Now
So I’m sitting on the floor of a Starbucks in Idaho Springs waiting for I-70 to reopen. Electrical outlets are at a premium and our driver said he’s waited for four hours for the highway to clear, so we might be in for a long haul.
Meanwhile, there are a few things on my mind.
First, Coachella.
I’m sure everybody there is having a good time, but I’m not sure it has much to do with the music. When did concerts devolve into a place to see and be seen? Probably when the festival paradigm took over. Now they’re events, not concerts. As for the headliners…if you can’t miss the reunion of OutKast then I fear you’re still living in the aughts, using a flip phone and unaware we’ve got tablets, never mind LTE.
Second, breaking rules.
The flight attendant said we could not go to the bathroom, they were ready to serve drinks. But the problem was they weren’t going down the aisle yet, could I steal a run to the loo?
My dad was a rule-breaker. Alternatively he stated if everybody jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should too?
Bottom line, are you coloring inside the lines or outside them?
All the winners color the exterior, while insisting you remain interior.
Kind of like all that business b.s. you read from CEOs, informing you how to make it. Sean Parker never says he stole the e-mail addresses from Napster to start Plaxo, as the legend goes, and no one winning will go on record about the corners they cut. Cash flow is everything. Independent labels don’t pay royalties because they need the money.
Now I’m not telling you to rob banks. But if you see a stupid rule, maybe you should break it. All innovation is about breaking the rules, which is why Coachella falls so flat. All the innovation is non-musical, it’s about food and sculpture. Whereas the acts paint by numbers (thank you James McMurtry!) Isn’t it funny the last ten years have been dominated by TV singing competitions where people tell you how to perform, where you’ve got to run the gauntlet to get noticed. Artists don’t do this, entertainers do.
New musical stars will emerge that will rivet the public. But they’ll be different. They won’t be focusing on sponsorship or fashion shows but causing us to look at the world just a little bit differently. That’s what rule-breakers do, make us challenge our preconceptions. Coachella is a celebration, it’s not art.
Third, there’s a very interesting interview with Fred Wilson on BusinessInsider:
I hate to admit I’d rather read the musings of a VC as opposed to the blathering of nitwits in “Rolling Stone,” but that’s the truth. Fred is a thinker who has something to say. The people in RS are fame whores eager to promote their next forgettable project.
Furthermore, Fred’s got a better track record.
But what fascinated me most were Fred’s comments on Instagram:
“A lot of the stuff that was on Instagram has now moved to Snapchat. It doesn’t mean that people are not using Instagram, but if I go back and look at my Instagram feed a year ago versus today, there’s a lot of people who were in my Instagram feed a year ago who aren’t there today. They’ve been replaced by brands.
So now my Instagram feed is full of things like the New York Knicks and restaurants posting amazing photos of food. The young Facebook user base who left Facebook to go to Instagram has now seemingly moved mostly to Snapchat and my generation plus brands are what’s on Instagram now.”
Old people are the ones still on Facebook and now using Instagram. Youngsters move on. For all their supposed love of brands, when ads appear, they disappear.
In other words, by time the mainstream starts touting something, it’s done. Just ask Fred, his company Turntable.fm died right after an insane wave of publicity.
Point is if you’re in the tech game, if you’re in the popular culture game, you’re concerned with where the people are going. The music business is primarily concerned with where people have been, believing they’re going to stay, buying CDs, listening to radio…
Building something from nothing. Seeing the future. Changing the world. That used to be music’s job, now it’s the VC’s. In other words, Fred Wilson is a bigger rock star than everybody appearing on stage at Coachella. He’s reaching more people, and thrilling them all the while.
Finally, there was an article in “BusinessWeek” that the convertible is dying.
I’d give you the link but now I’m writing from the back of a CME van moving slowly in a twelve mile line of cars on the east side of the Eisenhower Tunnel. The wifi is not working.
But the point is, convertibles are baby boomer dreams. Hell, they’re still buying expensive ones, Mercedes makes many. But VW is stopping. And Chrysler. You see kids don’t care about cars.
But they care about going to the festival to see and be seen, to take selfies and upload them.
It’s a completely different world these days.
Baby boomers think they run it.
But they just live in it.
Time is passing them by.
Because they’re all about leisure and lifestyle, and it’s very hard to keep your finger on the pulse when that is so.
Once upon a time music led change and adapted to the new world.
The concert companies are doing an incredible job of extracting dough from customers. Give AEG credit for making Coachella a foodie paradise.
Just don’t tell me it’s about the music…
Wifi is working!- “Convertible Car Sales Have Plunged as Image of Fun and Freedom Dims”
