PropertyOfZack is glad to be welcoming back Neil Rubenstein for his second Contributor Blog. The subject of Neil’s blog this time revolves around Rebecca Black’s “Friday” and his opinions on how the industry works in situations like these. Neil will continue to write his thoughts for us every few months. You can check out his blog here for more of Neil’s thoughts in the meantime however. Click “Read More” to read the full post!

I don’t understand the problem everyone has with this. 

ARK Music is essentially the mall modeling scam. Sure – there are victims. But Rebecca Black and her family are NOT victims here. Spoiled brats, sure. But not victims.  They are the success that Patrice Wilson will use to eventually scam more young girls and their shitty, self obsessed, DBag parents.
And if we are honest with ourselves and our industry – what he is doing isn’t much worse than what anyone else is doing.

The Black’s had to pony up some cash on a huge gamble, but any band / artist that ever made any money for anything has been charged back for some fictional marketing costs. Or my favorite is the ‘damages’ charge on digital recordings. So let’s not pretend like anyone pulled one over.

Perhaps the victims are the 12 – 15 year old girls that are being brainwashed to like this song. But again – if we are being honest – is it SO much harder to listen to than any other popular dance song?
I love / listen to dance music, so I’m not disrespecting the genre, but there really aren’t any emotions attached to creating a track in Ableton. Either it makes you dance, or it  doesn’t. This doesn’t make me want to dance. But that again isn’t Rebecca Black’s fault – or Patrice Wilson’s fault. It’s probably Apl.de.ap’s fault.

I am 100% positive that any DJ worth their salt could remix this into an extremely listenable track if the stigma wasn’t already attached to it. Rendering it to IRONIC status for the remainder of history. And I am sure, as Adam Pfleider mused, that any number of crab core kick dancers will post their youtube covers just as soon as they get home from the mascara store. But in the meantime, this shouldn’t be a story. No one is damaged – any more than any of us are damaged by whatever false promises or, god forbid, fulfilled promises we encountered in our years.

Yes. She is awful. Yes. Her parents are shitty. Yes. Patrice Wilson got lucky and had every intention of just taking advantage of rich people and their shitty kids. But it’s no different than ANYTHING else happening in the music industry. And in suburbs all around America. The same could be said for SO MANY dbag promoters, frontmen, label dudes (majors & indies), agents, mangers, fanagers, vampire novelists, and so on and so forth.

Don’t be so down. It’s better than anything Funny Or Die & Charlie Sheen have collaborated on. And WAY better than that movie with The Beaver & The Nazi. AND she is donating all her profits to Japan and her HS.