{"id":724,"date":"2007-03-14T11:31:16","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T19:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2007\/03\/14\/santanastealing\/"},"modified":"2007-03-14T11:31:16","modified_gmt":"2007-03-14T19:31:16","slug":"santanastealing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2007\/03\/14\/santanastealing\/","title":{"rendered":"Santana\/Stealing"},"content":{"rendered":"

SANTANA<\/strong><\/p>\n

If I get one more e-mail from some over fifty Clive-worshipper telling me Carlos Santana can have another hit, I’m gonna PUKE!<\/p>\n

God, it’s questionable whether ROB THOMAS, composer of "Smooth", can have another hit.<\/p>\n

In the years since "Smooth" Top Forty has tightened up and gone down the totem pole in age such that someone over SIXTY has ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE!<\/p>\n

Oh, you can sell some albums via TV.\u00c2\u00a0 But not the tonnage of "Supernatural".\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, NO ONE can sell the tonnage of "Supernatural", and that was JUST MY POINT!<\/p>\n

Or let’s go over to MTV.\u00c2\u00a0 See anybody old on that channel?\u00c2\u00a0 Better yet, when you tune in are they playing ANY music?\u00c2\u00a0 That network helped break Santana.\u00c2\u00a0 As for VH1, it’s featuring celebrity weight loss, and a has-been rapper’s dating life!<\/p>\n

So you’ve got NO chance of any BIG TIME exposure on music television, where the active buyers tune in.<\/p>\n

And Michelle Branch, who was featured on the SECOND Santana comeback track?\u00c2\u00a0 Her second album stiffed and she went country.\u00c2\u00a0 And by today’s standards, she’s having a TON of success, with the Wreckers, who haven’t even gone gold.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, the country business is HEALTHY compared to the pop landscape.<\/p>\n

In a world where the Dixie Chicks win Record Of The Year and almost nobody has heard the track, why do these oldsters believe Santana can have any ubiquity?<\/p>\n

That’s just the point, there’s no MAINSTREAM anymore.<\/p>\n

When Santana came back, the mainstream and the hip were still one.\u00c2\u00a0 This era started with MTV, but in this new century, there’s been a bifurcation.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s the evanescent pop crap, and then there’s underground touring bands.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like the late sixties and early seventies ALL OVER AGAIN!<\/p>\n

Then again, the hip acts…will THEY be able to sell tonnage?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, almost all of them can’t cross over to Top Forty radio.\u00c2\u00a0 And the other formats, like Alternative and Active Rock, are ghettos that don’t get you to gold.\u00c2\u00a0 And Hot AC has ALWAYS been a passive format.\u00c2\u00a0 God, just ask some of those acts that make it to number one there and don’t cross over.\u00c2\u00a0 THEY never hit platinum.<\/p>\n

Are there exceptions?\u00c2\u00a0 Like Groban and Buble?<\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

But they weren’t sold with the Santana paradigm, it wasn’t about radio play.\u00c2\u00a0 It was about TV!\u00c2\u00a0 And TOURING!\u00c2\u00a0 Their breaking seems positively NEW SCHOOL compared to what happened with Santana.\u00c2\u00a0 And name a Groban or Buble hit…\u00c2\u00a0 You CAN’T, because there aren’t any, because they’re selling their whole oeuvre, the album, their so-called CATALOGUE!<\/p>\n

So you can pair has-beens up with young ‘uns all day long, and have song doctors write or massage tunes for the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 But you probably won’t GET on the radio, and you won’t SELL multiplatinum.<\/p>\n

This is the new reality.\u00c2\u00a0 You might think it sucks.\u00c2\u00a0 But when you e-mail me and tell me Santana can come back, because he had hits even a few years back, you indicate to me that you’re not paying attention, that you’ve got NO idea what is truly happening, that you can’t assess the LANDSCAPE!<\/p>\n

STEALING<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t want to steal, but you won’t let me PAY!<\/p>\n

There’s no iPod without the Rio.\u00c2\u00a0 Which the RIAA tried to sue off the shelf.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you don’t test limits, if you play by the rules, the future never arrives.<\/p>\n

To try and bring the CD model online is positively nuts.\u00c2\u00a0 And doesn’t work anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 If songs purchased at the iTMS represent less than 3% of the tracks on an iPod, you KNOW there’s a problem.<\/p>\n

The iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody in the file world has MUCH MORE MUSIC THAN PREVIOUS GENERATIONS EVER HAD!\u00c2\u00a0 I went to college with way under 100 albums and I had the most discs in my DORM!\u00c2\u00a0 100 albums is approximately 1,000 tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 Kids today have 10,000 tracks in their iTunes libraries.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the Net allows, replication and acquisition for almost free.<\/p>\n

The replication element, what could be better?\u00c2\u00a0 No pressing costs!\u00c2\u00a0 And distribution costs are borne by the consumer.\u00c2\u00a0 But the RIAA won’t let people PAY for the way they get music.\u00c2\u00a0 They want to sue them back to disc.\u00c2\u00a0 And statistics say it just doesn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 File-trading constantly goes UP!<\/p>\n

Well, John Kennedy now says he’s open to authorized P2P.<\/p>\n

And Harvard has got a plan, a company called Noank Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Noank’s going to China first.\u00c2\u00a0 Licensing universities.\u00c2\u00a0 For the equivalent of $8 per student per semester.\u00c2\u00a0 I know, a de minimis amount, but it’s better than NOTHING!<\/p>\n

Yup, almost NO ONE’S paying in China now.\u00c2\u00a0 The government can’t stop physical piracy.\u00c2\u00a0 But it and the university system know they’ve got a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 So, they made a deal with this company, they’re gonna PAY!\u00c2\u00a0 And Noank is gonna distribute the revenue to the labels and then say…let’s go into North America, the rest of the world, charge colleges $100 per student per semester, think of the MILLIONS you’ll make!<\/p>\n

Yup, they’ve already spoken with the University of Maryland.\u00c2\u00a0 You see the universities want to pay here too, because of the LIABILITY!\u00c2\u00a0 If they just add a file-trading fee to the overall cost, they’re OFF THE HOOK!<\/p>\n

As for the trader, he can take as much as he wants, and he’s no longer on the hook, no longer LIABLE!<\/p>\n

As for the rights holders…\u00c2\u00a0 They’re gonna make so much money they won’t GIVE a shit about the CD.\u00c2\u00a0 And they’ll take it…\u00c2\u00a0 Has Doug Morris turned down a check recently?\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, WALL STREET will demand he take the check.<\/p>\n

End result, more people have more music and the labels make more money.<\/p>\n

The problem?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, I can’t THINK OF ONE!<\/p>\n

This is what happens when a mass of people who know they’re right continue in their course of action, irrelevant of what those in power have to say.\u00c2\u00a0 We learned it in France during THEIR revolution.\u00c2\u00a0 We learned it in the sixties here, with the protests against Vietnam.<\/p>\n

Shit, we rolled over and let Bush invade Iraq without putting up much of a fuss.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT was a good course of action.<\/p>\n

Yup, silence.\u00c2\u00a0 In the face of reality.\u00c2\u00a0 That equals NO change.<\/p>\n

When I say I steal, I’m evidencing SOCIAL PROTEST!\u00c2\u00a0 I suggest you steal too, it’s our only hope to get the RIAA to accept the new reality.\u00c2\u00a0 If more people have more music EVERYBODY wins.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only the labels, but the whole TOURING business!<\/p>\n

When you trade at a low per month fee, you take more, you get turned on to more.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d think labels would like this, when they can’t seem to get any traction with the conventional gatekeepers.<\/p>\n

OF COURSE rights holders should be paid.\u00c2\u00a0 But they should be paid reflecting the NEW reality, not the old.\u00c2\u00a0 And until they do, I’m going to continue to steal.\u00c2\u00a0 You know why?\u00c2\u00a0 Because I think music is the number one art form, and if more people have more of it at a lower price (can you say cell phone model?) our country will be better off for it.<\/p>\n

If you disagree, then you probably think Santana can come back on Top Forty radio.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SANTANA If I get one more e-mail from some over fifty Clive-worshipper telling me Carlos Santana can have another hit, I’m gonna PUKE! God, it’s questionable whether ROB THOMAS, composer of "Smooth", can have another hit. In the years since "Smooth" Top Forty has tightened up and gone down the totem pole in age such […]<\/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":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-online"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-bG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724","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=724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}