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Artists Are Getting Screwed in the New Music Business

November 17, 2014

“The music industry is dwindling, but only for the artists. Something’s not right here. Artists can’t make a living anymore. They’re having to go get second jobs to pay the bills. But look at the profits of music companies like YouTube, iTunes, Spotify and the evil publicly-traded Pandora (who recently sued artists and record labels to be allowed to pay even less per stream — they won btw and are now only obligated to pay a royalty rate of .0007 per stream. Yes, as incomprehensible as that is to fathom, that’s 7/1000th of one penny –that’s all we as artists get paid every time someone listens to a song of ours on Pandora. They’re revenue is in the billions. It’s hard to believe, I get it. It is just as hard for us, the content creators/product suppliers, to believe as well. The problem is the labels. I know and like these guys. And I’ve told them this to their face. They’ll sell their own mother for $25. They’ve got to change and start helping the artists more.” — Garth Brooks to CNN November 17, 2014

Hearing Garth say the words above in an interview today sparked me. It’s easy to feel like you’re being an ungrateful whiner when you’ve lived a life like mine — one that many could easily claim has been privileged, and yet you’re going around complaining about “artist royalty compensation” and other such seemingly elitist issues when regular folks are having a tough time making ends meet or even finding a job in the first place. It’s a subject Princess Little Tree and I discuss often: do I stir the flames of protest publicly about what’s happening in the music business to us the artists and tell people how bad it is? Or do I just play it cool? Is it bad for business? Or is it the right thing to do? Will people think I’m being ungrateful? Or greedy? Will I lose my street cred by bringing up the subject of money — which to certain circles of people shouldn’t even hold a place in the same conversation as music or art…?

Earlier this year I started the Fair Pay for Fair Play campaign to address just these issues. Accessing the Facebook page is the easiest way to get informed and involved in this cause and if you care about music and the artists who create it I encourage you to do just that. Visit the page. Like it. Share it with your friends. Because the truth is we are struggling in a way that we have never seen before in modern times. Artists are quite literally starving. Because we are being squeezed out of the very industry that we create the product for.

There are many many reasons for this sad state of affairs and over the last few months I have used these usually more literary Transcendence Diaries to discuss some of the root causes of this issue. No one diary entry is going to address the entire issue in its entirety. That would be impossible. It would take a volume of books to do the cause any real justice. But at the very least we are getting ball rolling in terms of alerting the public not just to the problem itself but to just how serious it is becoming. The easiest way to sum it up is to remind people that over the last ten years we have moved away from consuming music via purchasing it, through CDs or vinyl or through digital downloads ala iTunes, and shifted instead towards consuming music via “streaming it” online using services like Pandora or Spotify or YouTube.

For you and me as music lovers this has been an exciting trend, a revolutionary transition to a world where any and every thing that has ever been recorded by anyone we’ve ever heard of (or not) can be accessed immediately from anywhere in the world. Even on the go right from our phones. In fact most of us now listen to music via our phones more often than home stereos (remember those?) Besides the most obvious abhorrent problem with this shift — the fact that we use extremely expensive state of the art equipment worth millions of dollars to create the most pristine sounding music we possibly can for the audience and it is now being degraded to sound like shit through phone speakers, there’s another problem: as technology companies quickly take control of the distribution of the music — through the aforementioned streaming services, deals have been and are being struck that leave less than pennies for the artist, or worse yet leave them out of the equation entirely. And the sad part is that is most people have no idea that this is what’s going down. They just assume that because it’s all being done above board and publicly that “surely the artists are being paid as they always have.” But the answer is “No. They are not.”

It’s only been a few weeks since U2 shocked (and to some annoyed) the world by giving away their new album for free via Apple due to the realization that it probably wouldn’t sell many copies and thus like Jay Z, Kanye, Coldplay and Thom Yorke before, they’d be better off just giving it away rather than risking low sales figures.

Even more recently Taylor Swift rocked the music world by pulling her albums, including her very successful new one, off of Spotify completely — due to the fact that Spotify only pays us approximately 7/1000th of a penny per play. Consider that for a moment: Spotify doesn’t even pay us one cent per spin. That’s the cold hard truth. No matter how they try to spin it. And trust me, as a music lover I personally LOVE Spotify and it’s potential as a listening device. But as an artist there isn’t anything I can think of off the top of my head that I loath more than Spotify. Piracy, e.g. people who don’t pay for music at all and just go online to download it for free via bit torrent type piracy sites ranks just a bit higher on my hate list. But Spotify Pandora and YouTube come in a close second. Why? Because at least piracy sites are upfront and honest about what they are doing. They’re criminals and often times proud of it. They see “free music” as some sort of cause of rebellion, as if by stealing music they’re somehow sticking it to The Man. But companies like YouTube and Spotify pretend to be “working with the record labels and artists to create a fair playing field for everyone”. But that claim is total bollocks. It’s just completely untrue.

Today it was announced that platinum country rocker Garth Brooks decided to sell his new album via his own website, something called Ghost Tunes, instead of via iTunes. Why? For pretty much the same reasons. He’ll make a much larger profit that way without having to sell even a fifth of the copies he would have to via iTunes.

Caveat: I and my boys in Transcendence are on an independent label, Dying Van Gogh Records, one which we have a large stake of ownership in. And so we make a larger percentage of sales than artists like Brooks and Swift. We make at least 50% of sales. Whereas artists on larger labels like Garth Brooks and Taylor Swift only make 10% of total sales if they’re lucky.

So do the math. If Spotify is only paying out 7/1000th of one penny per spin of any one song and 90% of THAT goes to the label, leaving only 10% to the artist…well how is that artist supposed to make a living? Sales and downloads?

Well therein lies the problem: because streaming has become so popular, people are buying and downloading less and less music. In a nutshell sales and downloads of music — personal ownership of music has nearly come crashing to a halt. It’s a failed business model. (Unfortunately that also means that album artwork and photography is a dying art form as well. A sad often overlooked side effect of this trend.)

But okay let’s look at downloads still because there are some artists who can still sell some serious numbers. Taylor Swift being one of them. iTunes only takes about 28%, leaving the label and artist a full 72% of gross sales. Not bad right? But again if the label is taking 90% of THAT, leaving the artist only 10% of it…there we are again, asking how can the artist make any real money?

It’s no wonder that both Swift and Brooks have tried to create work-arounds to try to make more money from their new music. It’s only natural.

Speaking about this situation personally, this past weekend it was brought to my attention that the lead singles from my last solo album had huge spikes in their views on YouTube. Granted, they’re nothing close to big platinum selling artists like U2, Taylor Swift or Garth Brooks. But they’re significant. “Scene in San Francisco” somehow managed to hit 225,000 views; “New Orleans Dreams” close to that and “Hello My Dove” still hovers around 20,000. And yes I’m sure if we sat down and did more research we would find that plenty of the other songs we have on YouTube have even higher view counts than these three, because they are older classics and have the advantage of having been around longer, but I am referring to these songs specifically because they are the NEWEST songs from our catalogue. Just those three songs alone have pulled in a healthy half a million views on YouTube since their release. Not bad.

Any normal rational thinking music lover is going to assume that we the artist MUST BE earning something from all this action. After all we are forced to sit through a ten to thirty second commercial before every single song we listen to on YouTube. It only makes sense that if YouTube is profiting from all these commercial spins that at least some of that has to get passed on to the artist and their record label.

Now here’s the deal: we do NOT get paid directly from YouTube. That would be too easy. Too fair. The music business has never been fair or easy. Nope. We the artists get paid by YouTube paying out “public performance royalties” to the PROs (Performing Rights Organizations) like ASCAP, SESAC and BMI on a quarterly basis who are supposed to turn around and pass on ALL that money to us, the artists. Remember, these PROs portend that they are NON-PROFIT, that they are ONLY in business to “serve the needs of the artists”. And yet when we have called our PRO, ASCAP, they have repeatedly told us “hey wow Ed Hale that’s great man. Congratulations! You’re really making good traction with the new songs! But see, with our proprietary system we really don’t even pay out on YouTube views until a song gets at least half a million to a million views. And even then you would have to accumulate those views at a rate of half a million views per month in order for us to calculate them and pay you any for them. So as unfair as it seems we can’t really pay you for any of those views for your new songs sorry to say.”

