Tag Archives: corporations - Page 4

Band Changes, Brand Changes

Posted by on June 24, 2015 No comments

To expand a bit on a former post where I was noticing that when a musician or band changes recording labels, their sound changes, sometimes dramatically.  I wanted to make up a list of cases where I find this to be true.

Band Album>Album Label>Label
Asia Astra>Aqua Geffen>IRS
Belinda Carlisle Live Your Life Be Free>Real MCA>Virgin
Boston Don’t Look Back>Third Stage Epic>MCA
Boston Walk On>Corporate America MCA>Artemis
Bruce Dickenson Pretty much Any>Any Mercury>Castle>CMC>Sanctuary
Emerson/Lake/Palmer Love Beach>Black Moon Atlantic>Victory
Kansas Monolith>Audio-Visions Kirshner>Epic
Kansas Drastic Measures>Power Epic>MCA
Kansas Spirit of Things>Freaks of Nature MCA>Intersound
Rancid Life Won’t Wait>Rancid (2000) Epitaph>Hellcat
Rush Hold Your Fire>Presto Mercury>Atlantic
They Might Be Giants Factory Showroom>Mink Car Elektra>Restless
XTC Nonsuch>Apple Venus V1 Geffen/Virgin>TVT
Steve Morse Coast to Coast>Structural Damage MCA>High Street
Genesis Selling England>Trick of the Tail Virgin>ATCO/Atlantic
Dream Theater Most Any>Any ATCO>EastWest>Elektra>Atlantic>Roadrunner

Contrast that with some other artists that never changed labels and their sound/quality remained consistent:

Billy Joel: CBS/Columbia
David Lee Roth: Warner Bros (although his sound changed between Skyscraper and A Little Ain’t Enough)
Heart: Capitol
Ozzy Osborne: Jet/Epic
Queen: Hollywood Records

Sometimes the changes coincided with personnel changes, which could make sense.  Sometimes, it was a turning point in the band’s popularity.

The Music Biz

Posted by on June 23, 2015 No comments

The last few days, I’ve been adding additional metadata from my CDs into my ripped files so I can identify them better when logging them in Discogs.  As I was going through each of my CDs, I was logging the record label, the barcode and the catalog number.  As I was doing this, I had a few thoughts.

The first thought I had was noticing that when an artist or band would change record labels, their defining sound would usually radically change, and usually for the worse.  Most cases where this happened would be leaving a major label like Geffen and going to a tiny label like Ray’s Music Records.  There are some cases where an artist would change from a megalabel to a boutique label, like from EMI to Relativity or Magna Carta and although their sound would change, it would still be recognizable.

This got me thinking about how much influence a label has over an album.  Maybe it’s because the larger labels have a stable of high-quality producers that mold the artist’s sound with a heavier hand?  When the band leaves, they either self-produce or are provided a producer from their new label that has a different concept, so maybe that is the reason for the drastic change?

So maybe there is a distinct advantage to being signed on a big label, despite the massive disadvantages that go along with it.  And that was my second thought.  When I look up an album on Discogs and I see there are over 100 different releases of it, I get angry.  I can understand that there may be reasons for an album to be released on different labels in different countries.  I also can understand if a label gets bought out by a different one.  But when I see the album sold by multiple companies, that irks me.  That comes down to who owns the rights to the music.

One time, I picked up a book written by a musician about her story and experiences as an artist.  I didn’t read much of it, but I happened on a passage saying that if a contract ever uses the phrase “in perpetuity” to run away and don’t look back.  The meaning of that term is that the record label owns your work forever.  They can do whatever they want with it: sell it off, license it (whore it out to multiple people), or keep it locked away in spite of huge demand.  Whatever they want.  And that’s what really angers me about the music industry – the idea that the artists and their work belong to them.

It’s not an arrangement like, “You make your music, we’ll help sell it and we’ll take a percentage of the sales for doing that for you.”  It’s more like, “You make music for us, we’ll sell it and give you a percentage of the sales for your efforts.”  And for some long-running acts, you see this terrible situation where they’ve been released from their contract on one label, moved on to another, and the original label starts rehashing all their old songs into different compilations and collector’s editions.  That ends up cheapening the artist’s  image.  I’ve seen artists that have 10 albums and 40 compilations.  How fair is that to the artist?

