If older folk still buy music and younger people steal it, why did John Mayer sell almost twice as many albums the first week out as Bon Jovi?

This “oh snap!” moment brought to you by Bob Lefsetz.

Guys. People still buy music. And I would bet that young people, even the ones that download illegally, still buy more than the older folks. iTunes has sold well over a billion songs and I would guess that the majority of those sales went to people under 30.

It takes a lot more work and awareness than it used to in order to sell albums. John Mayer’s is one of my favorite Twitter accounts to follow. He’s clever, witty and he knows how to connect with his fans. He knows that Twitter is not where you do a sales pitch. But I would bet that a large portion of album sales for Battle Studies came from his Twitter followers, because he is constantly reminding them that he is there and that he’s worth paying attention to.

Bon Jovi on the other hand…

Live music, when done right, is life itself. Messy, with warts. You try to get it right, but no one’s life is perfection. You battle the mistakes.

There’s no ideal beauty. Even though actresses all plump their lips in pursuit of an elusive ideal. Hell, remake yourself until you lose your identity, like Jennifer Grey or Leeza Gibbons. What turns us on are your imperfections!

But I didn’t hear one imperfection tonight.

…

I saw better playing in Nashville in a bar than you see at most major shows. I felt it. Music isn’t dead, but the business is trying to kill it. You might think Ashlee Simpson doing a hoedown when the tape breaks on SNL is long in the past, but that mainstream game is not completely dead, unlike Ms. Simpson’s career.

(via Lefsetz Letter – Mika At The Palladium)

Lefsetz strikes again!

A live show is a unique thing. The music industry would die without them. It’s why a lot of die-hard fans collect bootlegs of shows. (I’ve got handfuls of bootlegs from bands I love; every one is amazing and unique and re-listenable.) If you turn the music into a repeat of yesterday’s show, the business of your band is going to be limited and, unless you’re spending a LOT of time in the studio making new stuff, it’s going to wither out and die. Maybe not now, but it’ll happen. It’s like living on a diet of corn syrup and MSG; it’ll kill you eventually.

I’d rather see a band screwing up, engaging with their audience and fighting with their own humanity in order to bring you the best show they can. It shows a dedication and love for the fans, the music and the passion that pushing a button on a computer will never be able to mimick.

I’ve been excited about the effects of this recession. No, seriously. When the natural consequences of our irresponsibility arise, there is no choice but to adapt, learn from our mistakes and figure out how to be more responsible.

This video gives me hope for what might happen. The signs of hope seem small right now, but perhaps a few more years of this will help them to grow.

I especially love the part technology is playing in this. It’s amazing how it’s helping people work together to find ways to save money, spend it wisely and use the resources we have in the best way possible.

Sometimes I try to come up with ideas for how, as a web developer, I can play a larger part in promoting the responsibility of our culture. Do I build a directory for food co-ops? A wiki where people share tips on how they’ve saved on groceries or their gas bill? A Facebook application for ride-sharing?

Does anyone have any ideas for how the Internet, social networking or mobile technology would help you find ways to promote sustainability, local community and responsible living? Maybe we can do something together.

In a world where there can be instant availability of all music, the major labels want to sell CDs. They’re afraid to piss off Wal-Mart, and they’re sacrificing their audience to other forms of media. The transition to digital distribution is wrenching. But you’ve got to see the opportunities. Believe me, if Spotify launched its free version in America, there’d be instant hysteria. Akin to the early days of Napster.

Don’t think Spotify doesn’t pay for the music. It does. It’s just banking on building a bigger business, willing to lose money now in order to make tons tomorrow. The music business is unwilling to risk, labels and publishers are desperately trying to keep their old creaky business model functioning. This is a recipe for death. We’re on the cusp of a golden age of music. The only people standing in the way are us.

(via Lefsetz Letter – More E-Books)

My girlfriend got me started reading the Lefsetz Letter a couple weeks ago and it’s already paying off in spades. This guy gets it, just like everybody else except, well… the guys running the music industry.

Every week I want an e-book reader more and more. Just reading about the Kindle makes me want to read more books.

For all-you-can-eat music, I’ve been using Rhapsody for years. It works well enough, but it isn’t ideal. I really can’t wait to see what Spotify has to offer when the stodgy old guys finally realize it isn’t going to kill their already-dying industry.

My girlfriend was a music business major. She has gone (and continues to go) to many seminars and panels on the current state of the industry. Almost every industry guest speaker that came in told her and her classmates, “Hey, we messed up the industry and we don’t know how to fix it, so it’s up to you guys to figure that out.” One time, after hearing maybe the tenth guest speaker say this, my girl stood up and said, “So why don’t you quit so we can have your job?” Tally one more on the “reasons I love this girl” board.

If you’ve ever read any investment books (oop… there goes 90% of you reading this) you probably know the feeling. The one where you are immediately inspired to start investing, then you get busy and lose the motivation.

This is probably one of those books. Today I feel like doing some research, logging into my Etrade account and making a few well-informed trades. Tomorrow I probably won’t. But hey, I did bookmark the Motley Fool site so I can do a little research for later. Maybe that’ll help.

This book is split in half. The first half is about “rule breakers,” the companies that are exploding out of the gate with potential that the stock market reflects. The second half is about “rule makers,” the companies that rule their industries unequivocally. Think Coca Cola and Microsoft. They do a good job of outlining the characteristics to look for when investing directly in the stock market. I recommend it if you’re curious about doing so.