Needless to say every time I have this conversation with them I hang up that phone angry and discouraged. See, there’s no shortage of new fans for the music what with all these new ways to experience our music… But we the artists are just getting screwed out of the process. And yet it is WE WHO ARE CREATING THE PRODUCT!!! Without us there would be NO product for YouTube to play. Nor Spotify or Pandora or iTunes.

I ran the numbers in my head this morning as I was watching Garth complain about the same thing… Even if YouTube only paid us ONE CENT per spin I would make at least $5,000 just for those three songs alone this year. If they paid us just TWO CENTS per spin or view those songs would generate $10,000. No that’s not enough to support a family. But it’s certainly better than ZERO! And zero is what we are currently being paid from YouTube views.

See, the problem is that just a few short years ago we would make that kind of money in just a few weeks from putting out a new album and selling it. Either via a CD or via iTunes downloads. But with every song we release becoming instantly available online there is really no incentive for a fan to make that purchase. They can just go to YouTube or Spotify. And as a music lover myself I totally get how awesome that is. I do it myself. At least I used to. But if these streaming services are not going to compensate the artists for the streaming because of some “proprietary system” ala YouTube or only pay the artist 7/1000th of a penny per spin…the fans and music lovers are getting just as duped as we the artists are — believing their favorite artists are being compensated for the listening pleasure that their music is providing when in reality no such thing is happening.

If you’ve been wondering lately where your favorite artist is or where they have been and why you haven’t heard from them in a while, and who hasn’t… This is the reason why. They’re still alive. They just cannot afford to make music any longer. And this is by no means an exaggeration. As an artist myself I promise you that it is much worse than I have made it out to be simply because it is just too embarrassing to fully admit publicly — especially regarding other people who may or may not want the world to know how tough things are for them. That decision has to be up to each artist and their respective family. But suffice it to say I personally know many who are big names and plenty of smaller names who simply cannot afford to make music at the present time. And that is a very sad thing for all of us.

Of course there is much more to all of this. But this is a start. We will continue to explore this in future updates. In the meantime YOU can do something by simply publicly letting the above mentioned companies know that you believe they need to start compensating artists fairly. Something needs to change. And as always that change begins and ends with us — we the people can turn this tragic episode around and create for ourselves the miraculous happy ending that we all hope and wish for just as we always do in all world affairs.

– Posted by The Ambassador aka Ed Hale using BlogPress on an iPhone

U2 Proves Rock is Dead. And So Is the Album

September 11, 2014

The below is the latest blog entry from music-culture blogger and general curmudgeon, Bob Lefsetz. In it he plainly and clearly argues that the release of the latest U2 album — through giving it away for free via Apple’s iTunes platform — was yet another red flag that rock music AND the album as a viable art-form is utterly entirely and completely dead. He argues a lot of things in the article below. Much of it makes sense and rings true. One of things he emphatically states is that no one has time to dig through 11 songs on a rock music album (or any album for that matter) and therefore U2 wasted years creating their newest magnum opus. They should have just released a 4 song EP instead. You can read it below for yourself. Frankly I don’t have the time to respond to Bob’s ideas — and THIS gives testimony to just how accurate he is in his latest treatise on the rapidly changing cultural world around us.

For my part, I CAN say this. Everyone knows that I am an avid U2 fan. I own all their albums and buy them as soon as they come out or soon afterwards. I have seen them live in concert more times than I can count. But have I heard this new one yet? Nope. Do I even own it? Nope. And they’re giving it away for FREE!!! Yet I still don’t own it. Yep. This fact proves Bob’s point more than I’d like it to. To further prove the validity of his statements below, he is right in these assertions as well: I didn’t want to go to iTunes to download the album — while at the gym I obviously wasn’t able to do this. What I wanted to do was LISTEN TO the album. As in STREAM IT via Spotify. But U2 made the irreversible error of making the album NOT available on Spotify for at least a month or two. By that time no one will be talking about or interested in the new U2 album. We’ll all be discussing something else entirely. So they lost that shot. The next place I went to try to hear the new album? YouTube. Just like Bob predicted we all would. And as can probably be guessed, the new U2 album is not yet available on YouTube. So they dropped that ball too.

This is why, three days later I still don’t own the new U2 album. And I’m an actual FAN. Forget about the ex-fans or never-have-been-fans or the flat-out haters. They’re all having a field day making fun of and insulting Bono and company. They’ve become the punchline of the hour, the battering ram of the week — right after Ray Rice, ISIS and Ferguson, Missouri.

It’s a damn sad day when one of the greatest musical acts of all time can become so lambasted, negatively perceived and devoured by mainstream society for such a small and simple mistake. It’s even more disturbing that Lefsetz appears to be right not only in his assertion that rock music has lost all credibility and influence in modern Western society AND so too has the album as a viable art-form SIMPLY BECAUSE no one has the time for either of them. Especially for yours truly, who still bathes in the illusion that I make my living from recording and releasing albums of primarily “rock” music. Oh well. Oh well. Oh well. Better luck next time.

What follows below is the article by Bob Lefsetz. Happy reading. Feel free to share your thoughts.

Ambassador

NEWS FOR A DAY

No different from a rape or a murder, but with even less legs. In today’s world it’s not about making an impact, but sustaining. Could it be that Bono’s been living too long in the echo chamber, hanging with forty and fiftysomethings who think they rule the world but truly don’t? Yes, older people build the tools, but it’s young people who utilize them. The older bloke will lament the loss of the record shop, the younger person has never been. If you want to make it in today’s marketing culture you must be online 24/7, picking up the nuances. Because it is about cred and it is about cool but if you think the old rules apply, you probably can’t name a YouTube star.

EVANESCENCE

This is an analog of the above. Here today, gone tomorrow. How could the band be so stupid as to believe anybody would actually play their music, especially the 500 million it was pushed to. Where’s the afterplan? Nonexistent.

PUSH

We live in a pull economy. Nothing pisses off the audience more than pushing something they don’t want and didn’t ask for to their devices. Even if you don’t download the album, it’s sitting there in your purchases, pissing you off.

HOW TO

Did you have iCloud turned on in iTunes? Even those who wanted the album weren’t quite sure how to get it.

ALBUM

How many tracks did PSY have? One!

OVERLOAD

No one’s got time to listen to a complete album, especially when it’s pushed upon them, that’s just too much material. Yes, a nascent artist on his way up might have people check out more tracks on his album out of curiosity, but no one’s curious about U2, they already know everything about them. One must factor in that we’re all overloaded with stimuli and you must point us to the paramount item and make it digestible in a matter of moments. If we love it, we’ll want more. If we don’t, we’re never going to get to the rest of your opus that you spent years creating.

ALBUM TWO

Make it an EP. Four tracks. People haven’t finished Piketty’s tome. It would have been better off as a magazine article. People bought it, they just didn’t read it, who’s got the time?

ENGAGEMENT

Now what. Where’s the game, where’s the jaw-dropping viral video? Where’s the element we can all point to and talk about. If anything, we’re talking about the stunt, not the music.

WRONG SERVICE

They’d have been better off releasing it on YouTube, that’s where the digital generation goes for music. iTunes is a backwater. It may be the number one sales outlet, but it’s not the number one music platform, not even close.

UNHIP

Put it on Spotify. Try to look cutting edge. Meanwhile, having the quality of your music trumpeted by Tim Cook is like having Ed Sullivan say your tunes are good.

CLOSED DOORS

This is the problem vexing filmed entertainment/video, there’s not one platform with everything. But in music we’ve solved this problem, Spotify and YouTube have all the tracks and you can access them for free, but putting hype over practicality, U2 failed to see they were playing in a walled garden, to their detriment.

This was a stunt, poorly executed. Everybody forgets that despite all the hoopla about naming your own price, “In Rainbows” was a disaster, with only hard core fans familiar with the material. Yup, Radiohead may be independent, but they’ve done a good job of marginalizing themselves.

And at least Beyonce had the videos, somewhere to click to.

And Weird Al had videos too, but after a week, few cared.

