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It is now 1 minute past 7 p.m.. Stay tuned for off the hook coming up
Hello
You're listening to WBAI New York. It's Wednesday and
It's 7 p.m.. And that usually means it's time for another edition of off the hook
I
Cut myself while shaving
I
And
A very good evening to our program is off the hook
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening joined tonight by Kyle
Are you over there?
We did a lot of testing on these levels, so I think everything is working we have Rob T firefly good evening we have Gila
And we have Alex
Good evening, and so sophisticated night came and tell who's in Skype, and who's not in Skype, so we finally arrived after two years yes
Well this is our last show for
2021 okay, you know what I'm getting all the looks and all the
Pointed fingers and things like that you want me to explain why I look the way I look I know it doesn't work on radio
I
Have I'm wearing what is known
In the medical terminology. It's an ambulatory EEG and
What that is it's something that measures your brainwaves?
I'm not doing this for recreation although I could do it for recreation
I suppose I'm doing it because I went to a neurologist who suggested I do this based on
Something I described to my doctor who which I'm pretty sure is is is nothing at all. It's just occasional
Occasional light flashing like every eight months or so and a little bit of confusion. It's called a painless migraine
I believe is the official word for it, but they said just to be safe
Why don't you do a couple of tests and I figure you know?
It's the end of the year my deductible is is at its yeah
I met my deductible this year
So why not have a whole bunch of tests and one of them involves walking around for three days with this electronic device
Your head is is basically wrapped up in this
What do you how would you describe it Kyle?
Bandage yeah, I look like a mummy, so I've got that on my head all right, and I have this electronic device
What else
Can it do?
But I don't know I haven't really hacked it yet. Well. Actually. This is my last day, so I'm not gonna really try
Fairly comfortable no, I'm not comfortable believe me
This is not comfortable because I'm walking around with this you know first
I've got this bandage on my head
I look crazy as it is walking around the bandage on my head
And I I have this this device strapped to me, and it's got a button, too
It's got a red button on it, which I'm supposed to press if I have an episode
I'm not having any episodes, so there's nothing I have to really
Worry about as far as that goes, but you know it's not the kind of thing you walk around in public with
So I've been I've been kind of keeping to myself, and there's a there's a tablet that records information
There's a camera that's supposed to be on me at all times which you know it's not I'm not filming myself 24 hours
But that's why I look the way I look
Does that answer everybody's questions?
Well it it does because I wasn't gonna say anything, okay, I was totally gonna say something, but you know
I just happen to have something that might be useful here. It's a deck of cards
You can see this one is a circle and a star you trying to confuse me
Why but yeah so forth and if you'd like to do some tests with me later involving this deck of zener cards
What we'll talk after the show Wow you you're right there with that
But
No, it's it's not something that that I'm concerned about because this is something that that I've been experiencing since 2005 occasionally
I just would maybe after straining my eyes
I'd find it difficult to read and I'd have trouble remembering things for about maybe 15 minutes if I close my eyes and sit in
A dark room it goes away. I you know basically just described that this year
When I got a checkup, I've described it every year and my doctor said you know what just to be safe
Why don't you have you know a neurologist?
Give you some tests, so that's what I'm doing
It's it's the end of the year trying to you know get as much advantage as possible from the fact that I met my deductible
so
Next year though. It's gonna go right back down to zero so I'll have to be extra careful
so
Yeah, that's surely. You're not the only one I bet others are part are getting as many
Things taken care of at the end of the year so that that seems practical
well
Some of the staff in the neurologist office in fact. They're getting things done because
When I went in earlier this week
Basically 80% of the office wasn't there because they all got kovat over the holidays
Yeah, very quickly from their relatives apparently so there's a lot going on and
We're all experiencing it in one way or another
So yeah, that's that's that's where I stand right now
And anyone else have any interesting stories
Nothing nothing that I can follow that with okay well
Then let's continue this this is the last show of the year and as is sometimes our tradition we we like to
Reminisce about the year that has just passed and think about things for the year. That is to come so
I'll start basically
It's gonna be pretty simple for me. I think the thing that
In the world of technology or or hacking the thing that that stood out the most
To me over this this past year
Was the concept of NFTs?
