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Here Today, Gone Today
July 10, 2009
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"Leaders have to act more quickly today. Because the pressure comes much faster ... a fundamental rule in technology is that whatever can be done will be done."
-- Andy Grove, Chairman of the Board of Intel Corporation in May 1997. From 1987 to 1998 he served as the company's CEO, and from 1979 to 1997 he served as President.This week Google announced that its plans to launch a new OS (operating system) that will directly compete with Microsoft.
The new operating system will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome and Google will rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.
According to one news report, "Google is designing the operating system primarily for "netbooks," a lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily interested in surfing the Web." ( Source: http://tinyurl.com/lqoq5r or http://tinyurl.com/mx57wv )
While most of the immediate press built their stories around Google versus Microsoft' market dominance with Windows and ready to take it on in full digital battle, the main issue lost on most reporting is that (as the quote above says) sooner or later, anything done digitally will be replaced, redone, rebuilt, recreated, etc.
Of course, the other issue I did not see mentioned in the articles I read was the fact that if Google really wants to try and wrestle OS market share away from Microsoft, they will have to start a whole new division just to compete with Microsoft.. And unfortunately, unless all the businesses currently using Microsoft products decide to suddenly stop using them, Google has little or no chance of gaining real ground in the OS wars.
Yes, on inexpensive low-cost computers, the possibilities of creating an open source OS might work. But if people use their inexpensive PCs to network with those who use Microsoft systems, or their own office computers using Microsoft stuff, then there will be a whole lot of digital hurdles to overcome.
Years ago we all read that Linux was going to take over the low-cost PC business and shrink Microsoft's market share. It didn't happen.
While Google should be praised for their undertaking in trying to create their new OS, it's going to be a long, long time before they see if this is all worthwhile. Their Chrome browser hasn't hit double-digit market share percentages yet since its release last September.
But Google's announcement should be yet another alarm bell going off in the halls of all companies everywhere.
I recently spoke to a Silicon Valley tech person who happens to read the newsletter and I asked him how far ahead the real technology being created up there is, from what we read about everyday in the press or hear about in the media. His answer summed it all up, "Well, buddy, way far ahead ... but the biggest problem we have is we go home at night knowing one thing, and then tomorrow morning something else happens and we start all over. It's like that almost every day. What we know changes so fast it's staggering."
For years now I've suggested that the music industry desperately needs a high-tech consortium to help it create its future models. One might think the industry's (alleged) association might take that task and try to do something meaningful with it.. But no, they are still too busy litigating in court. (As I reported in the newsletter recently, last month a federal jury ruled that a 32-year-old Minnesota woman, Jammie Thomas-Rasset, willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and that she must pay the recording industry $80,000 per song, for a whopping total of $1.92 million. Monday, Ms. Thomas Rasset's attorneys said that this amount is "grossly excessive" and they are asking a judge to reduce the damages to a total of $18,000, or to grant a new trial altogether, saying some evidence shouldn't have been allowed at trial. In 2007, a different jury ruled she had to pay $222,000. The Recording Industry Association of America says it is still willing to settle the case. How very big of them.)
So, the one thing we can be sure of in the digital world is that whatever is here today, can be gone today.
The music industry needs to start asking how it's going to be here tomorrow and developing solutions faster than ever. One thing is certain, the RIAA isn't going to save them.
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK
THE MICHAEL JACKSON THING ...CDs SELL AGAIN BIG TIME
This week Michael Jackson's combined album sales were over 800,000.
The new #1 album on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart is another of those "when you have lemons make lemonade" collections, "Now 31," and it sold a whopping 169,000 in change. In fact, the top three album debuts on the Billboard chart sold only about 85,000 more than just one Jackson album, the 'Number One' collection, which by itself accounted for 339,000 in sales.
While Michael also dominated in online digital sales, if we consider that each Jackson CD has on average 10 tracks, it means that he sold eight million tracks in physical format this week.
Of course, back in 1983 at the height of 'Thriller' mania, Epic was moving hundreds of thousands every week. That's what the record business used to be like in its glory days. That's when their were REAL artists like Michael, Springsteen, Seger, Billy Joel, Elton John, Aerosmith, Guns'N'Roses, Van Halen, The Eagles and so on and so on, the list is far too long to continue but you all know the names of all those multi-platinum artists who had careers spanning several decades.