Because at the end of the day we only care about the music. And U2 didn’t cut that one indelible track that stops us in our tracks, that we want to listen to again and again and pass on. Sure, the song they played at the Apple soiree was good, but good is no longer good enough.

Furthermore, when Bono talked he lost all charisma.

This looked like nothing so much as what it was, old farts using their connections to shove material down the throats of those who don’t want it. It’s what we hate so much about today’s environment, rich people who think they know better and our entitled to their behavior.

Don’t listen to the press. Rock writers are antiques who are underpaid who are in it for access and free tickets.

And the business press doesn’t care about the music.

And the old fart fortysomethings who talk about this music should be ignored. It’s no different from a Jason Isbell fan testifying about his tracks. No offense, but it’s a tiny world. Sure, U2’s is bigger, but until U2 cuts a track that makes the rest of us care, we don’t.

Meanwhile, Jason Isbell had a hit today, he tweeted: “U2 PHONES IT IN.”

Yup, that’s Internet culture, where someone who raises their head above is fodder for criticism.

But it gets worse.

Cultofmac said:

“But trotting out aging Irish rockers after you’ve wowed the world with the first glimpse of the glorious Apple Watch? That’s not thinking different. That’s a pity-f__k for a band that’s lost its edge, and an unfortunate bum note for a company that’s rarely perceived as tone-deaf.”

http://www.cultofmac.com/295084/u2-apple-event/

Whew!

All over the web people are criticizing U2. And that’s where music now lives, online.

So, so long Bono and crew. You’ll continue to sell tickets, but you’re no longer au courant.

So long rock that does not break through on Top Forty. U2 would have been better off cutting a country track, that would have been a better fit with a fighting chance of airplay.

So long albums. If you’ve got an hour to listen to once that which must be listened to ten times to get you’ve got no life, but everyone does, and they’re the center of it, glued to their devices, and to distract them you’ve got to be pretty damn good and the talk of the town for an extended period of time, U2’s new music is not.

So long stunts with no aftermath. If you’re not in the news every damn day, you’re getting it wrong. The biggest pop stars are the Kardashians. Ever notice not a day goes by without them in the news? Bono, et al, would be better off hanging with the sisters than heads of state, at least if they want to have a hit.

And so long the fiction that Guy Oseary would do a better job than Paul McGuinness. There might be a patina of new school, but this album release is positively old school.

Here’s how it goes:

Make everyone aware.

Put tickets on sale.

Make it an event, a la the Stones, i.e. if you don’t come now, you may never be able to experience it again.

Trump up traditional press so wankers believe there’s something happening.

But there’s not.

Because “I Will Follow” was inspired. It sounded like nothing else. It had urgency. It had attitude. You needed to hear it again. It was so good you wanted to hear what else the band was up to.

The new album is paint-by-numbers disposable.

Today we have to pull you into our world. And we only hold you in our bosom if we believe your music is repeatable and deserves our time.

Bono’s on top of the world, he’ll reject everything I say.

Rapino and Oseary will keep shoveling, hoping to keep this alive.

And you and me?

WE’RE ALREADY OVER IT!

Check Your Morals at the Door of the Trading Floor

December 13, 2013

Deep uncover still, exploring the world of investing and trading. Six months now. Don’t get me wrong, It isn’t just research; it’s also a way to make money. But it isn’t as easy as it once was. Those days are long gone. Yes, with the right amount of capital it isn’t difficult to make anywhere between $500 to $2000 a day actively trading. But it’s intense and stressful. And always a risk. You’re on the edge of your seat the whole time. Every minute seems like an hour when you’re in the middle of a trade. When you win, it’s exhilarating. When you lose, it can happen in an instant and there’s nothing that feels worse.

This is our third exploration into the world of active trading. The first was the period between ’97 to 2004, when I was still a kid, wet behind the ears and green as a newborn. Then 2005 to 2007. By that time I’d already made my fortune and investing was just a way to have fun with money. And now, once again we’ve jumped into the pool with the sharks. But this time it’s different. There are motives here much bigger than just to have fun or make a little extra money. And things have changed in this world. A lot. For everyday readers of the Transcendence Diaries, this isn’t going to be as transcendent as usual, but give it a chance. There is learning here. Just a very different world than what you’re more accustomed to here.

Yes, indeed, things have changed tremendously in the world of trading and investing. And yet things are seeming more and more like the old days. More on that in a few. For one thing HFT (High Frequency Trading) has been invented and is solidly embedded into the system; hell it is the system now. It makes trading operate at a rapid fire speeds. Mili-seconds matter. Pico-seconds in fact. [Many of the things I make note of will need to be Googled if not understood. For the purpose here is to post observations and lessons, not define terminology.] When I first started actively investing it was in the mid-nineties as already established here in The Diaries numerous times. We were in the process of a giant economic recovery in America which many mistakenly believe to be the effect of the Clinton White House or Alan Greenspan, when in reality it had a lot more to do with Silicon Valley and the advent of the internet age and modern technology becoming a regular part of the everyday man’s everyday life. Not only that, something amazing was invented, something truly revolutionary. eTrade. The ability of the average citizen to invest their own money their own way, in real time, without the need of a middle man or a broker.

eTrade was the first such system. Trust me when I say it was truly revolutionary. Up until that point you really did have to call a broker to buy or sell any kind of investment vehicle such as a stock or a bond or an ETF. Hell, ETFs barely existed back then. I was one of the first eTrade clients, coming on board in the beta stage as an early adaptor the same way I did with PayPal and eBay. Elon was still with PayPal back then. eBay was still a home based business. You became friends with the people you bought from and sold to. It was a small community. eTrade too. I still use the same eTrade, ebay and PayPal accounts from 1997 and 98. People are amazed when they see the date attached to my accounts. As if these are relatively new inventions. But to many people they are. That’s something that we always have to remember. The reason why companies like eBay and Netflix are still so valuable is because they’re nowhere near mainstream market saturation. Most people still don’t have a PayPal account; just as most people still don’t have Netflix accounts in their home. So there’s plenty of room for them to grow.

But back to the real meat of the story. Now eTrade is considered the old guard. The old dog that can’t learn new tricks. Try as they might they are having difficulty keeping everyone on board, though they’re still the most used platform out there overall. There’s something about being the first and the oldest that can backfire on you, whether product or service. The same way that Facebook ate MySpace who ate Friendster. Only time will tell if Tumblr will eat Facebook. I’m going to say no. But hey, they made their billion so at this point, who really cares. (Herein lay one of the main points of this post, along with a few dozen more, i.e. how similar today is to the dotcom crash of 2001. But that’s for later.) There are a hundred of these types of electronic home trading platforms out there. Scott Trade, Cool Trade, Ameritrade. Think Or Swim or TOS for short seems to be the popular kid in school these days, the current flavor of the month. Especially with the career traders, the ones who wake up every morning in their bathrobe and actively invest for a living all day. I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. I’m doing it now, though more for research and learning than for a living obviously.

Something has definitely changed though. Now everyone and their brother has access to a computerized home trading platform. And everyone who does fashions themselves an expert. I’ve joined about two dozen investing services over the last few months in order to get a real feel for what’s going on behind the scenes with these retail investors, the average Joes, versus the big dogs. Whereas the big fund managers that we smoke cigars with every day at Barkley Rex or De La Concha are trading huge amounts of cash in the hundreds of millions and billions, the owners and members of many of these trading services are small players. One thing I’ve noticed is this: the big guys, the ones worth seven figures or more who have taught me much of what I know about wealth and finance are quiet, humble, and careful with their words. They volunteer at their church on the weekends. They do their best to keep a low profile. The smaller guys are the exact opposite. They talk a BIG game. They really believe they’re “the shit”. Or at least they talk like they believe it. Totally the opposite of the guys that manage at the big houses that I’m friends with. These smaller guys prey on small fish through seedy posts on social media like Twitter and Facebook and StockTwits. They claim to be able to make you “a fortune overnight”. Obviously this kind of attitude and activity is not new. It’s been around forever. Back in the day our friends at Agora Financial were the masters of it. They’ve turned it into a gigantic business now. Almost to the point where one could call them, dare I say, viable or nearly reputable. El Infinito is working there now. Learning a lot. Some decent minds are now contributing to their content. Very different than the small team that once was back in ’04 and ’05 when it was just Bill and Addison.

