shooting of Suge Knight was this year's memorable moment

[PryTo]

What channel is MTV again?

And what kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where an unscripted precursor is the height of the show. That’s right, the shooting of Suge Knight was this year’s memorable moment, and that’s all the VMAs are about these days, trying to create lasting impressions, which this year’s telecast failed to do.

How do I know? I scanned the web!

So we’ve got a self-congratulatory music industry trumpeting this faux show because of its reach and we’ve got an advertising industry fascinated because they see these young nitwits as their next audience and we’ve got self-satisfied oldsters refusing to watch because they’ve got no idea who these people are and want to feel superior.

Welcome to 2014, where self-promotion is paramount and music is second to your brand.

How did we get here?

Ironically, via MTV itself. Which proved that music is second to money. Which took fly by night acts and blew them up to icons so big that they can still tour sheds today.

But that was 1982. Long before videos cost a million bucks in the nineties and then the whole paradigm was eviscerated by the web. Yup, a couple of years back Adam Levine excoriates the channel, now he plays it, because after all, who can turn down that exposure?

That’s the avenue you take when you’ve got little talent, when you don’t record memorable music. You call out the usual suspects, the hacks in the media world, and get them to trump up your evanescent product to the point where you feel it’s significant, even though most of us shrug our shoulders and move on.

At least credit Sam Smith for concocting a good song. But the point is how do you reach people not in the echo chamber? Oldsters who prefer CDs to YouTube, who don’t search SoundCloud and find it too hard to use Spotify.

We’re complicit in the decline of the music industry. All the makers and sellers. Because we haven’t come up with a way to showcase our wares. So MTV does it for us, poorly, and Grammy ratings improve because everybody at home has no idea what to listen to. It’s kind of like Twitter. Its adherents and the press keep telling us it’s changing the world, but we never go there. Hell, I follow my feed religiously but almost no one was commenting on the VMAs last night, I guess there’s no nexus between who I read and those who watch the VMAs.

So where do we start?

Always with the acts.

Give these VMA stars credit, they create catchy tunes. Not Beyonce, who self-indulgently tributed herself with sixteen minutes of music that didn’t break through and few want to hear, but the Ariana Grande and Iggy Azaleas of this world. How come oldsters can’t write catchy tunes? How come Americana acts can’t write catchy tunes? Have we lost the formula? Do only Max Martin and Dr. Luke have the secret sauce?

Because it’s damn hard to be ubiquitous with a product that does not deserve the acclaim.

And today, even though classic rock sustains, almost nothing else does. Check the most played tracks on Spotify, you’ll find Led Zeppelin, but not PSY. And Led Zeppelin didn’t break through until “Whole Lotta Love.” And sure, “Stairway To Heaven” was not an AM single, but it was unavoidable on FM, which was coming to dominate.

The youngsters know how to play the game.

But they’ve got nothing to say, other than pay attention to me, watch me dance, look at my bank account, wanna have sex with me? You can’t!

The oldsters want to say something but they’ve got bad tunes and bad voices and they’re so demanding of our attention that we ignore them. The VMAs of the hipsters is a feature in the “New York Times Magazine,” which just goes to prove you’re a wanker who appeals to the head not the heart, and deserve little attention.

Yes, we need a new awards show. A Mercury Prize for America.

But who are we gonna give it to?

The problem is us. We refuse to acknowledge that the basics are always key. That first and foremost music is something you listen to, and if it doesn’t hook you quickly, it won’t hook you at all, especially in these overwhelming times.

Come on, how many times did you have to hear “I Want To Hold Your Hand”?

And most of the acts whose music you had to hear multiple times had hits to entice us first.

But the truth is I’m not optimistic. Because music lost its hold on the culture decades ago, it’s not where you go for honesty and truth. I get a bigger hit opening my browser than going to the iTunes Store. We’ve decimated our credibility. Once upon a time music was hot, now it’s meh.

Yup, YouTube features young stars with credibility, but on MTV we get the fawning Sway.

Radiohead entered our consciousness via “Creep,” yet has not recorded anything that memorable for the masses since.

Which is why EDM could be our savior. Because the mainstream doesn’t care about it, the oldsters don’t get it and the deejays and attendees don’t need our attention.

Yup, it may be driven by drugs, but no one in that world is saying LOOK AT ME!

So, so long 2014 VMAs… The run-up was more memorable than the show.

And so long the seventies, when breaking through on radio meant everybody in the demo knew you.

