Michael Robertson Wins for the Craziest Digital Music Idea

Michael Robertson, always the wanna-be defender of the little guy (while stepping all over shareholders, former employees, vendors, customers, musicians, partners, copyright holders, etc.), asked in his latest blog for people to vote for the "Craziest Digital Music Ideas Ever."

Boy, he sure forget a whopper from his list:

My.MP3 - Michael Robertson's pet project which tanked MP3.com from a market cap in the billions to millions. MP3.com went public for over $25 per share, and ultimately sold for under $6 per share. (I'm not sure my dog could have done that poorly.) As usual with Robertson, many investors lost big and employees who held stock options were left underwater, and the artists and customers (who Robertson built MP3.com on the backs of) lost a once-promising website. Of course, Robertson made off big, even if most other shareholders didn't.

Why it was crazy: Because it blatantly violated copyright law, and handed MP3.com the largest judgment for copyright infringement in history. "The complex marvels of cyberspatial communication may create difficult legal issues; but not in this case. Defendant's (MP3.com) infringement of plaintiffs' copyrights is clear." ~ Judge Rakoff

When I get asked, "How do you start a small business?" I answer, "Buy a big one, let Michael Robertson run it, and wait awhile." Robertson never wanted to be known as a "one trick poney." I never understood that. What was his FIRST successful "pony?" Destroying MP3.com?

Kevin

My Video Tribute to Michael Jackson and 40 other "stars" who died too young.

I've been working with Jayson Haws on his first solo CD and it's just about finished. It's turning out to be an amazing collection of songs (more on that in a future blog). One of the songs on the CD is called "Stars." As I was listening to some of the early mixes of Stars, I couldn't help but think how appropriate the song was to the passing of not just Michael Jackson, but to the many "stars" who passed away far too young. Even though the song isn't finished, I asked Jayson if he wouldn't mind if I used it to pay tribute to Michael Jackson and the others. He was pleased to oblige.

So, here is my tribute to Michael Jackson and 40 others whose stars stopped shining far too soon.

How many of the 40 can you name? Which had the biggest impact on your life? Who did I miss? Post a comment and let me know. (After you watch the video, for the full list, scroll down. You can also scroll down for the lyrics.)



Click here to watch in Super High Def or to download.

Dedicated to Michael Jackson, Annie, Sara, and (in order of appearance)...

1. Kurt Cobain (27)
2. Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith (34)
3. Jimi Hendrix (27)*
4. Janis Joplin (27)*
5. Jim Morrison (27)*
6. Brian Jones (27)
7. Keith Moon (32)*
8. Jeff Buckley (30)
9. Freddie Mercury (45)*
10. The Notorious B.I.G. (24)
11. Tupac Shakur (25)
12. Heath Ledger (28)
13. Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes (30)
14. Kevin Gilbert (29)*
15. Selena (23)
16. James Dean (24)
17. Marilyn Monroe (36)
18. John Belushi (33)*
19. Chris Farley (33)*
20. Phil Hartman (49)*
21. Jerry Garcia (53)
22. John Denver (53)*
23. Karen Carpenter (32)*
24. Bob Marley (36)
25. Buddy Holly (22)*
26. Ritchie Valens (17)
27. Marvin Gaye (44)
28. River Phoenix (23)
29. Aaliyah (22)
30. Ronnie Van Zant (29)
31. Stevie Ray Vaughan (35)
32. Soldiers*
33. Victims of 911*
34. Crew of the Columbia Space Shuttle
35. John F. Kennedy (46)*
36. John F. Kennedy, Jr. (38) & Robert F. Kennedy (42)
37. Princess Diana (36)
38. Elvis Presley (42)*
39. George Harrison (58)*
40. John Lennon (40)*

*Those who most impacted my life.

Here are the lyrics. (Used by permission. (C) 2009, Jayson Haws.)

Stars by Jayson A. Haws

Hello, hello, are you in there
I'm as dark as the night
Let go, let go, find your freedom
Take a taste and chase the high

Colorful comes and color goes
Like throwing a stone through a stained glass window
We all disappear before we know

So look at the stars
We're beautifully blind
People are speaking in lullaby

With a shift of your glance
Your flowers have dried
We are just moments here
We're moments passing by

Jump off, jump off, this is living
You know I'm terrified of heights
The loss is the cost of your giving
You find your way a day at a time

Colorful comes and color goes
Like throwing a stone through a stained glass window
We all disappear before we know

So look at the stars
We're beautifully blind
People are speaking in lullaby
With a shift of your glance
Your flowers have dried
We are just moments here
We're moments here

Spinning 'round and 'round we go
We all fall down, we all should know
We circle for a moment around what is life

So look at the stars
We're beautifully blind
People are speaking in lullaby
With a shift of your glance
Your flowers have dried
We are just moments passing by
Passing by
We are just moments here

So look at the stars baby
Look at the stars all night
All night....

Kevin

PS: I've been asked why I didn't include Farrah Fawcett. Granted, her passing at 62 was too young, but I only included those who died before the age of 59.

