I feel like a fucking idiot.<\/p>\n
You see I was supposed to meet Tony in the lobby at eight.\u00c2\u00a0 To go out with a
bunch of people for pizza.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I’ve been going to the shrink for YEARS to
learn how to be late.\u00c2\u00a0 You see nobody in L.A. gets ANYWHERE on time.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I
saunter down around 8:03 and find…no one.<\/p>\n
But it’s worse.\u00c2\u00a0 I DON’T HAVE A U.K. CELL PHONE!<\/p>\n
I’m a Verizon customer.\u00c2\u00a0 I switched two years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 God, I can now finally
USE my cell phone.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t constantly lose the signal.<\/p>\n
But Verizon employs CDMA, a technology that rules in the U.S., but is
essentially nonexistent elsewhere.\u00c2\u00a0 Just about everybody else uses GSM.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, don’t
gloat you Cingular users, it’s a DIFFERENT PART of the spectrum from YOUR GSM
phone.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, if you’ve got a quad band Cingular or T-Mobile phone, you
can talk over here, using your same number.\u00c2\u00a0 But the calls are over a dollar a
minute.\u00c2\u00a0 Not enough of a deal to get me to switch for my limited foreign travel
schedule.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh yes, I can get a Verizon phone with GSM capability, but it
costs nearly $500, so fuck that.<\/p>\n
My nutritionist was going to lend me HER GSM phone.\u00c2\u00a0 That she bought when she
went to Australia, to talk to her fiancee.\u00c2\u00a0 But someone else she promised it
to first turned out to be leaving before I got back, so no go.\u00c2\u00a0 She told me
she paid $70 for the phone, but all I needed was a card.<\/p>\n
I thought I could live without it.\u00c2\u00a0 God, I’m living in the nineties.\u00c2\u00a0 The
U.K. is the cell future.\u00c2\u00a0 People depend on them, they supersede landlines.\u00c2\u00a0 And
everybody’s e-mailing me their mobile number (they call them "mobiles" here,
say "cell phone" and they look at you funny), and I’ve got no way of contacting
them.\u00c2\u00a0 But, wandering around the lobby I run into this guy Martin Heath.\u00c2\u00a0 A
true renegade.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m paying half attention as we speak in the bar, looking for
Tony and Yvette over my shoulder.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, feeling I’m being rude, I confess.\u00c2\u00a0
Turns out HE’S going to the pizza dinner too, but it’s been shifted to TEN!\u00c2\u00a0
And I’m completely out of the loop.\u00c2\u00a0 If only I could call TONY!<\/p>\n
Martin said I should just go get a free phone.<\/p>\n
A FREE PHONE??<\/p>\n
Yup, the phones are FREE!\u00c2\u00a0 You just pay for the time.<\/p>\n
Turns out the phones come with a SIM card, that represents your number.\u00c2\u00a0 And,
you buy a phone card with time.\u00c2\u00a0 You can constantly replenish it.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if
you buy a new phone, because you want to, because technology keeps changing, you just take your SIM card\/number WITH YOU!<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, we’re in England, not California, and the mobile stores are
not open on\u00c2\u00a0 Sunday, but…<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, things heated up after my last missive.\u00c2\u00a0 Tony was interviewing
Tommy Silverman.\u00c2\u00a0 Who spewed a lot of indie shit, GOOD shit, but then talked
about how we needed to educate the consumer, and charge MORE for music.\u00c2\u00a0 HUH?<\/p>\n
Then it was upstairs to hear Tony interview Ted Cohen.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, Ted waxed
rhapsodic about his days at Warners and Philips, showed off his Nokia video phone and ROKR, and then the floor was opened to questions.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereupon Scott from the
Orchard asked Ted when EMI was going to license P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they struggled over
the meaning of P2P for a minute or two, finally Scott emphasized he meant REAL
P2P, and then Ted said it could never happen because of the PUBLISHING!\u00c2\u00a0 You
had to pay the eight plus cents per track.<\/p>\n
Whereupon I blew a gasket.\u00c2\u00a0 You see Martin Bandier, head of EMI PUBLISHING,
is the dude who won’t go to a percentage rate, allowing licensed P2P to work.<\/p>\n
And then all hell broke loose.\u00c2\u00a0 I was going at Ted, Ted was going at me and
then Tommy Silverman jumped up to argue with my premise, that the future was
more music for more people at a cheaper aliquot price per track.<\/p>\n
And then Steve Gottlieb couldn’t hold back.\u00c2\u00a0 His panel was next, but he had
to jump in.<\/p>\n
And then, without missing a beat, like a network afraid to air a commercial
between sitcoms, Steve took the dais and started in.<\/p>\n
Turns out Steve’s on my team.\u00c2\u00a0 He thinks what killed the business was the
refusal to license Napster, the ORIGINAL Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s got this wrongheaded
notion that the solution is to put speed bumps in the way of BURNING!<\/p>\n
But you should have heard him lambaste Steve Jobs and Apple.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying he
refused to make a deal.\u00c2\u00a0 That it was a bad economic model.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is what I HAD
said.\u00c2\u00a0 But what makes this FASCINATING is that iTunes is the SPONSOR OF THE
CONFERENCE!\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think Denzyl Feigelson, the Apple liaison, was taking it too
well.\u00c2\u00a0 He even disappeared for a minute there.<\/p>\n
The hijinks continue tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0 With the same players.\u00c2\u00a0 Only this time I get
to take the stage.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I feel like a fucking idiot. You see I was supposed to meet Tony in the lobby at eight.\u00c2\u00a0 To go out with a bunch of people for pizza.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I’ve been going to the shrink for YEARS to learn how to be late.\u00c2\u00a0 You see nobody in L.A. gets ANYWHERE on time.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-2P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}