WINNERS:
APPLE COMPUTER
The Mighty Mouse isn't about placating Mac fans, it's about convincing Windows users. They lowered the price of iPods, they came out with the Mac Mini, they're switching to Intel, if you don't think Apple's gonna make a run at taking over the world, you're just not paying attention.
You still can't get a gmail account unless you know somebody.
It's this kind of soft launch, inside club marketing the music business USED to specialize in.
Furthermore, Google Maps and Google Earth debuted in a similar soft launch fashion and there STILL isn't a fee/business model extant. Oh, there WILL BE, after users tell everybody how cool the services are.
Don't bet on Yahoo. Yahoo is an overhyped company that doesn't understand the Internet. Terry Semel can speak to Wall Street, that's why they believe and have faith in him and the company. But Terry Semel's vision is positively old wave. Hiring all those Hollywood players. That's like the studios getting into the video game business, they don't UNDERSTAND IT! The way to make money on the Net is to be a visionary. Terry Semel is a manager.
CRAIGSLIST
The anti-Yahoo.
They don't want you to register, they're just there if you need them.
It's not about flashing graphics on the Web, it's about UTILITY! While labels are investing in sites with splash pages and animated effects they're missing the point that it's all about content, and getting that content easily and quickly. Yes, many band Websites give away music for free, but finding the appropriate page and getting there is like swimming through the Sargasso Sea.
MYSPACE
It's reached critical mass. The fact that Fox now owns it is irrelevant. It will continue to dominate unless somebody invents a better mousetrap.
And what's the secret to MySpace? Community. Exactly what the labels try to eviscerate. If you prevent trading, you reduce your revenues.
BLUETOOTH
The tech writers put it to bed, but having a bluetooth headset for your cell phone is a badge of honor. Or, stating it better, having a wired headset for your cell phone labels you a technical weenie, when your tech toys define you. (If this wasn't true, people wouldn't upgrade their cell phones every year.)
SHOWTIME
You just don't know it yet. It's the new HBO. Start talking about Mary-Louise Parker's show NOW if you want to look hip.
XM
It's the business strategy. No matter what you say about Internet radio, nobody's installing receivers in cars today. But, XM-ready autos are rolling off the line in the MILLIONS! And, experiencing their trial free subscriptions new car owners up for the term, since satellite puts terrestrial to shame.
Sirius might survive on this same basis. Then again, XM made a deal with the Major League and Sirius made a deal with the NFL. Sirius had to spend to survive, but will their spending kill them?
HIP-HOP
It was better five years ago. It does poorly on the road. But, there's an honesty, a visceral quality in rap that eludes almost all rock music. Could it be that the rockers grew up in too comfy an existence, and don't need to make it to survive?
VICTORY RECORDS
Tony Brummel's a mercurial blowhard.
But he signs hit acts.
And now everybody know it. His self-hype/e-mail everybody campaign worked. People take him seriously.
I'd tell you to replicate his strategy, but Tony's sui generis.
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL
Not classically beautiful, but radiates mischief and intelligence, a unique combination.
This is how our rock stars used to be. Making choices on creativity, not box office.
KELEFA SANNEH
America's best rock critic. At least working in major media.
Sanneh is knowledgeable, he cares and is easily able to say something sucks, even if conventional wisdom says it doesn't.
You don't need to read him. But you should.
NIC HARCOURT
Is it that he's not beautiful? Or is it that he's the only hero the boomers have got. Anybody else with this much press would be experiencing a backlash. But Mr. Harcourt's star keeps rising. And now that he's podcasting, including full tunes, LIVE PERFORMANCES, before just about anybody else, he's just that much cooler. Check iTunes' podcast chart. He's at number 11 as I write. Tell me you don't want to listen to him interview Ry Cooder. You know Nic will be knowledgeable, he'll respect Ry, and the interview will be done on an intellectual plane that doesn't insult the intelligence of the audience. THIS is the new paradigm. Assuming your audience brings something to the picture, that everybody isn't fucking ignorant. (Hello, Hollywood, can you hear me calling?)
PRO TOOLS
Puts the means of production in the hands of the proletariat.
SCOTT STAPP
You hate him, but Creed was the biggest rock band of the last decade. People are waiting for his next record. If it's decent, it will be a monster.
BRITISH POLICE
How come they can find the London bombing perps in weeks and Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, is still at large?