No Surprise: Government's 'HOPE for Homeowners' Program Hasn't Worked

Let's see, we turn over a big problem to the federal government to solve and they mess it up even more. Why should anyone be surprised?

If you want to see how well the Federal Government works at solving economic problems, read this article from CNN: Renewed HOPE for Homeowners

Hope for Homeowners has a 1 in 400,000 success rate.

Government's ‘Hope for Homeowners’ foreclosure rescue plan, rolled out last year, was set to target 400,000 distress families in some stage of foreclosure. The program was geared to keep those families in their homes. When the program was rolled out, many complained that it didn't go far enough, only helping 400,000 families of the millions facing foreclosure. Now we find the bar for ‘too little’ was set way too high for the government to meet. Out of the 400,000 families targeted to be saved by this program only ONE family/home was actually saved. This is a program with massive overhead, a huge staff, and there success rate was 1 out of 400,000.

As if we needed yet ANOTHER example of government's ineptness, this gives you an idea of what results we can expect if the government gets involved in health care, or further involved in the financial markets or banking industry. The Federal Government has bankrupted soc. sec., medicare, etc., and has shown they are incapable of solving hardly any problem. Why would you want to turn MORE over to them? This would be like having a basketball team and your best shooter misses one jump shot, so you turn to the worst shooter on your team and tell him to start taking MORE shots. (More examples of Government's failure to solve problems.)

Letting the worst shooter (Fed. Gov.) take more shots.

If you think the bank industry and the financial markets were inefficient before, give it some time with new regulations and government involvement, and watch the cost to borrow, and the cost to invest, sky rocket. If you think health care costs are high now, just wait 'till they're "free."

Kevin

John Stossel's "You Can't Even Talk About It"

Another very good special by John Stossel, taking on politically sensitive topics. Stossel is one of the few journalists who will take on these taboo subjects.

PART 1: Should Pregnant women get paid as much as others?



PART 2: Should food be radiated?



PART 3: Should tax payers pay for other's who take dumb risks?



PART 4: Is killing and eating tigers the best way to save them?



PART 5: Should steroids be legal?



PART 6: Shouldn't America start doing LESS for the elderly?

Lala Music Service - THEE Best Place to Download DRM-Free Music!

In my last blog I called out Michael Robertson for his bogus put down of the Lala music service. Today I want to show you why Lala is hands-down my favorite place to buy DRM-free music.

Lala.com has:

• NO DRM! Use songs on virtually any computer, phone or other music device.
• The lowest prices.
  
• The best selection.
• High-quality 256 kbps MP3 files.
• The fastest way to find, sample, buy and download pretty much any song or CD.
  
• Instant sync with iTunes.
• Sample over 6 million FULL songs (not just 30-second clips).
  

For example, today I wanted to buy Paul McCartney's first solo record, McCartney. iTunes didn't offer it. Amazon only sold the CD, but didn't offer it in their MP3 store. But, watch how easy it was to find, buy and download it from Lala:



In his blog this week, Robertson is yet again trying to get you to think poorly of Lala in favor of his failing MP3tunes venture. Don't fall for his propaganda. Most people don't even care about a silly "locker" for their music, as they prefer to have their music stored on THEIR hard drive and devices. You can buy a 1 Terabyte drive at Costco for around $100. (In my opinion, anyone who stores their music at MP3tunes and expects that company to be around in the future is kidding themselves. Look at what happened to MP3.com, Linspire, and other Robertson ventures. Where are they today?)

I encourage you to give Lala a try. It doesn't get any easier to find, buy and download high-quality, DRM-free music. I'm happy to finally see a legit site that respects artists and copyright law and that is easier and more convenient to use than piracy.

Thanks Lala!

Kevin

Click image above to see why Lala is the best music service

Michael Robertson Wants To Fool You About the Lala Music Store

I worked with Michael Robertson for seven years and watched first hand his methods. Anyone who follows my blog knows I wasn't impressed with his ethics or tactics. If you want to see a typical example of how Robertson tries to fool people to get his way by misrepresenting the facts (like when he falsely charged former employees for embezzlement to get money from his bank), look at his latest blog where he puts down the successful music service Lala.

The REAL reason Robertson dislikes Lala.

To me, this seems to be Robertson's typical cycle: start a business, fail, then start tossing garbage at the companies who did it right and succeeded, thereby justifying his failure. Linspire lost to Red Hat, Novell and Canonical (Ubuntu). MP3tunes lost to Lala. SipPhone lost to Skype. And so it goes, leaving Robertson with plenty of companies to whine about.

Let's look at his latest drivel about Lala to see his typical MO:

First he starts off like a politician, by trying to scare you with some horrible, over-the-top threat that only he can protect you from: "An insidious new plot to wrestle control of your personal music library is underway." He then goes on to compare it to a "roach motel." Ohhhh, the drama! Whatever shall we do?!? Please Michael, save us from this "insidious new plot!"