And so long to the eighties, when we were all watching MTV.

Hello to the twenty first century. Where we’re overloaded with information and just because you’re yelling that does not mean we hear you.

We live in a world where most is ignored but that which is picked up is spread like wildfire.

You know why you don’t know Iggy Azalea, never mind Ariana Grande?

BECAUSE THEY’RE JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

Kid music for kids.

But it used to be different…

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/ ... ic-awards/

[BurtReynolds]

Get off my lawn!

[PryTo]

Enjoyed the VMAs did ya?

[BigRedLedbetter]

I told my niece and nephew (20 and 17) the other day that I remember when MTV played almost nothing but videos. My nephew said he's only seen a few music videos from the 80's and 90's in his life.

[Peeps]

whoever shot him has to be sweating now. i think suge is the type of person who holds a grudge

[PryTo]

True dat. Maybe is was Young Jeezy.

http://www.tmz.com/2014/08/25/young-jee ... adid=hero1

[BurtReynolds]

maybe it was Darren Wilson.

[Whitey McTeeth]

Did they ever figure out who shot JR?

[doug rr]

hey whitey

[McParadigm]

These are dark days indeed, when iconic institutions such as the VMAs have become more concerned with mindless celebrity spectacle than with

uh

help me out here

[spike]

remember when the VMAs used to mean something?

[Norah]

Did they ever figure out who shot JR?

Smithers

[Whitey McTeeth]

Thanks Obama.

[PryTo]

These are dark days indeed, when iconic institutions such as the VMAs have become more concerned with mindless celebrity spectacle than with

uh

help me out here

1. Channel Overload

Used to be there were 5,000 albums a year and only a few got on the radio and if you didn’t get airplay or press, you were doomed. Now there are a zillion products, all easily promoted online, and unless your friend verifies quality and interest or a track becomes a phenomenon, you don’t care, and suddenly most people don’t care, and it’s gone. There’s a fiction perpetrated by the record labels that terrestrial radio reaches everybody, but the truth is with so many other options for hearing music, radio is a sliver of the marketplace. To make it everywhere you need not only radio, but video and… Actually, that which is ubiquitous lives online, not on terrestrial radio. Terrestrial radio is a ghetto. You can cross over from terrestrial radio to the internet, you can rise simultaneously from both, but to be gigantic, known by everybody, you need to make it on both terrestrial radio and the internet, whereas you can spike quite nicely online and function well without terrestrial radio, terrestrial radio is the dollop of cream atop the sundae. Online is on demand, terrestrial radio is not, and that’s why it’s doomed amongst youngsters, who don’t want to wait, who believe everything should be instant. The only thing no longer instant is sex. You can hear anything online when you want, research anything online when you want, connect with all your friends instantly via a plethora of communication techniques, but sex is still something you yearn for, although the internet has made porn ubiquitous, one can argue we live in a masturbatory fantasy culture.

2. Limited Time

They’re making no more time, everything has to fight for attention and very little sustains, because there’s constantly something new in the offing. Everyone is going ever faster, so the old paradigm of needing time to digest something is taboo. Industry has accepted this, art has not. Industry realizes the product has to be perfect in the first iteration and continue to work thereafter. Not buying a car in its first year is history, as is the fear that the electric windows will break. And with manufacturing so cheap, repairs (and repairmen!) have fallen by the wayside, why not buy something shiny and brand new! Yes, we all treasure some old favorites, but very few. So if you’re an artist, yelling may get you noticed for a day, but it won’t keep you atop the pyramid.

3. Competition

I used to read “Rolling Stone,” now I read “Fast Company.” Oh, I still get “Rolling Stone,” it’s just that the magazine no longer knows what it wants to be, and covers the travails of too many nitwits. I remember when I salivated over the words of musicians. Now I salivate over the words of entrepreneurs, because they’re thoughtful, they’ve got something to say. I’m a media junkie, so I’ve got all my magazines and all my websites and constant updates on my phone, so this squeezes out available time for competing media.

4. Howard Stern

He has single-handedly diminished my satellite radio music listening by hooking me. Many of us are hooked by something that pulls us down the rabbit hole, leaving little time for anything else. Used to be Howard Stern was on just a few hours a day, if you missed it, you had to wait for tomorrow. Now Stern is available 24/7, and I’m not driving 24/7, so most of the time I’m in my car there’s new Stern programming. We see this phenomenon in television. The late night talk show ratings have been decimated by the DVR, never mind on demand. We’re no longer victims of what’s on the tube, everything’s available all the time.