This week I received an e-mail from a label person and it said, "What a sales week for the industry! It feels like the old days!" I imagine it does, but of course the mania will die down and before long sales will return to the previous levels and the problems of meeting those quarterly quotas will start all over again.
Of course, Michael Jackson's early passing is the reason for the huge increase in CD sales, and it's an exceptional and tragic event. At the same time, every single label should recognize that people have no problem plopping dollars down at retail for CDs when they value the artist(s).
I remember talking with Dave Sholin when he was National Music Director for the RKO radio chain after "Bad" came out and we were discussing why some music critics weren't all that happy with the album and they were (of course) comparing it to "Thriller."
Dave asked me what I thought of the album and I said, "It's like a great jukebox ... you just put it on and let it play and every song sounds great! Isn't that what all great albums should be like?"
Dave agreed. And I think that same statement holds true today and will forever.
Maybe when the industry signs artists that make albums like that again things will change for the better.
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 3
ALLEN KLEIN DIES
Allen Klein, whose clients included the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, died last Saturday after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer's disease, his publicist said. Klein was 77.
Klein founded his firm Allen Klein & Co. in the late 1950s before the label evolved into ABKCO Music & Records in New York. The independent label holds the copyrights to music by the Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke, the Animals, the Kinks, Chubby Checker, Bobby Womack and hundreds of others. He represented dozens of artists, including Sam Cooke, the Animals, Bobby Darin and Herman's Hermits. When he represented Sam Cooke in negotiations with RCA, he won the artist control of his own master recordings, a first in the industry.
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 4
MORE PROOF THAT OUR CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IS IN BAD SHAPE
This week, VH1 (which, like its sister MTV, once actually played music videos all day) debuted another wonderful show. This one is called the "Great Debate" and tries to get the audience to engage the audience by having them take sides with such hot issues like which is better, "Star Wars vs. Star Trek" or "Boxers vs. Briefs."
VH1 launched the show with an interactive platform where viewers could comment and vote via text messaging at certain locations, Viacom's jumbo board in Times Square, on Facebook and (of course) on Twitter. Again, this is another example of what I've been saying since the whole Twitter explosion became bigger than Kirstie Alley's current dress size, which I've heard is now "tent." If this is a part of Twitter's audience, do we care?
Wendy Weatherford, a VP at VH1 said, "As our audience multitasks and time shifts, we are finding ways to reach and engage them wherever they are." Hey Wendy, where they are is NOT in front of the TV screen watching VH1 because they're watching the real engaging shows on MTV like "16 and Pregnant," "Real World Cancun," "Cribs" or the must-see MTV show, "Paris Hilton's My New BFF." With shows like these it's a miracle we still have kids graduating high schools and actually wanting to go to college.
Personally, it would be a whole lot easier to "reach and engage them wherever they are" by providing better programming content. If the "Great Debate" is VH1's idea of better program content to engage audience, I suggest they at least make an effort to come up with better topics for discussion.
"Megan Fox vs. Angelina Jolie" ... now there's an engaging show. The male demos would be through the roof.
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THE 'A-SIDE' - TRACK 5
IN SEARCH OF THE BETTER SEARCH
I've been using Microsoft's Bing.com search engine for the past few weeks, and I must admit, I like it an awful lot. Still, I miss Googling. This week, I found the best of both worlds. A website that brings up your search results from Bing and Google side by side. It's so good, I now use it for all my searches.
Check it out at: http://bing-vs-google.com/
ASCAP Strikes Sour Chord With Consumer Advocates
(From Media Post) -- In a move that has digital rights groups fuming, the collective rights organization American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers recently asked a federal court to rule that it is entitled to licensing fees for ringtones. ASCAP argues that the playing of ringtones is a "public performance" entitling it to licensing fees. The organization made that argument in the context of asking a federal district court in New York to order that AT&T pay licensing fees for the ringtones it sells consumers.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Internet Radio and Music Industry Reach Agreement On Royalties
Internet radio got a break Tuesday when the sector reached an agreement on streaming-music royalty rates with SoundExchange, the group that collects royalties on behalf of artists and labels.
