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Ever had that sinking feeling that you or your work is starting to feel like yesterday’s newspaper?

If you’re in the radio content business or music journalism field, you can get that unsettling feeling of “obsolete” simply by downloading an perusing NPR Music’s new iPad app.

In short, the app’s design and overall beautiful presentation of music content is light years ahead of virtually all radio station websites, while simultaneously putting slow-to-transition music publishers like Rolling Stone to shame.

The app, which was produced in-house at NPR, takes a big leap toward fulfilling the promise of of the iPad as a content publishing platform — and this on the verge of the announcement of the iPad 3.

It’s a platform for music discovery, music journalism, and even live events — as evidenced by the planned video streaming of The Shins in concert Wednesday night, March 7.

With all that, who needs the infrastructure of a radio station, a printing press, or any of the other top-heavy, money-sucking distribution models?

Radio stations and Rolling Stone should be thankful that NPR Music tends to stick largely to tiny, ultra-hip, indie-rock artists.

Also worth noting is a little bit of discontent, or at the very least a little bit of the green monster being expressed by more than one of NPR Music’s contributing stations. That is, with stations like WXPN/Philadelphia, WFUV/New York, and KEXP/Seattle feeding much of their best content in NPR Music, a few worry that they might either be competing with themselves, or helping to create a monster that will ultimately help obsolete them.

Many in the music industry, for example, rue the day they handed a fledgling MTV free content, only to see that the channel become a multi-billion dollar Goliath that ultimately abandoned them.

It is going to take some negotiation to smooth those relations out.

What’s most important is the following point: This is what you get when you invest — something too many radio stations and publishers have been loathe to do.

Feist: The Pantsuit Days

Nova Scotia’s Leslie Feist won the hearts of AAA with her second album Let it Die and the track Mushaboom.

But it was the homespun video for 1234 that broke her nationwide, thanks to Apple. As lo-fi as that clip was, the new mini-movie for The Bad in Each Other is at the other end of the spectrum.

With the new album having scanned more than 120,000 units and Bad having just debuted in the Public Radio Top 22, Feist appears set for a strong year. KBCO, WXRV, KCMP, and WFUV are just some of the stations on board.

Check out the clip, a performance for the excellent Black Cab Sessions, and tour dates below…

And here’s a performance from the UK’s Black Cab Sessions…

Feist from Black Cab Sessions on Vimeo.

Feist has announced the first leg of her upcoming tour…

April 14th Indio, CA @ Coachella
April 21st Indio, CA @ Coachella
April 22nd Phoenix, AZ @ Orpheum Theatre
April 26th Austin, TX @ Stubb’s: Outdoors
April 28th New Orleans, LA @ New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
April 30th Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room @ Old National Centre
May 1st Nashville, TN @ The Ryman Auditorium
May 2nd Asheville, NC @ Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
May 3rd Raleigh, NC @ Memorial Auditorium
May 5th New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
May 7th Boston, MA @ House Of Blues
May 8th Philadelphia, PA @ Academy Of Music
May 9th Washington, DC @ The Strathmore
May 11th Burlington, VT @ The Flynn Theater

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Steve Jobs has been described as prickly, short-tempered, and generally one who did not suffer fools.

He was not over-educated. He only attended one semester of college.

He started Apple in a garage with Steve Wozniak and was later pushed out by the board of directors.

He started a new computer company, called NeXT, and purchased the computer animation division of Lucasfilm — Pixar.

While Apple foundered, NeXT developed software and Pixar released Toy Story.

A desperate Apple brought Jobs back by acquiring NeXT – its software ultimately becoming the basis for Mac’s OS X operating system. Toy Story 3 set the record for the largest grossing animated film ever, making more than $1 billion.

During this Great Recession, while most companies have gone into retreat, Jobs’ companies continue to grow. Grow is an understatement. Last year, Apple had $65 billion in revenue.

Jobs understood the basics that most CEOs don’t seem to understand anymore. Invest in research and development. Attract the best talent, and demand excellence. Wow the customer.

Execute these basics, and things are likely to turn out very well.

We have Jobs to thank for some amazing innovation, tools, and toys. What we will miss is “One More Thing…” — his signature tease when rolling out new products.