5. Cultural Norms

We used to go to the movies to be part of the cultural discussion. But once we realized no one else was going, we didn’t either. Furthermore, there is no cultural discussion left, because we all share different experiences, there’s very little commonality. This makes that which is successful even more so, because we want to talk about it with others, leading to a superstar and no-star world.

6. Dominance

With everything at our fingertips, we gravitate to the few that break through. Look at smartphones, there are multiple competing ecosystems, but iOS and Android dominate, Windows phone is an also-ran and BlackBerry is a joke. We only want the very best all the time and therefore it takes an incredible effort to penetrate our consciousness and stay there. Furthermore, the more successful something is, the more it continues to grow, reinforcing its success. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

7. Fatigue

With so much new music, many people stop paying attention to the whole sphere, they go back to their favorites if they listen at all. Yes, when everybody yells, it becomes a noise you ignore. And you just retreat and burrow down deeper into the hole you already inhabit.

8. Quality

Easy to recognize, hard to achieve, especially when it comes to art. Good used to be good enough, today good is awful, something no one cares about. We’re all in search of excellence, and if we don’t find it we don’t waste time, as we did in the three network and limited terrestrial radio world, we move on. This is why major labels use the usual suspects to create obvious hit singles, anything less, and the product is doomed. Sure, you can come from left field and dominate, but this is too scary to creators who grew up in a world where your personal network is everything, they’re fearful of being ostracized, left out, even worse in today’s connected society, ignored. But since art is not quantifiable, creators blame the system and the audience when the truth is people are surfing for greatness 24/7 and if they find it they tell everybody they know about it. A great media campaign can gain notice for a day, but it cannot sustain the underlying product. For that to happen, the product must be exceptional. Purveyors want to deny this rule, they believe smoke and mirrors still work. Cynics want to say promotion is everything. But the truth is once distribution has been flattened, which is the essence of the internet, only true excellence rises. As a result, you can remember Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” it becomes the most played track in Spotify history, but you cannot remember number two, never mind number ten. And that which spikes and lasts, however temporarily, is usually a twist, it’s usually innovative. “Wake Me Up” merged acoustic and electronic, “Gangnam Style” introduced a whole new style of pony dancing and made fun of consumption. The sieve rejects nearly everything but that which titillates, usually because of its cutting edge newness. Your past history will gain you attention, but it won’t make you sustain. You can either play with the usual suspects, the Max Martins and Dr. Lukes, or you can risk failing on your own, like Lady Gaga. But Gaga didn’t realize it’s about product, not revenue, she stayed on the road, out of the internet spotlight, for far too long, and then she overhyped that which did not deserve it. It’s damn hard to create innovative excellence, but that’s what we’re all looking for, that is what lasts.

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/ ... dont-last/

[PryTo]

remember when the VMAs used to mean something?

Paying To Play The Super Bowl

NFL to Coldplay: Pay to Play the Super Bowl
http://online.wsj.com/articles/nfl-to-c ... 1408465018

You’re surprised?

This is what happens when nerds inherit the earth and “it’s just business” replaces the old saw “it’s only rock ‘n roll.”

Name the three biggest tracks of last summer. It’s easy, like taking candy, from a baby!

We’ve got “Get Lucky.”

And “Blurred Lines.”

And “Royals.”

What do the first two have in common? They’re fading away, they’re not radiating. No one has mentioned Daft Punk since the Grammys and Robin Thicke has become a public joke.

But not Lorde.

The two biggest phenomena of the past five years are both women, and both refused to play the game, refused to turn up the marketing to ten and yell from the rooftops…I’M HERE, PAY ATTENTION, BUY MY STUFF!

That’s right, Adele refused to play arenas, she didn’t do any endorsements. And despite being a teenager, Lorde knows the game better than the old men who believe they run this business. That in order to get into the hearts of the young, you’ve got to both have their values and be a leader.

The young are not famous. Stop reciting the litany of YouTube stars and branding by prepubescents. No, the truth is most young people are in school, playing sports, living their lives not much different than it ever was. If you believe they believe selling out is the way to go, your child has been offered a million dollar deal with Pepsi. But that never happens, that only happens to the rich and famous.

Give Steve Jobs credit. He hewed to his own beliefs. But everybody else is compromising, cutting corners, trying to play the game so they can get rich.