You know that it sees ridiculous
Images or
Anything really just images of art
That people buy and yet they somehow don't actually own the art and
They're paying huge amounts of money for this if anyone can explain it to me and people have tried to explain this to me
And it never works
Non-fungible token I believe is what it stands for yeah, and and the concept has has
You know
people have tried and
I get what they're saying
And I get what they're saying
But I just don't understand how anybody can spend a penny on something like this so that I think is is what was the?
the the most
I guess interesting development in the technology world over the last year
I know they've been around probably a little bit longer than that my prediction for the future
Is that it's all gonna come crashing down all right and people are gonna realize that this is nonsense and
They're going to stop or they're basically just going to not do it as much you know I saw something online a few days ago
that basically was someone talking about how back when he was a kid somebody named a star after him and
Somewhere up there in the sky is a star with his name
Now the company that if keeps the records for that that star that bears his name
It's not around hasn't been around for a long time those records are nowhere to be found
It's a whole damn star, and they can't find it. They can't find any records somebody paid money for that. It's all gone
So good luck with your NFTs because I guarantee you the same thing is going to happen
Okay anyone else have a
car go ahead
Well, I think mine was maybe a little less interesting, but the concept of supply chains and logistics
Specifically with software. I know there were a lot of like
Breakdowns the solar winds and
other
Basically software maintenance programs and the dependency on a lot of
really important systems on things that are contracted out and
You know not always
Paid attention to with the same sort of vigilance, so I think that theme
people learned a lot about that, and then it ended up being something that was topical in relation to the health crisis and
overall economic woes we had a
Canal get blocked and everyone was freaking out about you know getting their goods and certain and stuff
That boat went back into the canal a couple of weeks ago
It was the second time actually went once before but yeah, it's always fun to see that boat come back
So yeah, I think we learned
so much about what globalization means on a day-to-day level like the really boring stuff, and maybe we
I'm thinking are
more paying more attention to it and having an appreciation for what it takes to live and
And operate in the the world as we we thought we knew
For the coming year. I think that it's mostly
This concept of
one foot
this paradox of being both in the future, but also being in like the
deep
I
Want to say prehistoric past like this this idea of
analog and digital
There's a lot of talking like moving from different energy sources moving from different
Like levels of reality like depth in media
Having different types of
trusts networks and I think that has made
both the virtual and
Real life sort of blend back and forth. So I think this
joining of stuff that is very
Old school, but also also the the combination of that with sort of the newer themes
I think we'll enter into all kinds of things. I also think that
new and shiny great
Virtual things like is being discussed like people like escapism that kind of stuff
We're it's gonna there's gonna be fits and starts to that people trying it out and I think mayhem will ensue
You know
We'll realize that virtual places can be just as ugly and nasty as we've come to see the web
2.0 and any further. Oh, I think we've realized the same moderation issues. We'll continue to face questions until we actually
Face them collectively
Yeah, yeah, totally and I like the idea of
Bringing in the old as well. Well, we're constantly talking about how there's older and newer and we do live in that society America is
very
future forward there's a lot of
Innovation and very extreme high-tech, but there's so much that is like
Two three centuries ago and even further that we still rely on and attitudes even
Sensibilities I think in the cultural realm but also in people's day-to-day lives like where people actually live in this country
They're not at the extreme edge of technology
but I think there are growing exceptions where people might be in far-flung places, but they're
Bringing in elements of the future and tools and sensors all the kinds of things. We know what do we know and think of as a
Growing futurism. I think those are gonna be in the most
Lo-fi places first if that makes sense. Yes the frontier the digital frontier
I think is going to become further out in the frontier
Interesting. Well, I look forward to that world. I think I think that's that's quite realistic
Who wants to go next and Rob go ahead?
