Zane Safrit

Happy Birthday Bob

Bob's 70 years young this week. 70 years young. Forever young.

Happy Birthday, Bob.

2 words. Happy Birthday. They are woefully inadequate. 

You know it's not so much that you wrote great songs.

And, it's not so much that you wrote a lot of great songs and wrote them over, what, a period of 50 years now?

Nor is it that your songs captured the spirit of the times in melodies and words only you could create and share.

Nor is it that you put all those songs and all your passion and love and creativity into your performances over the years individually, with The Band in Before The Flood tour, with the Rolling Thunder Revue, with Charlie Sexton, with Willie Nelson and your Minor League Baseball tour

What made you great, what banded us together, for all these years was how your songs became part of the collaborations we call 'our life'. I don't know how you did it. But you created works of art we were able to take (listen, sing to, modify, try to copy, make integral parts of our road trips and journeys and moments good and bad) and make our own. Your music spoke what we could not until we heard your music. And then we said yeah, that's it. That's what I'm trying to say, that's what I'm feeling, that's me. Your song is my life. And whatever that song was, for me most often these days it's Idiot Wind and your set on the Concert for Bangladesh, we owned it.

Maybe, that's why you're reluctant to give interviews. Or the one's you do give, like with CBS a few years ago are so....bang on, funny, insightful, true...you. Thank you.

Happy Birthday, Bob. Thanks for the memories, the tunes and giving us material to collaborate in creating what we called 'our life'. Thanks for riding part of the way with us. May you stay Forever Young.

The Music Industry: What if they...

I was out running the other day. And sometimes, oftentimes, a good idea comes along during the run. And here's the idea that came came along at about mile 4 on this run.

Before each run, I load my ipod shuffle. This iPod Shuffle is a little thing, like a great big paper-clip. It holds about 1-200 MP3's, plays them in order or randomly, Fast-forward and reverse and volume controls. Simple. All I need on a run.

I loaded a 5-song set from Trombone Shorty. The set was recorded live by Trombone Shorty at a recent concert, maybe an earlier New Orleans Jazz and Heritage festival appearance. He offered this 5-song set for $5 for those who saw him at his show during the Iowa City Jazz Festival. (Great show. You guys should see him if you can. And you should come out to the Iowa City Jazz Festival )

After his show, I went to his table under a tent at the outdoor show. Paid $5. They gave me a card with a special discount code to use at his site where I could download the 5-song set.

And as I was running, I wondered what if...

Musicians offered a similar code, unique for each of their concerts.

And the code could be obtained for free or a nominal fee. Note: By mile 6 I had run through the different pricing options of free to $1 a tune to a max of $10.00.

The code would give its users the right to download their concert, in its entirety or x number of songs as selected by the artist or...selected by the audience member using that code.

The recording technology today would be accessible, affordable, for the major acts even the mid-major acts. Right? Back in the day, huge truckloads of recording studio equipment would need to be carried along to the show being recorded. But I think that's changed, now. Right?

Each concert is an unique experience. That's why ticket prices are so expensive. You want to reinforce that experiential monopoly. But...you can do it in a way where a band's biggest fans, those who attend the live shows, could memorialize that experience and...share it and promote its possibility via word-of-mouth with their friends. only, in addition to their word-of-mouth, the band would have their words and their songs from their mouths being shared.

Can't get any more authentic than that.

Now, for the business managers think of the market research possibilities. You could judge the power of a concert by how many attendees then used their unique concert codes to download its memory. And if you gave the fan the option to download from a choice of songs performed that night...you could see which ones resonate for those fans. Then you could do more of them in future concerts and less of those awkward, indulgent solos.

Then if you the fans shared their email address as part of the download process now you have a way to strengthen those ties, keep them up to date on new recordings, concerts, some sample MP3s to keep them sharing their stories and your voices and lyrics and notes.

This makes for a much more inclusive, engaged, business model than sending armies of attorneys after your most fervent fans for merely sharing with their friends your voices and musicianship or treating your revenue-sources as pirates.

Here's how the Dave Matthews Band does it: make money in the music business. Granted, not every band can reach these records:

According to Billboard Boxscore, between 2000 and 2009, DMB sold more tickets to its shows than any other band on the planet, moving a staggering 11,230,696 tickets. (No other band sold more than 10 million tickets in the same time period.) In the aughts, DMB grossed more than $500 million from touring alone...

