It’s about tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Could Apple Computer be any hotter?\u00c2\u00a0 Shouldn’t it scale down development and
return value to its shareholders?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that the goal of a corporation, to
deliver for shareholders TODAY?<\/p>\n
No, the goal of a corporation is to deliver value for shareholders LONG TERM!<\/p>\n
Dick Parsons didn’t believe in the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Bertelsmann didn’t
believe in the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 Howard Stringer doesn’t believe in the music
business, otherwise he wouldn’t have hired Andy Lack.\u00c2\u00a0 EMI is too fucked up to even know what’s going on.\u00c2\u00a0 And Universal, like its old leader Lew Wasserman,
believes in CONTROLLING the future, the company believes in utilizing its legal
department as a profit center.\u00c2\u00a0 Universal is single-handedly holding back the
future of music.\u00c2\u00a0 First, by bullying its major label counterparts in the early
twenty first century and now by suing Bertelsmann to get money for that company’s
funding of Napster.<\/p>\n
Hank Barry badgers me with new ideas to save the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 He can’t
understand why the major companies don’t wake up.\u00c2\u00a0 He wonders what it’s going to take.\u00c2\u00a0 I tell him Napster proved that the only way to change the
infrastructure is to STEAL THE MUSIC!<\/p>\n
Make no mistake, if it weren’t for Napster, there’d not only be no iTunes
Music Store, but no iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 That little device that’s your most treasured
possession, don’t forget that the RIAA sued to stop its progenitor, the Diamond Rio.<\/p>\n
One man in the music business believed in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas Middelhoff.\u00c2\u00a0 He
realized, like Steve Jobs, it wasn’t about TODAY, but TOMORROW!\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t
matter that the major labels made their money on CDs.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn’t matter that few
people had broadband connections in 2000.\u00c2\u00a0 In the near future, people would
want their music as files, and he sought to deliver this.\u00c2\u00a0 And for this, he and
Hummer Winblad are being sued.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s totally fucked up.<\/p>\n
The fact that the RIAA has convinced ignorant copyright holders that P2P is
stealing that must be stopped does not make their pronouncement true.\u00c2\u00a0 You MUST
trade P2P.\u00c2\u00a0 You MUST protest the heinous behavior of the major label cartel.\u00c2\u00a0
You MUST drag the business into the future, because otherwise the cartel is
going to keep it in the past.<\/p>\n
If they don’t win in the Supreme Court, they’re going to lobby Congress for
legislation.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re going to do all in their power to keep music from the
public.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, P2P allows cheap and easy distribution to the masses.\u00c2\u00a0 Allowing
more people to own more music at a cheaper aliquot price.\u00c2\u00a0 What’s wrong with
this?\u00c2\u00a0 NOTHING!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just not the paradigm the labels have employed previously.\u00c2\u00a0
They’ll make MORE money if they license P2P, but they’re afraid.\u00c2\u00a0 As afraid as
the independent promotion men whose business is threatened by shrinking label
budgets and Elliott Spitzer.<\/p>\n
I don’t really give a rat’s ass whether the major labels survive.\u00c2\u00a0 But I DO
care about spreading the life-fulfilling greatness of music to as many people
as possible.\u00c2\u00a0 Economies of scale, provided by the Web, allow this.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s
happening.\u00c2\u00a0 P2P is burgeoning.\u00c2\u00a0 The major label cartel just refuses to monetize it.\u00c2\u00a0
But what worries me is they might institute penalties, restrictions in
hardware, that will prevent the future from arriving.\u00c2\u00a0 To the detriment of EVERYBODY!<\/p>\n
Steve Jobs is throwing the long ball.\u00c2\u00a0 He sees that in a couple of years if
Apple continues to rely on IBM it’s fucked.\u00c2\u00a0 For Apple is a relatively small
customer for Power PC chips.\u00c2\u00a0 And, IBM can’t deliver what they need, at the
price they need it.\u00c2\u00a0 The G4 laptops are getting long in the tooth, Apple can still
sell them today, but in two years or so, sales will fall off a cliff, when
Intel processor-based machines run performance circles around them.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no
upgrade path, because IBM’s Power PC G5 chip runs too hot, and consumes too
much power.\u00c2\u00a0 SEEING the future, Steve has decided to make a change now.\u00c2\u00a0 Will it
be successful?\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the other route is slow death, by shrinkage
of market share if nothing else.<\/p>\n
But you don’t take such an action willy-nilly.\u00c2\u00a0 You PREPARE!\u00c2\u00a0 Apple’s got a
HUGE cash hoard, BILLIONS of dollars.\u00c2\u00a0 This is their buffer, their CUSHION
against doing that which is expedient in order to survive.\u00c2\u00a0 Warner Music used to
have essentially no debt, now Thomas H. Lee has laden it with debt so huge the
company can barely function.\u00c2\u00a0 THIS is the way you prepare for the future??\u00c2\u00a0
And Edgar Bronfman, Jr. speaks of new technological opportunities, but I don’t
see him embracing any.\u00c2\u00a0 Andy Lack keeps focusing on the disc, which is like Mr.
Jobs believing in IBM, which has failed to deliver the 3 gigahertz chips it
promised.\u00c2\u00a0 EMI is overselling Coldplay and the Gorillaz, just to prop up its
stock price.\u00c2\u00a0 Think different my ass.\u00c2\u00a0 Universal is behind SUING customers
whereas Apple is all about delivering that which the mainstream customer can’t even CONCEIVE of yet.\u00c2\u00a0 Like built-in RSS in Safari, and podcasting in iTunes.<\/p>\n
The major labels are bullies.\u00c2\u00a0 Not much different from Morris Levy and the
record men of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 For a business where almost all of the product is produced
on computers, the executives in control are technologically backward.\u00c2\u00a0 If
these companies truly believed in music, they would embrace the future, try new
models before the mainstream marketplace was even ready for them.\u00c2\u00a0 Dazzle
consumers to the point where they got EXCITED about music.\u00c2\u00a0 But all they can do is
come up with lame non-singers like Ashlee Simpson.<\/p>\n
Steve Jobs realized that it’s not about quantity, it’s not about lowest
common denominator, it’s about selling no art before its time and having it be so
good that the public CLAMORS to consume it.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you say "Finding Nemo"?\u00c2\u00a0 And
"The Incredibles"?<\/p>\n
Steve Jobs can be a mercurial prick.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not in service of his ego, but
the creation of insanely great products.\u00c2\u00a0 If only record execs could say the
same.<\/p>\n
If the above doesn’t make sense to you, then you’re just out of the loop.\u00c2\u00a0
You’ve drunk the major label kool-aid, unlike what George Harrison said, you
can’t think for yourself.\u00c2\u00a0 Please don’t make any pronouncements, don’t line up
and yell until you know about the new technological world.\u00c2\u00a0 Otherwise, you’re
just demonstrating your ignorance.<\/p>\n
People aren’t stealing the music.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re just demonstrating a better way to
consume it.\u00c2\u00a0 If you can’t wrap your head around this concept it’s only
because your noggin is too far up your ass. <\/p>\n
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