But I’ll tell you, this new breed, see they don’t manage money for any big firms. They’re traders. Pirates. But many of them are also professional hucksters. They need the money brought in through monthly subscription fees from small mom and pop investors to make their living. Whereas the guys we hang with over the weekend wouldn’t sell a subscription to their investment advice if you paid them to. And I’ve offered. They’ll talk to you free. But they would never sell you any advice. Why? Because it’s a very closed and private environment number one. And number two, they know how risky it is and how lucky they are to be in the position they’re in, so they’re humbled by that. And three, they don’t need or want that kind of money. They’re in the game for entirely different reasons. It’s more a professional sport to them. They’re in it for the Superbowl Ring. Not for a monthly subscription fee. Obviously we can’t name names here and I never have; we wouldn’t have any friends left if we did. But I have always been amazed at how cool and humble most of these guys are at the Big Ten. I’ve spent ten years smoking and drinking with them and they’re some of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. They’re not what you think, the way it’s portrayed in Hollywood movies. I’ve been to their homes, been to their vacation houses in the Hamptons, been on work trips with them, building houses with Habitat for Humanity or with church, and you wouldn’t believe the kind of effort they put in. You can tell they’re fighting some inner demons of guilt for making the kind of money they make when most everyone else is struggling just to get by. So they work their butts off on these work trips. You have to admire this.

Then there’s this whole new breed of guys out there now. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. They sell subscriptions to their “expert advice” to anyone and everyone who is willing to cough up 20 to 99 bucks a month for it. Some of them are as high as $5,000 a year. It’s an amazing market. For who doesn’t want to make it rich over night? These guys, they fight with each other over Twitter about who’s the better investor, who made the right call on the right stock. Verbally pounding their chest like apes, bragging about their latest great call. Things like that. Constant bragging. It’s silly kid stuff. One thing I’ve noticed is that they are more concerned with being right than they are with being smart. This is definitely a lose-lose way of operating in the world. And this is where it gets really concerning. You’ll notice that their real teeth in the game is in feeling “right”, as opposed to making money. I’ve heard some say “I’d do that trade a hundred times and even if I was wrong about it 100 times I’d do it again.” That’s actually a favorite tag line of this lot. It’s the “asserting identity” gone wild. The ego seems to take over for the being and runs on auto pilot, while the being itself is only God knows where. Very different than the large fund managers who will spend an hour with you explaining how often they are wrong and how careful we all have to be because “no one can time the markets”. This is experience and maturity speaking. They don’t have to brag because their title does the bragging for them.

[It actually reminds me a lot of the music business. When we’re kids, we swear we’re the greatest thing since the Beatles or Dylan. Then we get a few years under our belt and a few Billboard hits and before you know it, we’re taking three years to finish an album because we’re so damn aware of how average it most likely sounds. Our maturity informs our humility. We take on a humility that is more rooted in the reality of being in the business rather than wanting to be in the business. I assume most industries are probably like this.]

Another trend I’ve noticed now is that social media has really taken a prominent stake in the world of small time investing. People go into various social media outlets and tag the name of companies with a dollar sign. Such as this: $AAPL, when referring to Apple Computer. You see no end to the kind of treachery that one will partake in to make a buck. They pump up a stock the first half the day to trick average investors into believing it’s a great investment and right when it reaches the top of the day, they turn around and dump it — it’s called the Pump and Dump — leaving the average investor holding the bag with a giant loss for the day. Very sad.

Today one such slimy character Tweeted out “$GOGO stock rallying up after FAA approves cell phone usage on flights”. Of course no such announcement had been made. He just wanted to see if he could get a few more suckers to buy some Gogo stock so his shares would go up and he could sell it. Very heinous. The worst kind of pariah. Unfortunately it’s all too common. Lying is about as regular stuff as it gets with this crowd. This is NOT the world of the Avatar or Wayne Dyer or Abraham Hicks. It’s not about being a good person or taking responsibility or helping make the world a better place. It’s about making money. And that’s about all it’s about. Plain and simple. In a post earlier this week, I talked about how the world of investing is destroying the world we live in in the name of making money. Whether it’s the destruction of the environment for fossil fuels or promoting slave labor to improve shareholder dividends, it’s just a very seedy heartless business.

I’ve had a tough time fitting in. But at the same time, it’s the only way we will truly learn all there is to learn about the world of investing in order to better harness the power of Compassionate Capitalism in our quest to create an Enlightened Planet, which is the goal here. Compassionate Capitalism is a growing trend around the world of the wealthy, though very few are as of yet participating. For it takes a lot of self restraint and well, compassion. It also takes a lot of compromise when it comes to foregoing profits in favor of helping. But we’re getting there. More and more are jumping on board. And that’s where we’re headed as a society. It’s just going to take showing everyone else that it’s possible to make a fortune AND be cautious with our investment dollars to avoid contributing to the problems; AND even being pro-active, with a focus on making the world a better place. This might mean investing more in solar and alternative energy rather than oil, fracking and coal. This of course has the potential to lose you a lot of big money. Very true. And I have already experienced the conflict that sets in when trying to stop yourself from jumping into a company that you just know is ravaging the earth while making its fortune. It’s difficult.

A case in point that hits closer to home is that of Pandora. Yes the online radio company. What most people don’t realize is that Pandora has gone public. You can buy and sell shares of the company. And potentially make money doing so. The problem is that Pandora has slowly eroded the very lifeblood of the music industry. The initial deal they structured with the record labels and publishers was for 7 cents a play for each song — try splitting that up ten ways — it was already ridiculously low for as artists. A huge sacrifice. But we were told it was temporary, just until they got their foot in the door, that they were “new and experimental” so we all said yes just to see what would happen; on a temporary basis. Flash forward three years and they are logging tens of millions of listens a day; so they’re no longer “new and experimental”. What was planned was that they would up the ante for us artists once they established themselves and started gaining a bigger listenership. Instead what they’ve done is file a law suit against all the record labels and publishers in the world to ask the courts to allow them to cut that royalty rate in HALF. Yes they now want to only pay about 3 cents per song per spin. That way they can keep the cost down for the listener — it’s already primarily free — AND increase the amount of bonuses they pay to the directors of the company and the dividends they pay to the shareholders.

What’s really heinous is that their primary method of generating revenue — this is classic — is advertising. And who is their main advertising client? Yep. Music business companies. Turning around and selling advertising to US: record companies and publishers in order to promote new albums and singles by the artists. But if WE aren’t making any money from sales anymore, nor from online spins, then what incentive do we have to advertise on their platform? The music business is headed for complete implosion at this point. Not just “gone are the good old days”, but total annihilation. As in no one makes any money at all and everyone just does it for fun IF they can find someone to support them financially. Pandora is one of the reasons why. And what will this lead to ultimately for the average music fan? No good music. Just a lot of random shit gets released — as in whoever can afford to release music of some kind will. No gate keepers. No purveyors. We’ll see. This might be a good thing. But so far all it’s done is muddy the playing field so much that even the most open minded listeners are beginning to recognize that “there just seems to be a lot of really bad music being released these days.” Well now you know why.

[PS — for the record iTunes is not part of the problem. Unfortunately many people are operating under the misconception that iTunes ruined the music business through the distribution of online music and MP3s. But that isn’t the case. iTunes pays one of the best royalty rates out there for artists. And it doesn’t matter who you are or how big or small you are. If people are buying your music, you’re being paid handsomely from iTunes. Kudos to them for this.]

But Pandora, that’s just one example of the kind of conflict I’m talking about. So, let’s say we have a feeling that Pandora is going to rally on Monday, maybe it’ll go up a buck or two. We have a good chance of making some easy money if we invest a large sum. Jump in Friday. Ride it up till Wednesday or so and sell. Easy. But are we contributing to the problem by investing in the company in order to make a profit? I suppose if we turn around and use that same money to fund the counter-suit against them and spread awareness through PSAs about what a wretched organization they are, which is what just about every musical artist in America is doing at the moment — jumping on board this anti-Pandora train, then I guess it’s alright. Especially if we don’t invest for the long haul but only for a few days, to make some money. Why not? But that’s just one example. What about fracking? We know it’s the fastest way towards creating the great zombie apocalypse and destroying the world as we know it, but there’s BIG money to be made in natural gas. I made thousands trading it this week alone. And I KNOW what it is. I KNOW how it is made. And yet… I couldn’t resist the temptation. Again, if it’s just jumping in and out then is it really contributing to the problem?