LOSERS:
NAPSTER
On the way to extinction, just like the previous company that used this name.
It's the economics.
They only added 25,000 subscribers in this, their first fiscal quarter. A decrease from 86,000 the quarter before, after the publicity push. The company has enough cash, at the present burn rate, to make it to the end of 2006. And then PFFTTT!
People don't want subscription rental. I'll tell the record companies what they tell us. You can hype a product, but at the end of the day the people judge. The people want to own.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/investing/personalfinance/chi-050731001 0jul31,1,5953393.story?coll=chi-businessyourmoney-hed
SONY
Don't mistake the success of their flash-players in Japan for a trend. Bottom line...there's no iTunes Music Store there. When the iTunes Music Store opens, Sony will be crushed.
THE FIRM
It's all about the movies.
How long until the Yorns pick up their ball and go home. Or demote Kwatinetz and run the operation themselves.
The company had its moment, and it past. A manager's power is commensurate with the success of his acts. And the Firm's acts hit a cold streak, if they didn't leave all together.
It's an old Hollywood story. Too much too soon.
In other words, just because you're rolling in dough today, don't SPEND IT!
Or, as Allen Toussaint would have put it... The same dudes you abused on your way up, you might meet up, on your way down.
PLAYS FOR SURE
Only Microsoft could spend a ton of money hyping a slogan to absolutely zero effect. That's what Apple's BUILT UPON, playing for sure. It's part of its DNA. Microsoft's DNA contains greedy ineptitude, which results in consumer frustration.
NEWSPAPERS
They're already history, you just don't know it yet.
They lost car ads. They lost personal ads. They overpay for content. Their vision of the future is not based on investment, but cutting back to maintain a rate of return. It's like watching Polaroid. A company that was a household name whose moniker has lost almost all meaning.
MERCEDES-BENZ
Never going to recover from their quality crisis. They've ceded dominance to BMW.
Bottom line. Don't throw all the bells and whistles in to impress somebody, just make something that WORKS! There are more full-featured music jukeboxes than iTunes, but none so elegant and so utilitarian. You don't even need to read the instructions.
MUSIC ON CELL PHONES
Killed by the providers. Who want to charge an exorbitant price per track and want no interoperability. Eliminate utility and you eliminate profits.
CARSON DALY
Have no identity and you have no longevity. If you don't make an impression, if people don't hate you or love you, your career's in trouble. That's what's wrong with today's artists, they're so bland, being so nice to everybody, that the public can't identify.
RED
What happens when accountants run record companies. It wasn't about the bottom line, it was about breaking the acts Columbia and Epic couldn't and flying up new bands, like Los Lonely Boys, that the major companies couldn't sign.
Which is why Universal is the most successful record company.
Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine don't have MBAs, but they know music.
KROQ
You must innovate to stay alive. The formula is so stale that the ratings have finally fallen.
DVD
It's not about the competing HD disc standards, it's about Internet delivery. THIS is what Apple's going to deliver. In the so-called "Year of HD".
JUDITH REGAN
A self-promoting huckster whose success is based on jumping into the gutter and languishing there. Only in America, where money triumphs over everything, is this woman respected.
LIVE JOURNAL
So yesterday. Made irrelevant by MySpace.
MOVIES
The business seems to have forgotten it's all about story. Not look, not special effects, not even stars. Which is why pay cable has stolen its thunder.
MUSICIANSHIP
People assume a machine can do it. Even though it can't.
T-MOBILE
They may have Catherine Zeta-Jones, but they've got no 3G infrastructure. Without heavy capital investment, not presently on the boards, they're doomed.
WEED
If it aint' genuine P2P, it ain't worth a shit.
CREATIVE COMMONS
Confusing band-aid solutions don't work.
BECK
If a reunion with the Dust Brothers isn't successful, what alternatives are left?
A marginal artist.
ELECTRONIC ARTS
The underground days of video games are over. It's all about the economics. Which are tough when licensing fees are expensive, so few titles connect and those that do don't sell forever. No longer a Wall Street darling, just another company, in a maturing industry.
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
So let me get this straight. We spend all this money in Iraq, all those people die, they kick us out and the country becomes aligned with Iran, as a totalitarian, or close to it state?
If you don't believe this is the way this plays out, you don't remember Vietnam. And you're not paying attention.
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