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New York, 1:21 PM
Sun Nov 8
10 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/15/09
What year is it in anyone's head where a band as musically irrelevant as KISS is still on your radar screen?
Now where's my copy of Molly Hatchett's latest piece of vintage vinyl?
10/14/09
10/14/09
Jesus. Adam Lambert is the least gay thing about this story.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
Each album in the top 3 of last week's chart would have beaten Buble's Oprah-inflated sales. Kiss should consider themselves lucky to be at #2.
10/14/09
I wonder if having the Kisster Potato Heads for sale alongside the albums cut into their margins? I know which one I'd rather own...
10/14/09
Oprah also helped Journey out last week -- they were on her show Tuesday, and their (also Wal-Mart-only) album had a sales increase of 680.7% -- although not as much as she boosted Buble.
Are people really rooting for Kiss in all this? I mean, the only reason to do so is because you know that they're going to keep putting out albums until they actually hit No. 1. Maybe next time they can do a covers album of all the songs Gene Simmons likes to make sweet, illicitly videotaped love to...
10/14/09
Wow.
It was 500,000 just as little as 3 years ago.
3 years before that it was in the 1,000,000 range.
Etc, etc, etc...
Who says music isn't dying?
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
I worked in music. I was also a musician before that. There are less people buying new albums today then there has ever been for decades. There are more bands making albums, true, but there is no way to get those bands out to people who are only casually interested in music.
Most people don't have satellite radio. Most people are listening to the same Led Zeppelin tunes on classic rock stations they listened to 20 years ago. Maybe there's some new exposure on the pop channels, but that's ephemeral at best.
Next time you stand in line, ask the person standing in front of you if they've heard of Kasabian. Or We Are Scientists. Or even The Raconteurs. The White Stripes were the last non-pop band to really enter the public's consciousness, and even then Jack White can't repeat it.
10/14/09
10/14/09
10/14/09
I would totally call in sick for that.
09/27/09
Will it regain the heights of previous decades? No, probably not. So what? It will still become a successful industry again. Just a smaller one than it used to be.
This cheerleading and hyping the troubles of newspapers from so-called "new media" types is tiresome and irritating. Give it a rest. The Web doesn't "win" if newspapers "die," so stop trying so hard to convince everyone that's gonna happen.
Instead, recognize that most of the creative professionals in that industry are similar to those in your industry - writers, editors and artists. You all rise and fall together. Stop sniping at your "old media' brethren and working together to make life better for creative professionals across all media for a change.
09/27/09
09/27/09
09/27/09
09/27/09
"Ink on paper" is not their business. Their business is producing and selling news. The news product the produces is distributed through more than one channel. "Ink on paper" is just one channel (declining). The web is another one (growing).
I read the New York Times and the Washington Post regularly, and have not touched any "ink on paper" associated with those two "papers" in years. I read them both on the Web.
The key, of course, is how they can make more money through the Web channel. They'll figure something out.
09/27/09
Put most of your stuff behind a paywall and charge for it, then. Then it won't matter how many other sites link to it -- people who click the links will still have to pay to read it.
If you can't sell the stuff behind a paywall, too bad. dump it. Stick to the stuff people are willing to pay for. Simple.
09/26/09
Also, mint.com -- taking a cue from Gawker's recent inattention to detail -- refers to the company that owns USA TODAY as "Gannet." I guess there was no room on the chart for Night-Rider.
09/26/09
09/26/09
09/27/09
09/27/09
09/27/09
Tribune is in trouble because Sam Zell paid way too much and borrowed 99 percent of the purchase price. McClatchy is in trouble because it paid way too much money for Knight Ridder and borrowed 99 percent of the purchase price. The Times is in trouble because it paid way too much money for its new Midtown building and borrowed 99 percent of the purchase price.
Do you detect a trend here?
Solvent publishers are reluctant to broadcast the fact that they are making scandalous amounts of money, so they sit quietly while everyone cries that the sky is falling.
09/18/09
Seriously, even facebook is better, and thats going for almost 1/10 of it's value a year ago.
When the hype goes away, will twitter be worth anything at all?
09/17/09
Anyone paying attention can see the value of real time search on the web. Twitter became genuinely relevant when Summize appeared and got snapped up. Calling Twitter a messaging services is a mischaracterization -- it's a real time search engine for online chatter.
Google says they're pull ~70% of the Twitter content down as quickly as possible, but what a searing dependency for them! Google's best hope in real-time search is widespread adoption of Wave -- a long way off. Meanwhile, I'm sure they and others are doing everything possible to leverage Twitter, and therein lies a hefty valuation.
09/17/09
09/17/09
Nearly useless from a marketing perspective, in other words. But look: shiny! New!!