diary of a record executive

The following entry was surreptitiously forwarded to my inbox by "an unnamed source" at Capitol Records ...

Argh! It's a bitch being a senior executive at Capitol Records these days. My years of sucking consumers and artists dry have been rudely interrupted by this thing called the Internet, which frankly I still don't understand. It seems that people who really love music don't really love our highly-structured and profitable distribution model, and this whole digital thing keeps slipping through our fingers. Damn freeloading technophiles.

But I get it now. The Kids like digital things; MP3 players, cell phones ... hey, are digital watches still cool? Better have someone write me a memo on that. But anyway, it came to me on the crapper last night, that what better way to tap into those new media lovers than by launching Coldplay's new single as a ring tone? And get this: it'll be available as a ring tone before the damn song even gets released across the airwaves. I'M A GENIUS!!! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA ...

Wow, this is the least compatible music cross-promotion since iTunes went inside Pepsi bottles. Let's think about ring tones for a second. A ring tone becomes popular / effective because: a) it's annoying [attention-getting], or b) it's familiar [pleasing]. As a Coldplay fan I doubt the tone will be the former, and any completely unknown song can't be the latter. Just because popular music ends up in a ring tone download doesn't mean that the fascination works in reverse. The Mississippi River only flows one direction, bubba.

And even if I'm wrong, what are the benefits of introducing a new song as a ring tone? Last I knew, Coldplay tunes aren't exactly ripe for 15-second riffs pushed through low-quality polyphonic sampling. It was hard enough to evaluate Yellow from the 30-second iTunes clip, so don't expect a frothing demand-side pull based on .mmf distribution.

Better luck next time old-timers ...