Youth's a stuff will not endure

You may note two very critical comments appended to my entry about the Cannes Film Festival. You may also note that I published them - I don't have to. They are not, in fact, about the Cannes entry but about an article I wrote in The Sunday Times on the development of pop music through the net. I shall put this on my Selected Articles imminently to clarify matters. Both comments remind me of the perils of writing about youth culture in any form. People always complain that you've got it wrong without actually explaining how or why. John Dodds, for example, is demonstrably wrong about prespending on marketing and PR in the case I described and, therefore, Lazy Hack must be wrong in agreeing with him. The Guardian article is okay but is just an insider account that seems to me to miss the point which is that the net is driving a structural change in the business. This is all I wished to explain as vividly and amiably as I could to the general reader. I suppose these complaints are an aspect of the understandable paranoia and protectiveness of youth. Trust me, I've been there. But, as I was born when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it does get a bit wearing to have to endure the same old blind chipiness over and over again.