Gonna Be One Of Them Old People

Posted by on March 23, 2015 No comments

… with the leased telephone.

Verizon nags me non-stop about upgrading my Internet service so I can get faster speeds and a new router.  The thing is, I know why they want this.  They need to move on to a new standard for routers and until everyone switches, they’re pretty much stuck.

There’s an easy way to resolve it though.  Just offer me a hardware trade.  You want to get rid of the old router, so just give me a new router and we’ll call it even.  I have little need for more speed.  I got 60/60 in a speed test just now, but for $10 more a month, I can get 75/75.  Sorry, V, you gotta try harder than that.  I figure they’ll make the offer eventually.

I have mixed emotions about Verizon.  FIOS has been rock-solid and a dream come true.  I can’t complain about my bill either.  The first time, the contract was under my ex wife’s name for 2 years, then I changed it to my name and got another new user bonus for another 2-yr contract.  Then I worried about losing that special pricing in the next contract renewal.  You wouldn’t believe it.  My price went down.  Not a lot, maybe $5, but still.  Who ever heard of a utility bill going down?

No, my big beef with Verizon is their bundling.  I don’t watch TV, I don’t need a land line.  I have (and rent) one base-model cable box because I think I have to.  Nope, I just need Internet, but it’s more expensive to not get the 3-way bundle. Still, how can I complain when my rate is dropping?

The Contributors and The Creators

Posted by on December 3, 2014 No comments

Well, it’s been a year of lessons for me.  As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, I am on the board of a non-profit organization.  And after a little over a year of operations, that organization is shutting down.  The experience that I got out of it has changed a lot of how I view the world, especially towards the end.  The net take-away for me is that being a contributor to society doesn’t really have any payoff, either monetarily or emotionally.

Let’s look at the beginning.  When you start a business with a group of people, you might all be excited that you’re all building something great.  Don’t believe it.  Everyone has their motives for the creation of the entity and one or more people involved will only happy to be receiving the benefits of the existence of said entity.  The assistance you get from them will be minimal at best.

As time goes on, because of the lack of contribution, you will find yourself picking up the slack, through donations of time and money.  You will convince yourself that the business just needs to get over the hump and it can become self-sustaining.  As the excitement wears off for the others, you are left more or less alone.  Don’t believe in any “build it and they will come” dreams.  You’re going to have to drive people to your cause, and probably will have to do it alone.

Then, as you’ve put so much time and effort into your creation, and it actually seems like it might be stabilizing, you might be fortunate enough to be the recipient of an attack.  That attack could be in any form, whether financial, betrayal of a corporate officer, character defamation, or something even worse.  Maybe you can survive it.  Maybe your supporters rally to your cause and get you through it.  But, maybe, it just changes your entire perception of why you built the business in the first place.  Is it worth playing in the same playground as the bullies and the attackers?

And then, as time and negativity set in, there is no one left that believes in the cause.  The ones that were originally in it for themselves have already left.  If you’re lucky enough to have fresh members who you hope would feed the excitement for the cause, they may falter and leave.  What do you have left?  Start from scratch again with all the time and money investment that goes along with it?

The ideal life of a non-profit is like crowdsurfing at a concert.  The original people holding the surfer can’t keep doing it forever.  It needs to be passed on.  But when there’s no one available to pass on to, there can only be a collapse.

But anyway, back to the the title.  People may think being a creator is easy, since you just have to think the idea, get it started and off it runs.  That’s not always how it works.  Think of a for-profit business.  Sure you can run that until it explodes in a torrent of money or disaster.  But when you create a non-profit, you are not an owner.  There are NO owners.  You are a creator and a perpetual contributor until someone chooses to relieve you.  That time may never come.

We Believe

Posted by on August 16, 2014 No comments

Today I saw a funny video on a forum.  I thought to myself, “this is going to explode”, so I went to YouTube to see what the play count was.  400k.  Not bad.  I’ll have to check it later.  I noticed something really peculiar in the video description:

“For licensing/usage please contact: licensing@jukinmedia.com”

Huh?  This was supposed to be someone’s funny personal video.  Did this person have the foresight to actually license their personal video?

