DailyFinance.com

Merge Records: A Q&A looking back at two decades in the guitar-hero industry

Todd Pruzan — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:00:00 EST

Filed under: Company News, Technology, Media

Long before real estate and Wall Street collapsed, the music industry was already swooning. Executives were in a panic as consumers deserted the megastores and stayed home to download files illegally. But even as the biggest recording labels endured wrenching pain, a small label in North Carolina existed in a parallel universe: a topsy-turvy world where advances stretched into the four figures, where successful artists routinely got paid, where feasible budgets and modest revenues made the business of making music something resembling a traditional enterprise.

For 20 years, Merge Records, based in Chapel Hill, has been one of the favorite independent rock-music labels in the U.S., a home to such artistically cherished artists as Magnetic Fields, the Arcade Fire, Lambchop, Spoon and M. Ward. It's no coincidence that its founders, Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance (pictured), were musicians before they were label execs. Singer-guitarist McCaughan and bassist Ballance comprised half of a hard-driving quartet called Superchunk, a favorite among critics and fans who followed the indie-rock stampede of the 1990s that was set off by Nirvana.

Continue reading Merge Records: A Q&A looking back at two decades in the guitar-hero industry

Permalink | Email this | Comments

One Year Later: The art of the collapse

Todd Pruzan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: One Year Later

Was it really just a year ago? Was it really just September of 2008 when several of our august financial institutions, already teetering, abruptly toppled, proving they weren't too big to fail? The whole world was wincing, but one group refused to panic: visual artists.

In the past 12 months, illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, even graffiti artists have addressed the unfolding economic calamity with anger, humor, bemusement, emotion -- and above all, striking imagery.

http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,localizationConfig,entry&id=723892&pid=723891&uts=1253201147

http://www.aolcdn.com/ke/media_gallery/v1/ke_media_gallery_wrapper.swf

The Art of the Collapse

Click through the gallery for visual commentary on this year's financial crisis.

Aaron Draplin - Will Staehle - BLU

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Surprise Hits: 'A Million Little Pieces' shocks readers, Oprah -- and the author

Todd Pruzan — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Columns, People, Media

Six years ago, a young memoirist named James Frey smacked the rarefied literary world with A Million Little Pieces, a down-and-dirty memoir of addiction and recovery whose hard-boiled prose spurted his blood and broken teeth into startled readers' cappuccinos. As he threw elbows at popular peers like Dave Eggers -- "I hope I'm a bullet in the heart of that bullshit," Frey told The New York Observer in early 2003 -- Random House imprint Doubleday ordered a confident first printing of 50,000 copies. "Mr. Frey said he originally shopped the book as a work of fiction," the Observer reported, "but Ms. [Nan] Talese and Co. declined to publish it as such."

As a memoir, A Million Little Pieces stormed the august New York Times bestseller list for nonfiction. And then things really got shocking -- for James Frey.

Continue reading Surprise Hits: 'A Million Little Pieces' shocks readers, Oprah -- and the author

Permalink | Email this | Comments

iPhone 3G? I don't care, Apple -- I just want my MacBook fixed

Todd Pruzan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Consumer Complaints, Technology, Buyer Beware

I'm a Mac ... and I'm conflicted. For the past 15 years, I've barely placed my finger on a PC, either at work or at home. I've spent most of my career as a magazine editor, a profession that relies almost exclusively on Macs as its primary tool, and over time, Apple's platform has necessarily been hardwired into my brain. But over the past year, as more consumers snap up iPhones and collect endlessly clever apps, my personal relationship with this company has begun to feel abusive.Today, the rest of the world is salivating over the next-gen iPhone, which goes on sale this month. And me? I'm seething over my two-year-old MacBook's third trip since August to the emergency room.

