The problem isn’t that people are consuming fake news, but that we can’t reach them with the real news!

And for sure, one entity that’s got no insight into what is going on is the newsgatherers themselves, who keep wanting to stop screen time, the internet, as if ever in history we’ve gone backward. Trump thinks he’s gonna return to a time where America was great? Well, the truth is it was flawed but pretty great before he took over, and ask all the people and corporations hurt by his inane trade war which even the right wing paper of record, the “Wall Street Journal,” is against, whether it’s better today or worse.

Now the music business is always first. Because art drives the culture and the culture drives the nation and the files are small and there is little barrier to entry and everybody wants to become rich and famous.

The low barrier to entry… We had a tumultuous time dealing with it in the music business, but we’re close to the end now. Distribution has been figured out, it’s on demand online with streaming services, and there is a place for entities who can sign and promote acts, i.e. labels, and those with assets, i.e. catalogs, control the future.

Not that anyone who acknowledges the above is willing to acknowledge the effects.

The music business is a hit-driven one. But what is a hit these days? Something with a lot of streams online or that which tours to prodigious numbers? That which is evanescent or that which lasts? Every week “Billboard” publishes a chart so twisted it’s got little to do with reality, but do the streaming statistics tell the whole story? Used to be if you were not played on the radio, if your product wasn’t selling in stores, you were nowhere. But that’s not the case these days. Just because you’re not on the Spotify Top 50, that does not mean you have no impact. Look at Phish, which innovated last evening by playing the complete works of a fictitious band. The act’s audience was thrilled, they sell out arenas, are they successful? And Phish is thirty years into it while flavors of just a few years ago can’t sell a ticket. We haven’t come up with a metric for the music business and the somnambulant press is still caught up in the past, thinking its printing of charts and reviews makes a difference when it almost certainly does not!

And nearly two decades ago Tom Freston told me MTV wasn’t gonna play videos, that they were an on demand item online. Took almost this long for the industry and artists to catch up with that. There is a place for video, everybody wants to see what their favorite act looks like, but we all are not watching the same videos on YouTube, despite those who triumph telling us they dominate…THEY DON’T!

The now irrelevant MTV was a monoculture, we were all watching the same stuff, we are not today.

So the “New York Times” can delineate the history of Trump’s taxes and it has no impact, because those whose minds it is supposed to change are not reading! The same way you are not paying attention to the Spotify Top 50. Meanwhile, the “New York Times,” the “Washington Post,” all the old media companies have missed the memo, that just reporting the news is no longer enough, you have to be an advocate to have impact. Which is why MSNBC has so much mindshare. Then again, the right wing doesn’t watch it and has neutralized all the press but its own so…

This is where we are folks. And this is one of the reasons Trump is winning. Because people hate the chaos, they want to know what their future is. Meanwhile, the tech titans on the left seem to have no moral compass. Used to be you got a liberal arts degree, you took English, math and history, as well as sociology, psychology and science, in order to become a well-rounded person. Mark Zuckerberg is so focused on the buck he cant’ see anything else. Even worse, he doesn’t know anything else!

Meanwhile, you expect those at the bottom to place their trust in him?

And the press tears apart Elon Musk to the point where he goes loco and we end up with no heroes. Who are our heroes today? One of mine is Elizabeth Warren, who seems to have no problem standing up to the b.s., whereas everybody else is calculating their future, the impact on their status, and no one is worse than a musical act, afraid to offend a theoretical constituency when the truth is these people have no interest and when you have a viewpoint, make a stand, the audience resonates and clings. Hell, that’s one of the reasons music is in the dumper, in most cases it’s pure hedonism, as if you’d rather marry the person you bumped asses with on the dance floor as opposed to the one you talked with till four in the morning.

But that’s America, the land of superficiality. And money. And if you contradict the ethos everybody points the finger at you… What have you accomplished? What do you know? Stay in your own lane!

But we do have chaos, we do live in a Tower of Babel society, it is overwhelming, but you don’t make sense of it all by excoriating reality.