I'll go next the the big the big thing that strikes me and this is kind of a continuation from
2020 but the something that really struck me in 2021 is how after lockdown, of course
And this was back in 2020
We all had to like so many people had to learn to work from home to go to school from home
to telecommute rather than physically commute and
I think what we found this past year is that so many people have accepted that as more of a normal thing
It's no longer weird
In job job ads now, it's a normal thing to see, you know remote. Okay, you know
you can apply for jobs in states all over the country or even outside the country and
I think I think that is really striking how it's become something that the average person has access to can use
understands now
through being forced to use it for this long and
I think as we go forward
I have to say if there is ever an end to this pandemic situation
I still think this will become a new normal for a lot of people who prefer it or work better from home or
you know work learn better going to school from home and it will become sort of a
Fact of day-to-day life rather than something unusual or strange
Um, I think I think the whole paradigm has sort of shifted
You have entire businesses now that don't have a physical office
You have bands that collaborate from all different places and put out albums now where they're never in the same place
but they can get it all done and
Just this this is this is a fascinating new dimension to how things used to be done and has also
Led people to I think reconsider that traditional go to the office for you know
40 hours a week model that everyone had just been doing for generations. And so I find that really interesting
Wow rob before you get into your future. Um, i'm i'm uh,
A question about that that new world that now exists of remote working
Has this happened yet where somebody is working for a company completely remotely
But they're also working for another company completely remotely maybe even in the same field. Maybe even a competitor
I mean somebody has had to have come up with that scam by now
well in in the uh in the sort of gig economy that sort of thing has existed with freelancers like kind of
Having multiple clients for the same kind of work and sometimes yeah working
Uh on them at the same time which uh, you know
Check the terms of your contracts, uh to make sure that's cool before you go start doing that sort of thing
but the uh, yeah, I I think my prediction for the future is just that this will continue to be
More and more of a normal thing more and more of an acceptable thing
and uh, and you know for people who uh
Work better this way. I think it opens up new dimensions for them
You got to predict something new though because you're predicting more of the same
And that's not new
You know, do you think something?
Crazy might happen with I mean what I just came up with where some where people are working for their competitors at the same time
That's that's a prediction for something different that this gig economy or remote learning
remote working
Um might bring forth. Um, if you need a few minutes to think about something possibly
Do you have something off the top of your head?
Yeah off the top of my head there is uh, you know right now
There there are fields of work in which you can easily work from home
You can sign into your computer remotely and uh and go from there. I think uh, I think something that uh
Will be added to all this is maybe the ability to do more kinds of work remotely
um through things like robotic telepresence and uh, I I think like
For a while. I was working in manufacturing where I had to physically
be there to operate machinery and uh, you know work with uh work with components and things and
Uh something like that could conceivably be done from home if you if you build the right equipment and set it loose
in a factory floor and that opens up all kinds of uh further interesting questions about uh,
What it means to have a job? Okay. I'm disappointed. No one's come up with anything involving drones yet or uh robots, but i'm sure
Alex, uh, it looks like you have something on your mind. Go ahead
Oh, i've always got a lot on my mind these days emmanuel as you know, um in terms of milestones though for 2021
Uh, i'm going to build on something that we talked about over the last couple of weeks
I think log 4j is really really significant. I think this this log 4j
java library vulnerability has really been a revelation about the the weakness and and the fragility of the systems on which we
we rely on a daily basis and how
they too like us humans are connected in ways that are deeper and more fundamental than our
Uh outward appearances would have you believe
Separately, I think a big milestone this year too. I think has been advances in in vr technology virtual reality
It's really been amazing. The immersive qualities of this technology are
in my mind really really astounding the games are
They have an intensity and about them that i've i've never felt or seen before
Uh, you can watch netflix. He stays in a virtual theater right now
Which is pretty cool and i'd venture to bet that you could probably even attend. Um,
In any concert in the near future. Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean? You can watch netflix in a in a theater?
How does that work?
Yeah on this new oculus quest thing, which I hate to say, you know is developed by facebook not our favorite
uh company or meta now, whatever the the name of the day is but
uh, sure you can install this this netflix application on your headset and log into your netflix account and then all of a sudden
It feels like you're in this virtual theater watching a movie
Fully immersed. Wait, are there are there other people in this theater?
