Why Ellen DeGeneres Was The Right Choice

It's very simple really - American Idol is not about music. Hasn't been for years. So logically, their judges would not be about music. So Ellen, will not only garner increased ratings, it will also make AI gay-friendly, gay-safe.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if AI's winner this year was openly gay, either.

Not like there's any evidence anywhere that AI is fixed or anything...

But look at the facts of the matter: AI is a heavy, heavy branding machine, heavy marketing machine. The musical guests all are people looking to sell something. Notice that with each musical guest or judge who had come on, they all, all had an album, CD, track, tv show or something to sell that was either new or out for a while and not doing well. With lifestyle brands like Coke, AT&T and Ford, the show is one clinic in integrated branding and commercials within commercials, rather than a singing competition.

By way of comparison, do you really think that Nick Cannon got the hosting gig on America's Got Talent because of his mastery of pronunciation of the English language and his devastating charm? ...or is it because for what he's really know as - Nick Carey...

AI needs to stem the season-after-season ratings fall of the show, so a change is in order. AI is also seen as very conservative, anti-gay. So this is the perfect solution to both problems. AI will get a ratings boost, seem gay friendly, and all will be right with the world.

Look at the other new judge - DioGuardi walked in and essentially pushed Abdul out. Yet DioGuardi is a failed performer. She has no idea what it's like to helm a headlining show. She's also NOT the songwriter she claims to be, evidenced by the fact that her AI song was so bad they pulled it from the concert lineup and it is the lowest selling single to date. Her songwriting "success" was completely by the other songwriters who actually wrote the song, and gave her a percentage credit. She's milked it as much as one could do to her credit.

Any music industry professional can tell you stories as to how shady songwriting credits are and who actually writes songs versus who gets credit for writing songs.

So essentially you have one legit label guy, one legit producer guy, and you had one legit talent. Now you have a fake talent with a tremendous ego, and one comedian, who has no experience at all in the music business. And the show will go on because Ellen is homogenous enough to keep the folks in the midwest happy, minus the drug allegations. She's the right choice because you don't really care about music anyway and they know that.

Yeah, AI will be fine. You'll watch. You won't complain. They'll all get paid. You will still struggle. And that's the way it works - because you won't stop watching, and they know it.

Does Music Make You Hear Better

Wired.com has an interesting article about how music actually improves your hearing.

It cites a paper published in this month's Ear and Hearing journal (who knew! - there's a journal for everything nowadays!)

It appears that, according to this paper, music and mainly musicians have enhanced speech-in-noise capabilities due to the skills developed in trying to hear their instruments and dialogue during the cacophony of sounds and stimulation.

Hmmm...

Ever talked to a musician when they're just hangin' out? They can't hear shit.

Maybe that's my problem...I should blast music behind me...then they'll totally hear every word I say! Riiight.

Back from a hiatus...

Yeah, well we've been lagging, I know I know.

Too many weekends at the apartment building frolicking around in beer-induced comas and endless barbecues until 3AM...maybe that's why they brought in a new security guard?

But it's good to finally have a summer for once. I haven't had one in a long time.

Since summer is only a few more weeks, get out there and enjoy. I have had a barefoot summer, living like I did when I was 18, with good partying, some work, great new friends, beach, pool and almost always barefoot. You should too!

SiriusXM Nickels and Dimes with Iphone App - No Stern

Just when you thought the Iphone couldn't get any cooler, SiriusXM announced a new Iphone App.

I was so ready. So ready to convert my radio subscription to Internet and just route the whole thing through the phone...except that only a fourth of the news channels come through, NO sports and significantly enough, NO STERN.

Mel Karmazin is a good man, but at this point he clearly was just shoveling bullshit in saying that current subscribers would notice no change in the service level for the cost. We now pay more, for less songs on the music channels, unprofessional and generally bad talent on most of the channels, and for less service - we now have to pay for Internet streaming, when it came with the account. To add the insult to the injury, the world's coolest phone is further crippled by denying the two main reasons why people subscribe to SiriusXM.

I'm sorry, but what assclown at SiriusXM thinks that people actually tune in for the Oprah Channel or the SiriusXM book channel?

I've been a subcriber since 2005 and it looks like it may be about time to end this luxury. Subscribers are simply getting the arrogant shaft by SiriusXM and the only way these college graduates will learn how to retain business is by losing the business they tried to build. I'd rather switch to Pandora or another easy to use internet-based radio.

With stock shares valued at .01, it's clear that SiriusXM just doesn't want to be in business any longer.

Myspace in the throws of death - Predictable?

Myspace announced this week of layoffs of over 420 (30%) of their staff.

Not like this wasn't predictable.

First off, if you checked the foxcareers.com website, you'd always find openings for myspace.com. Like, seriously, always. A company is never hiring for this many people all the time, especially when there isn't reasonable proof that the company is engaged in gang buster profits. It is simply an unsustainable business.

Second, Myspace is really so 2005. After News Corporation acquired it, it was immediately deluged with ads, lame video sections, and a half-assed attempt at creating a music store with DRM-laced everything. Snocap stores to multiple video players on one page, myspace.com pages looked more like a clutterance of crap (a la 1995 webpages) than a cohesive creation of credible experiences.

A recent L.A. Times article tries to explain why Myspace is on the wane. Clearly written by someone not really connected in the scene, or is simply too old to understand what these phenomena are. It cites the corporate line that the company was "too bloated" to move nimbly to compete with the likes of Facebook. This is true, but not the whole reason. Yes, a large super-multi-globo-corp like News Corp can never compete with the barefoot engineers at Facebook because there is something inherently cool about creating new, cool stuff for people to use. Giant corporations have a set-it-and-forget-it mentality which is incompatible with running a business at Internet speed. One example of this is that their networks are populated with Windows XP systems running IE6, and reading emails on Novell Groupwise. HUH? Wow.

