Let the music business die.<p>There were musicians around long before the invention of copyright. There will be musicians when the music industry goes away.<p>We are in a temporary period that began with the invention of the phonograph and extended to the development of zero-cost copying of digital music. This temporary period enabled a few to become famous and rich off of the proceeds guaranteed by copyright law. We should not expect this period to last forever.
Steve Jobs has applied a "correction" to the music industry by enabling the end-customer to buy just what they want. Of course this reduces music industry's revenues so they become upset.<p>Steve Jobs really saved the music industry from piracy. People were once pirating music using Napster and ilk. Steve created a platform where people could buy (and still not have to pay for the whole album). I used to look for music from my own country, with generally no stores around. Now I can buy from Amazon.com with ease and I do.<p>Music is not the only industry to be (or still to be) reformed by technology. When was the last time I approached a human travel agent to buy my air tickets? How many times do I use postal service today? Or make expensive international calls? Read paper newspapers?<p>Now with E-readers, it's print industry that's retaliating to the "changes" coming from technical development. It's gonna happen, so they better start living it themselves and rather make something out of it for themselves.
I love the argument that "pro tools is killing the music industry"<p>No. Pro tools and the internet saved the music industry, and Steve Jobs helped.<p>The smaller bands are bigger than ever, and the bigger bands are still huge. I'm definitely not an Arcade Fire fan, but the fact that a band like the Arcade Fire can win a grammy on a label like Merge is something special that's not going to go away soon. Every once in a while this happens, and the result is something that drastically changes the industry, things like Sun records, Def Jam, etc...<p>There will still be a music industry and record labels, but the industry paradigm is shifting away from the corporate megalabels of the 80s and 90s and clearchannel derivative radio stations to something much more decentralized and exciting.
<i>When my wife - a huge and long-time Bon Jovi fan</i><p>I can commiserate. My wife is a huge and life-long fan of all kinds of music that I can't stand - ranging from mediocre to wildly annoying. If I had to listen to her music all the time, it would generate a lot of friction. I've never been able to tune out music I don't like. Call it a personal failing. Having unwanted music invading my brain feels like having my ears raped.<p>The iPod saved me from this and helped us live in quiet bliss. If good fences make good neighbors than good iPods make good spouses. I'm happy to let the old industry model die.
I agree with the author almost almost every point. There is one which raised a question in my mind.<p>The author states:<p>"The music industry is the problem—too many bad songs are the problem. It’s the reason the audience doesn’t roar when you talk about playing a new track or two that were added for a re-release of your greatest hits. If your greatest hits were from the last three years, imagine how much money you’d be making on album sales even beyond your touring."<p>When he says "greatest hits" here, what exactly is he referring to? Am I right to assume, that he means that bands, just like startups, need to be continuously iterating and innovating?<p>If so, then I'll sympathise a little with the frustration a musician must feel.<p>I think it's fair to say that musicians make their money of their long-time fans, which implies that they need to keep people happy with their music for a long period of time.<p>I think this is slightly harder for a musician, since unlike a startup, they don't explicitly have a "problem" to solve. For myself, I used to be a great Linkin Park fan, and I still think that 'Hybrid Theory' and 'Meteora' are 2 of the best albums around. They lost me after that unfortunately, and being 14 at the time when Meteora was released means that I never gave the band any cash.<p>On the other hand, there are other bands that I've been following for a long time whom I still gladly pay for their music. E.S Posthumous released their album 'Makara' last year, and even though its on YouTube, I still paid for the thing --- Thanks to iTunes =) [by the way check them out - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kH781DV0U" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kH781DV0U</a>] The same goes for bands like 'Mr Big' and their album 'What if','Nightwish' with their album 'Dark Passions Play', and Steve Vai with his recent 'Live in Minneapolis' album.<p>I use those bands as an example because they've been around for awhile (10 years or more) and still can provide innovative, new music that retains the same appeal as their previous work, but yet provides a distinct WOW factor to it. ie: same but different.<p>I personally think that very few bands can do that, and the industry that supports long-term creativity like this will inevitably be small.<p>So that's a long way of saying that I agree with the author's premise, and that the music industry of the past is bound to see a major change (relatively shrinkage) thanks to the inherent nature of the craft along with the new-found efficiency of distribution.
The author inadvertently proves Bon Jovi right:<p>"My wife has carried around all of your albums (and many more) on Steve Jobs’ Apple devices since she bought her first iPod years ago. I know from personal experience that she taps into your collection at home, in the car, and on vacations—literally at the drop of a hat, whenever she wants. If she hadn’t, I would have forgotten about your band back in the 1980’s. No CD player or radio station would have changed that, I can guarantee you."<p>The long tail of internet stores like iTunes, Amazon, or Rhapsody allows us to access far more music than we ever could before. It's much easier to listen to old and obscure music than ever before. Thus instead of spending out money on whatever new album is being promoted in the front display of the music store, we're spending our money on the old bands.
