Am I the only one who doesn't want to sign up for Facebook in order to use Spotify, Vevo and god knows what's next?
I'm not on Facebook. Oh, I've got a fake account so I can be up to speed, but I've got no desire to hook up with every girl I ever dated and be back in contact with every person I went to high school with, that's why I moved to California!
Is it just me? Have I just reached my limit? Did they finally get to my station on the Internet and now, just like the people who say they prefer CDs to MP3s and physical books to Kindle files, I'm suddenly a Luddite?
I don't want to people to know what I'm listening to. What's next, a camera in my bedroom so everybody can see me having sex?
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His intense brilliance captivates readers from Steven Tyler to Rick Nielsen to Bryan Adams to Quincy Jones to music business honchos like Michael Rapino, Randy Phillips, Don Ienner, Cliff Burnstein, Irving Azoff and Tom Freston. Never boring, always entertaining, Mr. Lefsetz's insights are fueled by his stint as an entertainment business attorney, majordomo of Sanctuary Music's American division and consultancies to major labels. Bob has been a weekly contributor to CelebrityAccess and Encore since 2001, and we plan many more years of partnership with him. While we here at CelebrityAccess and Encore do not necessarily agree with all of Bob's opinions, we are proud to help share them with you.
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And I don't want digital recommendations. Anybody actually use iTunes Genius?
That's why I hate Pandora… Seemingly every suggestion is a tune-out.
Then again, I seem to be the only person who gives a thumbs-down to the site. Everybody else is complaining they don't know what to listen to on Spotify and they want algorithms to hip them to what's good.
But algorithms never work, not consistently enough to invest your listening time. The filter, when it arrives, will be based on tastemakers, not data. Data might help, but it will never rule supreme.
I'm sick and tired of having to protect my privacy. Facebook is one giant cesspool whose raison d'etre is serving up targeted ads based on what I do on the site.
But it's worse. We don't even get the same Google results. Yup, you and I can put in the same search terms and get completely different listings. And no one clicks on anything beyond the first one anyway.
Are they doing this to edify us, to improve our lives?
NO, THEY'RE DOING IT FOR THE MONEY!
Please, please, please. If you've got a site and you're thinking of tying in with Facebook, please give us the option to register without either needing to be on Facebook, or scrobbling all our data if we are.
Why don't I just give you my social security number right now. My birth date and income tax return. Legitimate sites are now as bad as phishing sites. They want our data so they can make money. They say it's good for us but I don't know why… I've never ever clicked on a Google ad.
And without us, without our data, Facebook is nothing. Think about that.
Meanwhile, every wannabe company in America just wants to give Mark Zuckerberg more power. Yup, keep tying in with his service and one day you'll wake up like the record industry, beholden to Apple, iTunes dictating to them the same way Amazon does its best to dictate to publishers.
I don't think we're going back to an era where we all live in silos with no data to track us. We're gonna be able to find our nursery school buddies if we want to.
But it feels like Facebook, et al, are forcing us to. It's a bad sci-fi movie, the walls keep getting closer as big brother squeezes us all together in the name of profits.
I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking it.
But I wonder if I'm the only one.