Unfortunately I would say yes it is. For if NO ONE invested in these companies then they wouldn’t have any access to capital. They wouldn’t be able to keep going. They’d be forced to shut down. There’d be no more fracking. And there’s the problem. The only people fighting the good fight, against the frackers and the GMO monsters and Big Pharma and Big Oil, are the poor and middle class. They’re the ones out in the streets protesting and demonstrating and occupying. Everyone else is trying to figure out which of the big drug companies is going to be the next one that doubles in price next month and investing in it. Along with all the others. It’s a crazy scene. Trust me. For people like us, it’s just an absolutely insane scene. You check your morals and ethics at the door when you step onto the trading floor. You have to if you want to make big money. At least that’s the vibration that emanates from the room as you enter. Very few people speak of changing the world or taking responsibility or faith or peace or love or anything like that.

It’s a strange world full of animal consciousness. A cut-throat world. Ruthless. You hear phrases such as “chop those bears into little pieces” or “major bull trap” or “we’re going to eat these grizzly bears for breakfast once this stock hits $50″. On and on. Most of it I wouldn’t repeat here. Like I said, it’s cut throat. But remember, we’re here to learn. I do my best to keep the peace and stay true to myself, try to offer some civility into the game while I’m learning.

Another thing I’ve learned is this: no one can time the market. Everyone is guessing, analyzing in hindsight. No matter what kind of analyzing they’re doing, whether it’s technical or fundamental or chart reading, it’s all just made up formulae. Everyone and their brother has a special system that they’ve developed or have adopted from someone else, and they all think it’s “the best system out there”. They speak about proprietary systems and all these rules of the market. But no such rules exist. Every time one of the so-called rules is broken, they’ll come up with a different rule to explain why that other rule was broken. It’s hilarious. But it’s also sad because you can see what a vicious cycle it is of ignorance. A company can be worth a veritable fortune and be ridiculously profitable and still have a stock that is poorly valued. Another company can not even be profitable — they actually LOSE money every quarter — and their stock price can be selling at a price that is in the hundreds. It’s a completely illogical game. Twitter, the little company, is about one-tenth the size of Facebook for instance and yet today it traded for about ten dollars more per share than Facebook. No logic. No reason. Just hype and excitement. This is what makes the world of investing so dangerous. No one is using intelligence or rational thinking anymore.

It’s exactly like 1999 to 2001, right before what we call the dotcom crash. We all know what that was like. Most people weren’t actually investing back then. But they’re familiar with the story. I was smack dab in the middle of it. Though I didn’t do it for a living. It was just fun. But I swear we’d make a few thousand dollars in a day just from jumping into a new company’s IPO at the start of the day and jumping out by the end of the day. Things like that. No one even bothered to check out the fundamental financial health of the company. The fact that it was going public through IPO was enough. It had gotten crazy. Which led to a giant melt down. As I’ve already written here, twelve years ago when it happened, I was one of the lucky ones. I was advised by some friends who managed at Goldmans to get out. So I took everything we had out of the market and put it all into Berkshire Hathaway B shares. At the time these were selling for $3,200 per share. I couldn’t believe that one stock could be so expensive. But after the crash, when everyone around me lost a fortune and my shares stayed relatively the same price, I had a lot more appreciation for quality and value when it comes to investing.

We’re in a similar place now. You can feel the rabid nature of the whole thing crashing in around everyone. And yet all they want is for the markets to keep going up. It’s a fascinating study of human behavior. All the sell signals are there right in front of us that we are headed towards a major correction — for a variety of reasons, not just one — and yet everyday in all these public forums and chat rooms and even on TV, you’ll hear the majority of the people still speak very bullish about the markets. Only the very few, the currently unpopular, speak logically and reasonably about the possibility of a coming crash. And yet the smart money simply wants to make money. And with the system as advanced as it is now, the way it’s been designed, making money in a down market is just as easy as making money in an up market. So being bullish about the markets being bullish is just, well, being bull-headed. Smart money feeds on making money. Not on being right. There’s nothing more rewarding than leaving “being right” at the door in order to make some money. But you’d be surprised how many people are ignoring the signs right in front of us all.

Another thing I’ve noticed about the game in general, the industry, the business, is that there is this very prominent “us versus them” attitude that is very prevalent. You’ll hear people constantly referring to “they” as if there is this mysterious malevolent force out there lurking in the shadows whose sole mission in life is to defeat them. They believe it to be an us versus them game, with them being the heroic underdogs of the story and “they” being the wicked apparition or monster out to get them. In reality, it’s nothing of the kind. There is no “they”. There are just millions of people putting money in and taking money out of various different investment vehicles. No real rhyme or reason. But the conspiracy theories are legend and there are many.

I’ve read hundreds of books about investing over the last 18 years and studied hundreds of different systems; attended all the big courses and bought into all the secret societies. Each and every one thinks that it alone holds the secret key to how the market works and how to “always win and never lose”. But I’ve never seen one person do it. The closer you get, the more losses you see. People tend to only advertise their wins. So you have to actually buy in in order to get behind the scenes enough to see what’s really going on. And once you do, you see just as many losses in the most expensive proprietary formulas as you do from the average investor. One thing that does seem to help though are the guys who strictly do Options trading. They do tend to understand the market better than anyone else. And they also know how to minimize losses better than most. This has been the primary focus of my research over the last few months. Learning about Options trading. It’s complex stuff. It’s calculated risk because it’s limited risk. Though the timing has to be even better; and because no one can time the market, the losses seem to be more frequent compared to the wins. But at least they are limiting them. Last week I made a small fortune with my first two options trades, both with Apple. This week unfortunately I lost an entire premium — luckily only about $1500 — with another options trade. I’m telling you, it’s potluck. Damn close to gambling it seems sometimes.

But not if you’re smart. And that’s one of the things that I’ve learned from the guys at the big houses. They don’t gamble. Everything they do is very calculated. They keep risk to a minimum. And they pay a lot of attention to fundamentals. If a company isn’t worth a shit, they don’t go there. The average investor speculates. They’ll invest in anything if someone tells them that they might make some money from it. They truly believe that “fundamental analysis is old fashioned; that it’s for the old mom and pops who don’t understand the new game”. But they consistently lose trading these highly speculative companies that are pure “trader’s plays”. Those are stocks for companies that aren’t yet profitable or haven’t yet proven themselves. Smaller companies. It’s become a huge trend. Just as it had in 2000. And just as it had in 2007 with Credit Default Swaps and the rest of it. Personally, I smell a major correction coming. So I almost always sell out of everything at the end of each day. This week every index lost money. It was a bloodbath. And December is supposed to be “most profitable month of the year in the stock market”. Go figure. Like I said, there are no rules. And anyone who believes there are is kidding themselves. There are only rules AFTER. Not before. That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned on this most recent venture into this world.

