Blazing Saddles as a model for the music industry - Janis Ian's follow-up article on the music industry's demogaguery of file-sharing hits a high note. I agree with Glenn Reynolds' Tech Central Column; it's about the Music Exec's protecting their phoney baloney jobs. And their revenues are down 'cause they peddle crap for music. I know a girl (age 13) who downloads songs from the Internet with the skill of a race car driver. Mostly she listens to a lot of the stuff that she hears on the Radio - Britney Spears et al. But last year, after she went to camp in Tennessee she was somehow introduced to the music of LeeAnn Womack. A couple of days ago she put into my car CD player a disk she made for one of her friends. It had a new LeeAnn Womack song on it. Apparently she likes LeeAnn Womack now. Perhaps one day, a group of then-older people (this girl among them) will launch a resurgence in LeeAnn Womack's career like MTV did for Tony Bennett. Or maybe that meme will spread around sooner (I'd never heard of Womack, and I'm turned on to her music now).
Here's the point: this young girl and her friends like the things like KaZaa because they can try out a bunch of new music to see what they like. When I was a kid we did that by listening to the radio. Now when you listen to commercial radio you are stuck with a computer generated, demographic-targeted playlist: profit maximizing strategy that consistently fails to deliver fresh content (unless "fresh" is defined as something that the record companies have decided you might like to hear). So you've got young people who are willing to try out new music, and artists with diverse new styles (or old styles in search of the cross-over market) looking for fans. And the music industry, to employ another Blazing Saddles analogy, is like the toll booth in the scene where the bad cowboys, led by Mr. Taggart, are going to ride into the town and cause havoc:
To slow down Taggart's gang "to a crawl," Jim, Mongo, and Bart set up a toll booth outside of the fake town with a red and white striped gate crossing, and a sign which reads: "Gov. William J. Le Petomane Thruway. Toll 10 cents." It even has an Exact Change Lane, but none of the gang have dimes, so Taggart orders: "Has anybody got a dime? Somebody's gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes." Each one of the riders waits patiently as they proceed through the booth - one at a time. Seelink to Blazing Saddles site.
The analogy is not perfect (in the movie the "good guys" set up the toll booth). But forget theory and analogy, and focus on everyday life. Kids want to try out music, and they like the convenience of Internet downloads. They'd like free samples, with a lot of variety. But the record companies have a system in place, which to them makes perfect sense because they see it only as a toll booth, a place to collect money. Kids see it as a silly, ridiculous incovenience, much like a toll booth in the middle of a desert. The record companies really expect these young kids to patiently wait at the toll booth and to fork over a boatload of dimes. Well, the record companies may be stupid, but the kids aren't. And neither are the artists.
1:31:50 PM
The Old Olympics featured the javelin throw - according to Glenn Fleishman the new Tech Olympics (currently held in the Canary Islands) feature the long distance wireless connection competition. The new record? A 70.5 Km uplink.
Time is precious - so why go sit through a whole movie when you can subscribe to Movie Spoiler (an RSS feed even). Have the ending to all the new flicks delivered right to your News Aggregator.
7:12:30 AM