Come on, for all the ink Wierd Al has gotten, he’s already last month’s news, no one’s talking about him and his tracks don’t populate the Spotify Top Lists. And that’s what it’s about, staying power.

And it turns out despite all the hogwash about men dominating the charts, it really comes down to women. Because Lorde and Adele spoke from their hearts and left money on the table.

The NFL has never left money on the table. It squeezes everybody in the chain, believing it’s forever, whereas most people can’t even name the last two Super Bowl winners and attendance is flagging and the press is bad and…

But the sport gets a pass, because we need something to believe in.

Once upon a time we believed in music.

Who owns the best performance in Super Bowl history? Prince! Who didn’t sell tickets simultaneously. He’s toured to big numbers ever since on that one performance, but most acts are all about the short term, where am I going this summer, as opposed to where I’ll be five years from now.

If you think no act will pay the NFL for that exposure, you’ve never been exposed to the wannabes. If Ashley Madison is willing to sponsor a football stadium, believe you me someone without the cachet of Coldplay and Katy Perry will pony up, because that’s America, where everything’s for sale and it goes to the highest bidder.

Or does it?

Everything’s a promotional exercise. Who can top who. From Jay Z to Beyonce to Weird Al to Taylor Swift. They’re all Internet savvy, they all will sell their souls to the highest corporate bidder, and other than Ms. Swift, whose new effort hangs in the balance, their music has faded away.

It wasn’t always like this.

But the truth is the good old days were back when the business was being developed. No one knew the rules, they were being codified. Sid Bernstein ripped off the Beatles so Peter Grant demanded 90/10 deals and after Bill Graham ripped off CSNY, Michael Cohl created a new paradigm where the artists got tons of dough, they just couldn’t ask Cohl how he got the money back.

It was the wild west.

But it’s the wild west no more.

Except in the music itself. That’s what we’re all looking for, the elixir that tickles our brain cells, something we have not heard before, that we hunger for and tweet about. Because we want to share greatness.

Sharing built Lorde.

No one’s sharing the new Tom Petty other than the media he manipulated.

So, call the doctor, I think we’re headed for a crash.

But you know what the doctor says in that famous Eagles song, he’s coming, but you got to pay him cash.

And sure, the Eagles wanted to get paid. But they own the best-selling album in history because of the music.

You remember music, don’t you?

Adele does.

And so does Lorde.

So there is an antidote to the mercenary ways.

Yup, we’ve pushed the new paradigm to the wall. Did you read that celebrity fragrances crashed Elizabeth Arden?

Check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/busin ... iness&_r=1

And know that it all comes down to the music.

Same as it ever was.

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/ ... uper-bowl/

[PryTo]

Thanks Obama.

What I Hate About America

NO ONE CAN SACRIFICE

Everybody’s for change, just as long as it doesn’t negatively impact them. They can’t lose their job, they can’t make less money, you’ve got to leave that to the march of capitalism, and then these same citizens cry to the government to protect them. Ugh.

Unless we’re all willing to work together on solutions that benefit us all, we’re screwed. How come in families we know compromise is king, but when it comes to politics, it’s taboo.

MONEY IS KING

If someone is rich, they’re admirable. Making money is the highest form of personal achievement, unless you’re poor, then you hate those with the cash.

Which way do you want to have it? Whatever you’ve got, that rules?

But the truth is money has ruined art. It doesn’t matter how good or bad something is, it’s all about how much money it makes. No, let me restate that, if it makes a ton of money, it’s good!

MISINFORMATION

We’re living in the information age people! Don’t trust the hearsay of your friends when all you have to do is Google to get the information.

And this is where it becomes complicated, the rich and powerful are all about information and truth. Sure, they try to bend it, but they know it and understand it. Which is why anybody with a brain wants to hang with the rich and powerful, they’re the only ones who know what’s going on!

CONFORMITY

Being a member of the group is paramount to the millennial. You don’t want to stick out, if you’re a social pariah you can’t participate on social media!

In the sixties, it was all about letting your freak flag fly. Now it’s about being just like everybody else.

Even in art. The millennials don’t want to do hard time honing their craft and converting skeptics one by one, they just want to imitate those who are successful, which is why so much art is me-too!

Yup, watch my YouTube cover, because I haven’t got a single original thing to say in my music.

THE FICTION THAT THE YOUNG RULE THE WORLD

Check the age of the people running Apple, or Amazon. And even the meisters at Google are now middle-aged. And kids aren’t always on to the new trend, especially if it’s about more than mugging. Oldsters embraced Twitter first.