I visit the website and this statement jumps out at me:

WE BELIEVE CONTENT CREATORS SHOULD BE REWARDED FOR THEIR WORK.

What the hell?  Further:

JukinVideo.com has the world’s largest selection of short-form, viral video content available for licensing.

Ok.  I am feeling totally ripped off now for even watching that and considering sharing it.  “Viral video content” – I don’t even know how to describe this.  I was under the impression that “viral” was something that happened to a video, not something that was premeditated.  How naive I am.

But let’s jump back to that first statement.  I do believe that people who become viral sensations are rewarded in some way for their work.  They do get lots of media attention, then it’s up to them to parlay that into something of lasting monetary value.  This site is not needed.

This site’s statement should read: “WE BELIEVE WE DESERVE A CUT OF YOUR SUCCESS.”  Because that’s what they’re doing, injecting themselves between your work and the world, buffered by a team of legal experts that will “protect your (they really mean their) content rights.”  This is a company that is intent on taking everything wrong with the entertainment industry and applying it to the free internet.

I am curious how this works, because they do have examples of honestly homemade videos.  Do they seek out funny videos, then approach the owner and say, “Let us license your video and we’ll pay you a percentage of the licensing fees we get. Why not, you won’t make anything on your video otherwise.”  But is that true?  If this company owns the right to that video and it goes viral, what are your rights for show appearances, travel and reimbursements?  Do they own you?  I know enough about the entertainment industry to know you are not the one who will profit from this deal. 

You can be assured that the rights will be in perpetuity, which means they can resell your video over and over forever, to TV shows, DVD collections, or even Time-Life greatest hits.  The video isn’t yours anymore.  Depending on how the contract is written, you may not see any “royalties” after a certain period.

I am disgusted.

Heads In The Cloud

Posted by on May 15, 2014 1 comment

Ok, I’m going to call it now.  I don’t know when it will happen, but I’m becoming convinced it will.  I might have mentioned this idea in a previous entry, but I’m making this post stand-alone.

Do you have data in “the cloud”?  The motherfucking “cloud”?  The stupid term for Internet storage?  The one where some idiot manager looked at the Visio diagram for wide area networks, represented by… a cloud, and called it “the cloud” and it stuck?

Anyway.  You probably do.  Your smartphone saves backup data to “the MF’n cloud.”  You probably have Google Drive or OneDrive or DropBox or one of the many others.  You may actually have online backups through Carbonite or its competitors.  Surely you understand you are trusting these companies to stay in business as long as they have your stuff.

But, you’re not alone.  Businesses are being strongly pitched to store their stuff in “the MF’n cloud”.  Not only that, some businesses completely exist in this etheric realm – no tangible assets at all.  Today, Microsoft sent me an email stating they had developed a utility to move your TFS projects from your local machines to “Visual Studio Online” – a goddamn cloud for code.  (TFS is a tool for storing and keeping track of source code.)

Now hold on one minute here.  Microsoft wants me to take all my business’s code, the stuff that RUNS my business, and put it on their servers.  Oh, I’m not worried about security.  Seriously, I’m not.  There is one scenario I predict is going to happen, and it may happen to any one of these companies that deal in virtual, rented storage.

On that fateful day, there will be a news story about how CloudCo has defaulted on a financial obligation.  Then there is a flurry of more “investigative” news stories as people realize, “Oh shit, they’ve been insolvent for a really long time, although the executives have made tons of the money and are saying they had none of the idea this was happening.  How could we be such stupid Americans?  Is YouTube still up?”  No, this isn’t like the banks.  This is different. 

Banks may have your money, but you can replace that with other money, especially with money you get from FDIC guarantees.  Cloud companies have your data.  Your pictures, your documents, your emails, your contacts, your digital life.  There’s no FDIC guarantee on that.  It cannot be replaced.  Do you see the difference here?

Ok, back to that day.  CloudCo, says, “Sorry for your bad fortune, we’re going to have to close up.”  Government officials will immediately say “My pictures!” and will create something that sounds impressive, like injunction, that effectively says, “we’ll make people provide CloudCo service for free until everyone can get all their data off their servers.”  Problem is, CloudCo worked very hard to get a lot of data.  Too much data to move.  Too much data for a company to completely revamp its processes to use another provider.  So much data that CloudCo became “too big to fail”.  Oh wait, this is just like the banks.  It’s actually more insidious. 

