I can just picture Jerry Colliano, whether he is sitting at his desk, or walking around, quietly observing what is going on around hi, chuckling to himself and shaking his head.

His approach to his blog, Inside Music Media, is definitely Yoda-like. He makes curious observations that always apply to the situation at hand, without always overtly stating them. In his post, The Magic is the Music, Jerry begins by making innocent observations about young people:

Shorts.

Young people in shorts, being threatened by ushers to turn off their cell phones (“you’ve got two seconds to turn it off”). Most people dressed for this Broadway show like schleppers. But, then again, times have changed.

Right off the bat, Jerry lets the audience know that he is old because he cannot fathom this phenomenon. Some of his audience is probably older as well and can relate to his feelings, but he also wants to establish himself as different from his younger counterparts, so that he can show how/why his views may be different from theirs later on down the road.

For the most part, his overall tone is one of acceptance of youth culture, which is both a reflection of his own personality and a reflection of how he believes the music industry should interact with the youth of today.

But he doesn’t blast the industry for their backward approach like many of the other blogs that permeate the blogosphere about the music industry (see my post about the Lefsetz Letters). Rather, because he has nothing to lose by the music industry’s failings, he simply diagnosis their problems, and lets them decide if they want to deal with it appropriately. In his post Radio, Records & TV in the Next 10 Years, Jerry talks about the similarities between the various entertainment industries, noting what has been successful and what has not.

Restructuring the labels to concentrate on the music, the artists, the live venues, the branding, the merch – now that’s the magic that the labels have long ago lost.

Jerry uses some of the jargon of the music industry (merch) to establish himself as an insider of sorts. The word does not feel forced at all, but instead, merely gives him respectability points to a certain extent.

In terms of Jerry's own voice, there are no insults, no laments, no furious thrashing of his keyboard to release his emotions.

Kind of like a professor with tenure. You should listen to him, but if you don’t, he doesn’t care. He’s getting paid anyways.

And like a professor, he teaches with examples, using facts rather than opinion to state his case, convincing the reader to understand his point of view rather than shoving it in their face. Here he is focusing on Generation Y's interactions with another faction of the entertainment industry:

Why increasingly they are watching TV on their laptops – parents, I’m sure you can testify to this one. ABC runs Lost – forces them to watch a pre-roll commercial as payment for the rerun of what they gladly missed on cable TV. They get around it by using the time to check their email.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs knows this is true which is one reason why he is introducing what will be a long line of even lighter and brighter laptops that will eventually make the next generation’s TV ultra portable.

Jerry doesn’t come out and say that the entertainment industry is losing the battle to kids in generation Y it doesn’t understand. He doesn’t have to. The facts speak for themselves. And in detaching himself, he actually makes his argument more valid.

And in the few instances he does state his opinion about the business, he’s straight to the point.

the magic is the music.

And that’s it.

Twice now in the same post he has referred to 'magic' as the key to the music industry. The word itself is meant to evoke images of things that go beyond the business world, things that are indescribable and special. In other words, no matter how you dress, package and market it, the music is the most fundamental part of success. And the industry has to have that point driven into their collective heads. End of story.

The language of both posts is brief and almost mundane, making it easy to understand, but more importantly, it makes the solution seem so simple. He does not need to be a smart guy with a great vocabulary to figure this all out. He merely needs to assess the situation realistically and with an open mind, without the pretentiousness of the people who he is trying to help in his own way.