What I’d like to accomplish from this little adventure is two-fold: besides just mastery over all the knowledge of the investing world and global economics — which is what really juices me about all this, I’d also like to be able to understand it all well enough to where I can really help contribute to the advent of Compassionate Capitalism going mainstream. Making money while making the world a better place. We’re a long way from that right now. But we are ON the way. Many have already started. Many more will come on board as older generations die off and the younger ones enter the game. Right now when someone comes on a financial news show who is proposing a business model that helps AND makes money you should see the way that people look at them; it’s as if they’re from a different planet. They are met immediately with suspicion that their business model is no good or is faulty in some way. Just because it has an ulterior motive of doing the world some good. That’s something that needs to change. Together we can do that. We need to continue to spread the meme though mass consciousness that making money and making the world a better place are not mutually exclusive missions. They can easily work together, in harmony and synergistically. It’s the only way we are going to create a world that lasts for a long time to come and is fair and just and friendly to all its citizens. This is the goal. More later.

iPhone, Blackberry, or Palm? – or Why We Love the iPhone but Don’t Use One

January 29, 2009

A lot of talk lately about the new Palm Pre PDA/Handheld. Stuff Magazine claims it might be THE phone to kill the iPhone. Not that one cares or should care about such things… except that Apple dominates right now in so many areas and still manages to suck ass in a lot of the areas they dominate in. Case in point: our dead iPods that DO NOT come with replaceable batteries. (I have a 60 gig iPod that will not even turn on anymore that is only 2 years old…. sad little thing.) Once an ipod hits the 2 or 3 year mark they just stop working and won’t recharge. Buy a new battery you say? Yeah, great idea. Except that Apple doesn’t offer that. So you either throw it away or call Apple to see what you CAN do. They tell you that for $168 they will “fix it” or send you a “refurbished and reformatted” ipod. They DO NOT guarantee that they will send you YOUR ipod back. So that’s that. Your ipod is history.

ipod pricing has come down so much that you can now buy the same ipod that you paid $500 for two or three years ago for $200. That’s not a bad thing. But it does make their $168 fee to fix your dead battery or give you a refurbished replacement a negligible solution. Now you might as well buy a new one. And get used to it. Because you’ll be doing that every 2 or 3 years. Great idea guys. Now that’s innovation.

A buddy says to me the other day, “dude can I use your charger for my ipod again?” I’m like “what? you just used it last night…” He’s like “yeah I know but it only holds a charge for an hour or less now… do they have a new battery I can get for this?” “Nah man. You send it in for $168 for them to send you some used one…” “But I only paid $150 for this new,” he says. “yeah, welcome to the world of the ipod.”

And that’s just the grand finale rape scene that leaves you weeping when you exit the theatre. Forget about all the kicking biting scratching punching and beating you take before that trying to use the damn thing.

A friend says to me a few weeks ago while looking for a song, “God I hate scrolling like this! It drives me crazy. Isn’t there any other way to find a song or an artist?” “Nope. Nice huh?” Looks cool, but they cost three times as much as they should and will drive you absolutely crazy if you try to use it. Hey wait a minute! That sounds like something else… what is it??? oh that’s it. Apple computers themselves. But let’s not even go there yet.

So I call Apple one day. “Hey there. I probably loaded about ten new albums into iTunes this weekend and I want to be able to see those new albums on my ipod after I synch. How do I do that? “I’m sorry sir. You can’t.” “What?!!! You’re telling me that there is no way to sort according to most recently added so I can see the newest music that I have on my ipod???!” “No sir. Good idea though. We haven’t come up with it yet.” “O.k. well then take it. It’s yours. Consider it a freebie.” Crazy fucks. Have they never used an ipod themselves? Do they keep a list of the newest music they loaded in on their iPhone or something? Or perhaps scrawled on a piece of paper in their pocket?

[truth be told we did create a solution, a lame one, but this will do till they let you sort your music on the ipod in a variety of ways AND even let you create customized sorting configs as they SHOULD. Here’s the fix: You will have to create ENDLESS playlists in iTunes on your computer called “New Music 1, 2, 3,” etc and then drag your newest music over there. That’s the best they got. But even that sucks because the ipod DOESN’T LET YOU SEE WHAT THE NAME OF THE FREAKING ALBUMS OR ARTISTS ARE IN PLAYLISTS!!! All you see is the name of a song!!! So you just have to scroll and scroll and scroll through these freaking playlists clicking on each song every few seconds to see who it’s by or what album its from… it is truly an abomination in functional engineering, despite its technological advances.

So the iPhone… yes oh yes oh yes. just typing the name of it gets me drooling. Sure I want one. Is it not the coolest thing since a convertible BMW with Techtronic transmission and turbo power? Hell yeah it is. But its fraught with problems in functionality for power users. So they end up with Blackberries or Palm devices still. Wannabe hipsters and newbies to the handheld world are flocking to get their hands on iPhones. And for good reason. They’re cool as shit and have tons of nifty features. Now granted, most of them are just tricked out innovations taken from Palm (see forum dialogues below) but still, there is nothing like your first double-fingered view-expand on an iPhone. A truly chill-producing experience.

So what’s the problem? Why do the majority of longtime handheld power-users still use Palm devices or their beloved Crackberries? Well mainly because they actually do practical things with their handhelds besides talk on the phone, surf the net, or show their friends how cool their phone is. In fact you almost never see people holding the most powerful Palm out there, the TREO, showing it off. Because they’re too freaking BUSY — USING it. They don’t have time to show you photos from their trip to Disney last week or a blurry photo they snapped that day they spotted Al Pacino in the park. Though the Treo holds and records thousands of photos and videos and mp3s too, it just isn’t the main use for the device. [mine also currently holds 16 bi-level dictionaries for 8 different languages, a voice recorder to capture new songs I hear in my head, a world atlas and maps, a metronome, amortization calculators, the internet, Facebook, texting, endless storage using portable and swappable SD cards, a GPS, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and 168 file folders about just about everything I need access to when on the go.] [Note: iPhone’s feature plenty of these and more. for the record.]

Here’s the glitch: For most power-users of handhelds, they need real-world, business-related, practical tools to surf through their baddass entrepreneurial life. Not a fancy looking gadget. Though blackberries now look as cool as anyone could possibly want. (I wish the Treo looked as cool as Blackberries do now… sigh). But alas there is a reason why the Treo still remains the most expensive Palm-based handheld on the market these days, coming in at a steal for $500. Twice the cost of an iPhone. But worth every penny.

And that’s because one can basically do anything they’ll ever need with the Treo. Of course it looks like the new Pre discussed below is going to shoot it out of the water. But it appears that Sprint has a lock on it for now, which means that those of us with other services are SOL for the time being.

Speaking of SOL, that reminds me of when a good friend went out and bought his new iPhone and got all excited only to learn that he was then stuck with ATT phone service forever and got transferred to Europe for his job and now cannot actually use his iPhone… That’s Apple in a nutshell. Nothing wrong with ANY company dominating a market if they’re awesome and deliver the goods. But deliver the freaking goods already.

A caveat for diehard Apple lovers: this is not a diss on Apple. I used to LOVE Apple. My very first three computers were Apples. And I will be the first to admit that Gates and crew stole Windows from Apple. Windows is just a cheaper less stable version of Job’s and Wozniak’s brilliant software ideas. Gates and company were shrewd and some might even say very intelligent businessmen. Jobs and Wozniak were brilliant visionaries who didn’t see these shysters coming and got a royal screwing out of many of their brilliant ideas. Duly noted. I also freely admit that for music and graphics and design and video and most other professional applications I would never and don’t ever go PC. They also just offer a more stable environment without all the crashes and hiccups that Windows is so famous for. Granted. [Windows WAS getting better until the disaster they currently call “Vista.”]

BUT I will say this and then back to the Handheld issue: I often find myself in the position of being hired to help people choose and purchase new computer systems for their home or office. And besides the triple the cost price point of Apple computers, the machine has two other major drawbacks: one, all the software is proprietary and expensive and by the time aforesaid client has pimped out their computer with everything they’ll need to actually use it, they’re looking at dropping at least 4 G’s. Which is about 3 times the cost of a Windows based machine.

The other major drawback is this little issue: what happens if there is something wrong with your Apple computer? Will a tech come out to your home or office and fix it? Nope. Not a chance. YOU will have to go to them. Can you imagine? In 2009? Taking your computer in to get looked at and waiting for a few hours or days to get it back? I’d rather have hot lava poured down my throat and swallow than lose a whole day of work. Or five as the case might be. Imagine all these poor innocent people trekking their computers to a store to get it fixed and leaving it there and not being able to work… when with a Dell PC for example you can actually just give them a ring and a guy shows up in a van the next day and completely fixes your computer for you no matter what’s wrong with it. That’s what life in the 21st century SHOLD look like. I will trade all the bells and whistles and cool looking interfaces in the world ala Apple for the ability to KEEP WORKING on my computer and not have to drag my ass off to some store because Apple hasn’t managed to master the art of customer support.

