I've just watched this big whoop-dee-doo CNBC piece on the burning Rome that is the music industry, and I have to get this out.
[cue riotous laughter track]
Why they are choosing this topic now is beyond me, because the signs and the models in place for its destruction were there years ago. But the producer(s) chose to highlight, of all the music industry oligarch shitheads, edgar barfman, the same shithead who ran Vivendi-Universal as well as Dumbya did the oil companies he was given.
To hear this jerkoff talk with authority on the ills of the industry is at once laughable and sad, because it's painfully obvious he is a dinosaur. And the times have just completely left this piece of shit behind. It was painfully evident when asked if indies can compete with the oligarchs, and he said that getting a presence on to every cell phone, billboard, yadda yadda yadda, would be very difficult.
Yep, he's without a doubt the shithead of the month.
The piece cuts to a meeting room of slime-warner music "MBA's" - oh, yeah, I forgot, MBAs are the ones who can figure out anything. And one young thing after another is commenting on how they have TI's ringtones ready, and his myspace page ready, and a select video on Youtube ready...
What a bunch of fuckin' GENIUSES!!!!!!!
[cue riotous laughter track]
I commented on all of the chickens coming home to roost over four years ago when talking about the industry to indie filmmakers. Indie filmmakers need to take a good hard look at the musicians who have and are doing it without the barfman's of the world jacking up everything.
But the trick is that there are a lot of parts (the music industry business model of distribution-as-monetized-model, most of all), so it takes an effort to put them all together and figure out why they relate, but when you do, it's like opening the door of a dark room onto a sunny day.
On a side but related note, there is a real need for a legit org to come along and truly help indie artists with the myriad things to manage in their work as well as their lives. Think about something like health care; for indie artists to conglomerate and leverage their numbers to obtain bargain rates would be a huge step. That conglomeration can also be leveraged toward any number of things - after all, that's exactly what corporations do.
Where is the intelligence and entrepreneurship that will step up?
I'm a man without a corporation. ~Paddy Chayefsky
