Creativity Quote by David Rose

The sentence lands like a calm confession from the edge of a changing industry: go where the audience is already thinning out. Rose’s phrasing, especially “initially targeted,” borrows the language of marketing and strategy, not art. That’s the tell. He’s describing music - or at least distribution - as a campaign mapped onto vulnerable infrastructure. Pager networks “suffering” because of cell phone sales isn’t just tech trivia; it’s a portrait of obsolescence as opportunity. If the mainstream has moved on, you can either chase it or exploit what it left behind.

The subtext is pragmatic, even a little predatory: weaker networks mean cheaper access, looser oversight, and communities that are still reachable but less defended by attention or investment. “For the last decade” adds a slow-motion quality, implying this wasn’t a sudden disruption but a long decline you could watch, measure, and time. Rose frames himself as someone who reads cultural weather patterns and acts before the storm is officially declared.

Context matters here because “pager networks” evoke an in-between era: not the romance of analog, not the sleek inevitability of smartphones, but a transitional technology with a specific user base (service workers, hospitals, small businesses) and a certain invisibility to pop culture. The line suggests a musician thinking beyond stages and radio - toward channels, niches, and systems that still hum beneath the spotlight. It’s less about nostalgia than about leverage: when the future arrives, the past becomes a back door.