The two sides announced the deal, which comes after more than two years of negotiations, political maneuvering, and fans pleading with lawmakers to save webcasting. It should be noted, however, that Webcasters are still at a disadvantage when competing with traditional broadcast radio. Over-the-air stations aren't required to pay royalty rates to artists or labels.
Read more about it by clicking here or here.
U2 Will Release A 'Mobile Album' For BlackBerry
iPhone applications featuring particular musicians have been around for a while now--Nine Inch Nails was recently in the news when Apple rejected an update to its application, and tech companies like Melodeo and The Orchard have experimented with creating iPhone apps for their clients.
Soon, BlackBerry fans will be able to get in on the fun. Research In Motion, which is sponsoring the U2 360 tour, has posted a page on its website declaring the imminent arrival of the U2 "mobile album."
Read more about it by clicking here.
Report: Gaming Usage At An All-Time High
Nielsen WireHow are videogames faring in the global recession? Analysts will point to declining year-over-year sales, but a new study from The Nielsen Company, called "The Value Gamer: Play and Purchase Behavior in a Recession," shows that there is more to the story. For example, the number of hours that gamers are playing is at an all-time high; they have also increased their purchase of used games to record-breaking totals, as well as subscriptions to video game rental services by mail. "Taken together, these trends point to gamers' continued engagement with the category even as their budgets have come under pressure," says a post on Nielsen Wire.
"Primarily, we believe mainstream gamers are playing more of the broadly appealing games (i.e. Wii Fit, Guitar Hero and Rock Band), pushing their hours of game play up," said Michael Flamberg, director of client consulting, Nielsen Games. "The social aspects of these games have engaged them. We don't believe hardcore gamers are driving up the usage averages we've observed. Second, gamers may be looking to stretch their entertainment dollar further through playing games they own more. The importance of value for them is evident in the findings on used game purchase."
Nielsen offers three contributing factors to explain why game sales have been soft. They are: an all-time high in used game purchases, an uptick in subscriptions to video game rental services by mail, and a weaker lineup of new titles this spring vs. last spring.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Entertainment News Sites Boosted By Online Video
A recent comScore report says that nearly 55 million Americans visited an entertainment news site in May 2009, representing a 7% increase versus the previous year. Online video has also become an increasingly important channel for content in the category, with the number of videos viewed growing 53% in the past year. In total, Americans spent more than 893 million minutes, approximately 15 million hours, on entertainment news sites, with 44% of the total time spent in the category occurring at work.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Unlocked Cell Phones Hitting The U.S. Market
(From CNET) -- Nokia and Sony Ericsson are targeting the U.S. with a new set of unlocked phones. But without hefty carrier subsidies, will they ever be able to crack the U.S. market? There's no question that when it comes to features, Nokia and Sony Ericsson's new U.S.-ready phones can easily compete against the hottest new phones on the market.
Read more about it by clicking here.
The Problem With 'Free': Staying On Top
"The problem with companies who have built their business around free is that it is far from free to remain successful," notes Mark Cuban on his blog. "The more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top." It's a vicious cycle, he says. The more success you have, the more important it is to maintain that success, which means spending more money on new infrastructure and new sources of revenue --"all of the things that will prevent (companies) from staying lean, mean and flexible," Cuban says. "All of the things that distract them from innovating within their core competency."
Indeed, "there will always be a company that replaces you," Cuban continues. "At some point your BlackSwan competitor will appear and they will kick your ass. Their product will be better or more interesting or just better marketed than yours, and it also will be free. They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo."
As for Google, which lives and dies by offering free products, "We don't know who their BlackSwan company will be," says Cuban. "But we all know it will happen, don't we?" Meanwhile, as Google frantically searches for the next big Google revenue stream, Cuban warns that "when their BlackSwan competitor appears, they won't be in a position to compete with the newly presented model, particularly if it's free-based because their ecosystem has bloated to the point where they can no longer create anything for free." The same will happen to Facebook, Twitter and any other company that tries to make money off of free.
Read more about it by clicking here.
Murdoch Warns Peers To Stay Away From Twitter
ReutersNews Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch arrived in Sun Valley, Idaho on Wednesday for the annual Allen & Co. media and technology confab warning his media mogul peers against buying Twitter, the red-hot microblogging service. Murdoch said it would be a tough investment to justify because Twitter has yet to come up with a sustainable business model. "Be careful of investing here," he said.
