Bob Lefsetz, the music industry pundit who pens the long-running Lefsetz Letter, has a sparkling rant about Steve Jobs and the crummy state of the music biz. It's worth reading the lot, but here's how it starts:
During the Super Bowl, Felice’s 18 year old nephew and his UCLA buddy asked me what topic I was going to discuss on KLSX later that night. I asked them for suggestions. Blake said "THE iPHONE!" Digging deeper, I found that both had spent nearly two hours watching Jobs’ Macworld speech and NEITHER owned A SINGLE APPLE PRODUCT!
But they aspired to. Blake said his next computer would be a Mac. "Have you ever tried one?" He said no, but he was ready to switch.
And I asked these two kids with Sidekicks if they’d lay down five hundred bucks for an iPhone… And they said AS SOON AS IT CAME OUT!
Wow, if only they had this passion about bands.
Everywhere I go, all the under twentysomethings want to talk about is Steve Jobs. And, if they’ve got the dough, which Luca and Blake are amassing, they drop it all on Apple equipment. And then tell EVERYBODY HOW FUCKING GREAT IT IS!
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We Americans are looking for something to believe in. We can’t believe in politicians. And we can’t believe in the whored out musicians. But we can believe in Steve Jobs. The seemingly uncompromised guru who won’t do just anything for a buck.
The labels wanted to raise the price at the iTunes Store?
Steve gave them the middle finger. Even though he could have blamed the price increase on them. Maybe even made more money. It just wasn’t RIGHT!
Who the fuck makes decisions based on what’s RIGHT anymore? I mean you do, but you’ve got no power. But here’s a guy with ALL the money and ALL the power and he leaves all his alliances, all the BULLSHIT, out of his decision-making process.
