We tend not to appreciate, or even notice, the the real glories of our age. We’re too busy thinking about the good old days to take in the finer things in our own.

Like Mac Davis, I say stop and smell the roses.

For example: In the NYT the other day was a Jeff Leeds story about the newest trend in radio. It started out talking about the single “Apologize”:

WIOQ-FM, a pop station in Philadelphia, played the song 123 times last week, letting as little as 50 minutes tick by between repeat spins. And this month, “Apologize” broke the record for the most plays of a song on the nation’s Top 40 stations in a single week since computerized tracking began in 1990. The song played more than 10,240 times in a week, reaching an estimated audience of more than 70 million listeners, according to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems, an airplay monitoring service, and the chart-keepers at Radio & Records, a music trade magazine.

The new trend, it turns out, is playing hit songs more than ever:

[E]xecutives at some individual stations say they are playing hits more heavily than they did even two years ago. That is not so much out of concern over digital competition as it is a desire to respond to listeners’ busy lives, said Kat Jensen, music director for KKMG-FM in Colorado Springs, which played “Apologize” 78 times last week. “There’s a very limited window. If they’re going to listen 15 minutes a day, you want to make sure they hear their favorite song in that 15 minutes. It’s really the fast-paced life style that we all live.”

OK, now hold that thought. Over in the WSJ ($), there’s a backgrounder on Live Nation, more fully detailing how the company will be pursuing a new agenda heralded by the Madonna deal. Basically, with record companies vulnerable, there is room for other rock operations, like the live concert business, to make money in various ways off of artists. It’s all very glamorous, what with Madonna involved, and roiling sales channels, and newfangled artist-corporate partnerships. So it all seems, until you get to this graf:

At the same time, however, Live Nation is tackling the much more mundane task of streamlining the company’s existing business through measures like increasing the profitability of its venues’ snack bars.

In other words, radio stations are playing the same few songs over and over again; meanwhile, the nation’s biggest concert promoter is jacking up the price of its nachos. Strategies like this aren’t rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they’re poking a few more holes in the hull. Can you imagine the strategy meeting at Clear Channel? “I’ve got an idea–let’s make radio worse!”

Now of the two, Live Nation (which used to be Clear Channel’s concert arm) is better positioned; a great deal of money passes through your average concert venue. The problem is that the artists who play in those venues now carry vacuum cleaners with them to suck up as much of the money as possible. More from the Journal:

[Live Nation CEO MIchael] Rapino says Live Nation now realizes that no matter how big the company gets, it will always be in a weak position when negotiating fees with superstar acts. “We do not believe the cost of talent is going down,” Mr. Rapino said. “Just because we’re big, we’re not going to pay Aerosmith less.”

According to a slide displayed during the investor conference, the company typically ekes out just 4% operating profit on revenue that last year totaled almost $3.7 billion. All of that profit comes from parking fees, sponsorships, beer sales and a cut of the service charges imposed by Ticketmaster, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

The music industry periodically goes through difficult times like this. It always reminds of something William Randolph Hearst said back in the ’50s. Word had come that Stalin had had a stroke; the world waited for days to find out what happened. Said Hearst: “I hope it’s nothing trivial.”