I’m saying it’s going to happen.  I have no idea when or to whom it will happen, but it’s gonna happen.  And if you really wanna get in on this, you can do it yourself.  Start a cloud company.  It will be like minting money.  And when it all falls apart, you won’t even see a day in jail.  I can promise that, because America loves entrepreneurs.  Especially ones that have a plan, even if that plan is to take the money and run.

Consultancy

Posted by on March 27, 2014 No comments

The recent Dilbert strips have got me thinking abut the concept of consulting.  I think it’s a pretty recent thing, probably since the 90’s?  At least in the tech industry, I think it is.  Maybe it’s always been around for other fields.

Consulting, as the comic depicts, is a lifestyle.  It’s at odds with holding a regular job and has different benefits and drawbacks to working in that capacity.  Personally, I see many more drawbacks, and not just for the consultant.  The consultant’s issues are pretty easy to identify.  I’m just concerned that some things have been allowed to become “the standard” because they’ve been going on so long.

In the first place, businesses have become accepting that they don’t need to retain the talent to have the most advanced “stuff”. (Stuff is an ambiguous term for anything: a process, a piece of hardware or software, a design methodology.)  They think that the most advanced stuff just handles itself.  You just need to set it up.  So you can “rent” the expertise instead of “buying” it.  That’s not how stuff works, and it’s painfully obvious when shit goes wrong.  But this is the way it’s done now.

Because of that point, you can make a summary statement that “consultants don’t make solutions, consultants fix problems.”  Database running slow?  Bring in a consultant.  Need to solve a technical hurdle?  Consultant.  Need to adopt an entire new accounting system?  Consultants!  But consultants leave, and when they do, it’s back on you.  Yeah, it’s great to be on vacation, but you need to come back to work eventually.  So, what if the problem happens again? 

And what makes a consultant so amazing, so important?  Because they’ve helped dozens of other companies with the same problem?  That’s a great breadth of knowledge.  Does it mean the same as a great depth of knowledge?  No.  Can a consultant get a great depth of knowledge?  Not likely, because they are constantly jumping from one flower to the next, pollenating fixes here and there.

Yeah, I’m sure there are good consultants out there.  Ones who will teach and share knowledge while they work; ones that will dig deeper and solve the root cause instead of addressing the symptoms.  But that also depends on what the business is willing to pay for.

I guess it comes back to my first point.  The fact that business (and life as a whole) is so sped up, there is no time (and money) to do things the right way and no time to learn something in its entirety before it is obsolete.  This, along with the idea that there is always something better, which is probably true, but that it is incompatible with older versions, which is simply bad, is leading us into a state of perpetual rebuilding, so that there is never time to actually measure the success we have attained.

Executive Non-Profits

Posted by on March 7, 2014 No comments

I recently found an article or post saying that the Firefox browser was considering putting ads into its “new tab” page.  Now to read the announcement, you’d think it was a great thing for the user, because when you install a new browser and run it for the first time, clearly you do not know what to do and where to go.  Welcome to 1990.

That lunacy is not the reason I felt compelled to write.  It’s been out of my thoughts for a long time that the Mozilla Foundation, who creates Firefox, is a very large non-profit organization.  It was just kind of in my thoughts that the Firefox team was a very large group of programmers, possibly headed up by some architects.  I envisioned a bunch of great minds working together for a noble cause.  That’s not really how it is.

It’s a company.  It’s a big company.  And there are a lot of people who get paid from this company.  I’ve talked before about how large non-profits are paying people with a lot of other people’s money.  And these people essentially have a perpetual conflict of interest.  Non-profits are typically created to solve a problem.  What happens when you win?  The non-profit isn’t needed anymore.  You’ve put yourself out of a job.

So there’s that part of it, that you’re getting paid to fight a war, but you don’t really want the war to end.  But then there’s the other part, which is, if you’re joining a non-profit, you should believe in the cause, right?  And your experience can further that cause, right?  But what if you have experience, but not the passion?  Then, money talks.

