You have to forget 'Do you think I'm sexy' when you think Rod Stewart.
Atlantic Crossing is one of the great Albums and he's had a few early on. It was his 6th from 1975.
Of course his old 'Faces' pal and Stones legend Ronnie Wood is not here and the Album is very mellow, very soulful. In fact following this record he quit The Faces for a solo career.
Stewart sings like an angel. Deep, smoky vocal with Booker T on the Hammond Organ. Real deep south.
'This old heart of mine' is the stealer track, but 'I don't want to talk about it', 'it's not the spotlight' and 'Still love you' are gems too. 'Sailing' is here as well and you can, well, take it or leave it.
But ignore Rod Stewart at your peril. His early days were just stunning and this album is one of those key moments. Trust us....
YouTube have a problem....with Video.
Although they've always said they don't want to be a 'programmer' in the Netflix vein, their problem is that they've lots of content but it's hard to find and possibly not as "entertaining".
Lots of video about rather mundane things but.... you need to know what you're looking for. 300 hours of video uploaded every minute (!) and there's over a billion videos on the platform all lacking categorisation.
It doesn't have a 'series' to push like 'Narcos' or 'House of Cards'.
Their Channel strategy was in itself, an attempt to collate videos in one place, to be easy to find. But it's been slow.
Added to that, video competition from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, Snapchat has in some ways, diminished the YouTube effect.
But because video is hard to find, advertisers are having a job spending money too.
So YouTube is re-organising. Developing Apps to highlight popular sections (like gaming), 360 degree video and a subscription 'Ad free' service which is probably an attempt to deal with Ad Blocking software too.
They realise that they need to be better programmers as it turns out. They are planning some bespoke content and possibly re-broadcasting TV content with what seems, an emphasis on kids content.
Interesting that the king of video now has a problem with it.....
The Washington Post has started to block the ad blockers.
So if you have an Ad blocker installed, you won't get access to their articles.
Whilst it reduces traffic, the point is, that there's no future in having traffic unless it's watching the Ads.
Basically, you get a pop-up when you log onto the Post and they ask you to disable the Ad blocker on your browser if you want access (people who do, will be tiny). But they say it's "a test".
However, if Ad blocking continues at the extraordinarily high rate it is (circa 198 million users), especially in that lucrative younger demographic, online newspapers simply won't exist. Subscriptions alone, won't cover it.
Already, Ad revenue losses to Ad blockers is estimated at 22 Billion usd - don't worry about the actual number because all you need to know is that it's high. Very high and getting very higher!
Ads slow down websites and so Ad blockers improve the browsing experience. Furthermore too, people do not like being cookie tracked by advertisers so that's driving the Ad blocking. And it's hard to see how it will halt and therefore, it's hard to see online publishers dealing with it.
Therefore, they need to move to other formats - such as native content and video - which is impossible to block.
Fighting the Ad blockers is frankly, like standing on the beach trying to push out the tide.
