A New Media Paradigm. Part I

A New Media Paradigm. Part II

The point is not really the type of music you like, so I apologize to all the Country Music fans I’ve offended even though my true opinion is in fact that I’d rather have my ears Van Goghed than listen to it.

It’s all about the money.

In the vinyl business model your $12 album paid about $2 to the store and about the same to the artist.  The rest went to the greedy bastards in the music business.  Especially during the transition to digital when you had to buy everything twice this was quite a lucrative racket and enabled Record companies to pay Sports Star advances to people like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna.

The interesting thing about advances is that they are advances against future revenues, so it’s not like any of those people were getting real money, what they were getting was the same old $2 only all in a lump up front.  Don’t produce, lose your popularity, sell less, and some soulless accountant shows up at your bling bedecked mansion and tells you your blow budget is cut off.

Bummer to be you dude.

But the soulless accountant and his record company exec friends were still Aok until they started sailing off the shores of digital Somalia.

When you start cutting into Polygram’s blow budget now you’re in for some trouble dude.

I’m both a purist and a technician and I know that it’s simply not possible to duplicate all the information contained in analog media, but as you keep getting incrementally nearer the limits of your derivative you rapidly approach something that is close enough for jazz.  Your brain will fill in the missing pieces.

But once digitized the question simply becomes how many.  If you can play it you can duplicate it, maybe not exactly but close enough for government work (much less than you need for jazz) which is exactly where the execs went to protect their intellectual property.  Unfortunately for them the world is flat and different cultures have different ideas about what exactly property and ownership mean.  Ask Scandinavians (noted pirates and cut throats since Viking times).

So things changed and now you can download your iTunes for $1 a pop and Apple and the artist each get a nickle.

Not quite enough for a swimming pool full of Moet, or even a bathtub.

Still, ya gotta have your bling and the next big thing is concerts and merchandising.  Ever wonder why it costs over a grand to get front row for the Stones?  You’re paying for Keith’s new liver dude and those things are not cheap, even in China.

It has been democratizing in a way.  Now all the artists are starving unless of course you got your start when there was still a mass market and a common culture, but those days are dead as doornails.

A New Media Paradigm. Part I

While I have a moment or 2 I’d like to talk about my media habits.

I see a lot.

The TV is on 24/7 unless I’m out.  Usually news as you might imagine.  When I was working as a cashier at a convenience store I’d read 4 newspapers a day including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal which are way overpriced.  When I drive I listen to NewsRadio 88 (Traffic and Weather together on the 8s at 8, 18, 28, 38, 48, and 58 minutes past the hour) unless there’s a Mets game on or I’m out of range (more about the Mets and sports in general in an upcoming episode).

If I’m even out of range of the clear channel stations I like talk radio and occasionally I’ll even stream WABC when my lust for schadenfreude overwhelms me.

Not music so much.

Back in my DJ days my chief utility was librarian and programmer.  When my buddy and I worked he would run the board and I was in charge of finding the next song out of the 1000 CD collection.  By memory with something else playing.  It makes my ears bleed to listen to the plastic mouseketeer boy/girl band American Idol rap crap that passes for popular today.  Music ended about the same time MTV stopped playing videos and started doing reality.

And I’ve always hated country, why do you ask?

But my main point is not to tell you kids that your music sucks although it does (shakes fist at cloud), but to get you to reflect on the changes in the business model of music.  You used to get 7 or 8 great songs an album because they would sell the singles separately.  Then 45s went out of style and you’d get 1 or 2 great songs an album and pay about the same price (adjusted for inflation) as you did for those great A & B side 45s.

Then when digital came out you spent the mega bucks to replace your entire collection.

But digital changed everything.  Vinyl would wear out (two plays, and you can tell the difference between the second and the first) but CDs never do.  More than that, they’re easy to copy.  If all else fails you can put a microphone next to your speaker and tape something that sounds kind of ok, no worse than your average mp3.  Sure it sounds like crap, but so does radio and people have been listening to that for 80 years now.  The fortunate fact is your mind makes up the difference.

Having memorized all those songs I feel no more compelled to re-hear them than to re-read the books I remember the plots from simply by looking at the title on the spine (more thousands and most re-read many times for pleasure).

What I look for from radio on the rare times I listen is novelty.  I want to hear something not only fantastic but new.  My Aunty Mame is trying to get me into books on tape.

What puts me on this track is the recent announcement by NBC that they’re going to cut back on their programming from 22 hours of prime time a week to a Faux/CW like 17 by having Jay Leno cover 10 pm Monday to Friday.

Now not all my predictions come true, but I think this a horrible move, doomed to failure, and not just because I find Leno’s product inferior.

Back in the day I critically watched the Jay vs. Dave wars and Dave has at least the virtue of being funny and Leno not so much.  More than that, the original reason that The Tonight Show moved to Los Angeles was so that they could more easily book guests from the West Coast branch of the Film and Television industry.  No offense meant California (well maybe a little) but 99.99% of those people turn out to be vapid airheads who unscripted can’t put a complete sentence together and won’t talk about anything except their latest project and who they’re fucking, and that badly and incoherently.

Maybe it’s the price you pay for all the sunshine.

Not that David’s guests are that much better.  Intellectual rigor is not something you can expect from the media elite as a cursory perusal of Huffington Post will convince you.  Actors tend to be shallow self centered morons with no sense of shame, including News Actors (not really many reporters around any more).

And now we’re getting to the crux of the problem which is that the format is boring.  At least Rachel Ray and Martha Stewart cook, but most talk shows talk too much.  Who cares?  Jay, there’s a reason people go to sleep after the monologue and it’s not just because they’re old or have to get up in the morning.

Then there’s the repetitive nature of all of it.  Remember what happened to Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?  American Idol, Survivor, Deal or No Deal, CSI, Law and Order, they’re all the same all the time.  Nothing new ever happens.

They’ve just given up.

Even such a culture cannibalizing snooze fest as Happy Days seems like an innovative concept by comparison.  Instead of recycling nostalgia for 30 years ago we recycle it from last week.

My friends we are approaching peak TV.  Channel after channel is filled with stuff I’ve already seen or don’t want to watch in the first place.  And it’s a fundamental failure of the business model; they sell eyeballs and not only are they losing them by droves, but nobody is willing to pay for them anymore.

Their response is to downsize.  Cut the cost of production, worship efficiency, and stifle creativity.

This is a self reinforcing death spiral of deflation and depression.  If your product sucks make more of it cheaper, supply side entertainment.

That’s enough for now, but I expect I will revisit this subject.