No, there's nobody else good. I don't want other people in this theater. I don't want people making noise or getting in the way
Yeah, well, I absolutely I mean
You can do whatever you want in the virtual world. It's really uh,
It's incredible and I think it really dovetails with what you were talking about as well emmanuel and you and your
Confusion about the nfts, which is which you are by far not alone in having this type of confusion
I don't think it's confusion. I think it's common sense, but go ahead if you believe otherwise
well, I think that that the whole concept of nfts dovetails really well with the concept of this virtual world or the metaverse in
Which we're going to be living in where there may be
one digitally signed copy of something that belongs to you and I believe that
Nfts are essentially a proof of concept for how we're going to own
Real estate in the quote-unquote metaverse
In the future that all of this is is going to come around full circle
And what really terrifies me about that is if we are going to buy things and they're going to be akin to nfts
in this virtual world
Then the rules and the space and everything about that particular universe is going to be created by another company
A company perhaps like meta slash facebook
And that and their ability to set those rules and create value out of essentially nothing
Which is really what an nft is. Oh, yeah, we agree on that
We definitely agree on that and you know the fact that you're referring to it as real estate
Don't forget real estate is called real estate because it's real because it's real. It's real
That's I don't have no idea if that's what has anything to do with it. But the fact is uh nfts
They really aren't real and farmville is not real but people think it is and they they throw real money at
various things
and I don't know I I seeing more of that is just uh scary because
It's like a drug addiction, you know, just
Money goes down the drain
yeah, I think
Oh, go ahead. Oh, no, I just it's um amazing that we're talking about the same company that we were just talking about
Uh having failed a lot of people
in the realms of social media and and
And been brought to task taking the task over over how they've handled it and and addressed people's concerns
And uh moderated etc, etc. We're still having those conversations. There hasn't been a resolution to it yet
um
that they're they're the types of entities that um are going to be building a world that people will escape to
from their lives like like
um, that is uh, uh
a way of coping with
Reality, which I don't know. I mean that's probably been an argument made in video gaming for a long time
But this is a different level
Yeah, I think though this whole concept of nfts and akin to real estate will become more
accessible and real if if that nft represents something
That is more akin to a physical space in a digital realm
If you can look to that nft as as essentially a property deed
Of a certain space in the quote unquote metaverse then I think things will will fall into place more more quickly
but it's terrifying to me to think that
All of this property real digital or otherwise virtual whatever you want to call it can be created
Essentially out of nothing, right? I mean imagine imagine uh food as an example, you know an nft of food
You're still going to starve to death no matter how much of it you own
yeah, you know work that out get back to me and maybe i'll believe in the concept but
Until then it's just uh, you know a rich man's game
Now, uh, was that your uh future? Uh prediction? No future. I want to um
You know, I think more log4j vulnerabilities
Are my prediction more the same though. You can't you can't do more of the same
Well more well as a result of those variable, uh, those variant vulnerabilities that are going to be identified
I believe in this log4j library. I'm predicting more and more ransomware events that are going to be
uh affected as a result of that vulnerability but separately in going back to the issue of social media platforms and things I think there's
going to be
more accountability
uh for the foreseeable consequences of algorithms, uh,
Especially with regard to the psychological harm and the ample and the uh, the amplification of misinformation
I think this is going to be a direct result of the uh, whistleblower francis. Huygens. I think it was her name one from facebook
Uh as well as pressure from lawmakers academics independent researchers and everybody who's been clamoring for more of this data
Uh in the wake of what happened almost a year ago on january 6th
but separately my prediction I think uh
There's going to be some developments with respect to the world at large here, too
And i'm going to crib a little bit from the last article that I wrote for 2600, uh, the last column
And I think the author doesn't mind
Yeah, well, that's fine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no copyright violation here, but I with respect to the world at large I think
Because of the coronavirus and and its lethality we're going to have no choice
but to acknowledge the
Disconnectedness of human beings and and and this will bring to the forefront the the duty of care that we owe to each other
And the need for empathy
to triumph right now over apathy because if we turn a blind eye to each other we will be
Perpetually disrupted by these various variants one after another after another as we are right now
and you can see words like that in every issue of 2600 magazine penned by alex himself in his
Artificial interruption column and that's right, which has been a lot of fun
I can't believe it's been over a year that i've been doing that. Yeah, it starts during the pandemic and
um, and it's a it's almost a serialized column in the sense that it it it builds off each each one
Well, it started with a problem you were having activating a phone or something, right?
that's true during the hope conference when my
my iphone broke and I had to go replace the iphone in the middle of the
I think the the worst bit of the pandemic at that point. So that that was fun
Wow, definitely an article definitely the first article was definitely worth reading for sure. The others are okay, too
Okay, gala all comes down to you now
Oh very exciting. So before I get into either my most significant moment of the year or my prediction
Um, I just want to talk about nfts for a quick second because something that's been percolating in my mind
Is we've talked about it and we've learned more about it
is that
The hacker mindset as we understand it as we have explained it on this program
Especially to our young caller on overtime a couple weeks ago
Which was one of the greatest moments of the year as far as i'm concerned
um
The the hacker mindset is I understand this i'm going to share it. We want to make things
clearer to people better for people and the nft mindset is I own this and you can't have it
And the worst thing an nft believer can call you is a right clicker or say you have a right clicker mindset
Yeah, what is that? I've been i've been seeing that insult thrown around lately. What does that mean?