On the other hand, they have what every touring band can have now:

a large catalog of cheap-to-produce live-show discs and DVDs. "Without any marketing or promotion, Live at Red Rocks debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart and was instantly certified platinum," the band itself boasts of a 1998 album. "[It] provided fans with a high quality and reasonably priced alternative to the over-priced, ill produced, and illegal live DMB CDs."

See the threads?

• a large catalog of cheap-to-produce live-show discs and DVDs
• No marketing or promotion for those cheap-to-produce live-show discs and DVDs
• A huge base of adoring fans who pay to see them live.

So, think about it. All we want to do is share the experience, your music, with our friends and neighbors and drive them to be fans and come back to see you again and again. What's wrong with that?

Customer Evangelists: Killing them softly...with your decisions

TechDirt, always a source of great content on copyright and trademark conversations, shares a story of one company's efforts to kill their customer evangelists.

The company: EMI Records.

The customer evangelists: the indie record stores.

EMI decided, it seems, that indie record stores and their customers were no longer worthy (We're They're not worthy...) of EMI's attention. EMI would be happy though if the indie record stores continued to buy EMI's products; just not directly from EMI. Instead, these stores serving fervent, dedicated, evangelistic customers of indie labels, who passionately follow those bands on indie labels, who share their passions with each other via Word-of-mouth as all passionistas do...could buy EMI products, well from anyone but EMI.

Huh.

There are reasons you fire customers. Barry Moltz discussed 6 Reasons to Fire a Customer. Indie record stores do not satisfy even one of those reasons.

For the life of me, I can't understand why you would fire not only a customer, but a group of customers, who voluntarily put your product in front of the most passionate dedicated consumers of your product.

Being the kooky guy I am I would think you would instead invest in that relationship. What about this?

• Build a unique community for your indie music stores and their customers.

• They can share what EMI products (and others) are selling and why.

• They can share where the artists are performing. (Um, EMI, that's free promotions from the most trusted source: fans.)

• They can share stories of what promotional efforts work, what social media tools work.

• Give the site to the community and let them build it. If you build it they will come applies to more than a baseball field. It applies to a community of passionate fans about unique products.

But, hey, I'm a kooky guy. And EMI is a big brand with highly paid executives who just killed their customer evangelists...softly...with their decision.

Here's The Fugees with Roberta Flack performing Killing Me Softly.

Saturday Night's Alright for Fightin' - Elton, Christmas Eve, 1982

Turn it up. It's Saturday. Enjoy.

Talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation

My generation! My generation.

Preparing a post for another site, the phrase my g-g-g-generation began to play in my head. I found this video from The Who's show in Monterey Jazz Festival....back in the day.

Enjoy.

Music Industry to us: "We don't need your stinkin' word-of-mouth"

What's it called when your customers rave about your products and show them to their friends and colleagues and encourage them to experience your products? Well, outside the world of the RIAA and the MPAA, it's called word-of-mouth advertising, testimonials, referral-marketing.

Were this industry to survey us, its customers, with the Ultimate Question Survey, they'd generate off the chart Net Promoter Scores, as long as the question focused on the product, the music, and not the industry itself.

Your passionate fans and high Net Promoter scores are generated despite horrible packaging on your part, customer relations managed by attorneys, a business-model run by accountants, and, at-best, an indifferent relationship with every distributor possible (think FM/AM radio, back when anyone listened to it).

So, high Net Promoter Scores, a customer-base who jumps through new technology hoops on a regular basis to experience and share your products and the results for you are....declining revenues and increasing lawsuits by you against everyone whose lives are touched by your product.

And, as your revenues drop, you become more strident in your efforts to remain control. Now, you're trying to make our ISPs be your enforcers and  close down accounts of consumers who download your products and share them with others.* Wired: MPAA Negotiates with ISPs...

Brilliant. What part of out of touch isn't making sense to you? I'm humming the Stones' Out of Time...as I write.

( I trust you won't sue me for referencing your copyrighted material without permission) 

Ok. Now in all fairness, any other business model with that kind of passionate customer-base would see rising revenues, not declining revenues. 

So, what's different about yours? Answer that, and there's your revenue source.

Your product remains unique. That's what your customers want.

That's what they want to share. Well, they want to share their experiences with your product. (Reminder: that's free advertising for your product. See.  Experiences are shared. Then people want the same experience for themselves. And then they share it with others...)

What's changed is your distribution system has become...commoditized.

