Is the new Woodstock.
How is it a company purveying inert products has usurped the eyeballs of the world from the creative community?
Pursuit of excellence.
While the movie companies remake television shows, and genre films like "King Kong", the public ignores their efforts and looks to a relatively small entity to DAZZLE them.
Been to an Apple Store? There's a pulse you no longer find in the record store. There's the joie de vivre of a community of cutting edge people searching for tools to enrich their lives. Yes, going to the Apple Store is a ritual that burnishes the self-image of the customer. Just like file-sharing, if you think about it. But the record labels ABHOR innovation.
Used to be artists released new albums three times a year. Yup, go back to the sixties and the Beatles. Oh, some acts now put out a couple of albums a year, but it's usually the SAME DAMN RECORD, with two new tracks, or remixes. This is a TURN-OFF to the fan. The fan wants something new. Used to be Steve Jobs introduced something new twice a year. But this will be the THIRD time he's made major product announcements in the last FOUR MONTHS!
The iPod Nano is Elton John. Or the Kinks. Acts that we could have survived without, but came into the marketplace and dazzled us. They might not have been as REVOLUTIONARY as the Beatles, but they enriched our lives. I mean what kind of company kills its top selling product and replaces it with something completely different? Can you see the analogy to "Sgt. Pepper"? A record with no singles? Followed up by a double album with a blank cover? ("Magical Mystery Tour" was just a side venture, a lark, an EP. It was only put out in album form by the rip-off American company.)
And then, in October, Apple released the first consumer computers with dual-core chips. Satiating the TOP of the market after speaking to the bottom with the new iMac the month before. Do you wonder why everybody's paying attention to next week's reveal?
And although he has helpers (http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,16376,1677772,00.html), Steve Jobs's performance is not canned. You marvel. That HE can deliver so exquisitely in front of a live audience.
And then this same performance is beamed in QuickTime to the rest of the world.
In Aspen, Chris Sacca said you've got to know where in the food chain to charge. It might be that the record labels are charging at the wrong point. Maybe bands should be self-contained. And maybe only charge for t-shirts. Or give the product away at shows, a la Prince. Unfortunately for them, labels only SELL discs. They WANT to participate in more revenue streams, but flawed accounting and other untrustworthy business practices prevent acts from throwing in with them.
Most people are expecting a movie store, tied in with the Mac Mini. And, Intel-based iBooks are all but confirmed. But, what intrigues us most is the possibility of something we could never even CONCEIVE OF, that might change our life, like the iPod.
If you read the newspaper, if you watch television, you're completely out of the loop. You're not catching the buzz.
But online, the anticipation has been building not for weeks, but months. Hell, a slip-up at the GarageBand site has revealed new products entitled iLife '06 and iWeb and the faithful are eating it up like a deejay revealing the TITLE of a new Beatle single. (http://www.macrumors.com)
Now maybe you hate Steve Jobs. Maybe you think he's a pompous prick.
More power to you. You're an American. Some people loved the aforementioned Beatles, other the Stones. If people don't have a defined opinion of you, if you cause no polarization, you're having no impact. THAT'S what's wrong with today's music and movies. In trying to please EVERYBODY, they leave out the controversy, the acts slide off of the public, the appeal is lost.
Sure, Madonna might kiss Britney. Someone might get arrested. But what does the MUSIC say? What does the MOVIE say?
We're in a new era. The public wants more. Something they can sink their teeth into. They want to participate, they want to BELIEVE!
And mainstream media just doesn't get it. The usual outlets believe in the lowest common denominator.
The lowest common denominator can't even COMPREHEND Steve Jobs' presentations. He assumes you come with a modicum of knowledge, and an interest and desire in what he has to say.
Sure, there are high school dropouts drinking beer who don't get it. But then even they do. They want an iPod. They have to learn about USB 2.0 and FireWire. They have to learn about CDDB. Because they want to BELONG!
No one wants to belong to the RIAA other than its major label constituents. Music is now an us versus them proposition. Whereas when it was biggest, the label was your friend, you wanted to WORK THERE! Now, you can't even work there. Everybody's been laid off so the big execs can earn millions and a dividend can be issued to the stockholders. And why WOULD you want to work there, where you get no input and you're purveying dreck. You'd rather work somewhere where you can make a DIFFERENCE! Be RESPECTED!
This is a very big deal. Whatever Steve Jobs says next week WILL be all over the newspaper and TV. But if you find out about it then, you'll be the last to know. Just like our parents had no idea what was going on with us when we were kids. There's a generation gap as wide as there ever was in the sixties. Either you can play your computer like a Stradivarius. Either you're wired in, and know how your gadgets work. Or, you're a multi-thousand dollar besuited prick who always thinks about how he can profit, how he can get rich first. It's no longer a top-down society, it's a community. Get in the pit and play if you want to survive. Know that change is CONSTANT! And you can be on top today, and history tomorrow, like Netscape. Technology is now the model, not four singles fed to terrestrial radio like pabulum from the same damn album over three long years. The public has cried UNCLE! The only people who don't know are those in charge.
Subscribe to Feed