What it means is that this is the picture that I paid for
I own it and you you miserable peon you're going to right click on this image and save it to your computer for free
You are stealing from me you right clicker
It sounds to me like they're realizing just how easy it is to bypass
What what they have done all the money they've spent on something that's worthless this whole this whole venture is
because if you spend
However much real money and it's a lot of money in some cases on a picture of I don't know a monkey in a hat
And I can right click on the picture of that monkey in the hat and I can have it for free
Uh-huh, it kind of shows that you did something real stupid
But they get up. Yeah, I could take a picture of that
I could take a picture of the image that you save and then sell it to somebody else too. What does that make me?
I think it makes you clever
but
wow
I'm, not an nft head
um
so
Speaking alex what you were saying about the interconnectedness of human beings kind of brings me to my
Moment of the year which is a couple of moments that i'm thinking about the day that the meta servers went down
And took like half the internet with them
and there have been a couple of times when uh amazon web services went down
And took like half the internet with them
And I think the fact that we are consolidating
So much of what the internet is what the world is in the hands of a very small
Group of organizations
Is problematic at best and I think when we're saying okay, everybody can have all of this stuff
And everybody's going to use it. But then if it's not there anymore, you know, I know that there were
um
Hotlines there were ambulance services that rely
On whatsapp for whatever reason and when all the meta servers went down there were people who couldn't get medical help
because meta went down
so
I don't know what the solution is. I don't know how we solve it. I don't know if there's a possibility of like a
Rebalkanization
of all these services
I'd like to see that happen. That is not my prediction for the year though because
Well when you hear my prediction you're not going to think i'm that much of a realist either but thinking about how we can
Spread things out a little bit more because aws keeps dropping and
So many things go with it that I think that was my technology issue of the year
Well just to address that for a moment, you know, I think if you look at almost any industry we see the same problem of consolidation
You know, it's uh communications, right?
networks television
everything is being bought by
Relatively few
amount of corporations organizations
What is the solution and I think the solution is always
you know
Diversify as much as possible have independent people come and and and start become their own media
but then you know, you kind of have the side effect of oh everyone's the media now and uh
That includes every crackpot under the earth and then all of a sudden there's no legitimacy
And you don't know who to believe and everyone just believes the people that they follow and nobody else
It's like the extreme
consolidation versus extreme democratization
Yeah, which a lot of the newer technologies have allowed for that democratization, but there should still be
A consolidated effort especially in things like news. We've talked a lot about radio to talk radio is incredibly consolidated with owners
newspapers
Um have suffered from this as well. Absolutely all aspects of media and so that is an incredible observation. Yeah
My prediction
For the year is not a prediction. I don't think it's gonna happen, but it's my hope can we go with that? Sure
What I would like to see
is a
valorization
of rest
Because one of the things that we have seen
as rob said
That more people can work from home and more people are realizing that working remotely and working from home is more of a possibility
Is that more people are working more hours?
Than ever I would like to see us
as a country and as a culture
Stop valorizing the grind
quite as much
That you know people are saying oh what did you do during the pandemic and if you didn't learn a language monetize
Your hobbies and lose 50 pounds you were wasting your time during the pandemic
and like
We stayed alive a lot of us
we
Learned things and just because we didn't earn money for them doesn't mean that it wasn't worth it
I think that to
valorize rest relaxation
recharge a minute to breathe
And that the idea that if you can't monetize it it's not worth it
I'd like to see a step away from that in 2022 again. It's not a real prediction
but it's a deeply felt hope that is excellent that is that says so much because
Throughout the world people work themselves to death literally sometimes
And um, I remember back, uh when we did the first hope conference, uh, we were making fun of those at&t commercials
Remember those where basically, uh, they just made up some technology didn't exist and and you know, basically
Did you ever send a fax from the beach you will and the company that'll bring it to you is at&t
I think I have that right and uh
First of all, they're claiming credit for things that didn't exist at the time
But why would you want to send a fax from the beach? You're on the damn beach. Enjoy it
And that world has come to be where people don't know how to enjoy themselves
They have to work all the time my idea for this which I just came up with by the way, you know how in china
Everyone is is freaking out because kids are being limited in how much they can play video games
And I think you get two hours a week or something crazy like that
And then I don't know how it turns off, but it does what if we did the same thing for work?
