{"id":1104,"date":"2008-02-07T09:13:04","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T17:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2008\/02\/07\/belonging\/"},"modified":"2008-02-07T09:20:10","modified_gmt":"2008-02-07T17:20:10","slug":"belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/07\/belonging\/","title":{"rendered":"Belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard Daughtry on Sirius today.<\/p>\n

There are many things wrong with Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 First and foremost, the reception problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Secondly, the insane jive element.\u00c2\u00a0 With all the cliches of radio.\u00c2\u00a0 All the stuff Lee Abrams has excised from XM.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ve come to find out that Sirius sounds better than XM.\u00c2\u00a0 And that Sirius plays the hits.<\/p>\n

Let me be clear here.\u00c2\u00a0 The repetition could drive you crazy.\u00c2\u00a0 You hear an obscurity, then you hear it again the very next day.\u00c2\u00a0 But, if you tune in Sirius, you hear all the records you read about, that people talk about, the singles, the emphasis tracks, you feel like you belong.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve been listening to XM for five years and I feel like I’m alone, in a club with my friends who work there at most.\u00c2\u00a0 But nowhere do I go and speak of what I hear on the stations.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s creepy.<\/p>\n

Sure, we all found cliques in our first grade class.\u00c2\u00a0 But the first music clique I remember was Cousin Brucie, on WABC.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that my radio listening began there, I started with baseball, but the announcers, although doing a good job, didn’t know we were all in it together, didn’t know that I wanted to be a member of something.\u00c2\u00a0 Cousin Brucie made me a member.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, I was a member of WABC.<\/p>\n

Some people listened to Murray the K.\u00c2\u00a0 Others to BMR, i.e. B. Mitchell Reed.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t go to 1010 WINS, or WMCA…I parked my ears right there at WABC…\u00c2\u00a0 Because those guys were my friends.\u00c2\u00a0 And I could discuss the countdown with my school buddies on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

And that’s what MTV was, a club.\u00c2\u00a0 Back when they used to play videos.\u00c2\u00a0 We even watched shit we wanted no part of, like Wham!\u00c2\u00a0 Because it was on our channel.<\/p>\n

But now terrestrial radio is not programmed for humans.\u00c2\u00a0 The deejays speak like no one I know, and the records spun are determined by computer.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no belonging.<\/p>\n

And there’s no belonging on MTV either, certainly not VH1.\u00c2\u00a0 I might slow down on the freeway to look at the wreck, but I don’t want to get out and participate.\u00c2\u00a0 But I believe it’s human nature to get out and participate, to be part of a community, and that’s why MySpace and Facebook, all the Web 2.0 sites, are thriving.\u00c2\u00a0 Because humans don’t want to be alone, they want to belong, they want to be part of something!<\/p>\n

I felt a part of Warner Brothers Records.\u00c2\u00a0 I even mailed away to be put on the list for "Circular", their little trade magazine.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew who Mo and Joe were, even Stan Cornyn.\u00c2\u00a0 I was interested in everything the label had to sell.\u00c2\u00a0 And I was turned on to acts by their twofer "Loss Leaders" series, for a grand total of a buck a record<\/p>\n

\n

Warner\/Reprise Loss Leaders<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

CBS was not quite the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0 And MCA was the Music Cemetery of America.\u00c2\u00a0 Acts signed to Warner to be members of the club.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no club anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 Except maybe Jimmy Iovine’s fan club.\u00c2\u00a0 But is Jimmy like Mo, living in the shadow of the artist?\u00c2\u00a0 Or does Jimmy want to be out front, rich, a star too?<\/p>\n

Do you follow the younger generation?\u00c2\u00a0 The most important thing is to be a member of the group.\u00c2\u00a0 Look at their sports competitions.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t matter who wins, just that everybody had a good time.\u00c2\u00a0 Baby boomers?\u00c2\u00a0 They need to triumph, be adored.\u00c2\u00a0 But rising above leaves you outside, away from the fun.<\/p>\n

