{"id":628,"date":"2006-12-13T09:09:12","date_gmt":"2006-12-13T17:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/12\/13\/dinner-with-jason\/"},"modified":"2006-12-13T09:09:12","modified_gmt":"2006-12-13T17:09:12","slug":"dinner-with-jason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/12\/13\/dinner-with-jason\/","title":{"rendered":"Dinner With Jason"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m sitting downstairs at Jason’s house in Aspen, typing on the Cinema Display.\u00c2\u00a0 You know what they say, buy as much screen real estate as you can afford.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve now got 23", but 30" is a whole new dimension, you can have multiple apps open at one time, you’re IN the computer.<\/p>\n

We’re here for Aspen Live<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Take a look at the pictures.\u00c2\u00a0 If it looks fun that’s because it IS!\u00c2\u00a0 The highlight of my year.\u00c2\u00a0 Other conferences have bands, it’s about deals.\u00c2\u00a0 Aspen Live is about bonding, here’s where I made most of my friends, here’s where we reconnect.<\/p>\n

Felice and I were supposed to fly in tomorrow, but Jason asked if we wanted to come a day early.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, rather than get to the airport two hours ahead of time to fly to Denver and then on to Aspen, it was a no-brainer to leave two minutes from my house and arrive an hour and thirty nine minutes later.<\/p>\n

Now many of you may not live in Southern California, you might be experiencing winter.\u00c2\u00a0 But for Felice and me it’s a novelty.\u00c2\u00a0 We broke through the cloud ceiling and were confronted with the SNOW!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a complete head-change, you get in touch with your inner self, you feel so ALIVE!<\/p>\n

I’ve been to Jason’s house before.\u00c2\u00a0 But this is the first time I’m staying overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 This time I’ve had the ability to settle in, to see what a string of hit records, all the way from Twisted Sister to Skid Row to Stone Temple Pilots to Tori Amos to Kid Rock has wrought.\u00c2\u00a0 The record business has been very very good to Jason.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, it wasn’t a one way effort, Jason’s worked, HARD!<\/p>\n

Funny to see Jason in action.\u00c2\u00a0 He talks to EVERYBODY!<\/p>\n

We were accosted by the NetJet desk person on the streets of Aspen.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like they’d gone to high school together.\u00c2\u00a0 He insisted the hostess at Cache Cache pull up a chair.\u00c2\u00a0 So they could talk.\u00c2\u00a0 About everything from New York to skiing to the Stones.\u00c2\u00a0 Upon exit, while Felice and I were climbing the stairs, we heard Jason exclaim "MICHAEL GOLDBERG", and then he stopped to converse, catch up, with the owner of the Belly Up.\u00c2\u00a0 On some level it was like being with my father, he was the same way, you’ve got to know EVERYBODY.\u00c2\u00a0 Me, I’m too uptight, I’ve got too much social anxiety, I’m learning to be a member of the group, but it hasn’t been easy.<\/p>\n

And when we got back to the house, after it was discovered the hockey game Felice and I were playing wasn’t fully operational, we settled in for some ping-pong.\u00c2\u00a0 Jason beat the two of us.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, you don’t get this successful by LOSING!<\/p>\n

But what IS winning anymore?<\/p>\n

As Jason said at dinner, 1 1\/2 is the new four million.\u00c2\u00a0 The record business is shot.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t sell discs and iTunes has turned out to be a paper tiger, a fraud <\/p>\n

\n

iTunes sales ‘collapsing’<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And how long is the ringtone business gonna last?\u00c2\u00a0 Sideloading is imminent.\u00c2\u00a0 And the rap gravy train…\u00c2\u00a0 With broadband ubiquitous, people just STEAL that one track.<\/p>\n

And then we started reminiscing.\u00c2\u00a0 About the old days.\u00c2\u00a0 Jason was talking about the box of albums Ahmet dropped by the house when he was fifteen, after Jason’s father had given Ahmet some legal advice.\u00c2\u00a0 It included "Goat’s Head Soup".\u00c2\u00a0 And Jason promptly said how much he loved HEARTBREAKER!\u00c2\u00a0 I said "It’s my FAVORITE song on the RECORD!"\u00c2\u00a0 And when Jason told me it was all about the intro, I smiled so broadly, because this is EXACTLY how I feel.<\/p>\n

Jason spoke of having a hundred albums.\u00c2\u00a0 Putting his head between the speakers to get CLOSER to the music.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew exactly what he was talking about.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember getting my first pair of stereo headphones for my fifteenth birthday, and discovering "I’m very cold…" at the end of "Strawberry Fields Forever" (I’m sticking by that, I STILL don’t think it’s "I buried Paul.")\u00c2\u00a0 Music was EVERYTHING!\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s..?<\/p>\n

Funny how we’re all the walking wounded.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially all those who’ve been downsized.\u00c2\u00a0 How did this happen?\u00c2\u00a0 How did something we loved so much grind to a halt?<\/p>\n

Oh sure, there are great new acts out there, but the addiction, the CULTURE, is not the same.\u00c2\u00a0 That culture has to come back.\u00c2\u00a0 How is this going to happen?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not really sure.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ll tell you the very first step.\u00c2\u00a0 Doug Morris is gonna monetize the stealing.<\/p>\n

Yup, everything’s in Doug’s hands.\u00c2\u00a0 Times have changed.\u00c2\u00a0 Doug no longer wants to compete, with the Farm Club, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 He no longer wants to stop the future.\u00c2\u00a0 He just wants to get PAID for the future.\u00c2\u00a0 And the future is imminent.\u00c2\u00a0 CD sales are gonna drop so hard, so soon, that SOMETHING will have to be done.<\/p>\n

David Dorn believes there’s a service on the horizon, the equivalent of YouTube or MySpace, that will come along and save us.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll just have to say yes.<\/p>\n

I hope we can say yes.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Universal did to YouTube.\u00c2\u00a0 EVERY DAY people e-mail me about videos on YouTube.\u00c2\u00a0 It USED to be this way with Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 There was an excitement, EVERYBODY was talking about music.\u00c2\u00a0 Those days have to come back.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only to save the business, but our SOULS!<\/p>\n

Walk around Jason’s house.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a veritable museum.\u00c2\u00a0 Of the days of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 When the music business roared.\u00c2\u00a0 When record companies threw parties, when money was wasted because there was SO MUCH OF IT!<\/p>\n

As Billy Joel sang, I loved those days.\u00c2\u00a0 There was excitement instead of depression.\u00c2\u00a0 Music was the pulse of the nation, of the world.<\/p>\n

It’s all about opening the floodgates.\u00c2\u00a0 Today we have a controlled business.\u00c2\u00a0 The only radio that matters is Top Forty, and it doesn’t play the best of everything and certainly not the number of tracks in its appellation.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve now got the ability to get more music into the hands of more people at a lower price.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to pick up the gauntlet.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to cease the lawsuits.\u00c2\u00a0 Publishing companies have to go to a percentage rate.\u00c2\u00a0 Record companies have to share the wealth with the artists.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve all got to give a little to get a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got to stop warring and make peace.\u00c2\u00a0 Music not only inspires, it heals.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s take a lesson from the great tracks, let’s think of the joy encased within our favorite songs, and with that spirit SPREAD THE WEALTH!\u00c2\u00a0 Too many fat cats are trying to perpetuate an old business model.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not working.\u00c2\u00a0 Just ask Jason.<\/p>\n

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I’m sitting downstairs at Jason’s house in Aspen, typing on the Cinema Display.\u00c2\u00a0 You know what they say, buy as much screen real estate as you can afford.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve now got 23", but 30" is a whole new dimension, you can have multiple apps open at one time, you’re IN the computer. We’re here for […]<\/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":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-a8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","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=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}