And money seems to be talking pretty well at Mozilla.  The directors of the foundation are doing ok.  $150k+ for a couple of them.  That’s actually pretty much in line with executive pay.  The others?  I mean only three others?  $500k+ each.  That’s kind of ill-proportioned, maybe.  For a non-profit, remember.  This is about a cause.  a cause you can’t begin to put a price on – keeping the Internet free.  I think these three are less about the cause and more about the salary.

Blah, blah, blah.  Big company, big salaries.  But here’s where it ties in with the article I read.  Mozilla hired a new person, brought in at the Vice President level, to use his skill to bring in more money for the organization.  The salary is unknown, but $100k+ is safe to guess.  His idea?  Advertising, under the guise of helping new users.  His job is to create the money to pay himself and all the other executives, because cost-cutting would be backwards.

The revenue for 2012 was in the range of 9 million.  The total salaries were 4 million.  The executive compensation was 2 million.  Nearly a quarter of revenue.  Nearly half of all salaries.

Let me sum this up.  Mozilla is about keeping the Internet free, so that it can’t be manipulated by corporations (never mind the recent failure of net neutrality).  Their solution to losing donation revenue given to them by corporations – primarily Google – is to use advertising by corporations, who will direct/inform/influence users to use the internet that best benefits them.  Anything wrong with that model?

What A Deal

Posted by on February 25, 2014 No comments

Boy, does this piss me off.  Phone/Cable/ISP companies have a pretty bad reputation for ripping people off when they’re not looking.  I was actually kind of pleased with my Verizon FIOS contract, even though somehow the price kept climbing.

So recently, I looked up when my contract was up, so I could drop down to just Internet.  First off, I couldn’t find where to just get Internet.  Everything was a bundle.  But then, as I looked at the bundles, this “deal” hit me:

capture

Total Monthly Price: $115.  That’s the total.  FOR THE FIRST MONTH ONLY.  How does one month of a 2-year contract equate to a total of anything?  How can they even get away with something like this?  I guess they can because they do divulge the true costs right below.  But still!  Assholes!

And who would want to do customer service for a company like that?  Can you imagine how many calls they get in month 2 and later?  “But you agreed to it, sir.  It is right there under the Total Monthly Price.”  “Yes, have a nice day.  Thank you for choosing Verizon.”

Thought Followers

Posted by on May 6, 2013 No comments

I got an email from LinkedIn with a title that struck a nerve with me: “Don’t miss out on updates from thought leaders” and it went on to list a bunch of successful businesspeople and a link at the bottom that said: “See more thought leaders".  This newly-coined term, “thought leader” infuriates me.  What does that title mean?  Who designates these people?  Why should we even care?

The title “thought leader” can be taken a couple different ways.  The way that initially perceived it was condescending and elitist, as in “you can’t even think at the level of these people.  You need to listen to them.”  Screw that.  Like I want anything to have to do with Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington.  You could also take the term to mean that these people have ideas that shape the entirety of industry, finance, and technology.  That’s a bunch of crap, too.  Everyone has ideas.  These people are just in a much better position to execute them because of their money, power and influence.  I just did a search on “thought leader” and discovered this is a “thing", going back to at least 2010.  Another Dilbert-world industry buzzterm so we can discover that this is what we must aspire to and buy books and seminars.

From a website: “To be a thought leader, you need to immerse yourself in your professional domain and search for new things to say that add value to your organization’s objectives.”  Search for new things to say…  All you have to do is say shit.  Sorry, this is not sufficient.  It seems to me that you can’t get anything done by having a bunch of “thought leaders” in a conference room coming up with new things to say.  Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of awesome people keeping their mouths shut and getting things done.

Here’s the other issue with this idea.  In our polarized, black-and-white world we live in today, you are a leader or you are a follower.  If you’re not a thought leader, all you are is following someone else.  And that’s exactly what LinkedIn is suggesting I do.  I need to follow these “leaders”.  I need to do what they say, because my thoughts are not at their level.  Obviously, because I’m not a multi-billionaire.  You know what the real thought leaders say (and have said in the past)? “Don’t listen to me.  Think for yourself.”