A good friend of mine has a “power” problem with her Apple notebook right now. The Apple geeks can’t fix it without her spending hundreds of dollars. And now they are telling her she will need a whole new motherboard or something crazy. So she’s resigned to dealing with it or buying a whole new laptop. So the machine keeps crashing all the time or just shutting down right in the middle of her work and she loses it all… I feel bad for her – what can one even say to console someone in this predicament?… I had a similar issue last year and a Dell technician came out to my apartment and had the entire power section of the motherboard replaced before I was even out of my bathrobe. For free. I offered him a bagel and a cup of Joe to go. The least I could do.

We live in a hard-working multi-tasking gone-mobile world and we need our computers 24/7. Not just when Apple can get around to fixing them. A room full of so-called “Apple Geniuses” is absolutely no use if one cannot get access to them without wasting their whole day. That means COME TO US. Period. Or go back to watching your Star Trek reruns and shut the fuck up about offering good customer service.

Poor little Boo Boo Kitty, another friend of mine, made the switch to an Apple and the first day she was so excited by “how cool” it looked. But in order to actually use the machine, she was at the Apple Store on Fifth avenue in NYC everyday for months… she finally gave up and went back to a turbo-charged Dual Processer Quad-Screen PC that covers half her wall and has been happy ever since. Primarily for two reasons: one, because there was just too much that the Apple couldn’t do that she was already used to. Like run Outlook effectively as a power-user. And two, the “Geniuses” at the Apple Store couldn’t figure out how to help her. So they regretfully but gladly refunded her just so they could get rid of her.

Some of us, in fact most highly effective ambitious ass-kickers, work live and breathe out of a little something called Microsoft Outlook. Not that we think it’s the shit. (Because it’s not. There are plenty of fixes they need to make in Outlook! And often times we the users seem to know more about running the app than the technicians in India you get on the phone…) It’s just that Outlook happens to be the best out there right now. And Apple has so many known glitches with being able to run Outlook properly that it’s only a matter of time before someone either goes postal in some Apple store or they simply switch back if they are accustomed to using Outlook to manage their busy schedules.

I would be lost without my Palm. I’m out of town more than in town and even when in town I would have no clue what the day expected me to do without Outlook running on my Treo. Nor would I be able to have access to an ever growing database of thousands of contacts and respective files associated with those contacts. One day I will retire to a big ranch out west… my heart longs for the day when I will no longer live out of a little metal electric device in my hand all the time…. but that day has not yet arrived. So I live in and out of something called Outlook run on a Palm handheld.

(Apple will try to get you to switch to Entourage to replace Outlook, but google that nightmare app and you’ll see that people hate it so much that it’s a wonder that they still bother to make it.)

Which brings us back to the iPhone and handhelds in general. Google the phrase “Apple iPhone does not sync with Outlook” and you’ll get the picture fast enough. The iPhone is just not quite setup well enough yet to truly sync with Outlook seamlessly. And without being able to sync your handheld with your computer you’re screwed. You CAN JUST use your handheld as your main scheduling and database tool… as many do… but what if you have a major database task that requires a few hours of work? Are you going to do all of that on your iPhone? No. You’re going to do that on your computer and then want to sync your phone to it. And what about scheduling? What if you have ten twenty thirty forty scheduled events, to dos, appointments, repeated events, etc each week? Are you going to do all that scheduling on your little iPhone? Nope. You’re going to want to do it on your computer OR your handheld — and do it interchangeably — and then sync it to your handheld and have it all seamlessly appear there. With NO duplication (that takes a smart program – Palm has it mastered. Apple doesn’t.)

What if you want to take a look at someone’s file you’ve been working on for a week while you’re on the phone with them up on some mountain top? Did you do all that on your handheld? Hell no you didn’t. You did it on your computer. A lot of typing, a lot of copying and pasting, and note-taking while on the phone perhaps etc… and you did all of this on your computer. And THEN you sync it to your handheld device and voila their entire file is right there next to their name on your phone while you’re standing on some beautiful mountain. Go ahead, email it to them wirelessly from that same handheld from 4000 miles away so they can review it and get back to you while you climb another peak. It’s possible. But without Outlook none of that is possible. Not seamlessly at least. Not yet…

And lets not forget the most important issue. BACK THAT SHIT UP. In other words, if you’re doing all your scheduling, event planning, database management, etc on your phone only and you lose it on said mountaintop, then what? You didn’t sync to Outlook on your computer because you own an iPhone. So you lose it all… “oh well” seems to be the answer I hear from most people after they’ve gone bald from puling all their hair out.

Personally I hope it is sooner than later that the iPhone either becomes as functional for business users or Palm gets as kick ass and cool as the iphone. I love the look of the iPhone. Though I can’t tell you how many people abhor that weak excuse of a touchscreen thing they call a qwerty keyboard. That’s going to have to change too. Touchscreen qwerty keyboards just don’t do the trick if you text and type all day on your handheld. Unless you are a dwarf and have really small fingers. I hear dwarfs love typing on the iPhone. They’re the only ones though, so far.

Bottom line, if you sit behind a desk all day and primarily work from a computer, you can probably do just fine with an iPhone when you’re occasionally out on the town. It looks cool. It’s a fine phone, plays mp3s like an iPod, even offers you maps, the internet, email, texting, photos, and video. But if you’re running all over the world and need to be reminded what your next appointment is and don’t want a giant laptop hanging on your back, then Palm or Crackberry is still the way to go. For better or worse. Functionality my friends is still the key. One day Apple will get that.

Perhaps all of this is for naught and the iPhone will one day come together and be the baddass kick-butt device that newbies, techies, business people, and power-users all collectively dream of… I hope so.

Or perhaps the new Palm Pre will take a bite out of the iPhone so they aren’t so nauseatingly ubiquitous. See some forum posts below from YouTube regarding the iPhone versus the Palm Pre. Interesting stuff….

otterboxiphone (10 hours ago) Show Hide

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Hmm, I love my iphone and itouch but they are not simple to use. It’s good for tons of stuffs except for business-related activities (calendar, to do,…). Palm is better from this standpoint, I have to admit.

TOTALLY agree! iPhone is cool. that’s for sure. But for business apps –real life stuff — PALM is still the way to go. Too bad because i would love to have all the practical application of PALM with the cool features of iPhone in ONE PHONE!!!! Why can’t ONE company comprehend this?

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i have an iphone and i LOVE it. but im happy for plam. FINALLY i phone to keep up!!! or even beat the iphone. the reason im happy because now apple will have to create the next iphone to be better than the pre. so…the next iphone will be a great upgrade and then palm will create something better. Consumers win!

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Look at it this way, if Apples patent is certified Palm can simply change the name pinch/zoom to squeeze, Although I am not sure what Palm calls theirs. That is how narrow Apples claim is, that is one example. Basically Apple was not given a patent on multi-touch, they were give a very narrow patent on a certain swipe not swiping and zooming in general.

zsmorr92 (17 hours ago) Show Hide

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I did see that, Palm could literally do tiny little tweaks to the Pre and avoid most of Apple’s arguments. Apple however cannot escape palm’s. I’m gunna buy some palm stock in hopes that Palm does win this.

p3t3b2 (17 hours ago) Show Hide

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Go over to engadgetDOTCOM and read their in-depth analysis, Apple has been overstating what their patent(s) actually cover. Upon further review of the engadget article it is clear that Apples multi-touch claim is very narrow and that Apple infringed on many of Palms patents with the iphone. IF Apple decides (no indication yet only speculation) to press forward with a lawsuit they have much more to lose.

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Its not over yet my friend, iphone infringes on many of palm’s patents as well, this will be a war of epic proportions lol. Only one problem being that palm is so close to extinction that apple MIGHT be able to drive them to the grave… I wish palm luck, I too will be buying this phone.

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omg i must buy this phone ! xD

Wankerlito (1 day ago) Show Hide

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it’s official folks the patent has been awarded as of January 26 2009 and wow I’m really amaze how palm dared to copy most of the features the iphone has. Hahahaha. So what will happen now?

