“The music will outlast us all.”
Rick Rubin is my hero. This guy never wears a suit or has to go into the office. He gets up every day and listens to music all day long. He is paid to tell artists what he likes /dislikes about the songs they’re writing and recording and they pay close attention.
Lynn Hirschberg has a great article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine about the famed producer and Def Jam founder’s new stint as co-head of Columbia Records.
There are a couple of really interesting insights in the article.
First, Rubin admits that the music industry as we know it is toast.
“Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today’s world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it’s going to be a declining business. This model is done.”
Second, takeaways from a focus group of Columbia Record interns in their Big Reg program:
“The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.”
Third, TV show soundtracks are the ‘new radio’
Ever notice how a popular track on that emotional episode of Grey’s Anatomy translates into absurd amounts of downloads on iTunes? This is a technique perfected by MTV long before the major broadcast networks wised up and it works like a charm for selling singles, but does it translate into full album sales? Is that even what people want anymore?
Rubin goes on to say that he thinks the future of music is a ubiquitous subscription based service which lets you access any song, at any time, from anywhere, on any device. I tend to agree this is possible in theory and could end up saving the industry, but there are major stumbling blocks. One big one is that all the labels would need to play nice and agree on a pricing/rev share model that enables them to reap greater rewards on the artists that are in the most demand (i.e. Jay Z needs to be compensated more than someone whose tracks are downloaded once every 5 months by their mother) otherwise there is less incentive for an artist to stick with a particular label/distributor. Another huge issue is price point.
At what point does subscription music become ‘affordable enough’ that stealing music is just a pain in the ass?
In the article Rubin tosses out $19.95 / mo, but it quotes David Geffen at a much more reasonable price of $5-6 / mo. The truth of the matter is no one really knows how this is going to work, but we’re if the big record companies don’t get on top of this sooner or later, they really will be toast.
Sonos with Rhapsody already goes for $12.95 / mo so I think you’ve got to at least beat that price point as a minimum.
Any service with a fighting chance of really making it needs to be completely ubiquitous and platform agnostic. It should work in my car streaming on WiMax and support synch and go on my iPod/iPhone/portable music device of choice. I shouldn’t have to worry about bullshit windows DRM or annoying Apple Fairplay. As the article points out… if the record companies fail to reinvent themselves, they will only dwindle in valuation, until someone comes in to swallow them up at a great discount and restructure the distribution model anyways.
The next five years should be pretty interesting… my prediction–record companies are going to have to learn to enjoy the margins of a grocery store unless they figure this out tout suite.
Filed under: Music | Leave a Comment
Just when you thought you couldn’t spend any more of your time on Facebook… Booyah! iPhone application.
Announced on the Facebook Blog the “app” (aka dressed up iphone specific web page) allows users to peruse Facebook profiles and even links in to the iPhone API to call their friends with a simple flick of the finger.
That does of course assume that you have friends that are stupid enough to post their phone numbers on Facebook.
Update: more coverage from that Techcrunch guy
Filed under: Apple, Facebook, iPhone | Leave a Comment
R.I.P. Fake Steve Jobs
Looks like the game is up! New York Times reporter Brad Stone has revealed Fake Steve’s true identity, Daniel Lyons, a Forbes magazine senior editor.
Frankly, I’m really sad to see Daniel “outed”. I’ve not only enjoyed the hilarious posts on the Fake Steve blog, but also the continual guessing game of tech bloggers and journalists everywhere in an attempt to discover FSJ’s alter ego. Now what will they write about???
Disheartened fans of the FSJ blog need not fret! Daniel plans to continue writing FSJ as a blog now sponsored (& hosted?) by Forbes. I suppose this means at least he’ll get a larger paycheck out of entertaining all of us. He deserves it.
Oh, and here’s the CNBC interview with Daniel Lyons.
Filed under: Apple | Leave a Comment
Corporate Plinko
First, I want to start off by defining what a “sad factory” is. As we define it here, its a corporation that opens its doors to employees in the AM (who are generally in a good mood) and discharges them in the PM (when they are generally in a bad mood). Since this is a daily occurrence for many, it’s sorta like a “factory”… the sad emotion of course completing the title “sad factory.”
Before I left the sad factory the other day I was speaking to one of my co-workers who is our company representative of career frustration. He’s that guy in the office that made the right moves for a few years before stepping on a career land mine resetting all success back to zero. Talking to him is one of my favorite past times, no matter how bad my day is going I can guarantee that the black hole that surrounds his office has sucked in more bad news and frustration relating to his career.
As I left his office, I was reading my blackberry about news that Rosie O’Donnel might host The Price is Right. This got me thinking about The Price is Right and how entertaining some of the games were, specifically Plinko.
In the picture above we see the typical Plink board, the participant at the top puts a chip in, it bounces around, and eventually ends up at some monetary amount. After I deciphered if there was a way to manipulate the path of the puck once it is released (which there isn’t) I had this revelation: my career, much like negative co-worker here at the sad factory, is just like this game.
You start any career at the very top, feeling great, then once “released” you move from point to point, taking random paths not knowing ultimately where all the decisions will lead. Much like a game of Plinko, after all of these “moves” have occurred, you end up with some reward. For some, a CEO title (or $50,000 in the Plinko game) and for others, after all the moves, $100 dollars (or in real life, little career movement).
It is regularly said that those at the top are generally in the “right place” at the “right time” and have the “right skillset” for their job. Based on plinko-career-theory, one can trace the movements of any executive within a particular sad factory by looking at 1) random jobs that were career boosters, 2) random exposure that in turn 3) lead to a high yield on work performed (aka, big paychecks).
Filed under: Coporate BS | Leave a Comment
Rocky Votolato @ Bowery Ballroom
I saw Rocky Votolato in concert last night at the Bowery Ballroom. Rocky’s touring in support of his new album, The Brag and Cuss. This is his first ‘full band’ record vs the previous ones (all amazing) which were either solo or with some accompaniment. You can stream the full album from Barsuk records here. The show was a great mix of the new full band stuff, older stuff with band backup, and awesome guitar/harmonica solos. My favorite new songs were “The Wrong Side of Reno” and “Silver Trees”. Other amazing songs at the show were “Portland is Leaving” and during the encore when played “mixtapes / cellmates” by himself.
The fact you can listen to the new disc in its entirety before deciding whether or not you want to buy it is AMAZING. I know that labels have been doing this with select albums for a while now, but this is something that should be done for every album by EVERY ARTIST. The music industry (i mean the big corporate types! indie labels have been experimenting for a while) has been so clueless for so long when its comes to taking advantage of the internet. I’m completely dumbfounded by it.
Have a listen and enjoy!
Filed under: Concerts, Music | Leave a Comment
-
feeds
