Brian Feener

Joss Stone is on The Tonight Show singing her latest single. I’m glad to hear that she’s realizing that trying for the pop hit isn’t helping her career.

It’s not her fault that she can sing circles around Fergie.
But it is her fault that she didn’t recognize on her last effort that playing Fergie’s game wasn’t going to win her any fans or credibility.

But in trying to sing to a crowd outside of her market, she lost herself and her voice.

It’s not a bad thing to have a small audience anymore. Th industry has changed. There’s too many channels, too many web sites, too many chances to change the station. It’s not the same industry. You can’t assume that the backstreet boys and Britney model works anymore. Ke$ha may have the public’s attention now but where is she in 5 years? Heck - 5 months??

Joss has talent, just like Dave Matthews has talent. Just like U2 and Phish. What does Joss lack? It’s the thing that separates the Daves and Bonos from the rest - it’s the story.

Joss is legit. She can sing. When she came out she was the prodigy who was going to save blues music. Now? Is this even the same lady? Same voice and a better performer but where is the spice that drew us in and could sustain a career.

Joss looks like a model, but her career probably should follow closer to Harry Connick Jr. than it does Fergie. Which is, funny enough, the career that will generate the most money over the long term.

Talent trumps. But it’s only one part of the equation. Playing your game and not someone else’s is the other.

This is really a microcosm for what’s happening in the whole music industry.  Editing and studio production are becoming more and more obvious as the image of a pop star is more important than the talent of the artist.  But it’s not the Jay Sean’s that have the long careers - it’s the ladies and gentlemen who have the abilities.  It’s the Elvis Costellos.

I know nothing is going to change but it’s important to know why sometimes, even the best of us can’t win at certain games.

Update: Fixed some misspellings, added a conclusion.

$1mm … $4mm  … whatever the amount, text message-based payments are a big deal for this Haiti rebuilding effort.

And it makes perfect sense to me why - it’s a painless payment.

In less than 25 characters, you can pledge money to a charity through your cell phone bill, something you won’t see for maybe 2 or 3 weeks.  It’s the same psychology that makes credit cards so dangerous; that makes teenagers text over their 1,000 allowed; that turns a pay-nothing-for-24-month deal into a real problem….

It’s the same psychology that got us into the debt crisis, and the same psychology that allows iTunes to be so successful.

The buyer never feels the pain of the purchase.

Don’t get me wrong!  I’m not saying it’s a bad thing in this case!  It’s just that it’s encouraging to know that someone has figured out that the psychology that hurts us in many cases, can be used for the public good.

It does make me wonder if this type of strategy is going to be more and more prevalent in society for other less altruistic purposes?  I’m already a victim of the Straws of Subscription (these are the same straws that broke the camel’s back).  Magazines, TV, internet, phone … I’d love MobileMe and a better HD package but “I need to be careful in this economy.”*

*Translation: I’m broke.

With the speed that some of the services got up and running, I’m glad that we have smart, business savvy people running some of these relief efforts.  I couldn’t have done it better myself.

I only have one New Years Resolution this year - not to text and drive.

Did you know! That 60% of texts are answered within 90 seconds. … I know the culture is what the culture is but how is a text functionally different than an email? We don’t have a 90 second rule for emails.

So if you’re texting me just be prepped for a long delay. I took all my sounds and alerts to only phone calls.

All these pings and Pongs an dings all day long need to be filtered out some how. There’s no way that you can concentrate and be creative with a constant series of distractions.

So there you go. You can copy me if you want.

(It’s late and I need to wake up early tomorrow… I’m giving myself no more than 10 minutes to write/edit this…)

SMH is Twitter-speak for “shaking my head.”  Like when you see that your aunt and uncle are dancing a little bit too enthusiastically at your cousin’s wedding….

Could they have messed up this Leno and Conan thing worse?… Did they give either guy a real chance to succeed?

… I know both will land on their feet.  I know both will be fine financially and NBC isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  My only reaction is that the only bad move is to do what is the common wisdom and to push Conan to 12:05. (I’m sure there are other bad moves, but for the sake of argument….)

Best opportunity for Conan: Take a stand on this one and go to Fox.  Fox wants Conan bad.  He fits into their demo and he attracts a younger audience.  He’ll be a star on a net that doesn’t have many outside of the animated ones.  (Sorry, Ana Torv.)

I see Fox as a place that Conan might be able to breathe again.  As the Tonight Show host he’s fine, but in the way that a 3.78 ERA is fine.  He’s not striking guys out and you can tell that he’s forcing it a little bit.  Like the creativity that comes with having only a box and a glue gun is gone when you get all the fancy paints.  He has too many resources and PAs and people saying that everything is gold, when in the old days he had nothing but low budget comedy.

The drive to create isn’t the same.  Like part of the process for making things funny was finding the humor in a carboard cutout and the guy in the $75/day gorilla suit.  In a way, it was easier to get a bigger laugh.

