You(the fan) killed new music -Gene Simmons

As much as I'm not a Dave Matthews fan I'd never lump him in with the other 2 you mentioned! ;-)

 

If Simmons is right, "the kids" only killed music because (a) technological advances in communication made it easy to share files around; (b) they don't see anything wrong with taking freebies and not caring what effect that would have on producers (a moral failure, but perhaps mostly of their forefathers); (c) the industry was very slow off the mark to handle the new technology (as he noted).

For the record, (a) I'm not much of a KISS fan, my only record is a 45 of Hard Luck Woman (which I still like), and I don't mind hearing Rock and Roll All Night once in a while; (b) I can think of no song I truly love since the late '90s, although my listening has declined steadily; (c) there are some decent songs out there now, some of which I've been exposed to through threads here on the forum.

 

Name one time that he has sued and lost...

 

Yeah, I'm not saying stealing is right. It's not. But when technology makes it so incredibly easy to do, and evidently almost impossible to police in any effective way--to the point whole industries are just about torn down--it's high time we figure out how to remedy the situation, and in the meantime ease the pain of displaced workers.

Simply saying "stealing is stealing" and pointing fingers at consumers and the industry hasn't fixed anything so far.

And maybe "torn down" is the wrong way to characterize the current state of the industry. Taylor Swift and Beyonce don't seem to to have too much to complain about. But it seems a lot of industries have been stratified into the few lucky "haves" and then a mass of "have nots" with not too many people left in the middle.

But now I'm getting all political, and this ain't really the place for that.

 

One of these is not like the others.

 

Unlike the guy from Metallica. What a dunce that guy was....

 

I'm truly amazed that no one is seeing all the truth in Gene's statements. Fans are killing music by downloading it for free and the music industry did kill itself by not regulating that music more completely. I'll never understand why people think it's okay to download tunes without paying for them. You work. We all do. None of us would do it for free. Yet, artists are expected to write songs, perform them, and record them, and then allow them to be downloaded for free. Why was this ever okay? It's wrong. Totally and completely wrong.

Music is not free. Ever

Gene's not wrong. Not even a little. He's totally on the money. How people aren't seeing this is entirely beyond me. What am I missing? Honestly. If I'm missing something, please tell me.

Ed

 

Of course he's right in some ways. Go onto any torrent site and there's all Jimmy Page's remasters of all the Zep in HD audio. 3GB per album. I thought I'd take a look at the Purple on offer. Someone has uploaded every album with 5 different CD masters for each one. You want the EMI or Japanese or SHM-CD, take your pick. Heck, just leave your computer running and get all 80GB. Everything in FLAC. Gone are the days of an 80 MB mp3 download. How do new bands sell music? It's terrible. No wonder you only need to sell a few thousand to get into the charts.
I don't download as I much prefer having the vinyl but even then I'm mostly buying older used LPs with the occasional new one thrown in at $20 a go.

 

Assuming your question is not rhetorical, I think what you're missing is that it's incredibly easy to steal music with no immediate negative consequence to the person doing it because it's near impossible to effectively police thus far. So, given that state of affairs, the industry or government has to do something to remedy the situation and help displaced workers in the meantime.

It's fine to not like people who steal music, and to blame them for messing up the industry, and it's fine to blame the industry for being near-sighted in the way it let the digital genie out of the bottle, but doing so solves no problem. It's like pointing at a burning building and saying "look, that's horrible, this needs to stop". The fire is still going to rage on, and it will continue to do so until someone does something about it, or all the fuel gets used up.

 

He's right and he's wrong. People will always take the free option. It's the technology and its abuse by the greedy opportunists (like Daniel Ek of Spotify/former Torrent pirate) that have made it possible for people to take the free option. And he's right that the music industry was asleep at the wheel, they made all the wrong moves too late.
And no, new music is not doing well, just look at the billboard 200 thread — it only takes a few thousand sales to get into the top 200 = the industry has collapsed and is a shadow of its former self = a lot less money for musicians and everyone else involved in the industry. This issue has nothing to do with the quality of the music.

 

The industry has to shoulder some (or most) of the blame for their problems. Fat cats got too fat. And artists that long for the good old days of getting rich off selling physical media will just have to accept the new reality. Tour, tour, tour!

 

Of course, then you have the flipside of people who download actually spend more on music than normal listeners.

 

Gene is right. You really can't make a living by making recordings anymore, which has affected all parts of the industry. To make a living as a musician there is a large network of people to make it happen. The people in that network can't make money anymore either. It didn't just hurt the musicians you've never heard of yet, it's taken away all the people they need to make a career because there's no income. It's very sad, and nobody gives a ****. But, enjoy your free music.

 

I'm convinced that if the streaming-downloading industry, labels and government really wanted to get together and propose and test solutions to stabilize things, it could be done. But it's not happening for whatever reason. Enough people at the top of the heap are satisfied with the current state of affairs.

 

Free option meaning they steal and are either unaware of that it's stealing or we do not have the moral compass to indicate that it's not the right thing to do because it's just music (or whatever other untouchable data one cares to steal).

Your points are all well made though.

Speaking of free - remember when In Rainbows came out and Radiohead let you name your own price? I picked $0 because I would not have bought it but was willing to listen for the hell of it

 

I paid a dollar, it never occurred to me to pay nothing because I'm a sucker.

 

I just checked and I still have the files - at least they are VBR mp3's! I'm not a big fan but I do have OK Computer and Kid A on vinyl to make up for being a cheap skate (dick).

 

I've got nothing against Gene's music (take it or leave it) but this is the funniest thing I've read in a while. Thanks for that

 

A) There are huge bands now and probably will be for the foreseeable future (see Mumford and Sons)
B) It's harder to become a bigger band not because of people not buying your stuff, but because of the fractured music taste of the public.
C) There are other forms of entertainment and things and life necessities to spend money and time and effort on

 

I ended up buying In Rainbows on CD, anyway. I think the download was released first and I couldn't wait for the disc to be released to hear the music.

 

Correct t me if I'm wrong, but even in the pre download era wasn't it extremely rare for musicians to make a living selling music? For every Beatle or Rolling Stones they were surely thousands of musicians with 'real jobs'. What has changed exactly?

 

Nothing, just more public awareness and a picking and choosing and application of facts.

 

No, you absolutely could; one just had to do it differently. It wasn't easy to make a ton of money but one could make money selling music. Really, the only way unsigned musicians could make money was by dragging their wares to shows to do it. Now, the landscape is different with more opportunities and avenues to sell music now exist...if people would quit trying to find new ways to steal it.

Ed

 

Record company executives and radio station program directors aren't your exclusive content filter anymore. You can go to Soundcloud and listen to whatever you want. This has ruined music.

 

gene is oversimplifying. he's right that music should not be stolen, but it should also not be sold for more than $5 an album. So now we got the record companies out, we should just support artists directly and by a $5 cd/download or a $10 LP. But not many bands can write a good song any longer, let alone record it analog as it should be, so that it sounds natural and musical. Protools killed music more than the fans.