We need to bring people inside.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to make them feel like they belong.<\/p>\n

The labels fucked up big time by suing their customers.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they were right, their wares were being stolen, but there were other ways to address this issue.\u00c2\u00a0 Like selling the music the way people wanted it, a lot for a little, the ability to taste and graze.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was anathema to late century label philosophy, of dictation.\u00c2\u00a0 We decide what you want to hear, we package it with nine other crappy tracks and make you pay a fortune for it.\u00c2\u00a0 And you wonder why people hate the labels.<\/p>\n

And the concert business too.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to go see the act but you can’t get a ticket.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’re rich, or connected, you can get a ticket.\u00c2\u00a0 And then you find out a high percentage of the tickets never went on sale.\u00c2\u00a0 Feel like you belong?\u00c2\u00a0 You feel like you don’t even matter, that you’ve been completely squeezed out.\u00c2\u00a0 You say fuck you, and you stop going to shows.<\/p>\n

Fan clubs?\u00c2\u00a0 In most cases, just fees for better ticket access.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no belonging involved, the extra content isn’t even worth looking at once.\u00c2\u00a0 But Dave Matthews gives his members worthwhile additional content and truly good seats, at reasonable prices.\u00c2\u00a0 How come he can do it, but other acts can’t?\u00c2\u00a0 Because they don’t want to.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t respect the consumer, they just want to get paid.\u00c2\u00a0 They think they’re in business with LiveNation, but LiveNation is just a conduit, to the fan.<\/p>\n

It’s like a hit single.\u00c2\u00a0 Almost no one belongs to the Rihanna posse, not in any prodigious number.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about the single, there’s nothing to dig your talons into, nothing to marinate in.\u00c2\u00a0 We stared at the album covers because of the complete collection of tunes, what the act was saying!\u00c2\u00a0 And that doesn’t mean you can’t believe in an endless series of singles, that music has to be sold as albums, just that there has to be some underlying meaning, it can’t be about clothing and endorsements, because those don’t connect with the fan…\u00c2\u00a0 No fan has ever been offered any sponsorship.<\/p>\n

I’m listening to more and more Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 For moments like today, when I realize Daughtry really isn’t that bad.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s not like a typical American Idol.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to feel a part of the American fabric, this great country of ours.\u00c2\u00a0 In the future, will we have a plethora of mass appeal acts, that everybody enjoys and pays attention to?\u00c2\u00a0 I doubt it.\u00c2\u00a0 But the niches…they won’t be that tiny.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ll grow because people want to be a part of the scene.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why all those hipsters want you to pay attention to Vampire Weekend, so you’ll realize how hip they are, so you’ll be part of their scene!\u00c2\u00a0 But the mainstream doesn’t want to be hipsters.\u00c2\u00a0 But the mainstream wants its own acts.\u00c2\u00a0 Which don’t have to be bland, but do have to be honest.\u00c2\u00a0 A fan must have the desire to meet the act, and talk to him or her, about what he or she feels.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the bond.\u00c2\u00a0 The act must provide enough material for the fan to speak with other fans about, the songs must be deep enough that there’s something to say about them on the message board.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to be hooked, it’s human nature to be hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 No one wants to be on a desert island alone.\u00c2\u00a0 The Net has blown up because it made it easy for others to connect, to discuss, get a date.\u00c2\u00a0 Focus on building acts people can believe in, that they want to belong to.\u00c2\u00a0 The money will flow, that’s what dedication delivers.\u00c2\u00a0 Being a fan is like having a hobby, you’ll spend unlimited amounts on your hobby.\u00c2\u00a0 But only if you believe in it.<\/p>\n

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I heard Daughtry on Sirius today. There are many things wrong with Sirius.\u00c2\u00a0 First and foremost, the reception problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Secondly, the insane jive element.\u00c2\u00a0 With all the cliches of radio.\u00c2\u00a0 All the stuff Lee Abrams has excised from XM.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ve come to find out that Sirius sounds better than XM.\u00c2\u00a0 And that Sirius plays […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-radio"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-hO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}