Junk Food For The Soul

I’ve noticed that those of us in big offices treat the elevator like the drunk tank at the local jailhouse. You walk in and immediately move to an open area of the car. As people come and go you shift around to make sure you continue to stand as far away from the other riders as space will allow. Always face the door and try to keep your back to the wall.

For god’s sake, don’t make eye contact on the elevator unless it’s with a close friend who came in with you. Some people might tell you to look down at your feet, but you never know who you’re in the elevator with and you don’t want to show weakness. If you don’t know anyone on the elevator, don’t look around. Just stare up at the floor number.

And pray no one says anything to you.

We’re all in this together and no one wants to be here. If we all just keep to ourselves and ride out our time, we’ll get through this.

Adam Music

If they played this video at all high school pep rallies, college recruiting would skyrocket.

Adam Misc, Music

I’m loving the new MTV Music site. Remember sitting on the couch after school and watching music videos for hours? For a while you’ve been able to find those old videos on YouTube and other video sites, but now MTV has brought them all together with embedding, commenting, and an easy search.

De La Soul’s “Me Myself and I,” Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55″ and the quintessential ’80s video, aha’s “Take On Me.” They all seem to be there.

Thank you, MTV.

Now, here’s the video that for whatever reason was my favorite when I was a kid:

Adam Music, TV, Videos

Adam Music, Videos

Just finished reading a BBC article on Kid Rock’s refusal to put his songs on iTunes. What was interesting about the article was the contrast between Kid Rock’s reason for shunning iTunes and Garth Brooks’ reluctance to embrace online sales. (Both artists are among the small handful of top artists also not on iTunes or AmazonMP3.)

Rock says iTunes is based on “an old system, where iTunes takes the money, the record company takes the money, and they don’t give it to the artists.” Brooks, on the other hand, doesn’t want you to download his songs because he wants you to buy the full album.

He wants fans to download only full albums because he says each album is a complete work and the songs are designed to be heard together.

“We do albums, we have always done albums,” he recently told the BBC News website.

Not exactly surprising to me. I would assume anyone crazy enough to pull a Chris Gaines stunt obviously thinks a lot of his craft. But I’m most curious about this quote from him: “And if people try to make it a money issue, I can get the full album to the consumer for much less than they can get it at 99 cents a song.”

Really? Now that I’d like to see. If it’s really not about the money, why not follow the lead of bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails by putting out an album and making it available on your website for anyone to buy at whatever price they choose? Both of those bands are claiming success with that model.

Personally, while I’m not a huge country music fan I do appreciate a lot of Garth’s music. But I’d have to disagree with his statement “Friends in Low Places is not Friends in Low Places without Wolves or Wild Horses.” I love Friends in Low Places and the No Fences album is a decent one overall with hits like The Thunder Rolls and Unanswered Prayers, but if we were still talking cassette tapes Wolves would be a b-side that most would never listen to twice.

Bottomline: Do you want to give fans what they want, or what you want? It’s your prerogative, but don’t be upset if we don’t agree with you.

Adam Music

Adam Music, Videos

Adam Music, Videos

Just listening to yesterday’s Buzz Out Loud podcast from CNET and they made a very good point about the whole YouTube/Google lawsuit fear that I hadn’t previously thought of.

We all predicted that as soon as a company with deep pockets bought YouTube the lawsuits would come out. But maybe Google’s pockets are too deep. I, along with many others, believe that Google has enough F-U money to pitch at the content distributors to keep them off their backs until they can prove their business model works. I hadn’t thought about the fact that Google has so much money that they can afford to fight all of these guys in court for a long, long time. And no one has really stood up to them before so it’s possible that they could even beat them in court.

That’s a lot of assuming, but there’s enough of a possibility there that maybe these guys are worried about that too. Which would encourage them to sign with Google (for a hefty fee, of course) rather than try and fight Google.

Adam Movies, Music, TV, Technology

I was just reading this story on Ars Technica about Google, YouTube and their plan for attack. The fourth paragraph jumped out at me. Referring to the dance that Google/YouTube has to play with copyright owners:

This isn’t a new concern. BusinessWeek pointed out the dilemma that the site faced months ago. “If they cater too much to their users, they risk getting sued for copyright violations and losing the support of content companies. If they’re seen as favoring content companies, however, they could lose their millions of fans.”

If something weird didn’t jump out at you, read it again. “Their users” refers to people watching their videos. Those are the same people that copyright owners like music companies, movie studios and TV network execs are always complaining about not having enough of. Of course, they all like to blame piracy but the fact remains that all of these content distributors are desperate for more eyeballs because they are losing them at a rapid pace.

Yet, here is a product that all of their customers are flocking to. All of their customers are watching their content just like they wanted. It’s a dream come true. They should be down on their knees thanking God, Allah, Buddha, Google, YouTube and whoever else they can think of.

Only, this isn’t the way that they wanted the customers to watch. So instead they may sue. Rather than change their business model, they may take a thriving consumer base and shoo it out the door.

The article says that many analysts believe “YouTube is holding a shotgun to its foot and is just about to pull the trigger.” Personally, I think it’s the content distributors who are holding the shotgun to their own feet. They have the power to work with Google to give people – their customers – what they want. They have the power to claim back millions of lost customers. They have the ability to help create the utopia of any content, any time. And make billions of dollars doing it.

Or they can decide that they want to keep suing. They can decide that they like their dying business model. They can decide that they don’t want to listen to what Google, YouTube, THEIR CUSTOMERS and everyone else is telling them.

And they can pull the trigger.

Adam Movies, Music, TV, Technology

Adam Movies, Music, TV, Technology, Videos