The reality is people love their devices because they allow them to connect, they’re personalized to each owner. How hard is this to understand? We decry the old three network monopoly, we loved cable and now we truly love streaming services like Netflix but those losing in the now keep telling us to go back to the past. Imagine those three networks once again, with their bland programming.

And people love to share.

And people love to game the system. Hell, nobody’s worse than the music industry, built on smoke and mirrors, looking for an edge. Every week another scam for attention comes across my transom. Twitter followers? YouTube plays? Spotify spins?

So this is where it’s at and it’s not gonna change overnight, the only solution is to go forward.

The Republicans have played such a long game that you cannot turn it around instantly, people have been consuming this crap for decades. Which is how we ended up with Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court and George Soros being the enemy of the people. Come on, if you hear something every day you tend to believe it, right? Kinda like Richard Gere and that gerbil…

So maybe Frank Rich is right, the only way to defeat the orange enemy is to get out the Democratic vote, because you can’t change the minds of those not in the party. And so many people don’t vote that you can win.

However, this is not a long term solution.

A long term solution is values. And a welfare state. And higher taxes on the rich, not lower. Come on, the right made taxes a dirty word. How else are you gonna pay for crumbling infrastructure? Or do you want to eliminate the Postal Service and then complain when you can’t send a letter. Or get pissed when your car hits a pothole. We can’t go in the direction of every person for themselves, it must be all of us in it together. And we’ve been going towards the latter ever since Reagan, it’s as if people believe they’re entitled to be rich and sacrifice is a dirty word and if you’re not winning it’s your own damn fault.

Even though Donald Trump was born at home plate, having touched all the bases in the womb.

So…

People are not gonna give up on social media.

The fans of bands without attention get pissed when they’re ignored. What do we know, change always comes from outside, it was Lou Pearlman who developed Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, not a major label. Trump was certainly outside, meanwhile all the major labels sign is hip-hop, even though the truth is a number one song today means less than it ever has since the Beatles. Don’t keep telling me how many number ones Drake has, it’s as if we’re comparing a Corvair with a Tesla!

Change is slow. Until it’s very fast. Kinda like the Trump triumph.

But both Trump and the intelligentsia are planning on a return to what once as opposed to what will be. Those focused on the latter win in the end, isn’t that how tech triumphed, how hip-hop won, by giving it away for free online when everybody else was bitching?

You can complain about Trump all you want, it makes little difference. Your only hope is to motivate the left wingers who agree with you.

As for your band that’s not on the streaming chart… Keep growing your fan base, that’s the most important asset you’ve got. And know it takes longer than ever to gain attention. But if you stick at it and you’re good.

You’ll succeed.

The game is rigged, calling FOUL has no effect.

You’ve got to invent a new game, commensurate with the new era. Which is why the youth embrace eSports and tune out baseball, even though the diamond addicts can’t stop telling them they’re wrong. Everybody’s protecting their turf, they don’t want to admit it’s shrinking, talk to someone in terrestrial music radio and they’ll tell you it’s bigger than ever, it’s a juggernaut, then ask anyone under twenty whether they listen and reevaluate.

This flat cacophonous society won’t last forever. In truth, it’s going to consolidate. But who wins in the end is up for grabs. You’ve got to face reality, you’ve got to plan, you’ve got to stop complaining and do the hard work.

Then again, nobody wants to do that anymore either.

But they want the fruits of their non-labor.

WHAT A COUNTRY!

Tune in today, Tuesday October 30, on Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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

Twitter: @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

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We are assuming the outrage in the mainstream press will have an effect.

It won’t, not much.

Did the coverage of Martin Luther King’s assassination stop racism? Hell, there were states that wouldn’t observe his holiday, businesses that still won’t. People are myopic, to change their views is nearly impossible. Meanwhile, those concerned believe if they just generate enough outrage things will change, but they don’t, the longer time goes by the more Holocaust-deniers we’ve got.

But the real problem is anti-Semitism is no different from anti-immigration. They think we’ve got their jobs, they think we’re ruining their lives, they think we’re destroying the country.

