I feel bad for his experience, however, in and of itself free is not a business plan. To put it another way, free only works as a part of larger plan. Free works for Google. Free works for Facebook. Free works for radio. Free works for over-the-air TV broadcasts.

I’m trying not to criticize Tyler, but in a nutshell he was offering a crappier version of his paid service and hoping and praying that it was crappy enough that people wouldn’t use it and would pay for the higher quality version instead.

That’s a not a plan. That’s nonsense. If the free service is good enough, he is not offering any real reason to pay. If that was his plan, it was bound to fail.

Furthermore, if the free service is crappy enough that people would chose not to use it, why would anyone be willing to pay for it? Once again, if that was his plan, it too was bound to fail.

Think of it this way, if your first experience with Coke was a fantastic free cola, why would you ever buy the next one? Or if your first experience was a crappy free cola, you’d probably be hesitant to pay for the next one.

In reading his blog post on the topic, you can tell he is genuinely frustrated and angered by his experience. But considering his plan was a logical failure to begin with, isn’t being caught between a rock and a hard place the very definition of frustration?

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The main stumbling block for Google is that the cable companies own most of the pipes to our homes. That’s why they’re putting up bandwidth restrictions. To keep us from dumping high-priced, but increasingly unnecessary, cable TV and watching everything online.

Maybe that’s why Google bought up all that dark fiber?

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But I got to thinking. It’d be awesome to know exactly which songs Kiss will be playing. Certainly, someone, somewhere must have posted Kiss’ current setlist on the internet.

Sure enough, SetList.fm saved the day.

Looking through the list it appears that Kiss has been playing the same 21 songs all summer. While that sounds very un-Rock & Roll, considering their stage show, it’s not as if they can improvise anything. I’m sure every single note and every single movement is accounted for.

Anyway, thank you internet!

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Sure, he loves to express his own opinions, but it’s different when he does it because he “had to work six-hour shifts in Bakersfield, Calif., to earn my stripes as a communicator.” And besides, his editor and advertisers filter his writings. (How many columnists admit that his advertisers impact his writing?! Heck, at the least the guy’s honest.) While those young whipper-snappers on twitter are free to say anything they want. Damn kids.

The column is horribly written. Mike over at Tech Dirt compares it to an old man ranting to kids, “Get off my lawn” and complaining, “When I was a kid, we had to walk up hill both ways.” He’s right, it’s nothing but a rant without any factual support or logical underpinnings. The entire argument is that things are different and he doesn’t like it.

What Mr. Dahl doesn’t seem to get is that the reason writers had to be weeded out in the good old days, was because there were technological and physical barriers to everyone having access to the world. Newspapers had a finite amount of space, so the editors and publishers had to be selective as to who could be published.

The internet does not have that problem. Heck, the internet solved that problem by allowing anyone to write to the world, and for some bizarre reason Dahl thinks that’s a bad thing? Seriously? That’s just bat-shit crazy as far as I’m concerned.

It’s also funny that he contradicts his own argument. He talks about how in his radio days they would allow listeners to call in and make comments. However, he’s aghast that “CNN, Fox News, Oprah and even the Tribune” gives watchers, listeners, and readers a voice. He says that in the old radio days he could hang up on callers.

Does he not understand that CNN, Fox News, Oprah and even the Tribune can do the exact same thing with the internet? Does he honestly think that CNN has to read every single twitter posing on a topic? Does he not know that the editors at CNN decide in advance which twitter postings to air, and if it is not appropriate, they simply do not air it?! What CNN does with twitter postings is the exact same thing Dahl did when he worked in radio. Give viewers and listeners a voice.

The fact that he does not understand the technological advantages that the internet offers or that this brave new world is not that much different from his radio days, illustrates perfectly how completely ignorant and out of touch he is. Does this guy even own a computer? Does he still use AOL? He’s a technological neanderthal and has the insight and imagination of a brick.

Mr. Dahl, everyone in the world being allowed to have a voice is a good thing. Censoring people for no reason other than your own selfish pride would be malicious and evil, if it was not so rooted in utter ignorance.

