Edouard Chazal

A Sponsor Steps Away From The Edge

This may sound perilous for a brand that is so intrinsically linked to risky sports (the very own brand’s packaging represents a climber), but Clif Bar made the right move :

“We have and always will support athletes in many adventure-based sports, including climbing,” the company said. “And inherent in the idea of adventure is risk. We appreciate that assessing risk is a very personal decision. This isn’t about drawing a line for the sport or limiting athletes from pursuing their passions. We’re drawing a line for ourselves. We understand that this is a gray area, but we felt a need to start somewhere and start now.”

→ The New York Times

Inside The Biggest-Ever Hedge-Fund Scandal

Hint : S.A.C.

The tactics echoed the approach the F.B.I. had used to dismantle the New York Mob. The plan was to arrest low-level soldiers, threaten them with lengthy jail terms, and then flip them, gathering information that could lead to arrests farther up the criminal hierarchy.
Over time, agents produced an organizational chart with names and faces, just as they had with La Cosa Nostra.
At the top of the pyramid was Steven Cohen.

It took me quite some time to read this gigantic piece, but as always, The New Yorker delivered a brilliant investigation. Here is another one from Vanity Fair.

→ The New Yorker

The Man Who Got America High

He concludes that he spent his life on the run, and his pursuits all followed a common theme: Escape. There were planes, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but they were all just means of getting higher, faster and richer than the rest. He ran from the domestic boredom of New Rochelle, becoming a modern-day Peter Pan: He refused to grow up and instead flew to mysterious islands, battled pirates, lost his Wendy.

→ Narratively

Introducing The Blackberry Classic

Seems like Blackberry definitely established its product line based on the motto : Down with the new.

Note : the official website for the Classic points my iPhone to this weird page, without any photo of the device, while being on pre-order.

Note bis : You’ll have to wait till December 17 to put your hands on that antique and iconic piece of kit.

Weird all the way.

→ Blackberry

$2 Billion and Counting

Daniel Ek, Founder and CEO of Spotify, on Taylor Swift, revenues and the myths about the streaming industry.

He properly nailed it.

It’s not about Spotify and others not paying artists fairly, it’s about fans not willing to pay and play it the old way.
$2 billion, not a bad number.

In the long run how much is worth your favorite CD or your one-time iTunes purchase to the artist compared to decades of playbacks on that same album ?
I betcha my Led Zeppelin IV would be platinum-plated if Spotify existed at that time.

Why link free and paid? Because the hardest thing about selling a music subscription is that most of our competition comes from the tons of free music available just about everywhere. Today, people listen to music in a wide variety of ways, but by far the three most popular ways are radio, YouTube, and piracy – all free. Here’s the overwhelming, undeniable, inescapable bottom line: the vast majority of music listening is unpaid. If we want to drive people to pay for music, we have to compete with free to get their attention in the first place.

→ Spotify