Left Shark

Now that we've survived the deflated football "scandal"(And are you as tired as I am of the addition of -gate to words to name a scandal?  Can't we just come up with a new name for one?  Aren't journalists supposed to be clever?), moved through the fascination with the details of Katy Perry's psychedelic Super Bowl halftime show, and are now deep into whether Brian Williams is capable of telling an anecdote that is accurate, I saw something that inspired me to take a step back.

But first, let me take a short second step back -- or rather, out to the side.  Really, talk about First World Problems, is this all we have to be fascinated with?  Syria and Iraq are in real war, overrun with dangerously crazy killers, Ukraine is being invaded by Russia in a situation that, in future centuries, may be regarded with the same head-shaking amazement as we look now at August 1914, at least two kinds of dangerous viruses (viri?) are running about on several continents, simply hinting at what nature is capable of suddenly producing to clean out populations, not to mention a dozen other truly important things out there, and we care mostly about what kind of ball a multimillionaire chucks at another one?  Really?!

Moving on: there is general coverage of the irresistibly appealing story of a small businessman in Orlando, Florida, who hopped on the Left Shark bandwagon by producing small figures of it (him?) for sale online.  Katy Perry's lawyers promptly served him with a cease-and-desist letter.  Typical little feature story that follows these bigger ones like pilot fish, and one that usually ends with the big, mean, expensive lawyers coming to some resolution with the little guy that lets him do his thing and proves the star isn't evil.

However, I think this little story should be looked at from the other side.  The new model for music is no longer what we all think.  Sure, a few stars like Katy Perry have big hits with big distributors that make a lot of money, but those are small in number and even that top one percent doesn't work like it used to.  As for the second tier -- well, let's just say the system will no longer support the Ozzy Osbornes of the 21st Century in the mode to which Ozzy's family became accustomed. 

The actual sale of the music no longer pays the bills for most, if not all, professional musicians.  It's the concerts and the secondary sales -- T-shirts, tchotchkes, and little figurines, for example -- that bring in the actual income.  So maybe Katy Perry herself, currently in the Olympian upper levels of the music business, doesn't need the twenty bucks a Left Shark figure will bring in, but all those other folks do.  I'm thinking we need to look at this maybe from their point of view.