Continue reading iPhone 3G? I don't care, Apple -- I just want my MacBook fixed

Permalink | Email this | Comments

On the brink: Clear Channel saddled by debt

Todd Pruzan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Company News, Columns, Economy

No media corporation is immune to today's advertising downturn, and Clear Channel Communications, an immense and fearsome force in radio, is no exception. A radio conglomerate in business since 1972, Clear Channel, based in San Antonio, Texas, seemed invincible back in 1996, when new regulations allowed it to snap up multiple stations in many markets. Today, however, company fortunes have fallen so fast that it's said to be weighing a prepackaged bankruptcy.

Though it spent its first two decades as a sleepy owner of stations mostly in the Southwest, Clear Channel exploded across the nation after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 relaxed station-ownership restrictions. A glance at Clear Channel's current roster reveals a still mighty empire that encompassed some 900 stations, controlling much of the dial in markets great (11 stations in Los Angeles) and small (eight stations in Huntington, West Virginia). No question Clear Channel seemed invincible when private-equity firms Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners acquired it less than a year ago, in a leveraged buyout, for $27 billion.

Continue reading On the brink: Clear Channel saddled by debt

Permalink | Email this | Comments

On the brink: The New York Times tries to turn the page

Todd Pruzan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EST

Filed under: Company News, Columns, Media

Reasonable minds may disagree on whether The New York Times is the finest newspaper in the country. Most of us, however, would at least allow that it has entrenched itself, over more than a century and a half of publishing, as our national newspaper of record. Anything that reflects a city as complex as New York -- or a country as complex as the United States -- is necessarily awash in contradiction. Whether you revere its high-minded conscience or despise its patrician snobbery, it's nearly impossible to imagine America -- let alone Manhattan -- without the Times.

Yet we may have to. If we've learned one thing over the past two years, it's that there's no big institution too big or too institutional to fail -- even the New York Times Co. (NYT) is vulnerable. Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Chrysler, GM -- each time another one collapses, we hold our breath, transfixed like horrified citizens standing under a tottering skyscraper. The glowering face of Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, said it all last October, as he testified with uncomprehending rage before Congress about his capsized bank. Lehman Brothers? Who's next? The New York Times? No. Never. Well ... perhaps?

Continue reading On the brink: The New York Times tries to turn the page

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sorry, Microsoft, you're not the only Bing in town

Todd Pruzan — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:30:00 EST

Filed under: Company News, Technology, Media

TiVo. iPod. Prius. For years, global corporations' marketing teams and branding firms have had a bit of fun coming up with their own made-up words, leaving their dictionaries in the drawer. Making up words for the global market is so much fun -- and such big business -- that MacArthur "genius" grant winner Colson Whitehead even wrote a novel about it. Google (GOOG) went a little meta on the trend, whether inadvertently or deliberately, by corrupting "googol," a word coined in 1938 by the nine-year-old nephew of an American mathematician who wanted a snappy term for his concept of 10 the power of 100.

Continue reading Sorry, Microsoft, you're not the only Bing in town

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Queasy like Sunday morning: 'Times Magazine' brings the pain on credit, debt, foreclosure

Todd Pruzan — Fri, 15 May 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Banking, Credit, Debt, Retirement, Wealth, Economy, Investing, Credit, Real Estate, Personal Finance, Banking, Saving Money

Ah, Sunday morning! It's nearly upon us again. The languid wake-up. The mocha java. The nova and cream cheese. The tangy mimosa. The New York Times. The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Magazine's Money Issue. The glance at the table of contents. The flipping ahead. The credit and credit cards. The ballooning debt. The inevitable bankruptcy. The creeping dread. The moist paranoia. The undulating queasiness. The pushing the bagel aside. The not finishing the mimosa. The crawling back into bed. The curling into fetal position. The whimpering and weeping. The desperate wishing that it were All a Bad Dream. Ah, Sunday morning!