We wonder where the next “One More Thing” will come from.

Likely it will come from someone he mentored or inspired. Someone at Apple, Pixar, a customer. Or perhaps someone who heard his commencement speech at Stanford in 2005.

If Jobs taught us anything, it’s that the next “One More Thing” should come from each of us.

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While no one is betting that the record industry will ever return to its previous size, we will argue that stopping the seven-year sales slide is nothing short of a miracle.

Facing rampant digital piracy, the labels chose to protect their retail relationships, only to endure a painful and near complete collapse of brick and mortar sales. The labels’ inability to develop a coherent digital strategy in the early part of the decade only prolonged the torture.

But, to their collective credit, the labels took their lumps, identified mistakes, and changed course.

The result is an 8.5% increase in music sales from the first half of 2010, with a 19% increase in digital albums sales. Overall album sales are up just 1% year over year, however.

Regardless, an increase is an increase, and this is excellent news for an industry in need of positives.

Here are seven reasons for the turnaround — many of which are applicable to other businesses in need of a boost:

1) Got back to the basics of A&R and Artist Development

After a period where it seemed panicked labels were signing anything that felt like a hit single, they returned toward a more measured approach — allowing more artists multiple albums to hone their craft. This partly explains the huge albums delivered by Lady Gaga, Adele, and Bruno Mars that are helping to drive the current numbers. Remember, for example, that Bruno Mars was a failed Motown artist resurrected by Atlantic/Elektra. Other examples include album-over-album growth for indie-rock types such as The Decemberists, Death Cab, and The Black Keys.

2) Identified that a singles-driven industry was a loser

A corollary to the above, the labels finally got serious about selling more than just 99-cent songs. There was ample research to suggest that the music buyers could be upsold, but tactics were few and far between. The labels were too busy making themselves feel better with a bogus metric that counted 10 single sales as a album.  The resulting data was nothing more than garbage in garbage out. Step one was making albums that were worth buying. That meant albums with lots of good songs, not just one or two.

3) Figured out pricing

The $18 CD is arguably what fueled piracy in the first place. Up against DVD movies, video games, and now extremely inexpensive yet entertaining apps, consumers voted with their wallets, and CDs lost. Digital albums priced in the $7-$8 range seem reasonable, but physical discs — if you can find them– are still often overpriced. Finally addressing DRM issues was good for the consumer, and variable pricing helped demonstrate that not all songs are created equal.

4) Largely stopped attacking the customer

The RIAA filed and won high profile lawsuits against consumers who were pirating music. They were pyrrhic victories, garnering the labels no sympathy. There will always be thieves, and for every Limewire that is closed down, another private BitTorrent starts up. The better approach is education, with a combination of carrot and stick. Lawsuit threats to colleges and universities instead of individuals, for example, have likely done more for the anti-piracy movement than anything. Let the school tell the kids they can’t download — they can be the bad cops.

5) Identified and pursued new business models and revenue streams

The new reality meant that business models needed not just re-tooling, but an full-on overhaul. Copyright courts ruling in their favor, labels were able to extract performance royalties from new media, and may soon get similar revenue from broadcast radio. At the same time, labels and artists teamed in “360″ deals where the label, often financier or artist patron, shared in revenues beyond unit sales. Even the reintroduction of vinyl, while a small percentage of sales, speaks to the new “leave nothing on the table” mentality.

6) The industry decentralized

The massive shakeout took its tool on the majors. However, opportunity then knocked for indie labels and other entrepreneurs. One could make a pretty good argument that as long as the power was held by a handful of majors, very little change would happen. The rise of a class of mid-majors not only fueled artist development, but helped drive innovation in business modeling, artist development, promotion, and marketing.

7) Aggressive promotion and events

Event records, ranging from the Glee albums to American Idol releases helped fill the Pop void left unfilled since the glory days of Britney and Backstreet. Consumer stunts such as Lady Gaga’s near-giveaway, Amazon’s $5 album sales, and iTunes’ various promotions will pay dividends in the long run as the trick has always been getting the consumer to sign up for the service. Now that there’s an account in place, expect repeat business (and better behavior on the piracy side).