However, I’m at an interesting crossroads with all of this. On one hand, investing your money for the future is a wise thing if you have the resources to do it. On the other, when you start looking at companies this big, it’s hard as a socially-conscious person to find many that are both reasonable to invest in and healthy for our world.

Coca Cola slings high fructose corn syrup and sugar at literally every person on earth. Pfizer probably lobbies for drug laws and develops symptom-serving (rather than disease-curing) drugs that benefit them more than humanity as a whole. Tech companies feel a little safer, but even those allow for huge energy drains. Sure they all do “green” stuff, but big businesses are bound to have their major issues.

So what, do I ignore my conscience for the sake of my financial future? Or find the one company that’s a good investment that doesn’t hurt the world as much as it helps? Of course, I “invest” in many of those companies every day with my dollars. I’d have to go completely off the grid to avoid it.

So many questions, so few answers. Such is life. But getting back to the point, if you are interested in investing, or even just running a good business, this is a good book for learning all about that.

On another note: I’m on the final stretch! Four more books to read to finish my 2009 reading list. And they should all be fairly easy reads. Rock on.

An interesting article about why you see so much of certain artists in the used CD bin at the record store:

Borrowing a little from 9th-grade chemistry, we can say that a significant number of any given artist’s records will end up in a used CD bin if the number of records in circulation (our “substance”) exceeds the capacity of that artist’s popularity (our “solution”) to absorb them within a specific regional economy.

It isn’t all about the health of a band’s reputation. It’s about their ability to balance their success with their fan’s ability to absorb that success. You can be the most beloved artist in the world, but if there’s too much of you out there, you’ll end up in the bin stuffed between Frank Black and The Replacements.

(via Bjork: Why Bjork is the Queen of Used CD Bins from Music and Culture)

In our area (or at least at Boo Boo Records) it’s all about Bruce Springsteen. His saturation here is mighty high. I am not one to complain, though, as I’ve recently become a big fan thanks to my lady.

Coincidentally, I just bought two Bruce albums at Grimey’s on my recent visit to Nashville to visit the girl. Expect a full rant about airlines soon.

Yet another great TED video that stirs back up the conversation we (or maybe just I) have been having here about food, where it comes from, and our responsibility not just to eat it wisely, but also to cultivate it wisely.

I hope that we as a society and a world can understand and latch on to Carolyn Steel’s ideas about how to manage this earth we live on in a way that benefits us as well as the earth. It’s a symbiotic relationship, and right now, humans are abusing the privilege.

I feel challenged to think more about how I plan my week of cooking, and how if I were to actually plan meals ahead of time for my week, I could not only save money, but I could be healthier personally and be a step closer to controlling where my food comes from and how it’s made by being conscious of where I buy from. Our country really could stand to get back to cooking and eating at home together again. It would do a lot for our health, our economy and our social wellbeing.

Finally, the fact Steel mentions here, that in the western world it takes ten calories of energy to produce one calorie of food, completely blows my mind and further encourages me to think about the “miles per calorie” as far as where my food comes from.

People bring back traditional religious ideas in the funniest ways sometimes. I’m sure this man is aware that “sabbatical” and “sabbath” share the same root. Taking time off has its value. I wouldn’t mind a year off every 7. So many projects and ideas I could take the time to develop and flesh out.

My dad gets a sabbatical from his work once every ten years. His just started a month ago. It won’t be a full year, but it’s something. I have to admit I’m a bit jealous, and curious to talk to him at Thanksgiving next month about how it’s been going.

Publishers of all types, from news to music, are unhappy that consumers won’t pay for content anymore. At least, that’s how they see it.

In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more?

A copy of Time costs $5 for 58 pages, or 8.6 cents a page. The Economist costs $7 for 86 pages, or 8.1 cents a page. Better journalism is actually slightly cheaper.

Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant. Book publishers, for example, set prices based on the cost of producing and distributing books. They treat the words printed in the book the same way a textile manufacturer treats the patterns printed on its fabrics.

(via Post-Medium Publishing by Paul Graham)

I like this, but it also makes me a little sad when I wonder if a lot of the problems we have today with copyright, content distribution, etc. are the fault of people who were just trying to figure out how to charge money for what they were making and went about it the wrong way. I don’t think anyone in their case would have decided to do it differently, so what can you do?

An interesting fact I learned in Australia: US pennies would probably not exist were it not for copper lobbyists. In the land down under, the smallest denomination coin is 5 cents. They eliminated 1-cent coins and all prices are to be rounded to the nearest 5.

I wondered out loud at one point why the US doesn’t do the same thing. One of my travel mates quickly responded that the US still makes pennies because lobbyists for the copper industry have fought all such legislation. Now there’s an interesting twist on “money equals power.”

Australia also has 1- and 2-dollar coins. I wonder if there is some lobbyist for an industry supported by the US Mint keeping smaller bills instead of popularizing coins so they won’t go out of business too.

I understand the desire for an industry to do whatever they can to stay afloat, but, with a few exceptions, it seems like a bad sign when an industry has to resort to legislation and/or lawsuits in order to keep business from dying. Deal with it, folks. No industry is guaranteed to be eternal.

Fun side note: in Thailand, where 30 baht is roughly equivalent to 1 US dollar, there are 1-baht and even 1/2-baht coins, but they’re hard to find. The only people that give them out are Big C chain stores (the Thai equivalent to Walmart [blech]). And, conveniently, pretty much nobody will take a 1- or 1/2-baht coin but Big C, rendering them almost entirely useless.