Broadcast radio is ...not worth the words to describe it. By itself, I've grown to hate the music I grew up on. Until Clear Channel, etal, bought every station coast-to-coast, fired the DJs and their passion for music and replaced them with canned playlist so hits from 70's-80's and 90's can now be heard non-stop...coast-to-coast, border-to-border...broadcast radio was your distribution system.We loved it. Back in the day. Back so far it's hard to imagine broadcast radio having any meaning other than background noise in businesses.

Retail stores. Other than maybe Virgin record stores...who visits one now? And why? What's unique about them that's worth the travel and parking?

Packaging. My god!Have you tried to open one of your CD's in the past 10 years? You've turned what should be a celebration into an ordeal. By the time I break through your packaging to open the CD I've purchased....I don't want to listen.

Album art once was a cause for buying the album. At the very least, if the music was awful, you'd end up with at least a cool artwork you could discuss and marvel at.

And, if you didn't play guitar then either your playlist or the album covers were your only option with girls...back in the day. Hey.

Now, your attorneys have taken those options away. And they're trying to take away every option to share their experiences with your products. 

So, the kids (your revenue source) have gone around you. They've created their own solutions. And they've created them at their expense, time and money. And they've done that with no help from you.

How cool is that?

You've done nothing to help us purchase your products. You've done nothing to help us with the expense of the technology required to experience your product. But you still insist we can't tell anyone about your product, nor share our experience with said product, even though without our investment in the new technology to be able to experience your product you would have ZERO revenues.

However, the good news is want your products so much, we won't let you interfere...Despite your efforts to interfere with us becoming your volunteer salesforce, despite your efforts to punish us with horrible packaging when we do pony up to buy a CD...we continue to innovate solutions to receive your product.

See where I'm headed? I'm headed to tell you what you should have known years ago:

We, your passionate, are your R&D department. We are your innovators and early-adoptors.  And our expenses are borne by us. They're off-balance sheet, off P&L sheet and that's legal, for you, too!

What if you embraced us, worked WITH us, sought our counsel, listened to us? What if?

Here's a plan:

1. Check Your Assumptions. 

• Ask yourself:  what industry survives when it shuts the door to its customers, and uses armies of attorneys to attack  their remaining customers who still seek out their products.
• • The answer's obvious.
• Ask yourself: do I want to add my industry to this list?
• • Of course, not.
• Ask yourself: what's the definition of insanity?
• • Doing the same thing and expecting different results. 
• Ask yourself: could you claim the insanity defense for your business model?

2. What should you do? 

Do the exact opposite, in your case:

• Embrace your most passionate, dedicated, audience.
• Rather than attack us with attorneys, embrace our passion and dedication and creativity to remaining your customer. 

3. First Seek to Understand.

The first step of embracing a stranger starts with understanding them. Ask your most passionate customers:

• Why are we so compelled to violate laws in order to share their experiences with your product?
• Why are we so dedicated in creating a constant stream of solutions to overcome your attorneys.
• Why have we generated a constant stream of innovations for over a decade to create a distribution system for your products that meet their needs?
• What can you do better?
  • What if you invested 10% of your legal fees towards helping us with purchasing the latest digital technology that allows us to purchase your products? That might win you a few friends and loyal customers.
  • What if you partnered with these device makers to create/offer something unique and wonderful for us? Code that eats CDs in an effort to prevent their copying....doesn't count.

4. Partnerships.

Partner with your currently approved replacement for broadcast radio system. 

Who's that?

Online, Web 2.0, resources like last.fm,  blip.fm and Pandora and streaming internet radio stations.  

(And, rather than help them, you threaten them with increased user fees...)

What if you worked WITH them to increase their traffic? That would result in more exposure for your products. More exposure leads to more sales.

What if you offered us exclusive content like:

• artist interviews
• new song release
• concert playlists
• concert videos
• products
• live streaming concerts
• concerts only available to users of Pandora or Blip or iTunes?

5. Work with your customers' ISPs.

The ISPs are your friend. They are the ones delivering your products to your customers. Become the ISPs friend, not adversary. Make the ISPs look good to their customers (who are yours, also). Ask the ISP if you could speak with that user. You may have to ask 3-4 times. And be sure to explain you want to work WITH that customer you share with the ISP. And include the ISP in the discussion.

6. Summary.

This is the New World Order. You're in the old world order where it was all about me. Now, it's about we. And we includes your new partners: customers and fans, ISPs and web 2.0 resources and technology.

We're moving from me to we. And that's about sharing the process of creating your products and the experiences for all of our new partners: customers, employees, vendors. In your case, MPAA and RIAA, it's about embracing your users as your innovation and R&D department. It's about recognizing which part of your business model has become commoditized and then leaving it. It's about using that volunteer R&D department to generate a steady stream of unique products and relationships with your customers.