That $300 the author spent on Bon Jovi is $300 not being spent on new and upcoming bands.
Can I just say I love the fact that there is an anti-copyright movement taking hold of youth today across the globe. Ten years ago when I used to try to tell people the way I felt, people either called me a cuckoo libertarian (proto-tea party) or a socialist. Now it's totally normal, assuming you are talking to someone under 30.
I remember working in music retail in the early 90s, around the time when most 'singles' were taken away from retail floor space. We migrated to some cassette singles, and some CD singles, but the selection went from decent to dismal in just a few months - and in most stores in my area, not just our mall location. I was told "demand is down" by some regional bigwig, but people kept coming in asking for a single of some song on the radio they'd heard, and all we had was full CDs. These just happened to be discounted (for the first few weeks of a song's radio release) to make the price more palatable, but it felt shady to me.
Bon Jovi's comments make much more sense if you replace the word "kill" with "change." iTunes and others have changed the music industry and they're not done yet. The experiences he had are gone, but there are new ones enabled by technology. The music industry is exactly as doomed as it was when you could <i>record</i> and musician's voice on tape, when live shows were suddenly not the only way to hear a song.<p>Thanks for all the music, Jon. It'll be my time to whine like an old fogey when kids are subvocalizing a tune and Pandora makes a new radio station to match that song.
Focusing on Jon Bon Jovi's complaint that listening to an entire album has become less common as many people buy only the songs they want from itunes: he does have a bit of a point. I'm 37 and my album-oriented listening habits didn't change when mp3 came around. I still prefer to listen to an album at a time. It was jarring to me ten years ago when I checked out the music collections of people born in the 80s and see that they had few full albums and tended to shuffle play.<p>Putting the blame on Steve Jobs is wrong. Napster was the first big source of individual tracks. One reason: on dialup it took maybe three times as long to download a track as it did to listen to it. An album would take hours. This bandwidth problem made it efficient to only grab the track you wanted. There was a cost even if no money changed hands.<p>And early mp3 players were tiny. Flash based players often held less than a gigabyte and many 5 or 10 gigabyte ipods were sold.<p>Steve Jobs did drag the music industry, kicking and screaming, into providing for pay the same type of service as Napster. Apple recognized that individual tracks at low prices were the only format that consumers would accept as a Napster substitute. That price structure gives itunes customers then and now a powerful incentive to buy individual tracks.<p>Music piracy has effectively no bandwidth or storage constraints any more. People commonly rip to 320 kbps mp3 or lossless FLAC. Flash memory players are 16-64 GB. So I would guess that someone who downloads for free is much more likely to grab the full album, or even a box set or discography, than the paying listener. So maybe piracy will be a counter influence to itunes in terms of album oriented versus single oriented listening.
What part of the authors argument puts money in Bon Jovi's pocket exactly? Particularly when they make the bulk of their money (or at least "made") from album sales? I'm assuming Bon Jovi is making the argument that iTunes has reduced (maybe greatly) their profitably from those album sales. By both reducing the money spent and commoditizing music in a lot of ways.<p>I get where Bon Jovi is coming from. I'm not saying he's right, but the feel good bits and bobs about carrying their music around and sharing it with your wife doesn't make Bon Jovi more profitable. They're far past the point of deriving a lot of value from word of mouth, they're looking to milk the cash cow. iTunes is apparently spoiling that party a bit.<p>I'm not saying I feel sorry for them in the slightest, but the authors argument likely wouldn't hold much weight with the band either.
I don't understand how he could think that fans are better off basing their music purchases on <a href="http://www.google.com/images?q=bon+jovi+album+covers" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/images?q=bon+jovi+album+covers</a> rather than on <a href="http://www.emusic.com/artist/Bon-Jovi-MP3-Download/11661659.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.emusic.com/artist/Bon-Jovi-MP3-Download/11661659....</a> or the iTunes store equivalent.
As a used to be huge Bon Jovi fan in my teenage years, I am amazed they are still around and can fill concert halls at prices like that. I know they used to be popular but let's face it, they are not AC/DC or U2 who can get away with tickets starting at $110+. Especially considering that as far as I am concerned the last real Bon Jovi albums were Crossroad and These Days in 1994/96 and I don't remember hearing or seeing but 2 new songs in the last 15 years.
Gag me with a shovel... can't get any more pretentious than this teenie bopper pop star. Equally pretentious are his so called fans who think their portable music devices certify their hipness.