If you're a Times reader, get ready for a page-turning, stomach-churning weekend. The Money Issue -- given everything, the editors might as well have called it the Credit Issue -- taps into our nightmares of financial nuclear winter, on a wide level and a personal one too. The paper's economics reporter Edmund L. Andrews provides a personal tale of his experience of buying a house outside Washington, in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was supposed to know better, he says -- he was, after all, reporting on the subprime mortgage crisis -- and yet he jumped in anyway, enchanted by the lure of easy homeownership and easier money. (Andrews' article, tellingly, excerpts his forthcoming memoir, Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown.)

Continue reading Queasy like Sunday morning: 'Times Magazine' brings the pain on credit, debt, foreclosure

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dean Wareham Q&A: A life in rock is still fun, despite hurdles

Todd Pruzan — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:30:00 EST

Filed under: Technology, Economy, People

Rock veteran Dean Wareham remembers exactly where he was when he witnessed the asteroid that was coming to kill the dinosaurs.

At a party one night in 2001, someone turned off the CD player and fired up a computer running a music file sharing program. As the founder of the influential indie-rock bands Luna and Galaxie 500, Wareham had already survived as a starving artist. But when he heard his first digital riffs from Napster, he realized his entire industry would soon have to figure out a new economic model.

And today, it still does, Wareham told me in an extended interview.

Continue reading Dean Wareham Q&A: A life in rock is still fun, despite hurdles

Permalink | Email this | Comments

I'm a desperate ratings ploy ... and you're not: NBC spins off SNL's "Weekend Update"

Todd Pruzan — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Technology, Family Money

Imaginary transcript from NBC's "Weekend Update," Season 1, Episode 1:

Announcer: From Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, it's "Weekend Update," with Team WalletPop!

[Cheers and applause]

Hello, we're WalletPop, and here's tonight's top story:

The New York Times reports that NBC will spin off Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segment, hosted by SNL head writer Seth Meyers, into as many as 13 half-hour prime-time specials in the fall.

[Applause]

NBC's move comes in a heated season of rivalry among the big four networks and pre-empts Fox's anticipated announcement this week that it will hire Billy Mays to host a series of one-hour Slanket infomercials.

[Cheers, applause]

Continue reading I'm a desperate ratings ploy ... and you're not: NBC spins off SNL's "Weekend Update"

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Obama summons credit-card execs for a lecture on principles

Todd Pruzan — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:30:00 EST

Filed under: Debt, Credit

President Obama made good on a campaign pledge for credit-card reform on Thursday when he sat down with execs from issuers to demand a halt to an epidemic of increasing fees, interest rates, and red tape.

The New York Times (among other publications) reports that Obama envisions a compromise preserving both the credit-card market and consumer sanity. A bill protecting consumers passed the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, designed to limit steep fees and penalties and prohibit the marketing of cards to minors. The bill may go to the House next week.

A credit-cardholders' rights bill in the Senate Banking Committee doesn't have the same guarantee of swift passage. Among the bill's features, outlined in detail on Wednesday by Credit Karma, would be a ban on hikes in interest rates without legitimate cause and 45 days' notice. Credit-card executives and lobbyists argue that the Federal Reserve's restrictions, set to take effect in July 2010, make further restrictions unnecessary.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Maureen Dowd to Twitter: Drop dead. WalletPop to Dowd: Get over it.

Todd Pruzan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST

Filed under: Relationships, Technology, Family Money

Maureen Dowd, the most widely quoted newspaper columnist in America (or at least in Georgetown's cocktail-party circuit), works herself into a lather this morning, right on the pages of The New York Times. She just doesn't get Twitter. And because she doesn't get Twitter, apparently nobody else should either, and founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone deserve a spanking. But her interview with "EVAN" and "BIZ" reveals that Dowd has truly met her match. She doesn't like that. And who can blame her?

Dowd has never really been one for nuance. She's not a cold-eyed analyst but a smartypants wordsmith, given to inane, clever-clever phrasings and rhyming themes suitable for snappy ad copy. The words "cutesy" and "coquettish" come to mind, but those descriptions overlook her obvious intellect. Dowd is an excellent reporter by trade, yet her position on the Times Op-Ed page invites her to try her hand at writing late-night monologue wisecracks. She's the furthest thing from an airhead but she plays one in the Times today. And she gets schooled.