Meanwhile, Twitter is being represented at the annual conference by co-founder Evan Williams. There's plenty of speculation as to which media giant might want to buy the Web startup. As Reuters notes, the Sun Valley conference is renowned for deal making.
When asked if he would consider buying Twitter, Murdoch replied, "No." And selling MySpace? "Hell, no." News Corp. bought MySpace in 2005 for $580 million as the social networking service was nearing the height of its popularity. It has since been usurped by Facebook as the Web's No. 1 social network.
Read more about it by clicking here.
JACKSON INTERVENTION WAS PLANNED
Janet Jackson reportedly attempted to set up an intervention in 2007 to confront Michael Jackson about his addiction to painkillers, a pair of sources told CNN. According to the report, Janet recruited her brothers to help stage the intervention, however Michael told his bodyguards to prevent his family from entering his property and refused to accept phone calls from his mother Katherine, CNN reports.
GUITAR HERO UPDATES
Activision has revealed two dozen songs from Guitar Hero 5's massive 85-song on-disc set list, including tracks by Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Coldplay and John Mellencamp. The game will also feature a bunch of newer tracks, like Kings of Leon's "Sex on Fire," Beck's "Gamma Ray" and Wolfmother's "Back Round," a fresh tune from the Australian rockers that's available now as a free download up on the GH5 website.
RHINO GENESIS
Rhino will release Genesis Live 1973-2007, a 10-disc box set (the fourth for the band) of live albums with bonus audio and unreleased tracks, on September 29th. In addition to including four live LPs, the set features five tracks from "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway."
ROSEANNE HAS A LIST OF GUESTS
Rosanne Cash's 12th studio album, "The List," is due October 6th. The disc collects the singer's favorite covers, taken from a list of essential Country tracks father Johnny Cash passed to her in 1973. The set list includes Bob Dylan and Merle Haggard songs, and guests include Bruce Springsteen, Jeff Tweedy and Elvis Costello.
Quotes of the week
"If it wasn't for Michael Jackson, people like Justin Timberlake would probably be selling curly fries in the [San Fernando] Valley."
-- Jeremy Piven, paying respect to the King of Pop, at the BET Awards"I have a recurring dream that people are lined up next to my bed, waiting for autographs and taking pictures of me!"
-- Taylor Swift, on life in the spotlight, to Glamour"I'm looking forward to banking that paycheck."
-- Adam Lambert, being honest about going on the Idols Live tour this summer, to PEOPLE"I make soulless electronic pop. But when you're on ecstasy in a nightclub grinding up against someone and my music comes on, you'll feel soul."
-- Lady Gaga, describing her sound, to MTV"For me, it has to do with the music. I love both of them as human beings, but they keep coming to me with music that is absolute magic to me. It's a completely different chemistry. Each human being has a completely different vibe, and the four of us [including Neil Young] is a completely different chemistry than the three of us or two of us or solo, and that's fascinating and it keeps it fresh."
-- David Crosby in Rolling Stone, on what keeps CS&N going after 40 years.
The B-Side - 'Blips'
THE ONION (www.theonion.com) STORY OF THE WEEK:
From the Onion's 'Timeline: Life Of A Star - Michael Jackson' - August 10, 1985: Michael Jackson buys the entire Beatles back catalog for $47 million, including "Octopus's Garden" for $6.75
THE RADIO INTERVIEW on 'THE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE' - From newsblaze.com
"Steve Meyer is on the front line of global music sales and distribution which he expects will soar to pocket-bursting levels. What's more, he shares his insight and ingenuity with us. Steve gives us both historical perspective and futuristic vision as he chats with Judy about the love of his work, trends of the business and his personal points of view about success, happiness and blending life with the lust for life. Steve joins Judy and helps us discover the thrill of having it all with a sense of balance and purpose. "
You can listen to an interview I did with Judy Piazza of 'The American Perspective' by clicking here: (It runs about 15 minutes)
http://www.thesop.org/index.php?id=10306.
The Blogs
Check out Jerry Del Colliano's (the founder of INSIDE RADIO) daily blog, by clicking here: http://www.insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com