Fuzzy Lion

The following is from the Lefsetz Letter. I couldn’t have said it better myself:

—-
Used
to be you waited a week, maybe a MONTH to upgrade. But those were the
days before OS X. Having NEVER had a fuck up with an upgrade yet, I
downloaded iTunes 4.9, and its companion software, iPod Updater
2005-06-26, TODAY! You see, I just don’t want to be left out of the
podcast REVOLUTION!

Oh, I was intrigued by Dawn and Drew. But
when Nicole Sandler placed her interview with Ray Davies from the old
101.9 on her Website, I had to listen. I was PLANNING on taking it into
the mountains with me, but I just couldn’t wait, I listened to it on my
desktop, I was just that interested, even though the conversation was
half a decade old.

Used to be you MISSED your favorite band on
the radio, you either made an appointment or the appearance escaped
into the ether, never to be heard again. But now, we’ve got kind of a
TiVo for radio. Playing back all that stuff we weren’t even sure we
wanted to listen to, whenever we want to hear it. FURTHERMORE, unlike
regular radio, you can fast forward through it.

It’s EXCITING!

That’s what the music business is missing, EXCITEMENT!

Oh,
I yearn for the days of 2000. When Derek Shulman told me his
seventy-odd year old father-in-law was downloading old Yiddish music
from Napster. When everywhere I went people wanted to talk about music.
When Napster was on the cover of NEWSWEEK! Today this buzz is gone,
replaced by the comings and goings of faux celebrities. Music is just
another entertainment medium instead of THE entertainment medium.

Installing Tiger, downloading iTunes 4.9, it’s like buying “Let It Bleed”.

Yup,
I was with Marc Goloff at Korvette’s. He bought the record, we came
back to his house, dropped the needle and heard GIMMIE SHELTER! It’s a
moment I’ll never forget. I felt fully ALIVE, a member of a secret
CLUB, better than the one everyday people belonged to.

iTunes 4.9 integrates podcasts. It allows you to SUBSCRIBE TO THEM! It makes the revolution REAL!

You
don’t have to be a Mac user to participate, the software works on
Windows (although I won’t guarantee flawless installation). Please, go
to apple.com and download iTunes 4.9 RIGHT NOW!

And, after installing it, click on the program’s icon, load it.

Under
Library you’ll see a new menu listing. PODCASTS! With a purple
microphone icon. God, it’s like those colors they use in the iPod ads,
just a little unsafe, just one step over the edge, just what mainstream
corporations are afraid to use, since their focus groups are not
FAMILIAR with the color and do not react positively.

But if you
click on Podcasts, you find nothing. Turns out this is just the
REPOSITORY for YOUR podcasts. But, at the bottom of the window, click
on “Podcast Directory”. Suddenly the iTunes Music Store will load,
suddenly, you’ll be at Ground Zero of the podcast revolution.
YESTERDAY, podcasting was underground, you had to hunt and search.
TODAY, behind the scenes workers have assembled a fully-finished WORLD!

There’s already a listing of the Top 100 podcasts. There are twenty one categories. It’s a veritable CORNUCOPIA of information!!

Click
on a title. You can either listen right there, right now, in iTunes, or
you can DOWNLOAD the show, so it will sync with your iPod and you can
take it EVERYWHERE! And, if it’s an ongoing series, you can SUBSCRIBE!

It’s MESMERIZING!

Credit
Adam Curry. The man truly invented a whole new MEDIUM! It’s not
television, it’s not radio, it’s on demand INFORMATION, that you can
listen to wherever you want whenever you want to the degree you want to
hear it.

And all the shows are free.

God, Apple said
they’d release this software within sixty days and it’s barely been
over thirty. When was the last time a RECORD COMPANY ever released a
product EARLY, when did we get MORE than we expected, when were we
WOWED! Rather than sit back and wait for a market to develop, Apple has
found a cool idea and is CHAMPIONING IT, developing it, BUILDING IT!

Where’s
MICROSOFT? Where’s REAL? Where’s NAPSTER? It’s not like podcasts have
been hidden. It’s just those companies don’t believe in innovation,
they just capitalize on what others create. And now they’re mad that
Apple has created a music market and they’ve been LEFT OUT OF IT!

Not
that there’s much in the way of music podcasts. There’s plenty of talk,
plenty of information, a few unsigned acts. But exposure of full songs
by developing acts?? The major labels can’t have that. You’ve got to
keep the tunes LOCKED UP! Someone might slice and dice them, turn them
into MP3s, TRADE THEM! The labels need to get PAID! New technology is
only good when it comports with the old model.

Music should be
driving the podcasting world, instead it’s the laggard, bringing up the
rear. The labels have done SUCH a good job of scaring off the
proletariat that they’ve KILLED the market. God, they should be
licensing people to broadcast their songs like CRAZY! Certainly all the
new and developing acts, the ones MTV and radio won’t play. PODCAST
THIS STUFF, FUCK MTV and radio.

Not that the renegades are being
held back. On the upper lefthand corner of the Podcast homepage, you’ll
see “Publish A Podcast”. Click on this. You’ll see it’s as easy as
providing the link to the RSS feed of the podcast. (Oh, you don’t know
what RSS is? I feel sorry for you.) Yup, suddenly the indie, the
INDIVIDUAL, is on the same footing as the major label, it’s their WORST
NIGHTMARE! You’d think Zach Horowitz and Andy Lack wouldn’t let this
happen. But they’re too busy trying to sue people into the past to
embrace the present.

Podcasting is no joke. It will change your
life. Today, if you download the software and update your iPod. Or
tomorrow, when you hear all your buds talk about it and you feel left
out and you finally purchase an iPod and partake.

Oh, you could
have purchased a Creative Zen to have tethered downloads from Napster.
But then you’d be left out. It’s like going to see Bobby Sherman when
everybody else is at the Led Zeppelin stadium show.

Oh, you can compete with Apple. By stepping BEYOND them. But, if you’re playing catch-up, you’re fucked.

In
trying to protect their fief as opposed to journeying outside its walls
and integrating with the new reality, the major labels are just
insuring their marginalization.

–

If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.