Okay, where you basically, you know, you're on your your work connection or you're doing work related things on your computer
And then all of a sudden a message comes across saying you've worked enough
Now go relax
And it's enforced. I don't know that's probably not the answer, but I think something that's the mentality
We need to get into you know, if you haven't relaxed enough if you haven't done something for yourself today, it's time to do that
Well, there's that that at&t ad campaign you were talking about still lives and there's a current ad campaign for google
That does the same thing and I saw it on the subway
Unfortunately when I was on the way to work and it was a list of places you can work from with your google connection
Work from the beach work from your bed work from their bed work from the train
Whatever it is and it's like no
Just take a breath
draw a
a a
line
And you know if we get back to that ideal of eight eight and eight
um for what it's worth
The vpn my company has me using
When i'm working remotely does disconnect after eight hours of connection. Oh, really you can sign right back in
But yeah, it boots you after eight hours interesting
It's kind of like my idea
Yeah
I really like that too because it's also a real re-evaluation of um, how to spend your energy and that um,
The reward for things that you work on isn't necessarily compensation all the time and we have a really hard time
um
getting people inspired if if it isn't
um something
Monetary where there's some financial
uh benefit, uh, other than that, uh, our society largely looks at it, um,
Uh everything else as free time
Um if people even get to that
So, um, I just think there's there's a lot in what you're saying on on even deeper levels
There's many layers to that and I think there's so many worthwhile things people can invest in
uh as far as working on
Yeah, I saw this thing today on twitter that's that's being passed around. Have you seen this? It's uh, basically
uh geared towards musicians
And it's a calculation of the number of streams that musicians have to achieve in order to make one dollar
from their music one dollar
Um, i'm going to read off a list of what they have to accomplish and just try to remember how it used to work
You know where musicians would sell records
And get a cut from that
Uh and and have uh recording contracts and and and things
Uh from amazon music they need 249 streams
249 people listening to their songs
In order to make one dollar apple music 128
Uh title music, whatever that is 78
Napster
53
Actually napster is the best deal
Interesting, isn't it?
I mean think about when napster came out back in uh, was it 2000?
uh where
That was seen as as somehow ripping off artists. And in fact
They're doing they're giving them the best deal in the digital world
Uh, deezer 156 streams to make one dollar pandora
752
spotify
315 but you know what the worst offender is
You guessed it. Google
YouTube music you need
1250 streams to make one lousy dollar if you're a musician
Now I can't speak to the accuracy of these numbers that's being passed all over the place on twitter
So it must be true
Um, but um if it is true if if this is anywhere based in reality this right here illustrates
One of the major problems that we have where the people the artists the people who are creating things
They're the ones in last place
And you better believe these companies are making a killing from those people
And and that's that's a huge issue
And at least then they could go in there was like a
Recording label they could go in and confront. I mean, these are basically just uh web pages
they're visiting to see how they're
they're uh, uh
distribution and and um, and uh audience is growing
They're not actually able to advocate. Um
In in a large way, especially if you're a new artist
A quick research check-in is that napster?
Um and talking about consolidation napster is now what used to be rhapsody
Um, the rhapsody service became napster in 2016. Was that real made by real?
Possibly real networks
It's very very possible. Um, because things just keep getting eaten
By other things and I will be interested to see if this sort of chart will exist in another year and how many
Platforms will be on it
see
I keep going back to um, not not to fixate on the way things used to be
But the value of owning a record or a cd
And and and showing your support in that way knowing that when you buy something
Uh that a good percentage of what you are paying is going towards that artist
At least in theory, I know record companies do all kinds of shenanigans have done that in the past
uh, but at least you know, you felt like you were you were
voting in some way
uh with either your concert ticket or or you know your your record purchase and um
You know, we can say that uh digitizing everything has has made it a lot more. Um, uh,
Uh palatable for some people but I don't think the artists are the ones benefiting from this
It doesn't seem that way alex
Alex I think you're muted
Yeah, no, sorry. I'm having a little technical issues here today. It's a bit of bit of lag, but
this whole notion of
Music and streaming and services and profit. It really only works out for the artists when
Uh, they can stream at a at a much larger scale. So for instance if you have
Hypothetically 40 million streams on a song per month
That would equate to about 160 thousand dollars at
One dollar per per every 250 streams
That's a lot of money per song per month
But you can only ever get to that rate if you have some kind of boost from popular culture
And usually that means some kind of massive marketing campaign
By way of a music label or some kind of corporation behind you or some kind of corporate promotion of your music
throughout the airwaves throughout streaming and
Uh through all the streaming services rather and so for independent artists
It becomes very very difficult for them to break through and make a meaningful
Uh wage from this and it it almost forces them out of the out of the market itself
which I think is is is very very unfortunate and the
The the scale of this has to change in one way or another or we're just going to be stuck with this
Homogenized view of of what we
Of popular music which is what we had on the radio 20 years ago and it annoyed the hell out of me that
I like um where you're going with that alex too because I think it wraps people up
It's really a management to wraps the artist up in this sort of branding machine and they become
Something they didn't really intend to be as a recording artist. They're out doing like
um
endorsements and things that and
getting really
Far afield from like having their music be performed or or sold widely
Like uh, they're sort of forced to say like, okay
well
this is success and that means you have to be in all of these different ads and all these different platforms and modes and
you have to do a
Collaboration or or some kind of crossover appeal on this
uh program or series and and uh
That keeps you relevant and therefore gives you more endorsements and before you know it you're just basically like in this ad cycle
and uh you you that you only got uh exposed to
through your uh
your
your wish or desire to to perform music which is crazy to think about that like we
We laud the success of an artist on things that really are all externalities to to the craft itself
Which is music?
Absolutely, rob
The the thing is the the traditional entrenched big label music industry has always been very very good at underpaying their talent
And taking things that challenge their sort of rule of the entire
system and market and everything and uh, just absorbing them or uh
Or taking them down I have right here on my desk. I have a cd that I bought
Um, I got it a few weeks ago. Oh good for you
It's from one of my favorite bands and it's a hard piece of media
And uh, you know
The first thing I did when I when I received it is I ripped it to digital files
That I put on my devices and stuff and the cd will go up on a shelf whenever I get around to cleaning my desk
but
Um, if I if I spend, you know, 15 bucks on this independently produced cd
Um, you know, they probably saw the vast majority of that money because they're the ones getting the things printed up and putting them out
And doing it as an independent, uh act without the help of the major labels
who uh, you know who are very good at just uh
Making numbers like uh, like these amazon music, you know 249 plays to make a dollar sort of things
Uh look good. So I want to say if you if you have music that you enjoy
Um track down the band's official sites official stores buy things from them get a t-shirt get an album
I know a lot of people like vinyl records again
Get some of those because that is how you're going to keep your favorite artists your favorite creative people
Um able to do their work. Um, the big the big music industry is still not the way to go
It's still screwing people and we can see that clearly on this if you're one of those artists or bands
I think the best thing for you to do is to have your own website
Where you have an account on an online store that doesn't uh,
Take the majority of your profits and you sell this thing and you send it out yourself
You send out the cds you send out the shirts
And uh, you you don't farm it out to uh to amazon or anybody like that
Because they will take a huge cut and you won't make anything
And this way people who are fans of your music will say I want to support them
I want to buy a cd and like what you did rob
You'll you'll have the cd on your cell your shelf and and uh,
You'll digitize it for your various devices and then when log 4j comes calling one day and you lose everything
You have that cd to go back to so you can encode it again and start over
So you got some optimistic view of the future. I like that too because uh, the the
people landing on your site, uh, if you're hosting it, they won't be as susceptible as they would to um having their
demographics and so on uh fed into advertising which would take away their disposable income that
They would otherwise maybe spend buying your merchandise and your cds
So if like they're being um, just to get to your site
They have to go through all these these storms of ads the risk of them buying
With money, they would otherwise spend at your web store is a lot higher, right?
