Tom Petty didn't want to be the guinea pig, he didn't want MCA to sell his next album for $9.98.
Although there was radio action on "Breakdown," Tom Petty's first two LPs were not commercial juggernauts. He was still somewhat of a secret. Unfortunately going in the wrong direction. You can only be the new thing once, and when the build is at a feverish pitch and your second album is not as good, it's hard to recover from that.
But Tom and the Heartbreakers (Who should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as their own group if the E Street Band is, but being mainly from Florida and living in California there's no chance. Didn't you know they only make serious music in New York?) employed Jimmy Iovine and released a blockbuster, "Damn the Torpedoes." One must ponder whether the LP would have been as big if it were released by ABC, Shelter's prior distributor, but in any event Petty didn't like being traded and declared bankruptcy and that story has become industry legend. But the story of $9.98? That seems to have faded away.
Records were an addiction. This was just before MTV was launched. Sure, there were casual customers who only bought one, based on what they heard on the radio, but the business was driven by those who couldn't resist purchasing two, three or five. I wouldn't say records were cheap, but unlike in the U.K. they were not ridiculously expensive, one can argue quite strongly that the U.K. remained a "hits" business, i.e. Top Forty, because singles were affordable and albums were not. A trip to the record store was a weekly ritual. You watched the papers for sales. And if you were paying suggested retail...you were one of the very few. The key was how much of a discount you got. The new releases were always cheaper, which is kind of funny, you'd think they'd be more expensive, and the catalog stuff was the most expensive. But you'd wait for the all label sale, when the entire inventory was at its cheapest. Or if you lived in the metropolis you went to certain indie outlets were the albums were always cheap. Fans were aware of the price of records. And were they going to take a risk for a buck more?
Petty, a customer himself, knew many wouldn't, so he agitated for the standard $8.98 price on his album, which really meant that savvy customers could buy it for five bucks.
Ironically, "Hard Promises" was darker and not as commercially successful as "Damn the Torpedoes," and "Long After Dark" even more so. Then Petty put out "Southern Accents" and "Don't Come Around Here No More" ended up being gigantic, driven by a ubiquitous video with Tom in a giant hat. Tom made the transition from the seventies to the eighties, from AOR to MTV, he started to become the Tom Petty of legend, not that everybody was on the same page until the release of his solo LP, "Full Moon Fever," in 1989. I'd like to be free fallin' right now!
Not everybody recovers from hiccups in the road. They can stall a career. You want to make it easy for fans to continue to follow and appreciate you. Like Titus Welliver in "Bosch."
That's the reason to watch, Titus is so damn good. Tom Cruise is mostly external, Titus Welliver is mostly internal, but there's an external element too. You know guys like Titus, who go their own way, not caring what anybody thinks, who seem to be plugged in in a way no one else is, who radiate weird loner charisma. It's more of an anti-star than a star. It's the difference between Metallica and the Spotify Top 50. What becomes a legend most? Metallica!
So I got hooked on "Bosch" six summers ago, recovering from shoulder surgery. It was like discovering a new band, where you had to go back and devour all of the catalog. And then I waited every spring for a new season.
Yes, it's a formula. But you can't stop watching Titus. And the supporting cast too, it's quite an ensemble.
But now Amazon, in all of its "wisdom," has moved the "Bosch" sequel, "Bosch: Legacy," to Freevee.
HUH?
I'm such a fan that I knew that Amazon's IMDb TV was rebranded as Freevee and you had to go there to watch the new season of "Bosch." BUT NOT A SINGLE PERSON I INTERACTED WITH KNEW THIS! They were all fans of the show, they were positively shocked, shocked I tell you, when they found out there was a new season. As far as being on Freevee...they'd never heard of IMDb TV!
But it gets worse, it's not on Freevee all over the world.
And you know how it is in today's world, you can't get the word out. And even if people got it, they had to know to download a new app, and that you didn't have to register to watch it, but you know Amazon wants all your data. To HELP you. Yeah, that's right.
So since it's on Freevee, that means there are...COMMERCIALS!
I pay for Amazon Prime, one of the perks is the streaming TV without commercials, and now you take my favorite original show from the service and exile it to the hinterlands and make me watch adverts after having made the journey?
I know some people are cheap. Actually, a lot are cheap. But most of them will pay for convenience. Which is why they pay for Spotify instead of continuing to steal music. Sure, there's a free tier with advertising on Spotify, but it's hobbled, it's not fully-featured, it's for casual users only, to be able to pick and choose what you want to hear you need to pay. You need to pay for everything good in this life.
I don't want to see no stinking commercials.
Talk to a young 'un, they don't know what a commercial is! Well, they refuse to watch 'em. And where would they see 'em, they don't watch network, they don't even have a cable TV subscription! But they do have a Netflix account, even if it might be their parents'.
Clamp down on password sharing, why not. It's like when cable went digital, you could no longer steal HBO by removing a filter.
So Amazon was building momentum, a catalog, of "Bosch." Hell, most of the legendary TV shows were not gigantic out of the box, not only "Seinfeld," but "Breaking Bad." It's harder to reach people today, but the key is to hook 'em, which Amazon did with "Bosch," and now they're throwing all that good will away, putting "Bosch: Legacy" on Freevee? The people paying for Prime are the same people who don't want to watch commercials!
Amazon could realize the error of its ways. And put "Legacy" on the main service right now, most people would have no idea it had been previously released.
As for the commercials on Freevee... They're less in number than they are on network/cable, but that's like saying five bee stings are better than twenty, when in truth you don't want to be stung at all!
Commercials disrespect the art.
We can finally air visual product sans reformatting and editing. Yes, the aspect ratio of your flat screen is akin to the one in the movie theatre, that all the producers create for. And, there are no longer time restraints, in streaming a movie or series episode can be as long as you want. This is liberation!
But the powers-that-be, out of touch with the public, think otherwise.
Have you seen "Tehran"?
The first season was pretty good. But I haven't watched the second yet, I can't watch anything week to week, you forget too much, it's not the same experience. And is there any buzz on "Tehran"? NO! Maybe if they had released it all at once there would be. The only damn show with buzz on Apple TV+ is "Ted Lasso." Meaning they must be doing something wrong. Forget good reviews, there is no word of mouth, because Apple is stifling it. To think that Steve Jobs was about breaking norms, being ahead of the customer, and Apple is going backwards.
But in any event, watch "Bosch: Legacy." Titus can carry the show alone, but the usual suspects are there too, Maddie and Money, and even cameos from Crate and Barrel. And there's a breakout star, Stephen Chang, who is so unknown he doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page!
Eventually all albums were sold for $9.98. And then CDs for twice that price. And the labels were rolling in dough, laughing all the way to the bank after selling catalog all over again and cutting out singles if they hit, forcing consumers to purchase the whole overpriced album, can you say "Chumbawamba"? And then came Napster.
Don't force the public to do what it doesn't want to. You only build resentment. And I resent the fact that "Bosch: Legacy" is on Freevee!
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