I don’t have the time.<\/p>\n
And neither do you.<\/p>\n
That’s what your unwanted e-mails are, solicitations.<\/p>\n
According to the Oxford Dictionary:<\/p>\n
\n"solicit: ask for or try to obtain (something) from someone"<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nYes, you want something from me.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, you wouldn’t be e-mailing me if I didn’t have an audience.\u00c2\u00a0 You want me to write about your project\/service\/artist so that you can be more successful.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s in it for me?\u00c2\u00a0 Good question!<\/p>\n
I’m willing to admit your product could be fantastic.\u00c2\u00a0 But I just don’t have enough time to filter through the junk.\u00c2\u00a0 And I have great suspicion for someone who’s promoting with self-interest.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why I beat up Ian Rogers’ tweets today.\u00c2\u00a0 I love Ian on a one-to-one basis, that’s one of the reasons I follow him on Twitter.\u00c2\u00a0 But he’s trying to build a business, and he’s employing Twitter to do this.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where he’s lost all credibility when it comes to music.\u00c2\u00a0 Because he won’t say something’s bad.\u00c2\u00a0 Won’t delineate when a project is a Topspin one or not.<\/p>\n
In other words, if you’re selling, I’m not buying.<\/p>\n
That’s the consumer revolt against advertising.<\/p>\n
If I want a new car, a new pair of skis, a new computer, I’ll pore over websites for hours.\u00c2\u00a0 I want this information.\u00c2\u00a0 I can consume it at my leisure, without being bombarded.\u00c2\u00a0 If you ask me for my e-mail address, I won’t give it or will give you a false one. Because I don’t want more input.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got too much already!<\/p>\n
I just opened my cable bill.\u00c2\u00a0 $187.\u00c2\u00a0 And I turn on my TV a few times a month!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s there for when I hear about something, I’m then able to check it out\/record it.\u00c2\u00a0 As for mindlessly surfing from channel to channel…why would I do this?\u00c2\u00a0 There’s enough on demand to satiate two lifetimes.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to waste time separating the wheat from the chaff.\u00c2\u00a0 I want someone else to do that for me.<\/p>\n
Those movie preview issues in "Entertainment Weekly", even the "New York Times"?\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t read them.\u00c2\u00a0 I wait to hear from trusted sources whether the film is good or not.\u00c2\u00a0 Why waste time with hype?<\/p>\n
I look at what records are being reviewed in mainstream publications, but only to see who broke through the filter, who got ink, because when it comes to music, there’s not a single newspaper I trust.<\/p>\n
But I trust Mike Marrone.<\/p>\n
He e-mailed me about a Too Much Joy track.\u00c2\u00a0 I checked it out on Rhapsody.<\/p>\n
I’ve got Rhapsody, Napster and Spotify along with the free services at Lala, MySpace, YouTube, artists’ websites and RapidShare.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not lacking for music, I’m more interested in knowing what to play!<\/p>\n
This is so different from the days of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 When I had limited cash and played the albums I bought to death.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to, there were no other sources of music, other than radio, which although good, I didn’t control.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I hear about great tracks from a million artists.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s got time to listen to a seventy minute CD?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s going to have to be really fucking good.\u00c2\u00a0 Every single track has to rivet me in order for me to keep listening.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to bat 1000, or I’ve moved on.<\/p>\n
And so has everybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the iTunes cherry-picking mentality.<\/p>\n
You may not like it, but it’s real.<\/p>\n
I’ve got trusted sources.\u00c2\u00a0 I depend on those.\u00c2\u00a0 TV advertising escapes me, I wait for multiple friends to say something is great before I check it out.\u00c2\u00a0 Like "Modern Family".\u00c2\u00a0 People with no vested interest e-mailed me saying it was great.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, I’ve only watched a few minutes.<\/p>\n
How do you penetrate the force field?<\/p>\n
By creating something great.\u00c2\u00a0 Not good, great.\u00c2\u00a0 We no longer have time for good.<\/p>\n
And then you seed it with your trusted sources.\u00c2\u00a0 Your friends, your relatives.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if it’s truly great, they’ll turn on someone not related to you, with no vested interest, who might ultimately even reach me.<\/p>\n
In other words, if you’re selling it, I’m not interested.<\/p>\n
They say GM cars are great, just look at the advertising!<\/p>\n
But "Consumer Reports" says they suck.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a report just yesterday that they’ve got shitty resale value.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not interested in the sheen, but the substance.<\/p>\n
CR is my go-to guide for automobile reliability.\u00c2\u00a0 I may not trust them with car greatness, but they’ll tell me if cars last.<\/p>\n
Greatness?\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll go with "Automobile".<\/p>\n
So, to reach me, you’ve got to start off by earning my trust.<\/p>\n
Maybe I don’t know you, but I know your lawyer and like him.<\/p>\n
Maybe we shared a car ride once and I liked the music you played on your iPod.<\/p>\n
But just because you’ve e-mailed me twenty times with good information on tech doesn’t mean I trust your music recommendations.<\/p>\n
We’re looking for filters.\u00c2\u00a0 In a world of 500 TV channels and endless websites we want trusted sources to tell us what’s good, to make sense of things.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s who is going to make all the money in the future.<\/p>\n
That’s the Google secret.\u00c2\u00a0 Prior to Google, you rarely got what you were looking for via a search engine.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to tweak the search terms, use quotation marks.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought Google was a joke, a search engine for newbies until I just heard too much about it and tried it. Now I’m sold.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t need Bing.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s Microsoft’s problem.\u00c2\u00a0 A new search engine would have to be a quantum leap beyond Google to interest me.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got my search problem solved.<\/p>\n
I don’t have a definitive new music filter.\u00c2\u00a0 Satellite radio used to be it, but then they switched sides, to the purveyors, to the advertisers, to the consultants, anywhere but the listener.<\/p>\n
The blogs have too much self-interest.\u00c2\u00a0 They love everything in a genre or are about hating everything that’s not in that genre.\u00c2\u00a0 I can like alt.country and a great pop song.\u00c2\u00a0 But where’s the blog that tells me honestly about both?<\/p>\n
And it’s about taste.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is different from raw data.<\/p>\n
So, you’re frustrated, you can’t break through.<\/p>\n
I hate to burst your bubble, but all those people you hate, at the top of the pyramid, they didn’t get there easily.\u00c2\u00a0 They got a million doors shut in their face.\u00c2\u00a0 They wasted a ton of time.\u00c2\u00a0 But were tenacious and made it.\u00c2\u00a0 And since they might have never ever gotten a great unsolicited recording, they’re playing the odds, they’re waiting to hear about you from someone they trust.<\/p>\n
Use the intermediaries.\u00c2\u00a0 Know it’s about credibility.\u00c2\u00a0 And decide whether you want to play in the old world or the new.\u00c2\u00a0 Who gives a shit if Jimmy Iovine pays attention if you don’t want to be on a major label?\u00c2\u00a0 Who gives a shit if I miss how great you are if you build your own audience?<\/p>\n
Face up to reality.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t be sour grapes.<\/p>\n
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I don’t have the time. And neither do you. That’s what your unwanted e-mails are, solicitations. According to the Oxford Dictionary: "solicit: ask for or try to obtain (something) from someone" Yes, you want something from me.\u00c2\u00a0 Believe me, you wouldn’t be e-mailing me if I didn’t have an audience.\u00c2\u00a0 You want me to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-DA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454","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=2454"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2454\/revisions\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}