PEOPLE WHO ONLY READ ONE NEWS SOURCE

It builds bias. Because most outlets have a viewpoint. Yours can only be informed if you get information from multiple sources.

GOVERNMENT’S REFUSAL TO INVEST IN AMERICA

Infrastructure is flagging, we could have put America to work repairing roads and bridges and sewers when interest rates were negligible and no one had a job. Instead, we’re gonna wait until the economy revives and we have to pay more for money and workers. This is a country? Why is it no one wants to believe we’re gonna get to the future?

MISPERCEPTION

Despite data being rampant, publicity rules. With so much information at our fingertips he who yells loudest usually convinces America he matters, even though in truth he might not, no one may be buying his product.

SKINNINESS

Sure, we have an obesity problem in America, but how about those oldsters shrinking by the minute? Especially women, who seem to believe if they don’t eat they’re better than the rest of us, even though they lack brainpower and the ability to move. Despite living in a foodie culture, the older and richer you are, the more food is taboo.

THE HORSE RACE

I had to hear about the 2016 election from the moment Obama was elected in 2012. It’s like our whole news media has been overrun by the sports page, who’s winning, who’s up, who’s down. It’s like debating how good the Yankees or the Packers will be three seasons from now, how much time do you want to waste on that?

PHONINESS

Kim Kardashian lies about having plastic surgery and her only goal is to extract dollars from our wallets. American commerce is too often built on lies. If you buy this it will make you beautiful and successful. From religion to cosmetics, everybody wants your money under the pretense that giving it to them will somehow make you better. But if you want to get better, read a book.

ARTISTS HAVE NO BACKBONE

Show up in Ferguson, write a song about it, take a stand. But you’re afraid to, afraid it’s going to turn off some theoretical segment of the public. When did artists become such wimps?

ENTITLEMENT

I’m all about entitlement programs, a safety net for Americans…health, homes and welfare. But don’t confuse this with the right to be a success. Just because you made it, that does not mean people have to buy it. Just because you put it on Spotify, that does not mean people have to stream it.

PRUDISHNESS

Everybody wants to do it, but you can’t talk about it, unless you’re in private with your friends or significant other. Sex has to be fiction, the same way truth has to be in cartoons. Because people just can’t handle naked bodies and desire.

THE CLICK ECONOMY

It’s like we’re all being tricked every day, and the profitable websites which are responsible for this cannot be criticized.

CORPORATIONS AS PEOPLE

People die. People have a social conscience. People don’t make every decision based on money (although with the veneration of companies, people have moved further in this direction.) Why is the number one goal of artists to get money from corporations? If they really think the money is free, they’ve never heard of the chilling effect, and they know nothing about economics…it’s hard to get money from companies, they want something in return, and they always get it.

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/ ... e-america/

[BurtReynolds]

WHAT

[Heathen]

WHAT

HOW TO FOLLOW WHAT IS NEW IN ECONOMICS RESEARCH

RePEc offers various tools to keep abreast of latest research developments in economics. Keep in mind that due to the unusually long refereeing and publication process in this field, following what is coming out in journals is often not the best way to keep current. The research frontier is advancing with working papers, and this is why RePEc puts a special focus on those. Note that all resources below are free, as always for RePEc services.

NEP

NEP (New Economics Papers) offers email lists and RSS feeds that disseminate approximately every week the latest online working papers across over 90 fields. Field-relevance is determined by volunteer editors who pick the appropriate papers among all working papers newly listed on RePEc during the previous week. Note that if you think a topic is not appropriately covered, you can volunteer as editor of a new report.

MyIDEAS

MyIDEAS allows you to follow new additions to JEL codes, author profiles, series and journals. This is done through the creation of an account on the IDEAS website. Once logged in, you can add the relevant items while navigating the site.

EconPapers Search

EconPapers allows to limit the search results to documents added recently to RePEc. Use the “Modified last” selection at the bottom left of the search form. One can also limit the list of items by JEL code and recency here.

IDEAS Search

Similarly, IDEAS allows to restrict search results to specific years. When looking up by JEL code, items are sorted with the most recent first.

EconAcademics

EconAcademics follows the latest discussion of research on the blogosphere. While it does not necessarily mean this is the most recent research, it is often the case.

http://blog.repec.org/2014/02/20/how-to-follow-what-is-new-in-economics-research/

[Kaius]

Did PryTo break?

[McParadigm]