Still work to be done

Again, congratulations to the label side for stopping the slide. What are the other reasons for the turnaround? Please add your comments.

In part two of this post, we’ll examine what pitfalls remain.

15 million units of the original iPad, one million units of the iPad 2 sold in the first weekend of release. Rumor has it there will be an iPad 3 later this year.

So let’s get this straight: A high-end, overpriced product the beats the competition like a red-headed stepchild — during the greatest recession in history.

Imagine where Apple might be when people actually have money to spend.

Interestingly, it’s not all that rare. There are many examples of companies and products that emerged during recessions and sometimes even dominated once the economy recovered.

While most companies peel back on research and development, cut talented personnel, and otherwise hide in hopes of riding out the storm (sound like anyone you know?), others pounce.

Household names like GE, CNN, MTV, HP, and FedEx all grew out of recessions.

More recent examples might include the Kindle, Pandora, and Hyundai. Green Mountain Coffee, with their little single-brew cups, accelerated while Starbucks was on its heels in this recession. Interestingly, the two partnered just days ago as Starbucks rebounds.

For radio, it’s not too late. While things are improving somewhat, many radio companies and individual stations are still in hiding.

Stations that make moves now — investing in research, new formats, talent, and (gasp!) marketing may well reap significant rewards in the very near future as they position themselves ahead of competitors in a strengthened economy.

The Huffington Post just sold itself to AOL for a cool $315 million. Not bad for a site that does almost no original reporting and doesn’t pay most of its contributors.

In a nod to the Great Aggregator, we will aggregate from their tech page, which scours the web on a weekly basis for fun tech stats. Here are just a few:

Apple versus Everyone

* Apple iPhones sold last quarter: 16.24 million worldwide
* Units of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system shipped last quarter: just over 2 million

* iPhone smartphone market share: 17.25%, market share of all phones: 4.2%

* Return rate for the Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet in December 2010: 13%
* Return rate for same in January 2011: 16%
* Return rate for iPads purchased through Verizon, since debut: 2%

Digital versus Paper

* Amount NewsCorp has invested in The Daily – and experimental iPad “newspaper”: $30 million (this may be peanuts for first-mover advantage)
* Number of Kindle ebooks Amazon has sold per 100 paperbacks since 2011: 115
* Number of page views Reddit had in January: 1,000,404,480

Social Media versus Quality Time

* Time needed to read the average online privacy policy: 10 minutes
* Average time spent each month on Twitter.com, per user: 2 hours 12 mins
*Average time spent each month on Facebook.com, per user: 4 hours 35 min

* Average number of new Facebook sign-ups per second in 2010: 7.9 (that’s nearly 700,00 per day)
* Registered number of LinkedIn users at the end of 2009: 55 million. At the end of 2010: 90 million. Can you say recession?

Check Huffington Post’s Tech page for more.

Sales Rule #1: Sell benefits, not features.

Volvo doesn’t sell airbags and frame design (features), it sells safety (benefit). Virgin America doesn’t sell an airline seat from which you order food, it’s sells a flying-in-a-club experience.

With the release of the iPhone 4, Apple does a solid job of throwing plenty of red meat to the geeks (features), but it also does a great job of selling the benefits of the device:

* FaceTime: Skype-like video calling (which, by the way, requires wifi). The video phone has almost arrived.
* Better battery life
* Video and video editing
* Incredible screen
* The photo flash that’s been missing until now

All are sold as benefits more so than features.

In the video below, note how there’s plenty about the new innovative glass, a special kind of metal, a faster processor — but who cares, you can send video of your baby live on the phone.

The geeks will complain about the iPhone 4 being a collection of 100 little features. They’re wrong.

Baby on the video phone. Sale complete.

My favorite part of this video is at about 1:15 when Scott Forstall says in 8 or 9 years, when his kid is in college, he’ll be able to see him while talking to him on the phone — and really know if he’s okay. It’s a tear-jerker. But seriously, if Apple keeps this up, in 8 or 9 years he’ll see a full-on hologram.

Again, watch this with an eye toward how the benefits are sold to average Joe and Jane, while the features get sold to the geeks.