Robertson talks about how Lala must be evil because it has taken investment from music companies. I have absolutely no idea if that's true or not (as I don't believe anything that comes from of Robertson), but what I DO know is that when I was CEO of Linspire, Robertson was more than happy to have Linspire take millions of dollars from "the evil" Microsoft and partner with them. So I guess Microsoft was pulling all of Michael's strings at Linspire?

Robertson put millions in his own pocket that came directly from Microsoft ($3M while I was CEO, and I'm sure more after I left). The money that flowed from Microsoft to Robertson more than likely helped fund MP3tunes. So, using Michael's logic, we can all assume that Microsoft is pulling the strings at MP3tunes, right? Such hypocrisy. The only reason MP3tunes isn't backed by "big music," is because big music is smarter than that. Warner Music tried one time to partner with Robertson and got stabbed in the back the second the ink was dry on the agreement. If one of the big record labels offered to put money into MP3tunes, Robertson would take it in a minute, just like he did at Linspire with the Microsoft deal.

Robertson's claim that he will never "sell out the consumer," is utter rubbish. As CEO at Linspire, I didn't see him raise one objection to Linspire's "deal with the devil" Microsoft, or him concerned in the least about how this would affect the consumer. All I saw him care about was how big was the check and him making sure that $3M was wired to his personal account on the very day we got paid from Microsoft to cover a line of credit Linspire had with Robertson. Many times I watched Robertson intentionally do things that would annoy our users because it would sell more product. As soon as I became CEO, I made CNR free and put out a free version of Linspire (Freespire), all going against what Roberson did as CEO. Robertson helped to justify Microsoft's patent claims when Linspire entered into their deal with Microsoft, so his claims of being the champion against patents, DRM, and protecting consumers' rights rings hollow. I only thing I saw Robertson ever care about was himself, his ego and his net worth. Robertson is the one person I know who can make the big record labels seem like good, honest, honorable people.

Next comes more lies and half truths. He says, "To participate you just need to upload all the tracks from your personal library." Lala should sue Robertson for that line, because it's total rubbish. You don't have to upload a single song from your library to participate at LaLa, but by lying about this, Robertson can make Lala seem so much more "insidious," so why let the truth get in the way?

Robertson's nonsense continues with, "Your music will be controlled by Lala and will eventually vanish, because no company lasts forever." There is no truth to the first part, and the second part would apply even more so to Robertson's companies, given their poor performance.

If you upload your music library to Lala, you are in no way transferring ownership or control of that music. You will still have all your music on your computer's hard drive or on your CDs. Lala can't touch those files and in no way does it "control your music." Lala could go out of business tomorrow and you'd still have your music. (Besides, if anyone's going out of business, my money is on MP3tunes tanking long before Lala.)

Robertson then offers a table where he laughably labels LaLa as the "Record Label Locker," and MP3tunes the "Consumer Locker." Robertson insults the reader with this transparent "BS." Lala is an independent music service, even though Robertson wants to scare you into believing otherwise.

Here's the table I'd offer you about Lala, the one Robertson DOESN'T want you to see:


Read what Ed Bott has to say about Lala on ZDnet.

Most of the popular music stores now all offer non-DRM MP3 files, so Robertson has to start finding other excuses to pick at them. Most consumers just want the lowest cost MP3, and Lala is an excellent service for that, perhaps the best. MP3tunes has little content and can't possibly compete with Lala there, so Robertson wants to scare you about their locker service, which honestly, most consumers don't even care about. (Most people can carry their entire music collection in the palm of their hand and sync it to all their devices without a locker, rendering MP3tunes useless.)

From what I hear, all the best employees have left MP3tunes and there are hardly any employees even left there. Why would anyone want to waste their time uploading their music to a business that will probably go the way of MP3.com, Linspire, AJAX Windows, and so many other ventures started by Robertson?

I've had years of watching Robertson closely. I wouldn't trust anything he says. If you want to have a great selection of music that you can buy in non-DRM MP3s, I'd ignore Robertson and check out Lala. You'll see why it's succeeding.

Kevin

Michael Robertson Loses in the Court of Public Opinion

I found an interesting website a few months back called On The Jury (www.onthejury.com). The site basically lets Internet users read about a "case" and vote Guilty or Not Guilty. I thought it would be fun to try it out, so I made a post about how Michael Robertson filed police reports against several Linspire employees calling them all embezzlers. I wanted to see how hundreds of Internet users would "rule" on this matter.

I posted the case in November of last year, and as of today, 204 people had voted in the case. The results were pretty interesting (although, not at all surprising to me). Hardly anyone agreed with Roberton's claims.

Click on the below image to enlarge, read Robertson's case against me, and then see the "verdict."

98% of Internet Users found me "Not Guilty."

Only 2% of the public jury agreed with Michael Robertson, who accused employees of "embezzlement" because they received severance payments from the me, the CEO, when they were laid off.

Of course, Robertson lost in a "real" court over this issue as well. Click here to read how Judge Meyer ruled against Robertson, not even letting his bogus allegations get past summary judgment.

If you ever decide to go to work for Michael Robertson, make sure you have a good lawyer, you could very well need one. The fact that he could try to have some of his very best employees arrested for having received severance tells you just how greedy he is.

Kevin