Do that and you keep your industry.

Don't...and pretty soon you're out of time.

Live with me: Rolling Stones w/ Christina Aguilera

The maid she's french;
 She's got no sense;
 She rides the crazy horse.
And when she strips, the butler flips... 

This song puts the funk in family dysfunction.

Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Beck: Goin' Down

Takes a moment, but they tear it up at the end. Sad, though. Stevie Ray gone. Definitely a shooting star, huge arc-brightly lit, across our sky.

Neville Brothers and Dr. John

The Neville Brothers and Dr. John played tonight in a benefit concert at the Englert Theater.

I'm looking for the right words...Awesome, inspiring, rip-this-jointin', tearin' it up, crazy, fun, dancin' in the aisles....

Aaron's voice continues to range a few octaves more than just ordinarily great singers.

The band with Cyril, Charles, Aaron and I thought one more of the Neville Brothers along with just outstanding keyboardists, lead guitar and drummer....just tore it up. Great show.

Oh. And Dr. John, aka Mac Rebenacker, aka The Night Tripper, opened.  Amazing talent on the guitar for Wang-Dang-Doodle, piano and, I believe, the Hammond organ. Everybody was on their feet with Right Place, Wrong Time (sadly, not with these backup singers).

The Neville Brothers ended their show with Aaron singing Amazing Grace with keyboard and a very deft, understated, guitar accompanying him. And then followed with Bob Marley's One Love.

Heres a live version of Amazing Grace with Aaron Neville and the Neville Brothers.

Here's a YouTube of them singing Amazing Grace + One Love last year in Stuttgart.



On a wing and a prayer I came to buy standing room only tickets. A snowstorm had dumped a 3-4 inches in the afternoon...I ended up sitting with friends Dean and Patricia in the 8th row, center section, on the aisle.

Life is good sometimes.

David Bowie: Rebel, Rebel

Still makes my smile...Still makes me dance. Listen to the crowd!

Jeff Beck: Goin' Down, Studio Version

My preferred background music for driving by myself in heavy traffic. Best served at near-deafening volume.

David Bowie: Heroes

Concert for NY City. Still brings chills and smiles.

A Song for You: Willie, Leon, Ray

Joe, Leon, Mad Dogs, Englishmen: The Letter

The horn section, Leon's piano, Joe's singing...Jeez.

Happy New Year!

Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Mad Dogs and Englishmen "Cry me a river"

The quality's a bit iffy, but it doesn't stifle the party.

Sure, go ahead, crank it up. Send everyone to church...agitated.

Happy Holidays!

Janis Joplin, Woodstock: "Try"

Whew! Scorcher.

You know if church services had this much passion...I don't know. I'm just saying.

...the 99 percent that is failure

That's the source of our success. It's what results from...the 99 percent of our efforts that are failures.

Many people dream of success. Success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. Success represents the 1 per cent of your work that results from the 99 per cent that is called failure. Soichiro Honda, CEO of Honda, as quoted in Welcome Failure - Stepcase Lifehack.

We're failures. Abject repeaters in the fine arts of failing. Let's get over it.

We discuss only our successes, we celebrate them, create myths and heroes and legends around successes, because they are so rare.

They're so rare because we often stop at the 74th percentile or the 88th percentile or even more painfully at the 98th percentile...

Jim Morrison of The Doors, total failure, huge success, sung break on through to the other side. Break on through, yeah! Break on through, whoa!

Break on through to...more failure, a higher percentage of failure....and be successful.

Hurry up. Success and happiness await us and our families, our communities and companies.

Santana: Soul Sacrifice, Woodstock

Get our Sunday morning groove on.

Joe Cocker: Woodstock

"The greaseband...meself" .

Enjoy it. Catch the backup singers. Just...perfect.

Check the comments. Ah-h-h, the Generation Gap. You know you're getting old when you have to explain Joe Cocker's performance...

Alvin Lee, Ten Years After: Woodstock, Going Home...by Helicopter

By the time he played this song it might have had more significance for the audience, than just a phenomenal performance.

Generation YouTube likes it, too. 1.5+ million have watched this video. That's more than at Woodstock. Kids, and grandkids....one of the commenters did note the last 10 seconds were missing where he picks up a watermelon and walks off the stage. Perfect. You see an audience member offer it up right at the end.

Enjoy it. Turn it up real loud. The lyrics are simple. The licks....yessss. Check your pulse if you're not yelling with him by the end.