Dig this, a man in Fort Worth, Texas walked into a Chase bank and tried to cash a personal check for $360,000,000,000. That’s three hundred and sixty BILLION dollars, kids. The man, Charles Ray Fuller, 21, claims it was given to him by his girlfriend’s mother to start a record business, Fort Worth police said.
A bank teller suspicious of the amount, as well as the fact that the check wasn’t actually made out to Fuller, called the check owner who confirmed she did not write a check to her daughter’s boyfriend for $360 billion.
Isn’t this how Death Row Records got started though???
Universal Music Group’s CEO Doug Morris talks to Wired and admits he doesn’t know anything (or care) about technology.
Morris insists there wasn’t a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. “There’s no one in the record company that’s a technologist,” Morris explains. “That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?”
Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn’t an option. “We didn’t know who to hire,” he says, becoming more agitated. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.” Morris’ almost willful cluelessness is telling. “He wasn’t prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology,” says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. “He just doesn’t have that kind of mind.”
Two responses to this. One is from former Reprise Records president Howie Klein: How To Destroy A Profitable Industry In Just A Few Easy Steps wherein he claims to have presented a pre-iTunes app to Warners only to have it shot down by the “technology people Morris was complaining about.” The other response is from a former major label employee “at the bottom” who says it’s the organizational structure of the industry that prevents the young lackeys who have a clue from having a positive impact on the business.
All three are worth reading. The overall vibe is surprisingly hopeless. Everybody seems to accept the idea that the industry fucked up and is now doomed. This is something we’ve been saying for years, but to hear it from people like Morris and Klein is a little disconcerting…
R&B producer Jermaine Dupri is pissed that Apple allows customers to purchase songs individually from its iTunes music store:
Soulja Boy sold almost 4 million singles and only 300,000 albums! We let the consumer have too much of what they want, too soon, and we hurt ourselves. Back in the day when people were excited about a record coming out we’d put out a single to get the ball going and if we sold a lot of singles that was an indication we’d sell a lot of albums. But we’d cut the single off a few weeks before the album came out to get people to wait and let the excitement build. When I put out Kris Kross we did that. We sold two million singles, then we stopped. Eventually we sold eight million albums!
Did consumers complain? Maybe so. But at what point does any business care when a consumer complains about the money? Why do people not care how we – the people who make music – eat? If they just want the single, they gotta get the album. That was how life was. Today we should at least have that option.
I love the fact that he uses Kris Kross as his example. That album is exactly the reason why people don’t value albums. One great single and a bunch of mediocre filler. (Actually, Totally Krossed Out had three good songs: “Jump,” “Warm It Up,” and “Lil Boys in Da Hood,” but the rest was pointless.)
Continue reading Jermaine Dupri proves the industry is doomed →
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