Can I recommend half a book?<\/p>\n
What made "Hit Men" so great wasn’t the narrative so much as the insider information revealed.\u00c2\u00a0 We know the story, we want to know the backstory.\u00c2\u00a0 Steve Knopper has written the new "Hit Men".\u00c2\u00a0 The sequel to Fredric Dannen’s book.\u00c2\u00a0 But it only goes up to the twenty first century.\u00c2\u00a0 After that it’s essentially a recitation of headlines, which we all know too well.<\/p>\n
But how did Gil Friesen get his job?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you know the story of how Steve Jobs closed Roger Ames and Roger became the point man for the iTunes Music Store?<\/p>\n
I didn’t know the former, but I do know the latter.\u00c2\u00a0 Roger IM’ed me that he was going to meet with Jobs, he was thrilled the way you and me are when we meet a rock star.\u00c2\u00a0 But Roger had met many a rock star.\u00c2\u00a0 This was something different.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a genius.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a twenty first century rock star.<\/p>\n
And I mention this story because Steve Knopper gets it right.\u00c2\u00a0 But there are a bunch of other details that he gets only half right. Or wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 And this is interesting because no one who was actually there will ever write the story and "Appetite For Self-Destruction" will become factual history.<\/p>\n
We all know the Napster story, it played out in every publication known to man.\u00c2\u00a0 But did you know some guy in the Pacific Northwest invented the CD back in the sixties?\u00c2\u00a0 Long before Sony and Philips masterminded their own?\u00c2\u00a0 And that the successor in interest of those patents made a killing decades later?<\/p>\n
These are the kinds of facts exposed in "Appetite For Self-Destruction".\u00c2\u00a0 You learn the story behind the story.<\/p>\n
I kept saying I was going to put the book down.\u00c2\u00a0 But then I couldn’t put it down.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is the mark of a great read.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I got to the points about Jobs and KaZaA and…\u00c2\u00a0 Anybody could have written those chapters, at least most of them.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, I was depressed.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I realized all of the excitement was at the turn of the decade, the few years thereafter, when innovation was rampant and the major labels were clueless.<\/p>\n
The majors squandered their power.\u00c2\u00a0 But what is more interesting is that they stifled innovation.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why I write about the major labels so much.\u00c2\u00a0 Because the power they retain is a drag against progress.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the music they release…\u00c2\u00a0 If music were that exciting, kids wouldn’t be busy updating their Facebook profiles and playing Grand Theft Auto.<\/p>\n
Something’s been lost.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not clear exactly what it is.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t want the return of Tommy Mottola.\u00c2\u00a0 But we do want the return of Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss.\u00c2\u00a0 But they failed with Almo just like Mo and Lenny failed with DreamWorks.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they didn’t start at the absolute bottom, they knew too much, it wasn’t fresh.\u00c2\u00a0 Great music is not made in a factory, but in basements and bars, and if you’re lucky producers little better than amateurs can capture its rawness, keep the lightning in the bottle for all to see.<\/p>\n
Although the emphasis of "Appetite For Self-Destruction" is the self-immolation of the major labels, the subtext is money.\u00c2\u00a0 How the compact disc blew up record company profits.\u00c2\u00a0 Enhanced even further by the reduction in the percentage paid to acts.\u00c2\u00a0 The executives wanted to retain these exorbitant profits and their corporate overseers pushed them to do so.\u00c2\u00a0 But now that money is gone.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t matter who Guy Hands puts in at EMI, he paid too much for a company that can no longer deliver a string of million sellers.<\/p>\n
AC\/DC may be burning up the chart, but the band has no presence in the culture.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what Wal-Mart does to you, it speaks to your fans and truly casual buyers and that’s it.\u00c2\u00a0 Metallica’s sales are slower, but the band means more.<\/p>\n
But Metallica doesn’t mean that much.\u00c2\u00a0 No one means that much.\u00c2\u00a0 And those entrenched in the industry just can’t get over this. They want someone to blame.\u00c2\u00a0 Shawn Fanning, Nikki Hemming, Steve Jobs, the customer.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone must have conspired to steal their business.<\/p>\n
But their bottom line was impacted less by the mistakes they made fighting digital music than the change in our culture.\u00c2\u00a0 True, P2P software allowed many to own much for essentially zero, but the fact that there was such a cornucopia of options, so many entertainment choices, made it hard to build a star.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially the kind Tommy Mottola and his Sony Music liked to construct. People like J. Lo.\u00c2\u00a0 Low on talent, but shoved down people’s throats.<\/p>\n
You can’t shove anything down people’s throats anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t have to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 They love train-wrecks, but they’ll only invest long term in something they discover and believe in.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is too difficult a challenge and too expensive for too little reward for the baby boomers and their older brethren still running the record companies.\u00c2\u00a0 What if a record had to be good to sell?\u00c2\u00a0 What if going gold truly meant something again?\u00c2\u00a0 That won’t pay for gas for your private jet.\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not in the short run.<\/p>\n
According to Amazon, this book isn’t being released until January 6th.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’m writing about it now because the publisher sent it to me weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 I wasn’t going to write about it, because they kept e-mailing me about it, but a few pages got me hooked.<\/p>\n
We’re all looking to get hooked.<\/p>\n
You won’t love "Appetite For Self-Destruction", but if you work in this business you won’t be able to stop reading its first half, when all the people you know testify.<\/p>\n
As for the public at large?<\/p>\n
Why are there major publishers paying authors a bunch of money to write tomes that the mainstream is not into?\u00c2\u00a0 I admire Mr. Knopper’s research, but who is going to buy this book?\u00c2\u00a0 It needed to be a Website, not something bound between two covers.\u00c2\u00a0 It needed to unfold online.<\/p>\n
But the book business is not prepared for this sea change.\u00c2\u00a0 Where people pull the information they desire when they desire online.\u00c2\u00a0 Where heat is more important than your book tour.<\/p>\n
The times have certainly changed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got me scratching my head.\u00c2\u00a0 Big records and movies are so bland as to appeal to everybody, around the world.\u00c2\u00a0 TV’s a bit better, but it’s helped by a limited channel universe, even if this universe is five hundred outlets strong.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, most of those channels get every little traffic.\u00c2\u00a0 But they survive because advertisers want to reach this narrow sliver of audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Your band’s audience is narrow too.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t try to convert outsiders, maximize the revenue from those who’ve become addicted.\u00c2\u00a0 Outsiders don’t care about you, they care about someone else.\u00c2\u00a0 Accept it.<\/p>\n
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