. As for excising awards from the telecast because the show is too long…THAT DOESN’T MATTER TO THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WATCHING! Most people don’t watch to begin with. Making the show half an hour shorter makes no difference.

So you’ve got magazines like “Vanity Fair” focusing on the Oscars and driving headlong into irrelevance. The audience is limited. Glamour without gossip triumphed in the eighties and nineties, but today, who is the magazine appealing to? Only those already subscribing, new adherents are nowhere to be found. This is the story of the mainstream media in general, it is aging with its audience, and MTV proved that this is death. They fired the beloved original VJs and replaced them with younger people. “Vanity Fair” is aging to extinction. As for the WSJ, NYT and WaPo, they do nothing to entice a younger generation which they do not understand and do not report on. They thought that since they survived the great newspaper washout, they’d triumph. But they do not understand the new game, what does Gen-Z think?

It’s not even the millennials anymore. They’re making new people every day. Gen-Z does not remember an era before the internet. Google was always here. Gen-Z has taken over music, and baby boomers and Gen-X’ers just can’t fathom it. As for millennials, they’re caught between two eras, just like Gen-X’ers before them.

And then there are record labels. Which were supposedly threatened by Napster, but survived. But the truth is now they are truly threatened. Primarily because the deal is too poor in the internet era when you can do it yourself. They’re like loan sharks, giving you cash and extracting a pound of flesh, forever. The truth is most music made today will not be played on the radio, and won’t get on SNL, so why do you need a major label? The majors survived by wielding the power of their catalogs, but that’s now history. Spotify is bigger than any label. You can’t pull your catalog and survive, you need that streaming revenue. Furthermore, Spotify promises promotion if you go direct. Just when they’re getting comfortable, the labels are going to be challenged. Vivendi should sell Universal Music NOW! Sure, there’s still a little upside left, but if you’re trying to eke out every dollar, you risk getting caught on the downside, which is a very slippery slope.

It’s even happening to Facebook. While the media rails against the company, the truth is no Gen-Z’er would be caught dead on the service, they’re all on Instagram, which Zuckerberg presciently purchased. The record labels’ revenues were falling and what did they do? THEY TOOK MORE! Wanting a piece of all action. You prepare for the future by adding more value, not by taking it away.

So we’ve got a coterie of people who won’t buy magazines, won’t go to movie theatres and don’t care what the label is, they can’t see it online anyway.

And what are the enterprises doing? Exulting because they think they’ve survived. But the truth is the challenge is only beginning.

The internet made all content available. But it made every success smaller than ever. What old media thinks is known by everyone is not. All the metrics are antiquated. How do you quantify a world where everybody is listening to something different and old tracks are as popular as new ones?

Instead, we’ve got inside manipulation. Whether it be record companies including physical product and merch to make a chart only meaningful to themselves or terrestrial radio failing to innovate as it keeps boasting about its reach.

Meanwhile, the Grammy telecast was down 5% in the 18-49 demo. Oh, overall it was up just a smidge, but if you think advertisers or performers want to reach those without money or the nearly dead…you must be broke or one breath away from passing yourself.

The ball keeps moving when everybody thinks it’s stopped. They’re busy pounding their chests in triumph just before the end comes.

Kinda like BuzzFeed. Like the HuffingtonPost before it, once the shine wears off, people realize they don’t want junk news. BuzzFeed is a risk to news purveyors like your kid is a threat to the Premier League.

And a star is not what he or she used to be. But the old media keeps trumpeting faces no one knows. And keeps paying lip service to “influencers” as if they’re the future.

But today’s kids are savvy. They know the influencers are doing it for the money. Which is why the influencers burn out and fade away, there’s no there there.

But there’s plenty of there there on Netflix. And on Spotify. The new platforms that are smorgasbords of content. Meanwhile, every day I get e-mail about the “faltering finances” of these two companies…have you ever heard of AMAZON? You play to dominance and you win in the end.

Spotify is not selling some records, THEY’RE LEASING THEM ALL!

Netflix is not charging you $15 for a movie at a particular time, they’re serving more than you can watch any time you want to turn on the set!

It’s a public addicted to on demand. With the world at its fingertips.

But the surviving companies run by boomers can’t fathom this, believing they’re forever when they’re not.

Everything has a lifespan. Everything percolates on the outside before it breaks through. Who knew the public wanted long form documentaries like “Making A Murderer” and “Wild Wild Country”? Credit Netflix for taking a risk. Denigrate record companies for putting out endless me-too hip-hop records in a world where people are not restricted to hearing only them.

The truth is there is no hit parade.

When are the oldsters going to realize this?

When they lose their jobs.

Is it time to forget the baby boomers?

Linda Ronstadt got a featured piece on the holy grail of television promotion, “CBS Sunday Morning,” yet no one is listening to her album on Spotify, and it’s quite good. Only two tracks break five digits, the rest are in four. For the math-challenged, that means “Just One Look” has 29,177 plays, “Blue Bayou” has 96,901 and the rest have bupkes.

So, are oldsters not paying for Spotify or are they unaware of this album or…

Probably all. THEY’RE OLD! They lived through the classic rock era, they’ll pay to see classic rock acts, but they’re uninterested in new music by new acts or old music by classic acts.

This is important. Because oldsters control the media, giving a false impression of what’s going on.

Of course they could be subscribing to Apple Music. Which doesn’t make its stats publicly available. That would make sense, afraid of the newfangled Spotify, whose subscription numbers are accelerating faster than those of the vaunted Apple, maybe going public gave Spotify more credibility.

Or they could be calling out to Alexa for Amazon Music. But do they even know this Ronstadt LP is available?

Just because they’ve got smartphones, that doesn’t mean baby boomers know how to use them.

Baby boomers are the ones who are afraid of streaming, the ones who barely use their data plans, the ones who sit in front of their flat screens, but they own a disproportionate part of the conversation.

As for “CBS Sunday Morning”… The effect is overstated. In a world where late night means nothing, except for SNL, people glom on to the last show standing, not knowing the paradigm has shifted.

And are we pitching physical or ownership here?

Note how “Billboard” trumpeted an increase in sales after the Grammys. So anemic, that anyone could see through the so-called bounce. Or, as Billy Preston once sang, “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.”

But the “Bible” didn’t talk about streaming numbers, where the active audience is, where there was NO EFFECT! Where Ariana Grande owned almost the entire top ten. It’s bizarro world I tell you. How do you expect the political world to get the facts straight when we can’t even do it in music.

As for buying music, whether it be files or physical, someone is sending me a CD and I wondered where I’d play it. I hear this from ancient acts all the time. Baby boomers do know Bluetooth, they’ll stream in their automobiles with no CD players, my computer has no CD player, even Whole Foods stopped selling CDs, but brain-dead oldsters keep sending them, it’s like getting an AOL disc in the mail.

Of course there are baby boomer exceptions, I’m gonna hear from them all day long. But they don’t realize they’re a self-selecting tribe, that most boomers are…

Retired and over-the-hill.

They might have cash, but they watch it closely. Kids need Netflix and Spotify and all the attendant services. Baby boomers are counting their cash and saying no.

It’s not only that music is a youth business, but boomers are old, and despite dressing up like their kids and getting plastic surgery, age never sleeps, whether it’s today or fifty years ago.