Despite the predictable, sanctimonious political pearl-clutching, turns out the man was technically correct.

Let’s say I created a pension fund company. You paid into it and when you reach the age of 85, you’d get a monthly check. However the mortality rate in the United States today is 79 years old. People would look at that and call it a scam, and it would be an understandable way of looking at it. If enough people complained, I wouldn’t be surprised if state and federal law enforcement showed up at my door with a warrant and shiny handcuffs. Thank God we’re not living during the tar-and-feather, torch-and-pitchfork era.

Well, it turns out that’s exactly what President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 74th Democrat-controlled Congress did in 1935.

The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. In addition to several provisions for general welfare, the new Act created a social insurance program designed to pay retired workers age 65 or older a continuing income after retirement.
— Social Security Dot Gov

Now while this was portrayed as altruistic and a great benefit at the time, it appears Social Security was a slush fund created by Democrats to forcibly extract money from the American people; money that would not be repaid as promised in most circumstances.

In 1934, the American mortaility rate was 61 years old and the new Social Security payout was at age 65. FDR and the Democrats who passed the Act knew a good amount of Americans would never be around to take advantage of the program they paid into.

Unethical, heartless, evil; call it what you want.

Thanks to the advances in modern medicine, people are now living to the age of 79 years old while the Social Security payout age is 65. Even a college grad today can figure out why the math is horribly off and why the program is doomed, UNLESS the eligility age is raised.

It’s sad this whole Social Security mess isn’t communicated as simply as it is.

Then again, we all know why it’s been reduced to partisan scare tactics because the truth would be inconvenient.

There’s an obvious problem with the subscription business model. While most people will listen to a song they like an untold number of times, people may listen to a podcast episode once; maybe twice? And then all it does is take up space. Not exactly a good use of valuable and expensive storage space and now the geniuses at these businesses are taking notice.

Apple has quietly tightened its reporting of how many people listen to podcasts, sending shock waves through an embattled audio industry still reeling from the end of the COVID-era production bubble. The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

But while few users noticed the shift, some of the biggest podcasts in the world saw their official listener numbers drop dramatically. Long-running shows that publish frequently were hit particularly hard. A user who listened to a show like The New York Times’ The Daily a few times, subscribed, but stopped listening would continue to count as a download indefinitely.
— Semafor, 1/14/24

I’ve commented on, what I consider, the failed subscription business model because while you pay for certain things you like, you’re also forced to pay for many more things you don’t. In this case, you may have a person you enjoy hearing from but you’re also paying for the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Meghan Markle, and almost every cable news personality and it’s doubtful anything you hear makes you want to hear it over and over again.

Even podcast executives believe the changes are part of a necessary shakeout in an industry whose bubbly inflation helped create the industry’s recent boom and bust.

But privately, reactions to the change have ranged from mild annoyance to legitimate alarm. Some advertising deals were inked under the assumption that shows had audiences they no longer have. The update also means that some shows could struggle to meet minimum download agreements. The fact that no major podcasts would talk about how much they lost is a sign that many big shows aren’t ready to admit how much their audiences have shrunk.

This could create some real problems in an industry that, in some cases, paid hefty up-front money to “personalities” and at some point will have to have awkward discussions with narcissists involving pay restructure because few are really rushing to hear what they say.

But even if it is not responsible for a sudden drop, podcast publishers are bracing themselves for a decline. “From our detailed analysis, these adjustments will largely impact download numbers on back catalog episodes, which are typically categorized as content older than 7 days,” Acast CEO Ross Adams wrote in a blog post on Thursday.‍ “However, it’s important to note that these adjustments do not reflect a change in the unique audience a podcast has, simply the number of downloads per user. On the whole, this will mean more accurate measurement and a more efficient depiction of a podcast’s total listens.”

You know who loves accuracy? Advertisers. And you know who doesn’t love paying for impressions that aren’t really impressions? Yeah, you get the drift. As this plays out, I will be interested to see how advertisers react to these changes.
— The Verge, 10/17/23

I can’t imagine how much a publisher pays on a monthly basis for storage, or if they own their own servers, how much it’s going to cost to expand, but if you’re having trouble getting advertisers or can’t tell them accurately what the reach to consumers is, that could be a problem.

It appears it now is.

Granted, a lot of the discussion centers around their reach to a smartphone, which nowadays also connects and sends content to automobiles (that strategically stopped putting CD players in them a few years ago). When phone manufacturers upgrade, it creates havoc downwind and that’s part of the problem.

Again, the subscription business model was ripe for those who wanted to take a website public, make a gob of money off screwed content creators, hire hundreds of employees, meanwhile forcing their consumers to pay for programming they like and programming they never consume. That is a model doomed for failure and it’s only a matter of time, especially when consumers revolt.