Stealing Music

July 21, 2005

July 21st, 2005
On the phone with itunes today about how one great they are and have been for us and two how awful they are at the same time because its so easy for people to just hand each other a stack of cds and have their friends burn them into their itunes system on their hard drives. We talked for about an hour about it. they tried to get me to see how much better it is now than a few years ago when people were just downloading for free. And I see that. but I also see how easy it is to grab your friends cds and burn them into your system. shit I’m DOING IT!!! and lately I’ve really been questioning it. I mean, after all, we are still stealing. Say what you will, but we are still stealing music. its one thing to borrow your friends CD for a few days for a free listen. but its another thing to take it forever into your hard drive… man but its just so fucking easy… how can we stop it? should we stop it? can I as a music lover stop myself even? its true that if I get the new lcd sound system from polar bear, and I like it, that I will go buy the rest of their back catalogue, BUT I’m still getting that new one for free and putting it into my ipod. Interesting. Perhaps one day we will find a way to stop it. get the control out of the hands of the consumer and back into the control of the people who actually make the music, the artists and labels who are spending the time energy and money on making the product. in no other industry is their such potential for such rampant stealing of product. imagine for a moment going into a grocery store and being able to just fill your basket with food and walk out of there without paying all because we have found a way technologically to do so without getting caught. So we justify it to ourselves because after all we aren’t getting caught or getting into trouble… this is what’s happening in music right. or imagine sneaking into a movie theatre to see the newest craze just because you can. most people wouldn’t because quite frankly they’d feel like losers. What’s ten bucks for a movie? So what is the difference with music? well, I don’t know. I’m asking myself the same questions. Because I’m just as guilty of it still and I make my own living from selling music. so why would I partake? Why? because I can get away with it. Crazy.

I am still knee deep into this process I have chanced upon whereby I am searching for past transgressions, misconduct, wrong-doings and healing them one by one….

Looks something like this. [this is from a letter to rockaway I sent him today to help him deal with a recent problem/conflict he is having with a guitar player in town]

Bro, breathe deep and check this out. And when you feel in a secure place, ask yourself what is your responsibility in this….. take a piece of paper and gently and lovingly write down each different incidence of misconduct or transgression that you feel like you committed against Tony; and then other people regarding talking behind their back (since this is what you are upset about him doing to you)…. write down what you did, write down why you did it (to get attention or approval etc…. to feel better than others… to feel cool in the moment), and then let that all go. acknowledge it, feel sorry for it, see what and why you did it, see how it affects your life, make amends if you feel you can or want to, and then let it go.. this doesn’t make Tony right in the situation, but it allows you to clean up your part in it. it allows you to be clear. it allows you to free up more of your own attention/creating energy. And usually it helps you see the bigger picture of why you would create something like this happening in your life. after this, then lets see how you feel about Tony. And then lets see how he is showing up in your world…. o.k.? good luck and may the force be with you. love, Fishy

So yes this is what I am doing STILL. day after day I spend a few hours late at night doing it. things pop up in my mind. Based on the integrity rundown from Avatar basically. One of The questions is “list any current conflicts you are in.” so I am through with present time and now I am working on my high school and junior high school years. I look for anyone that has a charge for me. anyone that my attention sticks on. even though this is years and years ago, you will find that there are still plenty of people that if you feel into it have a charge for you, that when you think about them you feel bothered for some reason. They can be people that you know you transgressed against in some way and just never bothered to look into it or acknowledge it, or they can be people that you feel have hurt you in some way. usually if you look deep enough you will find some point where you did something to them OR some point when you did a similar thing to someone else. sometimes they are small things. like ‘I moved the ouiji board piece and pretended that it was moving by itself with my friend David and all these years I have felt like a liar….’ you cannot believe the sense of freedom and release and relief you feel from this! its fucking mind-blowing. We hang onto this stuff in our consciousness forever it seems and then we act and react based on how we feel about these things but very subconsciously… we don’t even know this stuff is still there….

Sometime they can be big things that we just repressed. Things we don’t want to look at. things we are still justifying. Things we are still trying to find a way in our mind of not remembering or rationalizing why we did it. Picking on your younger brother or sister, or making fun of some other kid in school to try to make yourself feel cool. or man I’m not going to list anything big here but I have found tons of little things from high school and junior school that I am not too proud of…. things that have been there all along and that I have been living through… it has helped so much free up my attention and energy. I feel so much more relaxed, softer, more myself, less on guard, more able to look people in the eye and be myself. little by little everyday I am letting it go and becoming more happy to be me. it feels like enlightenment. It feels amazing. great stuff.

I spoke with little Havana today and she asked how my love life was doing. I told her I was sort of seeing this older woman, and last night I had this opportunity to be with an even older woman. I Googled her today and found out she was about 60 or 65. She was aghast. ‘What?! what are you doing Fishy?!’ ‘you know, I just want the experience. Its so crazy. but c’mon I want the experience of that. how awesome that is!’ and she asks me ‘whatever happened to your fetish girls?’ ‘oh I’m over that phase now. I’m into the older women now.’ she tells me “They should make a planet out of you Fishy. you are your own planet.” Use that for a song or album title. they should make a planet out of you. hey, can I use that? sure, feel free.

Last screening: the classic, maltese falcon. In my ongoing discovery of Humphrey Bogart. This is one of his most famous classics. He plays Sam spade, the derelict dick with a pension for fast talking people out of cash whenever he sees an opportunity or slugging people just because they did that a lot back then. all these old movies, guys just hit each other out of the blue all the time. A small picture, like all the old movies, but no less dramatic because of that. you can’t believe at the end that he turns the girl in. its great. thoughts: movies are much bigger now, but not necessarily better. Back then the characters had a sense of realness and drama that a lot of times they don’t seem to possess these days, though I cannot say why. could it be that we are around now? so we see the bullshit media hype behind the stars all the time like brad pitt etc? so we just don’t respect them as much? Whereas with Bogart we weren’t around back then so he has become a sort of icon to us because we only see his movies and not the behind the scenes stuff??? I’m not sure yet. but there is such an intensity to him onscreen. You really believe him in his roles. I’m a fan now. maybe that’s just what made Bogart Bogart so to speak.

Current spin: LCD sound system, lcd sound system. creative. Addictive. Can’t stop listening to it. reminds of young David Byrne before he got serious. There is a song called losing my edge that everyone must hear at least once.

Also, the BOOKS. This is a great project. Amazing experimental music. get it.

Also, serge gainsbourg, comic strip. My oh my those French were cheesy. You have to hear this stuff to believe it. it is major cheese. I’m not saying its bad. But its everything that sixties French music was… just over the top tongue in cheek campy kitschy stuff… girl back ground singers and all… really silly.

Last screening: DIG. This is the best. It’s about the bands Brian Jones town massacre and dandy warhols. This is the best rockumentary I have ever seen. it’s a must see!!!!! Really good. critics and observers were right about anton. He deserved the bad rap. He comes off like an asshole and an idiot. his band seem cool. but their music doesn’t sound very good. the dandies on the other hand made some really great music in their time. I don’t see how Courtney was influenced by anton at all… or intimidated by him. he was better, wittier, classier. Maybe he was just influenced by his personality…. that whole art for arts sake thing… which can be a potent aphrodisiac, but in that case one often forgets to actually pay attention to the product or output itself. Such was the case with Andy Warhol. Where his asthetic influenced generations but his art (what art?) just never lives up the hype. But his cult of personality was something to behold and to be reckoned with.

by the way: this is really cool: fucking humans. We are cool.

(In Case of Emergency)

Following the disaster in London… The Ambulance Service has launched a national “In Case of Emergency ICE)” campaign. The idea is that you store the word “ICE” in your cell phone address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be contacted “In Case of Emergency”.

In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to quickly look at your mobile phone and find out who your first contact should be and be able to contact them.

It’s so simple that everyone can do it. Please do. Email this to everybody in your address book, it won’t take too many “forwards” before everybody will know about this, and it will become an international practice. For more than one contact name use: ICE1, ICE2, ICE3, etc. It really could help the emergency services in doing their job.

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November 18, 2004

Last screening: Harold and Maude. Heard a lot about this movie. Didn’t find it too good myself. More of a play in the background kind of thing for me honestly. Couldn’t sit through it. although it did entice me to download this song from iTunes by the Cat, if you want to sing out, sing out. great little ditty. The cat’s music will endure.

TheTranscendenceDiaries

Tag: itunes

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