Another is a little more subtle. Myspace is/was based in Los Angeles. In 2005, during the rise of myspace.com, L.A. was all about everything indie: indie artists, indie music, anti-corporate establishment mentalities. Myspace music was based a lot on an "all-electronic" model of what the CD distribution-turned-iTunes distributor CD Baby was. More simply, Myspace Music was to promote the little guy, even the playing field, make money through a kind of crowd-sourcing. Even a radio station called Indie 103.1 was created to capture and harness the power of the "new independent artist". It was the rise of the e-promotion, the grass roots effort, the new way to organize large armies of people, to promote your brand, your band, your identity. Everyone bought it.

One problem: the indie artist doesn't make enough money to support all this overhead. It never will. Myspace.com friend counts were more fraud than fact. Early artists like Tila Tequila were more titillation than talent. So when the indie market for talent collapsed in Los Angeles in 2007, so also collapses Myspace's hopes and dreams. Myspace became a billboard rather than an interactive, connective experience. Bands were indistinguishable from eachother. Friend counts were automated and people used myspace as an Inbox rather than a connection tool. Look, people don't like friggin advertisements. They don't like their experience to be wallpapered by endless ads for the next big 20th Century Fox movie. And, they (the users of Myspace early on) barely had enough cash to buy the indie artist's CD. They weren't going to patronize the thing being advertised at the level that was projected. It was sort of the "FU for buying/corporatizing Myspace" message. After the indie collapse and the subsequent economic downturn, WHAM! Ad revenues vanished, and what was left, the viewers weren't buying anyways. What does that mean? A whole lot of unpopularity for Myspace.

Another reason for the Myspace losses is more a demo issue. Many articles written illustrate that the average user now on Myspace is a mid-thirties male. Mid-thirties. Young people spend money indiscriminately - not mid-thirties. As well, those young people don't want to be where old people go, where many cops go, where many pedophiles go, and they don't like having their profile on the same system as their mom, teacher or coach. It isn't cool. And young people have been exposed so much to advertisements, that it doesn't affect them as well as on an older person who, say, really wants to see Megan Fox do anything because they don't see hot young women that often.

Facebook has surpassed Myspace for ease of use, excellent trend-chasing (like with Twitter apps), and the noticable LACK of advertisements. Like Twitter, people just want to connect, not buy music (there's Itunes or Amazon for that), not watch videos (Hulu, Youtube or any number of the bazillion other sites for that) or have to wade through a page jammed full of ads and wait for pages that don't load quickly because the code loads the ads first.

Myspace is simply too ignorant to realize this reality and it's death is hopefully forthcoming.

As long as Facebook doesn't make any more bonehead UI revisions (like adding giant banner ads everywhere) it will retain it's tactical advantage over Myspace, and will hold up after the predecessor to Facebook breaks.

Facebook is still not for the young - it's a great way to replace classmates.com, for one!

I've had many a wonderful experience with Myspace. I met many amazing people, from all over the country - all over the world. But it's time has come to end, and let the new innovators of the 21st century take their bow.

Blink 182 Dazzles at Kimmel

They've not played a show together in about three hundred years, but fans of Blink 182 got a fantastic treat care of the always music-supportive Jimmy Kimmel Show when they played the Pontiac (why is this still named this?) Garage outdoor stage in Hollywood.

Although the actual show was a bit sloppy and disconnected, but if you're a fan of Blink, well, you kinda expect that!

One notable element was the absolutely superb drum playing by Travis Barker, who is just completely tatted to the point where you just don't notice new tats anymore, but has shown that he has sharpened his skills to become one of the elite drummers of all time.

Over 300 plus watched the 8-song mini-concert in Hollywood, where some concert viewers were hanging from trees, on rooftops and, conventionally, in the audience.

If this show is any indication, the concert this summer that Blink 182 is headlining will be quite lucrative and a fantastic show for all.

Desperate Marshall Mathers

It's a sad day in hip-hop when big bad ass Eminem, arguably one of the most beautiful rappers/poets of the last decade turns to acts of desperation to sell his album.

His most recent single is clearly a phoned-in attempt at ATM-ing his talent because his on-again, off-again distortion of a marriage had probably tapped his finances.

But to take a man's ass in your face on international television, on the wholly-irrelevant MTV Networks group of channels is one classic act of sales desperation, proving that Eminem can now, not only be called a sell-out, but can command clearly no respect anywhere in the hip-hop community. His artistic prowess is now completely overshadowed by the fact that he clearly, clearly was in on the joke.

Howard Stern pointed out on his radio show on Sirius XM that the shots were all properly blocked, the pathway exit was cleared, and that he sat just long enough for the cameras to get a clear shot of him, he sat with his head right on Sasha Baron Cohen's taint for more than five seconds and, only then, did he say "Get the fuck off of me" with his ignorant bodyguards playing a clearly rehearsed game of badminton with Cohen's body.

This is why I don't like the modern music industry. This is why the music industry needs to re-examine itself. These desperate acts of "punk rock" rebellion serve only to underscore how lame and out-of-touch the producers are, especially when they let these dipshit over thirty college graduates do the writing for the show.

Eminem doesn't really deserve the respect due an artist any longer, for taking such a cheap and desperate attempt to sell his music.

There was once a day when it was only about the music and the artistic expression which enveloped the music.

Now, it's about cheap thrills, bad jokes, lame showmanship, and talentless writing.

What's next, Eminem takes a shot in the mouth to sell a single? Bukake's his face to bank a buck?

Lame.