And after you’re done watching how research and development lead to innovation, you’d better get back to programming that Two-for-Tuesday…

AT&T announced today that it is killing new unlimited data plans. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Why is this important? Because there are a lot of internet Utopians who think everything should be free. Then there are a bunch of media thought leaders who think that the internet in your car and Pandora in the dashboard is a reason to kill HD Radio.

They may be right. But this is gonna at least delay Utopia a bit. Because if you’re gonna have to pay real money for all that bandwidth you’re sucking down, you’re gonna be a little less likely to let Pandora rip on both ends of your commute. Full story in The New York Times.

Jobs’ Creation

Isn’t it interesting that Apple managed to not only grow, but become dominant — during a recession? How’d that happen? Leadership + Research & Development.

Actresses Like Rock Stars

Lastly, John Mayer has canceled European tour dates due to an undisclosed illness. Rumors point to food poisoning. Let’s hope he recovers in time for Clapton’s Crossroads show in Chicago later this month – because we have press passes.

In the meantime, enjoy this Six Degrees of Separation mapping of John’s manhood.

The Jesus Tablet, The Kindle Killer, The Convergence Device — just some of the names people are using to describe a product that no one outside Apple has yet seen.

To be unveiled by Apple’s Steve Jobs on Wednesday, the rumor mill has been working overtime regarding the name (we predict iPad), specs (10 inch screen/3G from multiple carriers), the price ($600-$1000), and the content (publishing, publishing, and more publishing).

A group of major magazine publishers have been scrambling to assemble “an iTunes for magazines” in recent months, prepping content for some yet-to-be-available device. The New York Times reportedly had staffers in Cupertino working on the project. Publishers see a savior (but they may want to talk to their brethren at record labels first.)

Beyond the publishing buzz, we think there’s something even bigger. The iPad at first may be a Kindle Killer, but we’re really hoping it’s a Cable Killer.

Apple has what few other companies have, and that’s a sixth sense for what the consumer wants. (It’s actually good ol’ R&D, but most companies don’t bother much with that these days.)

When Apple launched iTunes, it knew the public was tired of paying $18 for an album with just one good song on it. It gave the consumer exactly what it wanted — an à la carte approach to buying music. Buy the songs you like. The End.

The exact same consumer revolt is brewing with cable television. You pay $100 a month for access to scores of channels, few of which you watch. Plus there are other channels you’d like to have, but can’t get.

Even worse is the fact that your monthly payment actually subsidizes things you detest. That’s right, every month, your money helps create embarrassments like MTV’s Jersey Shore and Glenn Beck. But there are chinks emerging in the cable TV armor.

The pattern is familiar. First the younger demos start canceling cable in favor of high speed internet, illegal downloads, and legal sites like Hulu and iTunes.

What comes next is a company like Apple goes to the next level, reportedly having held direct talks with television producers over the creation of a $29.95/month television plan.

À la carte is the big nightmare, however, and everyone in cable knows it. They fought hard to prevent it, and the Bush FCC conveniently buried the issue, alleging that it was actually bad for consumers. Right.

Imagine a scenario where, instead of paying $100/month for a bunch of stuff you don’t want, you paid $60/month for everything you did want.

Winners and losers would quickly become apparent. HBO and Showtime win as they have already mastered the model. But in the basic cable tier, things will get ugly — and fast — for bottom feeders.

RJ Berger and Date Talk About the First Thing That Pops Up

For example, and this is true, MTV is about to launch a new show called The Hard Times of RJ Berger — about a well-endowed 15-year-old.

Pretty funny. Until 20 million parents in an à la carte world wonder why they’re paying for it and pull the plug.

Cable bill a tad too high? Do I really need all those news channels? Maybe I’ll just stick with CNN and BBC World. Bye Bye MSNBC and Fox.

Now those channels would still have the opportunity to survive, but without all the subsidy money, they’d need to raise prices on their remaining fans to survive.

All this may be too much to ask of the new iPad, but we’re betting it’s a step in the right direction.

-Paul Marszalek

UPDATE: Is this the iPad commercial? Most think it’s a hoax designed to push the band’s music. It probably is. It’s not well-produced, but the ink blots in the beginning match the ink blots on the introductory event’s invitations.