That’s right. We’re ruining the American way of life, we don’t belong, we’ve got to go home. Which in this case is Israel, which they only support because it’s the birthplace of Christianity, but while we’re at it, why don’t we give the country back to the Palestinians and we’ve got to work with Saudi Arabia, because Israel has no oil.

You can’t even defend yourself. College students are anti-Israel. We are supposed to shut up and do what they say. Because otherwise we demonstrate who we really are, loudmouthed, money-grabbing predators.

Well, we were money-lenders because you wouldn’t let us into other professions.

The canard that all lawyers and doctors are Jewish is incorrect. Sure, parents push children to become professionals, but then you’ve got the ignorant saying they want a Jew-doctor, or a Jew-lawyer, thinking they’re the best.

Meanwhile, Asians sue Harvard for admission and what comes out is…

Harvard perpetuates the establishment via legacy admissions, but now they’ve changed their policy, to admit more quiet, introverted people. The blowback had an effect, but Harvard gets money from the government and is not ignorant. People get money from the government and vote against their own interests.

And when you cry anti-Semitism, the enlightened say it’s dead! These same people and cronies who go all the way to the Supreme Court where voting discrimination laws are deemed no longer needed because racism is dead, and then you get what you’ve got in Georgia, will Stacey Adams get elected anyway? We’ll see.

You see they want us to stay in our place. Not rise above. An African-American can clean your house, but not rule above you, despite in many cases being here longer than you are, when it comes to blood.

And you may ask me to look at the sunny side of the street, be all kumbaya, but I’d tell you it’s going in the wrong direction, all over the world. Hell, look at Brazil. The rank and file want law and order, a return to yesteryear, when anybody with a brain will tell you that’s impossible, but they don’t want people with a brain, meanwhile, brains are destroyed in the NFL and they keep watching, like feeding Christians to the lions at the Colosseum.

I am a Jew. I can’t hide it. And if I do, people leak out anti-Semitic comments. In the the highest ranks of our economy. I always say something, but many Jews do not, you see they just want to get along, live their lives.

History tells us we’ve been expelled from so many countries, limited to so many jobs.

Then they tell us we’re all powerful and all rich.

Right.

It comes down to education and travel.

But Betsy DeVos wants more religious education, and that ain’t Judaism folks. And the right wants to starve public education. What’s gonna change?

Nothing.

So if it makes you feel good about being distraught about Pittsburgh while you’re loving each other, good for you, but know it won’t make any difference. We’re talking about thousands of years of history here. Hell, Rodney King had it right, why can’t we all just get along?

Because your religion is better than mine.

Your skin is better than mine.

Your attitude is better than mine.

I am the problem, I need to GET OUT!

I heard you, and hopefully, unlike the six million, when it gets really bad, I’ll heed your advice.

Do sports die?

I just spent seven and a half hours watching game three of the World Series. It ended after three a.m. on the east coast, it took eighteen innings, and all through it I had to fight looking at my phone.

Forget the backlash, we live in a distraction economy, and it’s never going to change. We’ve empowered people, the individual is finally a star, and they like it.

It never used to be this way. Used to be there was a clear demarcation between those known and unknown. Now, most of the known, are not that well-known. Or if they are known, their fame derives from exploits far from their wheelhouse, like Kanye West, who’s a musician, but is known by most for his political antics. The only person everyone seems to know is Donald Trump, after that…

So I grew up loving baseball. Went to Yankee Stadium, watched the pre-season games on TV, but…

The game remains the same but times have changed.

And it’s not only baseball, it’s football too. Everything from the last century that has not modernized for the new era is fading. Football is a game of coaches, and a relatively faceless team, in an era where the individual is king. As for basketball, the reason the NBA is so big is because its management allowed the players to extend themselves, have an identity, speak up. The NBA runs on Twitter. The old people who watch baseball are flummoxed by the social media service.

Now baseball is better at the stadium. But even there, it’s hard not to get distracted by your phone and your eating. But at home? When time is passing and nothing is happening? That’s a condition we no longer have in our society, boredom. Hell, I remember the days before clickers, i.e. remote controls, hell, I remember the days before color! But now we’ve got pristine hi-def and it all looks good but your phone has an even sharper screen, and it’s tailored just for you.