The geniuses as NBC decided to buck tradition, screw over the millions of football fans who already paid for cable subscriptions, and made the Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs playoff game available only to those who bought a subscription to Peacock, and went as far as openly bragging about it. Yet another act of public relations arrogance, thus stupidity.

And if it’s any consolation….

Peacock finished the June quarter with 24 million subscribers, up from 22 million at the end of March — but the streamer lost $651 million over the same three months.

Sadly, those losses have pretty much become par for the course. The NBCUniversal streaming platform lost $704 million in the prior quarter (and $467 million in Q2 2022). The company expects to post “peak” losses from streaming — to the tune of $3 billion — in 2023. Good thing Comcast is soon to come into about $9 billion in streaming bucks through the sale of its Hulu stake to Disney.
— Yahoo! Entertainment, 7/27/23

Chances are very good that once their tech-challenged, NFL playoff broadcasts are over, Peacock subscription will be cancelled en masse and they have it coming.

It’s no surprise the podcast industry is cratering. Most of those, who deem themselves important, aren’t creative enough to find new ways to talk about the same thing. They seem to believe an audience will be perpetually enamored simply because they said it. But they are still a part of what we used to refer to as the “entertainment business”. With few exceptions, people talking isn’t really all that entertaining.

Especially when it comes to people who have nothing else of value to give the world.

Meanwhile, the has-been quest for relevance continues unabated.

Joni Mitchell announced Friday that she will join her friend Neil Young in pulling her music off of Spotify.

Mitchell, 78, said in a statement posted to her website, “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify. Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
— Los Angeles Times, 1/28/22

With the political tantrums being led by has-beens like Neil Young and now Joni Mitchell, depriving the public of hearing their music on Spotify, we’re being made to believe this is a moral sacrifice that will also deprive millions of music lovers of their important contributions.

For some unknown reason, several outlets are reporting a strong spike in internet searches for “Who is Neil Young?” With little information about this unknown character available, and with all memory of the man’s existence having been erased from America’s collective memory for decades, many are still being left guessing.
— Babylon Bee, 1/27/22

Let’s be real when it comes to platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, etc. They are just websites. Like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and the rest, they are solely dependent on the content provided by users. Without content providers, they are just empty servers. The music streaming companies make their money off monthly subscriptions (NOT per unit sales) so like the record companies of old, those running them offer artists the lure of fame, exposure, and compensating peanuts in return.

While offering podcaster Joe Rogan $100 million because he brings in coveted demographic subscribers, artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell really won’t be missed which is why Spotify is more than willing to say sayonara to musicians most of today’s consumers don’t know exist.

Spotify, depending on where you look, has between 150-190 million subscribers and at roughly $130 annually per, that’s some serious income to stream music and blabbermouth content they didn’t create.

So, how much will this principled oldhead musician revolt cost?

Spotify complied with the request, which ultimately came from Warner Brothers, Young’s label. Though the loss of Young’s music likely represents a small percentage of overall streams on Spotify, Young pointed out that “Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners around the world.” For Young and his fans, the hit was palpable, and his fans are apparently taking their frustrations out on Spotify. The hashtag #SpotifyDeleted trended on Twitter yesterday, and fans seem to have inundated customer support with so many messages that Spotify has had to take it offline at times.
— ARS Technica, 1/28/22

In the grand scheme of things, this won’t hurt either side a whole helluva lot, which is why the initial connection was made between today’s streaming services and yesterday’s record companies. Ultimately, they screw the artist.

In a tweet sent late Thursday, and later pinned to the top of the official Apple Music Twitter account, Apple called its platform “the home of Neil Young.” Some Apple Music users also reported seeing Young’s albums and playlists promoted front and center in the Apple Music “browse” section with the banner “We Love Neil.”
— CNN, 1/28/22

On Friday, Young announced a special deal with Amazon Music, giving new subscribers four months free of the streamer. The move by the 76-year-old music icon comes two days after he demanded that Spotify pull his tracks off its service in protest of Spotify’s failure to curb COVID misinformation in “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
— Yahoo! Entertainment, 1/28/22

So Apple and Amazon will offer Young twice the chump change Spotify paid in royalties. That’s mighty big of them. Neil had better hope those on social media who’ve just discovered him via his newfound, yet superficial relevance, don’t find out what he really thinks of them, and with all the talk of Spotify tanking because of Neil Young, it looks like they’ll survive the #CancelSpotify hissy fit by those who couldn’t tell you who Neil Young was a couple of weeks ago.

Considering Neil Young and Joni Mitchell’s songs may come up in an obscure oldies playlist, it’s not looking like they’re really taking one for the team in the name of medical clarity.

So ignore the attention-relevance-seeking bloviating from artists whose music older people haven’t intentionally opted to hear since before the ’80s. The Spotifys of the world won’t have their back because there’s really nothing for either side to lose.