Continue reading Maureen Dowd to Twitter: Drop dead. WalletPop to Dowd: Get over it.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

The recession-era perp-walk: Credit-card execs slouch toward D.C.

Todd Pruzan — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:00:00 EST

Filed under: Relationships, Consumer Complaints, Economy, Credit

eThere are probably people out there who lie awake at night, thinking about credit cards. They toss, imagining their tenacious debt entangling them like ivy slowly choking a brick house. They turn, fantasizing about the C.I.A.-approved techniques they'd like to see performed on the leaders of the credit-card companies. For people like that, next Thursday, April 23, is a day they're going to want to circle on their calendar. And it's not because it's the day their minimum payment is due.

In fact, it's the day that 14 of the nation's largest credit-card companies might be sending their executives to the slaughter -- or to a meeting with Obama Administration officials, which is pretty much the same thing. The Washington Post predicts the meeting will happen, and the prospect promises a fast and furious fireworks display, given the climate. If there's one lesson this fledgling White House has learned in its first hundred days, it's that it can't go broke with displays of outrage that companies like to clean out the wallets of ordinary folks. Suddenly, that's no longer acceptable.

Continue reading The recession-era perp-walk: Credit-card execs slouch toward D.C.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Friend or foe? An author caught in Amazon's gay-books scandal isn't sure

Todd Pruzan — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:00:00 EST

Filed under: Company News, People

On Sunday evening, the blogosphere swirled with rumors that Amazon.com had dumped all books with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender content from its ranking system, rendering thousands of books nearly impossible to find. However, Nathaniel Frank just chuckled. Maybe that was an odd reaction for the author of a new book that was itself caught in the scandal's net, Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America. But at least now he knew it wasn't his iPhone's fault.

Amazon fixed its "glitch" on Monday, calling it an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error." Meanwhile, for Frank, a history professor at New York University and the University of California-Santa Barbara, coverage of the incident may have raised his book's profile. In effect, Amazon's "glitch" became an unplanned cog in the book's publicity machine -- just as visible as the book's review in The New York Times and the author's guest slot on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

As he explains in this DF interview, Frank (who, in full disclosure, is a college acquaintance) may never learn for sure whether, or how, the "glitch" affected the sales of Unfriendly Fire. It can be fun guessing, though.

Continue reading Friend or foe? An author caught in Amazon's gay-books scandal isn't sure

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Dead cat bouncing: The credit markets are waking up -- for now

Todd Pruzan — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 17:30:00 EST

Filed under: Credit, Economy, Credit, Banking

Ah, spring! When a young consumer's fancy turns to McMansions and Honda hybrids! Or, in this nasty climate, perhaps another stroll through the storied halls of your favorite institution of higher learning. (It may be April, but the economic forecast is still stuck in "wintry mix." Might as well sit on the sidelines and get a law degree.) Getting a mortgage or a loan still isn't a walk in the park, but it might feel like one if you were trying to get a loan six months ago, when A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers were in full meltdown, and the credit markets had seized up like a cramped swimmer.

Well, these days, despair might be ratcheted back to third gear. The New York Times today serves up cautious optimism for a "spring awakening" in the credit markets that reflects the national bailout blueprints and mirrors last week's Wall Street upswing.

"The revival is tentative and, like the gains in the stock market, which pulled back on Monday, it may well prove fleeting," warns the reporter Jack Healy. Still, after months of relentless despair, it's hard not to breathe a little sigh. The credit markets are more stable, interest rates for mortgages are at historic lows, and achieving your dreams is going to be a little easier.

