Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

If you feel like i'm just going Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, don't make me a target. I love Spoon. Now i can add their 6th album to my collection. 

Did you know Pete Loeffler is surprised and frustrated by the fact that Chavelle doesn't make any money from album sales? Why is he surprised by that? Pete isn't selling those records. They aren't Pete's records, they aren't Chavelle's records, they are Sony's records. The band signed away their profits for global distribution. It's one thing to understand what your contract says, it's another thing to understand what it means and decide what you really want. In the case of a major label, it invariably means you created a work for hire. Dear Pete, Epic bought your album with Sony's money, hope you negotiated enough of an advance to live until the next one. 

I know what's happening in Pete's head. He thinks that fans are buying his albums and he'll get some portion of that money. That's not what his contract says will happen. It could say it MIGHT happen, but i doubt Epic has much left after payroll and pay-up to Sony. Epic's job is to pay Sony with revenue generated by its roster, not the other way around. Pete's job is to re-capitalize on the gargantuan marketing, publicity, and distribution to get fans to shows, but he doesn't own the venue, or tickets, or merch. There isn't anyone handing Pete money, so.... 

Spoon, on the other hand, is an indie band.  They have a much better contract than Chavelle, in large part because Spoon is paying their fair share. Spoon has a stake in their own career, tours, distribution. I'm not ragging on Chavelle just to be mean, i'm merely pointing out the sloppy, naive thinking. Chavelle is at the mercy of Sony, using Sony subsidiaries for the profit of Sony. Spoon is on Merge, who uses AMPED for distribution. Merge cares about producing great new music. AMPED cares about getting Merge artists into stores and fans hands. Everyone is paying for a service and expecting tangible results, but Sony is just slapping through product the same way it has been for decades, hit or miss, drop them if they miss too many times. Merge doesn't want to miss. 

Is that true? No idea, it's what the illusion looks like to me. 

Hold on Bottle. This is all getting too abstract for me to follow. What are you trying to say? 

I'm just rambling. We're looking at a problem. We all have this notion that people know what they are doing, that there are systems in place to take care of problems, that things SHOULD work out. Things don't just work out. Yes, it's entirely possible to make it worse by doing dumb things, but we have enough experience to prioritize, and we should have enough integrity to suck it up and do the work. 

In the case of Spoon vs Chavelle, all the little private companies are focusing on succeeding at their task, but Sony only cares about Sony. If you start to make a dent in one of their markets, they will try to buy and/or squash you. Sony has a massive economic footprint, and if they fold, the whole world will feel it. They are "too big to fail." There's no exit strategy if they do, the same way that there's no exit strategy for the education loan system failing. We need to take a look behind the scenes, and try to understand how we got where we are. That means the Fannie Mae/Sally Mae/Freddie Mac problem. I don't want to dive into the deep end, though. We'll take the following statement as our context: things got so bad that the Department of Education bought most of that debt, and people like me with graduate degrees are ultimately paying back the Federal government through various servicers. 

There are strict rules about how much can be collected, but there is no real plan for the really bad ones like mine. Average oustanding debt is 30k, mine's over 200k at this point because the interest kept compounding through a year of unemployment without any benefits (a different story). 

Once i finally got a job, i resumed paying what i could, but the interest on my loans was more than my salary. Everyone with three firing brain cells understands that's an impossible situation, but nobody has an actual plan to resolve it, because everyone wants it to magically work out; i'll get 200k for buying that 80k principle balance (or whatever, i'm just using approximate numbers at the moment). So, they kept trading my debt around until the federal government said "no more." But, they don't have a plan either, and partisan bickering is the opposite of doing something. If it were a house, the bank would foreclose and kick me out, if it were a car they'd reposess it, but it's the stuff in my brain we're talking about. Most people don't think my thoughts and creativity are worth much money. They certainly aren't worth grocery money. Spoon's 6th album isn't worth grocery money, no matter how much i like it. Food is more important than music. But, Barnes & Noble doesn't sell groceries, so records it is. 

One last thing before we move on to the weekend, i make more than enough to live a lovely life (and you've been watching me do it for years now). I shouldn't have to sit here watching the federal government argue with the federal government about how much of my salary from working a full time job at a plumbing/hvac wholesaler they can take to pay back my unpayable student loans from my Master's and PhD studies. I wanted a career that required a doctorate, but it failed to materialize for reasons beyond my control. It's gone forever. I'm paying the cost of my failure (and i started back at ground level $9.50/hr), but no one is paying the cost of the bad investment that i turned out to be. That doesn't seem fair; i'm small enough to fail, but the predatory lenders aren't? I have to payroll my own third party debt collector?

I think tomorrow we should look at my book, how it illustrates the reality of business without the illusive fallacies of financial finagling. I can't guarantee it will make this whole train of thought come together, but it should at least be interesting to watch while it makes you late for work as it's passing through town. Plus, i still have 4 more records in this batch, so who knows where we'll end up?

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