jon bon jovi thinks itunes is killing music industry

[deadrats]

http://www.dailytech.com/Bon+Jovi+Shot+to+the+Heart+and+Jobs+is+to+Blame+He+Gives+Musi...ticle21127.htm

this article proves something i have been saying since the napster days: the reason why people are so eager to pirate music is because they are sick of being ripped off by artists and music labels and piracy is seen as a legitimate way of leveling the playing field and getting back at the rip off artists.

check out this quote from bon jovi:

In his interview with The Sunday Times, a British newspaper, Mr. Bon Jovi states, "Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

<sarcasm> i have to agree with him on this one, i for one miss the over whelming joy of spending $12-$15 on a cd just to discover the 1 song was good, 1 was barely passable and the rest were unbearable. </sarcasm>

Now such stores are living on a prayer, thanks to Steve Jobs. He comments, "God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."

i would submit that perhaps the music business should have been killed because music and business are two words that should be kept apart.

[yoda313]

I can understand both sides. I don't want to pay for a bunch of so-so songs but I can see them wanting to get credit for an albums worth.

What I want changed is the cable industry. I'd love to have a pick and choose option. And if you could limit your "regular" package to only the channels you want then you could charge a small extra amount to pick and choose specialty channels like sports league channels or individual movie channels.

I don't like having to step up to a whole separate package to get a few channels that I want. I want to just say have 30 "regular" channels and have a handful of so called premium channels for not much more than the package I have now. That way I'd actually watch the channels I have instead of having all this extra stuff out there I don't care about.

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I guess thats sort of the same argument for buying single songs over whole albums.

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However one place this argument loses cohesion is that you could ALWAYS buy a single before there was an internet. You could buy the single on cassette or cd. So you wouldn't have to blow 10-15 bucks on a whole bunch of songs when you only wanted the chart topper.

Actually I tended to only get greatest hits albums if it wasn't an artist I really liked. The ones I grooved on I'd buy all of them and the live albums. But for other groups I'd only buy a single or greatest hits to get a grouping of songs I'd like.

[deadrats]

2 things:

1) singles weren't always available for all songs, there were some albums that had 2 great songs but only one would be released as a single. i almost always bought just singles.

2) yes, the greatest hits albums were great, i have a ton of greatest hits stuff from journey, kansas, chicago, bruce springsteen, abba, meatloaf, the list goes on.

but believe it or not there were many in the music industry that did hate singles.

to me the whole wanting the customer to buy the whole album instead of the songs they want smacks of a desire to rip off their customers.

imagine if you went into a burger king and tried to order a whopper and were told "sorry, the only way to get the whopper you want is by purchasing a whopper, large soda, large fries, large sundae and large cookie", so instead of paying $3-$4 for just the burger you actually wanted you had to pay $10 and get all the additional stuff you didn't want.

would you support burger kings "right" to do business this way? do you think they might be out of business really fast if that's the only options they offered?

here's a novel idea, if musicians want us to buy the whole album, how about actually making sure that the whole album kicked ass, like some of the beatles albums or led zeppelin or the like.

[yoda313]

so instead of paying $3-$4 for just the burger you actually wanted you had to pay $10 and get all the additional stuff you didn't want.

I think thats a little extreme but the connection is there.

Except for the fries that don't last well you can always save the cookie for a few days if you didn't want to eat them right away

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Actually the whole album doesn't have to be perfect but I think shorter albums would work better. Than instead of having 11-14 songs of average quality have 8-10 songs that are much better than your run of the mill album.

More concentration on less songs would equal higher quality overall - all things being equal.

[fritzi93]

I remember way back in the day (when I was in college), when fairly decent cassette tape decks were becoming affordable. Albums were borrowed freely among friends and taped. Quality wasn't too bad with the "chrome" tapes. Very often an album had maybe one or two decent songs, but wasn't worth 5 bucks to buy it. That was still a good bit of money then for a college student.

I think that's what first let the genie out of the bottle. That's when, as I remember it, you first started seeing/hearing the first dire predictions of piracy. Not long after that, the first affordable videocassette players really caught on and rental shops appeared.

The complaining has been constant ever since. I get their point, really, but I have a hard time working up much sympathy. Music CDs are still bulked out with crap. Movie studios still milk you for all you're worth. For example, finally the extended LOTR movies are soon to be released on Blu-Ray, as if they couldn't have done it at the same time as the theatrical versions. No doubt there will be "ultimate" sets to follow.

[SquirrelDip]

iTunes isn't killing the music industry - they've killed themselves...

<sarcasm> i have to agree with him on this one, i for one miss the over whelming joy of spending $12-$15 on a cd just to discover the 1 song was good, 1 was barely passable and the rest were unbearable. </sarcasm>

Back when music was big (IMO late 70's to early 80's) I did enjoy picking up new CDs - but there was generally a lot more than just one or two good songs. The other main point is that when CDs came out they were the technology of the time. Add these two together and it's no wonder the music industry made the money they did.

I think we've currently got some pretty good artists but far too many shitty ones. We've also got far too many other technologies competing for our limited funds. The music industry has failed to evolve and figure out how to extract money from todays market - and attacking them with law suits isn't a very smart solution.