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A person wrote advice columnist Amy Dickinson asking how to deal with old people wanting access to young people’s Facebook accounts. Amy summed it up perfectly:

There are plenty of middle-age people capable of navigating on Facebook, but the experience is easier for everyone if the older generation accepts that Facebook “rules” are dictated by people who want to be able to reveal all — but don’t want for anyone else to violate their “privacy.”

This can be seen in the uproar over a decision in Canada where a court forced a person to turn over information he posted on his “private” Facebook account. People were shocked and outraged that their private writings, which were shared with countless friends, could be brought into court.

Facebook users want to share private details with their friends, but they want to keep those details private. That’s not how the world works. If you want to keep something private, you keep it private. The second you divulge the information to someone else, it’s no longer private. (Assuming that “someone else” does not have some sort of legal duty to maintain your secret, such as private conversations with your physician or maybe your clergy.)

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His point about the music industry being taken over by bean counters is completely correct. I worked in a mom & pop music store from the mid 80s to the mid 90s, the exact time John was talking about. What he left out was that music industry intentionally set out to kill such stores. Starting about in the 90s stores such as Best Buy were selling CDs cheaper than we could buy them at wholesale. But of course retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart does not have the knowledgeable staff that a real music store would have. So when you were looking for a particular artists or CD, you could find it with us. At a big box retailer, you’d get a shoulder shrug and a confused look. (But of course the music store would have died anyway, because the internet is a more efficient system for researching and buying music.)

His criticism of SoundScan is not completely correct. He praised the prior system which was based on “manual research.” But because that system was not based on any objective criteria, it was easily gamed. Here’s a specific example. During the time it switched we sold cassette singles. One song on one cassette. Paula Abdul had a number one single the week prior to the switch. The week it switched, the single dropped completely off the charts. Why? Because no one was actually buying it! SoundScan used actual sales to chart hits, which means it was harder for the music industry to manufacture hits.

He complains that after the switch to SoundScan that “All of a sudden there were #1 records that few of us had ever heard of.” That’s because the charts were no longer being gamed! Duh, is he really that ignorant about what was going on?

Suddenly the music we’ve been selling a lot of, alt metal (i.e., metal that was not oriented around hair styles), alternative, country, and rap dominated the charts. Because that’s what people were actually buying.

John then criticizes modern music because you cannot sing it. But parents and old fogies have been doing that for generations. The biggest mistake any musician makes is thinking that his style of music will never go out of style. Styles change John, get used to it.

Of course John is right, completely right, that the music industry completely missed the boat on portable music.

But his argument that he does not want to be a “P.T. Barnum” is pure nonsense. On one hand he wants to be completely free to make music, and not worry about anything else. And that’s fine. He can do that. No one is stopping him from doing that. The nonsense comes from him wanting to do nothing but music, but also demanding access to everyone’s ears. Or to put it another way, he wants to do exactly what he wants to do, without any compromise and earn a very good living in the process. He does not want to sit alone in his room making music, he wants to “enrich” the world with his art, and enrich his bank account. A question to John, since when does the world owe you a good living for doing exactly what you want?!

And here’s a note to John, the internet will allow both! He can sit in his room and do nothing but eat, write, perform, record, and sleep. And he can put his music up for sale on Amazon and iTunes, or sell it himself. He can have complete freedom and access to the world without ever leaving his house, and without signing away his precious freedom and copyrights to the labels!

I wish to god that we had the net back when I was a musician in the 80s and 90s. It would have made it much easier to escape obscurity and to please fans worldwide. The fact that John is oblivious to this borders on a mental condition on his part.

Update 11/19/10:

John might be starting to get it. Here’s a good quote from a recent interview.

So the greatest thing that ever happened to (my career) was the breakdown of the record companies, because there were no more stupid questions about how many hits are on the next record. It was very liberating. These records we make now are just a calling card for me to go out and play. I was on tour with Bob (Dylan), and he said it was that way when he started. He didn’t expect his records to sell. It was a way of getting out there and playing for people, and that’s the way the record business has come around now.

That’s exactly what I said. Dumping your label and using the net for promotion allows complete artistic freedom.

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