And the thing is if and when you become major successful superstars
that's the time you put it all on amazon and let them deal with it because you can't be bothered if if uh,
Somebody needs to get your um, your music delivered to them by drone in the same day
You know, that's that's a better solution than you running it yourself and going crazy trying to deliver merchandise
but when you're when you're
Beginning when you're small when when you're not making a whole lot of money at this
Uh doing this yourself
basically having a website having having an online presence of one sort or another that is by far the the better way to um,
And it goes for you know for writers as well people who publish books artists of all sorts
um, and you know, I think
We would see so much more
Uh in the way of uh of new artists prospering and having a path to becoming more successful because I guarantee
You you see small artists on amazon half the time it's counterfeit work
That is basically using their name. I I know at least one musician
Uh when I mentioned hey your your your cds on amazon, they never put it on amazon
Somebody else put it on amazon amazon doesn't do anything to prevent that
And they're not making a penny off of that those sales
Amazon is amazon's making money from that and of course the counterfeiters are making money
So that is what happens that can't happen if you're running your own site
and um if if you see it show up on amazon when you didn't put it there you can you can uh,
draw attention to that and uh
Hopefully take some kind of action. Yeah, it's not your own doing. Yeah, exactly alex
Yeah, and and speaking of which I just took a quick look at the the monthly listeners that enya has on spotify
Since I know that's one of your favorites
emmanuel
Uh and 3.6 million monthly listeners. So at scale this is gonna it's really gonna work out for anya
However, I know one of your other favorite bands the uh, the scottelites
Right, how many would you venture to guess that they would have well, you know, uh, if you ask me this question, uh,
20 years ago, I would ask you what you're talking about because amazon didn't exist
Uh, but um, I would basically guess now today
um a mere fraction of what anya gets, um
I'll say maybe 250 000
That's right. You know, that's that's pretty good guess. They actually have about 489 000. Okay
Listeners, which is which is not bad, but there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them though. Alex
There's more than one in the scottelites
Oh, well, that that's true. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, it's quite quite a large like 50 people on that horn section
Yeah, uh, but let's say that equates to 1 million streams per month. Okay
That would be four thousand dollars
That's that's not enough for the horn section even no feed that family, you know
And and if you multiply that times 10, it's still arguably not enough to feed the scottelites given the size of that band
So, you know the these
Economics just don't really seem to work out at scale
No, but the convenience does it's it's way convenient to be able to click a button and hear the music you want to hear
and think that you're contributing and um, you're really not you're contributing to to amazon and to the uh,
To the uh, large companies that are doing these these streams, but that's it. That's really it
Yeah, you keep them in uh
Center spotlight as far as the dominant player. Mm-hmm
Well, you know, we have a lot more to cover as far as 2021
We're gonna have to continue that over on overtime
And the way you get to overtime and and by the way, we are not on next week. Uh, we're pre preempted
And we'll be on again in two weeks
But the way to get to our overtime show is go to youtube.com
Channel 2600 you should see it there. It goes live at eight o'clock or you can go to
www.2600.com
And click on the link at the top of the page that goes to overtime and uh, you can make phone calls then you can
Ask us questions share experiences
Uh various things like that. I also want to remind people to support wbai in these closing days of 2021
Uh, we are basically trying to pay our transmitter bill for the whole of 2022
Something we've never done before pay in advance. Imagine that
We can do that with your support if you call 212-209-2950
Or go to the website give to wbai.org give the number to wbai.org
Pledge whatever you can afford to the transmitter
transmitter
Project I guess is what it's called, right? Yeah
I think fund or project fund
Yeah, it's hard to say quickly. It is transmitter fund fund
Yeah, but you know, you can you can pledge one amount you can pledge something every month
uh, it all goes to the same place for the same purpose and um
It's amazing when you think two years ago
We were out on the street or actually a little bit more than two years ago
we were out on the street because of a of a coup attempt from various factions and
The history of the station was very much in doubt and very glum
And now not only are we back on the air
Uh, we've moved to a new transmitter site. We've cut expenses
we're
in the black instead of deep in the red and
We are basically ready ready to um to take the next step and you can help us do that 212-209-2950
Give to wbai.org
2021 has been an interesting year and uh better than 2020. I'll say that but you know, i'm hoping
2022 will be much better than 2021 and my fingers are crossed. Um, i'm looking forward to it
Is anybody else it might be only one
Yes. Yes. Uh, we are very much looking forward to it. And uh, you know, I I have hopes I have hopes and uh,
Let's uh, let's see how they do. I have hopes about my hopes
I also have hopes about my hopes one hope that is going to get us to hope
Um is that if you have plans for friday night, please stay home just stay home. Yeah, why not stay home
Makes sense to me. There'll be crowds of people crowds of people everywhere. We don't need that. Yeah
All right, uh, join us over on youtube. We'll see you in two weeks here on wbai stay tuned to 99.5 fm
Because we have all kinds of great programming throughout the week
For alex, rob, gila, and kyle, this is emmanuel. Happy new year