This is what the media has wrong. This is what the boomers have wrong. We are never going back, only forward. These people blamed Apple and Android for ruining society. They even got them to include software that theoretically discourages use, but it doesn’t, read the reviews. Wait a second, I should shut off my phone so I should read your physical newspaper and watch your TV program and talk to people? I hate to break it to you, but they do call it SOCIAL media. I’m in touch with more people than I’ve ever been in my life, and they’re all looking for ME! And it’s not only me, it’s EVERYBODY! And this has numerous consequences, one being that it’s hard to penetrate everybody’s feed. The second is that old paradigms, like baseball, don’t mesh with the new world.

First and foremost, baseball is now about money. Hell, they now have ads DURING the game, between pitches. Maybe they can fix it so it’s all ads occasionally broken up by the game. And one reason the games are so long is because the commercial breaks are so long. But money comes first. Only it doesn’t.

If you want people to believe, which is the bedrock of any enterprise, you’ve got to make it about the core, not the penumbra. The game, not the ads. The music, not the sponsorship. People want to believe. When you’re whoring yourself out, they can’t. But the ten percenters keep telling us it does not matter, when the truth is they just want to get paid. Any wanker who admires you because of your wealth is not a true fan. They’ve got to admire you for your identity, your talent, your skill, and that’s got nothing to do with money. Furthermore, these same people will support you when the sponsors are long gone.

We live in a Me Decade. Tom Wolfe’s was different, the seventies were about personal development. Today it’s about curating the world for yourself. Hell, everybody’s got a different wallpaper on their screen. Everybody’s got different settings.

And this is even evident at shows. People are on their phones because the experience is about them. They want to share it, with those there and at home. And if you bore the audience, they’ll start surfing their handsets for information. I know, I was recently at a gig and when the act played an unknown song, the guy next to me started reading the “Wall Street Journal” on his phone.

So you want to create something so great, that it trumps the phone. And that’s hard to do, but not impossible, but that’s your challenge.

Kinda like today’s game. What makes baseball work is the tension. And it didn’t emerge until about the thirteenth inning, when the Red Sox had run out of players and everybody was tired and anybody who got on base could change the game. And when the Red Sox scored and the Dodgers did too, in the bottom of the inning, to keep the game going.

Then again, experienced viewers winced many times. Because of the lack of fundamentals! Cody Bellinger running before the pitcher’s delivery? God, they teach you not to do that back in Little League. And the missed throws. Used to be these errors were the anomaly, now they’re there all the time, because the players are millennials, and the ethos is it’s all about ME! I don’t want to move the players around the bases, I want to hit a home run and be a hero! Unless it’s Instagram-worthy, it’s not worth doing!

So I don’t know if I’m gonna watch tomorrow, at least it’s now a series, two to one instead of three to zip. But I do have a life, and I had to blow off stuff I wanted to do this evening. Do I want to do that in the future?

Used to be the World Series had gravitas. Back before the endless playoffs, when the games took place in early October during Indian Summer. Baseball was not made to be played at forty two degrees, hell, it impacts the playing of the game. And it was not made to be played long after midnight either. But over the decades the game has been changed in service of the almighty dollar, to the point where most of the public has no idea who the great players even are.

But I’m not sure baseball is savable.

People like action. Something so intense they don’t want to be distracted. Something that they feel involved in. Which is why eSports and Fantasy games are so big.

But the owners of this nation, the ones who believe they are in control, feel that nothing must change and they must continue to win. So they miss change completely until it smacks them in the face. Like Trump. Turns out globalization hurt a lot of people, even though it was the right path to take, but these people felt ignored, they should have been helped, but if one team is winning they don’t care about another until…

It all crashes.

What we’ve learned in the twenty first century is edifices crash overnight. Kinda like that old Hemingway quote. The change comes very slowly, then all at once. Kinda like digital cameras. Kinda like the adoption of smartphones. Kinda like the death of baseball.