While many have been left behind by Part D, there is a clear winner: the drug industry. Independent analysts predict that Part D will increase drug industry profits by $139 billion over the next eight years. Glaxo-SmithKline's second-quarter net income already jumped 14 percent, and other leading drug companies also have benefited.
Unfortunately, you don't get artist development anymore. Record companies have become a huge corporate thing. It used to be you'd meet someone [in the business] and they'd have a little history of music. Some people in the companies now don't even like music. It's just a job. So I miss the days when someone would go out on a limb and pick a band that was different. I just don't see that anymore. It's the same with the film industry.
I think the record industry, by and large what's left of it, is still totally homophobic. I think it's much less so in the film industry now, but the record industry, it's always been a man's world.
In reality, there's a limit to putting a record out yourself. When it comes to working with major record companies in the context of them owning anything, though, that will never happen. Ever. In my life.
If I was going to go into an office I wanted it to be with people I would choose to be around even if we didn't have to work together and so that was one of the major reasons why I decided out of all the different companies we invested in to work with Zappos.
One of the reasons for The Walt Disney Company's long- term success is really the first of Dr. Deming's famous points, "create constancy of purpose." In his professional career, Walt's major passion was to provide the finest in family entertainment. For the most part, for nearly a century, the Company has stayed true to that legacy, and has set the standard for the entire entertainment industry.
One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.
The old ways still apply. You can still send tapes to record companies, and there are record companies, you know, there are one or two of the record companies do declare proudly that they listen to every single one that comes.
Part of it is, I think, just to let people know you've got a record out there and that you're still alive requires more work than it used to, because the traditional radio, bug chains of record stores, all of that, that doesn't exist anymore.
It's quite a mistake to think that music fans don't work on major record companies. Sometimes, you know, you do find some good people on corporates, among all the infidels.
Live Nation is one of the most unique, exciting companies in the world and has remained at the forefront of the live entertainment industry by continuing to innovate and bring live entertainment to more fans around the globe.
Halcyon people have put aside and left their homes, their million dollar salaries, full professorships at major universities, and fully seed-funded startup companies to be part of this effort.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.
I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.
Art is the response of the living to life. It is therefore the record left behind by civilization.
There is much to life than fame and fortune. If you are a part of the entertainment industry, please remember it is all temporary.