Conan will lose part of his audience, but it’s the part that didn’t care in the first place and just hates Dave. He’ll be able to grow with a set of firm roots.

Best opportunity for Leno: Kick Conan to 12:05 and become the king again.  Sure- advertisers will abandon the net after 12:04 and Conan will be out of a job as soon as ratings allow him to be fired and it’s financially shot in the head for NBC… but at least Jay wins! (Actually, he probably still loses.  His half hour show being a constant reminder of this crappy crappy situation.)

Best opportunity for NBC: Let Leno go to Fox or wherever he wants.  Or pay him enough to just stay home.  Leno is comfortable but keeping him off the air is a good move for allowing Conan to grow.  Maybe it also keeps Conan from becoming the neutered comic he’s starting to look like.  Leno, while the lead dog in the race, can’t keep doing this forever. (This is the longest term strategy they can employ, and won’t help people keep their jobs in the short term, and you can probably count on this not happening.)

(Went over by 9 minutes.  Will leave unedited.)

Just a quick note on Ke$ha and her #1 song “Tik Tok” from NPR –

“The lyrics mean nothing, and the song is about nothing, and the song is not a very good song… but it sounds enough like a good song so that you can’t tell the difference.

Perfect description.  The song isn’t just empty, but empty in an extremely purposeful and radio-friendly way.  It is as designed as an iPhone and as sweet as a pack of sugar.

“… When you channel and put together so many pop and hip hop cultural memes, but you don’t have a real story to tell, you kinda got: nothing.

Is there any real difference between the three photos of pop stars here?

Which one is Ke$ha?  Which is Gaga?  Who’s the third one? [Answer]

“What you hope for in a movie like Avatar or a song like Tik Tok is that … some genius producer has put together this montage of tropes next to each other like a bunch of movie scripts in a blender to make a larger point.  … But if you’re employing a bunch of tired old tropes and you don’t have a smart point to make, then you’re just tired.”

This song is being heard by EVERYONE.  You can’t escape it if you want to listen to terrestrial radio.  It’s making lots of money through iTunes and through licensing to commercials.  If we accept paintings, sculptures, movies and dance as legitimate art forms, why can’t pop music be art too?  Isn’t it just as legitmate of a medium as any of the previous listed?

I’m not even arguing that cultural pastiche is a bad thing.  It’s just that when you have the opportunity to transcend, there’s no obligation to do so, but it’s a wasted opportunity when you don’t.

—-

Listen to and read the full story at NPR.com: “‘Avatar’ And Ke$ha: A Denominator In Common?“

I’m not even going to comment on how many times there was gratuitous product placement.  I get it. (”This pizza moment was brought to you by DiGiornio!”)

Not concerned with how many times they referred people to Twitter, even though I think that for corporate entities, the Twitter world is never going to be a cash cow.

I’m not even worried that there is a category called “Favorite Web Celeb.” (Samberg was robbed!!)

I’m just shocked that News Corp still cares about MySpace. They bought up space on every award winner’s super.  So that now I know not to go to the official Twilight site but myspace.com/twilight.

To me, this just confirms that MySpace is now an entity that’s more like YouTube than it is Facebook.  MySpace is a content management system with some profile features.  That’s it.  And with the full-blown corporate integration, my question is “why cheapen yourselves?”

Aren’t we at a point that the public can handle an “official site?”  Is it that hard to develop a widget to take comments on the official site?  What is MySpace giving people that can’t be found elsewhere?  It’s not a great social networking site (at least in U.S. terms).  It’s  not a great layout.  It’s not very friendly after you get more than 200 spammy comments…

The answer: It’s cheap and easy.  And we know what happens to things that are cheap and easy….

(Want a social network?  Get Ning. For all the controversy that surrounds him, 50 Cent uses this site for his ThisIs50 site and does a great job.)

There’s no easy solution to making a successful marketing campaign, but setting a goal of “generating buzz” isn’t going to guarantee any sort of victory in the end.   Buzz isn’t worth anything anymore.  There are too many things buzzing at the same time.

The Beatles had buzz in the 60’s.  There were three television channels.

The Vines had buzz in 2007.  And they’re not exactly tearing up the radio  right now.

In the end, the goal has to be converting to sales (registrations, whatever).  MySpace, Twitter, Facebook are nothing but the salesman knocking on the door to sell the vacuum.  Or a call from the telemarketer.   Sure, there may be an answer here and there, and a sale here and there, but is it really worth it?

There’s a reason that MySpace won… and then Facebook won… and now Twitter is winning.  This space is too hard to monetize on a consistent basis.  Attention is too short.  Things that were cool start being lame.  Tastes change.

Maybe I’m wrong.  Use the comments.

So I just finished posting enough content to the site that I feel comfortable enough broadcasting it out…

Team USA vs The World can be found at http://www.usaVworld.com and if it doesn’t get you pumped up about international football then I don’t know what

will.

Huge thanks to Steve, Anthony, Alex & Nicole at USA Football … and Anshey at VPV Interactive.