"Tangible" vinyl, subscription-only tchotchkes, building an on-line fan-base...The Jack White business model has reached the hallowed halls of the Wall Street Journal, which lead them to publish to such unintentionally hilarious sentences yesterday as “You can’t help but have a punk aesthetic, to rebel against technology and the way music is presented to people these days,” spoken by a man whose sales techniques are designed to force fans to sign up to Twitter if they want to catch "spontaneous" streaming video performances and take part in giveaways in on-line chat rooms on a website to which they pay to subscribe.
This is funny because White hates Twitter and says, "I don't want to give in to the digital age", among many similar quotes. One hopes Jack does not end up like the pigs in Animal Farm, "Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." No insult intended; I'm The Man in that paragraph. I'm the one who spends all my time on the internet.
The article, which includes an excellent video and interactive graphic is here on the wsj site.
There's also a short article on his business model at techdirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment