Are They Obsolete?

(23 Jul 2007 6:38)

Given the trends in online video it seems like just a matter of time before online music gets the same boost. After all, major labels haven't been interested in new talent for a long time. Let's face it, if it's not something that can be made with a computer and some contracted talent they're really not interested.

The 1990's marked the end of looking for new and interesting talent. When I look through my CD collection for artists that I've started listening to in the last 2 decades I find a lot of bands that would never even get the chance to release an album today. The Spin Doctors, Living Colour, The Dave Matthews Band, and Blues Traveler have each sold millions of albums and played for millions of people, but I can't imagine any of them even getting to record a single track in todays bottom-line based industry.

And that's really the problem. When you try to run a business that depends on artistic quality by looking at the bottom line you're doomed to failure. You're also doomed to miss the most interesting artists, only a small portion of which will be able to big money makers, and almost none of whom will look like cash cows when you see them.

If someone could put together a website that can put small, local bands front and center for agents and venue management to find it would be the last nail in the coffin of a diseased and dying industry.

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Good For You Yahoo

(13 Jul 2007 19:37)

Lately I've been getting a lot of email from scammers and it's really been pissing me off. I'm used to ending up on a bunch of mailing lists, and I used to spend at least 10 minutes every morning removing my name from them. To their credit, most of the list admins take this at least seriously enough for this to be worth my time.

However, it seems that one of my email addresses has apparently been put on some sort of list used by one or more scammers. After simply deleting the emails for a couple of weeks, like most people would do, I got mad. Why should I have to spend my precious time deleting their crap every single day?

Since the majority of the scams I've been emailed about seem to have return addresses from Yahoo, with a few other major email providers as either the source of those emails or return addresses for others, I decided to start reporting them. Starting at the end of last week I've been forwarding the emails, which commonly have return addresses from either Yahoo Hong Kong or Yahoo UK to abuse@yahoo.com. If you're not familiar with this process, most email services of any size, including those from ISPs have an address of abuse@wherever.com that you can send these emails to for action.

To Yahoo's credit, not only have they sent me an automated message when they receive my forwarded emails, but also a message from the employee who's dealing with it in their office. This usually takes around 48 hours, which is reasonable given the amount of email they must receive. Although the emails have been sent from non-Yahoo accounts, the Yahoo reps have assured me each time that since the return addresses appear to be Yahoo accounts used in ways that violate their terms of service they'll be dealt with appropriately. The first 2 of these I received I took with a grain of salt and tested sending emails to the accounts. Both times the emails were returned as undeliverable.

I highly recommend dealing with scammers this way. If they're going to make you spend your time dealing with their crap, the least you can do in return is make as much of their illegal and immoral income difficult to get to as possible.

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Corporate Arrogance

(09 Jul 2007 10:27)

So Sony finally announced a price drop for the PS3. What I find much more interesting is how Sony president Ryoji Chubachi was able to lie about it with a straight face. If he really thought people were buying this line he was the one person being fooled. But I guess that's par for the course for Sony. It seems like they're in the news daily, but most of the time it's not for cutting prices or making deals. It's normally to defend a proprietary format they refuse to part with (no matter how much money they lose on it), apologizing for something stupid some corporate rep said, or flat out lying.

New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said "You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” It seems that most corporations could learn something from this quote. Now, it's bad enough when you can say that you should learn something from a Washington politician, but how much worse is it that the only people who seem to believe the "facts" presented by these companies are their own executives?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not singling out Sony because they're the only offender. In fact they're just the easiest target because they're the most publicly arrogant of the bunch, but they have plenty of company. The bottom line is, no matter how many statements you release and laws you pay for, reality doesn't change. If you want to make money you'd better be selling something consumers either need or want. As the old expression goes, "Shit or get off the pot." But don't cry foul when your sales go south because nobody wants whatever garbage you're selling, especially when you're one of the biggest corporations in the world, and could have seen it coming if you weren't too busy burying your head in the sand to watch the world pass you by.

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The Right To Make Money

(08 Jul 2007 13:48)

It's been a while since I posted here, and since I've become a staff member I've been tempted to save all my writing for guides, news, and other paid endeavors. However, since I'm such an opinionated ass this seems like a more appropriate place to get some ranting out of my system. To that end I'm going to try to add another entry here whenever something really gets my dander up. As any doctor will tell you there are few things more contagious than raised dander ;)

Here's what I'd like to know. Since when do companies have the right to make money off the public. I realize it's nothing new for corporations to believe they're entitled to my money. They always have, and probably always will. What's new is the government agrees with them.

We see examples of it all the time. Copyright terms are extended because otherwise a work won't be worth any money. Patents are given for things that are either so general as to be useless on their own or so obvious that my 7 year old could come up with them. Laws like the DMCA and EUCD are passed because companies wouldn't make as much money if they had to come up with an idea they could patent. Instead it's all about selling the same crap over and over again. The question today isn't whether we should allow it. That choice has been taken out of our hands. The question is what are the long term consequences of this attitude by various national governments.

To answer that question you need look no further than the DVD player section of your local mega-super-discount chain. The shelves are dominated by cheap players from China and Korea. Why is that? Because they aren't forced to adhere to the ridiculous rules that say Sony (or Time/Warner or whatever corporation you like) deserves to get paid every time you sell anything. In developing countries like these they actually make things besides patents. Cheap DVD players from China were able to almost completely destroy the Japanese and European manufacturers' profit margins because its not in their government's best interest to turn a blind eye because it helps their economy.

So where does that leave the companies who rely on garbage patents and never-ending copyrights? It should be giving their executives many sleepless nights, but I suspect they're too busy counting their money to realize what's going on. Maybe a better question would be what their counterparts a decade or two in the future will be doing to reverse their "unexpected" reversal of fortune as the world economy forces them to play on a level field.

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