Continue reading Dead cat bouncing: The credit markets are waking up -- for now

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

For charge-offs and unemployment rates, a perfect storm

Todd Pruzan — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Credit, Debt, Economy, Credit, Banking

Today we've learned of yet another unhappy achievement for credit-card issuers, no thanks to Reuters and USA Today. (Not that we're blaming the messenger.) Credit-card charge-offs reached their 20-year peak in February, at a dizzying 8.82%, according to Moody's Credit Card Index. That's a rate of uncollectible debt a full 3% higher than it was a year earlier.

For cardholders who can't pay off the debts they've racked up, maybe it's comforting to see more Americans trapped in the same downpour with a leaky umbrella. But as the banks continue to dismiss more of their cardholders' debts as uncollectible, our already troubled economy -- ever reliant on our collective consumption -- remains stuck in its queasy spiral.

Continue reading For charge-offs and unemployment rates, a perfect storm

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Not paying taxes saves you money...until it doesn't

Todd Pruzan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:30:00 EST

Filed under: Tax, Crime, Saving Money

If committing your day to 4,800 words about income taxes isn't your idea of fun, do yourself a favor and sit down with Jason Zengerle's "Hell Nay, We Won't Pay!" from Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Think I'm kidding? Here's the story's lead: "On Monday, April 16, 1990, millions of Americans sent their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service. Peter Hendrickson sent a bomb."

Just in time for Tax Day, the article exhaustively documents America's restive tax-protest movement -- if such a Balkanized, ragtag crew can be called a movement. Every year, when it isn't fielding bombs from its constituents, the I.R.S. receives as many as 100,000 tax returns it considers frivolous, which bureaucrats place in what they call "the funny box." You don't have to be frivolous to be labeled as such, according to Zengerle (who, in full disclosure, is a friend of mine). Any tax rebel who files a so-called "educated return" after learning, erroneously, that income taxes are unconstitutional, or that only income earned outside the U.S. is taxable, usually winds up having to defend his or her actions in court. And not surprisingly, the court always seems to win.

Continue reading Not paying taxes saves you money...until it doesn't

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Upromise keepers: Feel the love...and please spend

Todd Pruzan — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Credit, Retail, Economizer, Banking

Ask not what your bank can do for you; ask what your bank can do for your country's sullen consumers.

Next week, when Bank of America Corp. takes over the Upromise credit card from Citigroup Inc., it plans to eliminate a $300 annual limit on cash-back loyalty-rewards bonuses that Citigroup had imposed.

WSJ.com blog The Wallet reports on the Upromise promise. Until now, customers who spent $30,000 a year on the card maxed out their 1% annual cash-back limit. No longer.

Upromise is designed to help parents save for their kids' college. But beyond its educational goals, is the Upromise move an act of patriotism? After all, President Obama is pleading with increasingly nervous (and increasingly unemployed) Americans to please, please part with just a little loose change. The card's cash-back savings can be funneled straight into a Upromise-managed 529.

While spending $30,000 on a Upromise card isn't quite enough to buy a year's tuition at Harvard, it's enough to put you in Benjamins sufficient to acquire the stuff of your dreams (base price, 16GB 3G version). Spend 'em if you got 'em.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More reason to hate your credit card debt: Late payment rates rise again

Todd Pruzan — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Debt, Credit, Banking

Business as usual for credit-card holders means, of course, more bad news today. The banks are raising cardholders' late and over-limit fees and interest rates; USA Today delivers the sordid details. The lenders couch their rising interest rates as a means to offset unprecedented delinquency (when customers make payments more than 30 days late) and charge-card charge-offs (when they don't pay the full balance, as the terms demand). American Express, a charge card, is raising its 45-day late fee to $39 from $29.

Don't get them wrong. Banks and card issuers love late payments -- at least when customers aren't too late. Last year U.S. cardholders ponied up $19 billion in the twin windfalls of late and over-limit fees. That figure is expected to swell by nearly 8% this year, reaping banks $20.5 billion in essentially free money.

Continue reading More reason to hate your credit card debt: Late payment rates rise again

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments