Jon Bon Jovi accuses Steve Jobs of murdering music biz Aging 80s hair-band demigod Jon Bon Jovi knows who killed the increasingly moribund music market: Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am," the 49-year-old Bon Jovi (née John Francis Bongiovi, Jr.) told The Sunday Times Magazine, "and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to …
If your definition of "old man" is "out of touch". Don't get me wrong, I actually like the public image of Bon Jovi ( music, acting and what little I've read about the guy himself ), but he's showing his ignorance here. All Jobs did was find a cash model to the already online music swapping activity. Hell, if anything, he put the music business on life support for a little while longer. The music business should be looking to him to SAVE their sorry asses.
I think the piece of the puzzle our 80's idol is missing is that music was being traded quite a bit online already, sans-Jobs. Still is, in fact. Had no one come along to start making money off of it, the music business would have run themselves in to the ground years ago, denying there was anything they could do to stop it the entire time.
Jon has a point - If it were not for Job's itunes and the Record Label Law Suits. We would still be swapping mp3s on limewire and napster. And now those poor artists will just get paid for every song that is downloaded and played......
Jon - you should open you're own website allow the market to download every song from the Bon Jovi auditory history and continue giving away full blown albums from your website as well.
Go get 'em Jon, put the rapacious nature of capitalism to bed and perform for your fans for free. The way art/music was meant to be experienced through sharing........
He's pretty much Damned Steve Jobs. Then again, Jobs and the music industry have been In And Out Of Love for quite a while. I hope Bon Jovi doesn't Runaway on a Silent Night, Living on a Prayer, lying on a Bed of Roses, looking for Bad Medicine.. You know, Something For The Pain.
I Believe, These Days, We Weren't Born To Follow. Hey God; It's My Life! Someday I'll Be Saturday Night, One Wild Night! As My Guitar Lies Bleeding In My Arms, You Want To Make A Memory. It's My Life; No Apologies.
Thank You For Loving Me.
Apple killed the album as we know it.
Bands used to put out a couple of decent songs and a BIG trash filler up to Album size. Granted, Victor the Plumber who drives a truck is not a really big offender here. Most of his albums could be listened to from start to finish.
Most of his colleagues however drove the "2 songs and a trash filer" paradigm all the way to rehab, yahts, villas and celebrity marriages. That does not work any more and thank you Apple for that. Goodbye Album and Good Riddance.
Oh, and Victor the Plumber should be the last one to complain because people continue to buy WHOLE albums of his stuff till this day.
I found the so-called 'filler' to be some of the best pieces compared to the top-40 pablum that started to take over the industry in the 70s. These were often longer, more artisitc pieces from a musical perspective and allowed the listener to learn more about the artist(s) talents/skills.
With the advent of the 'American Idol'-style of talent searches (please.. what a boatload of sh** THOSE performers turned out to be, with maybe a couple of exceptions), musicality and artistry went by the wayside for cheap-ass entertainment and made-up drama/hype.
Steve Hand-Job and Apple have only contributed to the demise.
> Apple killed the album as we know it.
No. A&R men killed the album.
Although it wasn't terribly lively even before then. Music has been sold as singles for pretty much the entire history of recorded music. This idea that the album is somehow sacred is just total historical revisionists nonsense. Very few bands ever bothered to compose albums as such. Even fewer did it well.
The grandparents of the iTunes generation were buy music as 45rpm vinyl singles.
I always used a tray 'cos they rolled off the cover ... now Nepalese Temple Balls ... THAT was a completely different thing and rolled very well on an album cover. Personally I always preferred the double albums - Trout Mask Replica being my favorite - but realistically, it was the advent of the CD that killed that particular joy.
Aside for than, Mr Jovi's got a very good point - my 13yo daughter loves the Beatles but has no concept of an album like Sergeant Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, or In the Land of Grey and Pink ... they are just little songs to her - she has no concept of an "album" - listening to an album? - that's not something that she understands and it's because of Jobs insistence on selling "the song" not the album. I shudder to think what would have happened if he'd dealt with Shakespeare that way ... "Tragedies? Boring, let's just sell the good plays, Romeo and Juliet? No, that's kiddie porn so we won't let that filth in the Store"
Steve's gonna have a lot of explaining to do when he gets where he's going.
>>"Aside for than, Mr Jovi's got a very good point - my 13yo daughter loves the Beatles but has no concept of an album like Sergeant Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, or In the Land of Grey and Pink ... they are just little songs to her - she has no concept of an "album" - listening to an album? - that's not something that she understands and it's because of Jobs insistence on selling "the song" not the album."
Surely it's arguably an effect of having MP3 players (not a *Jobs*, or even an *Apple* invention)?
I grew up with vinyl and then CDs, and I haven't bought a 'single' since the late 70s.
The vast majority of my music in proper album form, (pretty much all that isn't is CDs of multi-artist collections or various 'best ofs') but I'm far more likely to listen to individual tracks than whole albums, whether playing music from my PC, or playing tracks on an MP3 player in the car.
And that'd still be the case if Ipod/iTunes had never happened.
I was going to point out that I have quite a few memories of putting a CD on one track repeat and letting it replay my favorite song on a disc several times before skipping on to another song that I liked. But then I remembered that I used to do the same thing with records, that just required a bit of manual intervention to replay the song over and over again.
Personally, I like having albums, but noone's going to like all the tracks on every album. And for many artists, lots of people won't like more than one or two tracks per album. I think they should blame the disposable music industry for pushing the artists to release albums on a fixed schedule instead of letting the musicians write the kind of music that they're inspired to write. And a whole lot less of the written by W, arranged by X with lyrics by Y and sung by trashy bimbo Z type music. When was the last time you heard of something good come out of a committee?
My 9 year old is the same, she doesn't sit and listen to an album right through, she will pick out a handful of tracks from various artists and just listen to them at random. I have no problem with this, it's change, it's the way kids listen to music these days, a bit sad but you can't stop progress apparently!
At the age of 40 when I buy a CD or an album online, I still put it on and listen to it first time from start to finish, it's just a habit from my vinyl days back in the 80's. Some stuff only works as an album, Edge of Sanity's Crimson II is 44 tracks that seque into each other that you cannot radomize the playback or pick tracks out, you have to listen to it from start to finish to get the story. Queensryche's Operation Mindcrime or any of Marillion's ( with Fish ) albums, have to be played through. Then there are the albums you grew up with that have special meaning to you when played in their entirety, Screaming for Vengeance, Queen II, Ride the Lightning and anything by Venom!
It's sad but it's not wrong, it's just different these days. My old man still digs out his old vinyl once in a while just to revive the old memories, it's not the music but the whole experience captured in those memories, the ceremony of playing a vinyl album. Hopefully music will still give kids memories they can look back on in years to come even if the style of play is different now.
Also Simple Minds New Gold Dream works in track order. Also UB40 - 'More UB40'. No reason - just the memories, I guess.
What modern kids miss out on is the "creeper" tracks...you know the ones. You listen to the album all the way through, and there's a track that's utterly anonymous. Next time through, you remember it as being crap. Next time - actually sounds ok with volume up. Next time - it's the best f*ing track in the world.
A few of my all time favourite tracks were creepers, and I wouldn't have found them wthout albums.
Good lord, does that mean I'm 40 too??? onoz....
More like:
A bottle of Vodka still lodged in my head...
And so on... not quoting the whole verse for political correctness reasons...
In any case, Steve's World provides no place for "The Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You are Here", "The Wall", "The Final Cut" and "The Pros and Cons of HitchHiking" and "The War of The Worlds". Just to name a few.
They however were the exemption - very few bands used the album art form. Most just abused it.
... something similar.
Would Pink Floyd /be/ Pink Floyd if the formed now ? No, I don't think so.
The LP format and the "concept album" were marvellous, and, the more there is a proliferation of digitally delivered music, the less imagination there will be.
I'd also add to the list above Hawkwind, Tull, Deep Purple, Uriah Heap, Status Quo [with John Coglan, not really without] early Queen ['2' and "The Prophets Song" were immense] , Led Zep', Rick Wakeman in all his incarnations..... oh the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...........................
The music business was dead long before that.
As soon as the music conglomerate lobbyists learned to sign artists to captive "for-hire" contracts, and then got copyright terms extended to "from date of publication for 95 years" (in the United States; your country may vary), the music industry died.
The over-reaching length of copyright terms means that culture stagnates: Works of creativity which have a pronounced effect on an individual's present culture will rarely enter the Public Domain within that individual's own lifetime. This prevents him or her from (legally) taking that work and playing with it, bending it, warping it, twisting it, and integrating it into other creations, thereby advancing culture and making something new or better out of it.
So while "from date of publication for 95 years" does, technically, meet the criteria of the U.S. Constitution's "for a limited time" clause, I am quite sure that a 9.5-decade lock on a creative work is NOT what the Framers intended...
Most seminal albums were created before anyone was concerned with mash-ups, repurposing, or re-mixing, except dance club DJs who did it on the fly, or on limited DJ-only vinyl releases (Hot Tracks 12"ers, et al).
If ANYTHING, the whole mash-up/remix/repurposing culture has made some artists lazy. With few exceptions such as Danger Mouse's seminal "The Grey Album", how many high-concept mash-ups are there? And not to knock GREAT mash-up work by people like Party Ben, but let's face it - "The Dark Side of the Moon" it isn't. It's not even "Fragile", and a far, far cry from "Tommy". Mash-ups and remixes are nearly always individual SONGS, not album concepts.
So please stop posting anti-music industry drivel just because you think it applies everywhere. It doesn't in every case.
What killed off albums was NAPSTER, and the ability to download tracks individually from the file share. Usually over a slow, dial-up connection, that meant you grabbed what you liked, and ignored the rest. And lost the cover art entirely. So, Jobs isn't to blame, I nominate Fanning...
(N.B. - the only people that doubt this are people too young to remember the Wild West days pre-iTunes...and before the lawsuits shut Napster down.)
"What killed off albums was NAPSTER, and the ability to download tracks individually from the file share."
I disagree. I am from the vinyl age, and fondly remember buying/listening to whole albums.
But I also remember recording songs onto cassette tape directly from albums AND from the radio.
This is fuck-all to do with Apple/Napster/etc.
It's about people using content how *they* want to use it.
Now if artists nowadays made albums that were good enough to actually listen to 'whole album at a time' then people might just do it. They would also take their favourite tracks and listen to them mixed-up with whatever they like.
Kids today have missed the whole experience of buying an album and finding it has two good tracks and a bunch of fluff.
Or buying The greatest "Hits" volume 1, 2 and 3 to get all 5 of the bands actual hits and 3 copies of all their fluff.
The poor kids don't know what they are missing.
I for one dislike the one-track-at-a-time model. Good artists used to actually craft the album, not only the individual songs. That included the cover art of course, but also the choice of songs and their order. Tommy from The Who springs to mind, and also Gainsbourg was a master of the genre, with albums like Melody Nelson or L'Homme a Tete de Chou telling a story where each song loses a lot of it's sense when separated from the rest of the album. All artists of old used to do that, although to a smaller extent.
Now the model definitely shifted towards self-contained 2 minutes nibbles, which can be good too, but definitely abolishes a level of depth.
Of course this is necessary in a iTune-like model, where you have to sell tracks individually so that the customer doesn't notice that he's paying MORE for just the license to listen to the musical content than for the physical album with it's resilience and nice art (and, incidentally, resale value).
Here, have a cold one in memory of the good old times.
I call BS and rose tinted glasses.
Most albums consisted of two decent , even classic pieces, the rest was utter garbage, and they knew it. There have been the odd exceptions, but they are not the rule. Good artists will use the format in the same way these used the album, nothing to do with the album itself.
Bon Jovi fauns after those days he could sell you shit music because you didnt have a chance to hear it. Oh how he pines for those days where he could spend make money by being lazy.
I call bullshit. I said "artists", it doesn't include the "hit of the summer" type of commercial crap (on which there always is one or 2 hits -hardly classic- and a lot of utter shit).
Good artists cannot use "the format in the same way these used the album", because there is no way of doing so. How can you stick an actual zipper on the cover (as for Sticky Fingers) when there is no cover to begin with? How do you tell a story spanning a whole album (as for the albums I cited), or even create an atmosphere, when the songs are sold by the unit?
You'll note that I never said that it is not possible to make great music in that format, just that it takes away a layer of artistic depth and creativity.
"Most albums consisted of two decent , even classic pieces, the rest was utter garbage, and they knew it. "
Most BAD albums.....
I dont think Dark Side Of The Moon would exist in todays iTunes and for me thats sad.
To be fair to HRH S Jobs - if it wasnt him making the money someone else would be. I think Steveo killed music by taking 30% cut.
Its not like it should cost a lot of money to run iTunes. A few thousand computers is not the same as a few thousand brick and mortar stores
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The concept of album is very modern. Before long play records, the musicians performing in the streets with the goat and the monkey didn't have the concept of album either. So if music prospered for thousands of years without albums and artwork then I am sure it will continue to do so in the future.
I'm sure the disc houses miss those days the most.
Price fixing and the ability to pus ha crap album on the strength of an exclusive track.
Committing financial rape on artists until they could afford to buy their way out of a contract and start their own label.
Besides, everyone knows if the market is dying it is manufactured talent that is killing it.
"To Bon Jovi, the past was also a time of risk and reward, the thrill of the hunt, "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.""
More like taking my cash buying an album and being extremely pissed off at the crap on it outside the one song I'd hear on the radio.
Last CD's I bought (more than 8 years ago) paid $24 the day it came out. I bought it due to the promo songs I heard. I couldn't even stand listening to 9 out of the 12 crappy tracks crap on the disk. Best part the promo song I heard that made me buy the damn thing wasn't even on the fucking disc, but offered as a free download off the website...
So the death of the music industry IMO is a good thing. We should bury it, and forget it ever existed.
People having to "take a risk" was exactly the problem... You could sell total garbage and get enough people to buy it to make a profit. Total scam, and the industry hates losing the ability to scam people and being forced to actually produce decent content if they want a sale...
The movie industry said the same thing about text messaging and the like, previously it would take a lot longer for word to get round about a lousy movie.
There is still plenty of innovative music being created every day all around the world. The difference between now and the 80s is that the media-space is now much bigger, and that makes it much more difficult to find the nuggets in amongst the mass-manufactured dross.
It's very much possible to find superb music of an genre but people are pretty lazy and clicking on a link for the latest song you heard on the radio is much easier than actually *gasp* going out to a music store/club :P
Among many factors in the gradual decline of music sales, I think often underestimated is that other media are more available and competitive and these drain our "entertainment attention" away from albums.
Since 2001 (when iTunes was introduced) we've gotten three new game consoles, flat screen HDTV's 300+ channel digital cable and/or satellite, mobile internet and games and apps, blu-ray, and phenomena like twitter, facebook, and WoW that eat several hours per day from their participants.
If it weren't for iTunes and portable music players enabling people to listen on the subway/tube, people wouldn't bother listening to Bon Jovi at all anymore.
I would say that he is right, but his reasoning wrong. The amount the artist receives from an iTunes sale is what is killing the industry. You could say I am in the industry, as a sound engineer, and have lots of musician friends. One band I know well, who had a good following, put out an album on iTunes, and they calculated that if their album went platinum, then they would break even!
Yes, music is a business, and people want to make money from it, but the percentages that Apple Computer offer does not work for singer/songwriters/musicians/bands to have a roof over their head, or food on their table.
If they only break even if they went platinum. I would tend to think it's not that they don't get much margin from Apple rather it's more likely that they don't get much margin from the the record company and that they production costs are too high. If you could the album marketing costs in that then the statement is mispresentative, because the production costs of the digital files clearly are very low. I'm sure that Apple are indeed not giving a huge cut of the profits, but I bet that the amount taken by the music execs is still higher. We've all read the articles that detail the income versus the cost break down that the music execs come out with.
“… One band I know well, who had a good following, put out an album on iTunes, and they calculated that if their album went platinum, then they would break even!”
Nonsense.
If the artists publish their music themselves, they would get 70% of the revenue. If an album goes platinum, it’s sold over a million copies; even if someone sold it for a dollar, I find it unlikely that they only break even from revenues of $700,000.
Although if you self-publish, you’re might see more profit producing physical CDs and selling them at your gigs – but obviously there are more upfront costs.
If you’re on a label, it’s been estimated in the States (how this applies to the UK is another thing), that if you’re on a high end royalty deal (only the bigs acts have such deals) if a CD album is sold for $10, the band get $1. If you’re on a low end royalty deal, you’ll get a princely 30 cents for each $10 CD album sold.
However, if the act is on a label and a song is sold for 99 cents on iTunes or Amazon, they’ll get 9 cents. So if they sell ten songs, they’ll obviously get 90 cents. An album is quite often made up of ten songs, so if we use that to compare the two means of distribution, the vast majority of acts would make three times the amount of royalties from ten songs being bought via iTunes/Amazon, then if someone bought a $10 CD album containing the same songs from a store. For the likes of U2, they would see a fall in their royalties… so there are obvious losers…
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-earn-online/comment-page-1/
http://thecynicalmusician.com/2010/01/the-paradise-that-should-have-been/
What a load of rubbish.
It is cheaper than ever before in the history of man for someone to create music and publish it to the whole world. Your friends are being ripped-off by more than just Apple.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
(I have no idea if this is true... but it wouldn't surprise me)
You're right that the artist's renumeration, but you're wrong about it being Apple's fault.
If you buy a CD for £10, £7 of that goes to the distribution network (manufacturing, retail, logistics, etc.). £3 goes to the record company and they pass on anything between 30p and £1 depending on the individual artist's deal.
If you buy an album on iTunes for £10, £3 of that goes to Apple for its hosting and payment services (effectively the distribution and retail). £7 goes to the record company who then pass on between 5p and 94p to the artist, because they have different royalty deals for "digital only" media - despite the fact that they are getting more than twice as much money for the sale.
OK, I've simplified the figures to make the sums a bit easier, but if you buy an £8 album from iTunes and the same album as a CD from Amazon for £8 or for £15 from a high street store the record company gets less from the CD sales, but the artist gets less from the download. The cost savings to you you for the two CD purchases come from the retail/distribution savings being passed on to you by Amazon, not because the record company sells the CD into the two channels a different prices.
What the record companies have failed to notice is that when CD came out most people bought their entire music catalog again on CD over a period of about 10 years, but they can't understand why people aren't doing the same thing again and they are assuming it must be piracy. The truth is that Vinyl->CD is time consuming and generally just leaves you with a rubbish sounding CD, whereas CD->mp3 takes minutes and can give you the quality you want in probably 90% of cases, so there simply isn't a reason for people to buy their catalog again.
Jebus, I'm kicking into my mid forties and even I think he sounds like an old Jewish man.
"You kids and yer crazy digital music"
I think someone might have failed to point out to the antiquated old fart that CD's are digital as well and I'm pretty sure predates Steve blowJobs iTunes by a number of years. Although iTunes (and possibly Steve too) does indeed suck sweaty balls..... but then I think Jon might too!!!
Steve Jobs is whats standing between Oblivion and making at least something out of downloads.
Not Steve's fault we turned into the "now" generation. People were downloading music illegall before iTunes, and without it I'm sure they'd be doing it a lot more (presuming something else didn't become iTunes in all but name).
Except that I bought a bunch of stuff as albums and listen to it as such, and after I've listened to it as a whole, on iTunes, I then decide which individual songs I like - iTunes hasn't killed it for me at all, being doing the same thing in a variety of formats for years.
And the really weird thing: I invariably end up listening to albums as a whole at times, so JBJ is talking out of his arse at this point. (I never bought any of his albums, other half did though.)
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The killer for a lot of people was when the multiples came to every high street.
The independents were where you could actually hear music, talk to people who knew what was coming, what was good and (hush) what wasn't. Even very small towns could have two or three independent stores.
The multiples like HMV and Virgin started off with lots of choice and seemed to be a better version of the independents as they offered even more choice. But now they're being eaten alive by the supermarkets and Amazon they've gravitated to pushing a few big names, the staff are all minimum wagers making ends meet with no particular enthusiasm for what they're selling, and their management have a background in generic retail rather than this business.
If anything, iTunes has brought back something of the experience of stumbling across something awesome. Although the aseptic iTunes Store interface doesn't really look much like those endless stacks of vinyl in a gloomy shop the size of a child's bedroom pervaded by the smell of something that probably wasn't tobacco smoke.
"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."
...
and then going "ah shit - the only track I like on that album was the one I've been hearing on the radio - what a total waste of money that was !!!"
Might have worked when you were loaded, but if "allowance" money required saving for one album a month, then you really were up shit creek with that "model"...
This was a good money saver, only bought it if more than half the tracks were good.
Back in the late 70s and early 80s - they usually were.
Then as bands lost their edge we stopped buying them.
My last CD purchase was the most recent Def Leppard one - I bought it after sampling a downloaded copy.
Everyone's tuned into their own radio. It's not about albums, it's about songs.
Music store listening stations had always been there since the 50's . In the Jazz and classical stores anyway. Remember back when stores just sold Jazz?
No, the music died with the cd.
Regarding Steve Jobs: all you have to do is write a good song and Apple will sell it. Of course it still needs to be promoted.
Nobody cares about radio either. Who turns it on at home?
in Montreal, Canada, there is an upstart new company, owned by a laid off financial guy which is banging out 33.3 disks and they are so busy they have to run the presses 24/7.
Now if there more decent record players incorporating the latest techniques that would be near heaven for audiophiles.
"Jobs insistence on selling "the song" not the album."..."Steve's World provides no place for "The Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You are Here"..." etc.
What the hell are you on? Search on itunes for the album, returns a list of all the songs in the album - hell, search for songs by an artist, returns a list of songs, with a column showing the album, and the songs ordered by album! Buy the songs from an album, stick'em on your ipod, and the default heirarchy is artist->ALBUM!>song. Tada! Now you can listen to your album! FFS! Its EASY to buy albums from itunes, its just you don't have to if you don't want to. Which given the utter trash filler in most albums, can only be a good thing.
Ad for JBJ, and his bullshit about the thrill of taking a risk...Many moons ago, before mp3s happened, having discovered and liked his early 90s stuff, I risked buying 7800 farenheight his second album, without having a chance to hear any of the songs first. It wasn't a thrill, it was a massive disappointment, not just no good songs, no even average songs, worst album I've ever paid money for. That's the kind of "thrill" I and every other consumer can do without, thanks.
The music industry is dead, because it is looking for one hit wonders, not great artists. I have figured that local bands are much better ... I mostly buy old stuff on CD's and LP's a little on iTunes (when I only like this or that track on an album or the album is out of print and/or hard to find) ... and I support local artists (buy their CD's).
When I look for music on youtube, I often read comments like: "Nobody makes music like this anymore ..." or "I would have loved to be around then, that music is great" when they pay no attention to local bands at all. You can basically find local bands that play any kind of music ... they are trying hard to make a living out of their work and need your support!
The music industry is not looking for new talent, they are looking for quick and easy cash, so all we get now is commercial crap.
Listen to your local independent radio stations (also on the internet), look around for posters of bands that will play in your neighborhood and attend the gigs! From experience I can tell you there is plenty of talent out there waiting for you!
The terrible thing is that kids no long sit in a quiet darkened room, crosslegged, with eyes closed in contemplation, and listen to an album from start to finish without uttering a word.
Some of them don't even smoke drugs, have long unwashed hair or steal the records from the shop.
What a sad state of affairs.
You get to listen to a few and you get a better mood of it.
I actually like the early Bon Jovi stuff before he went pop. I remember that they were influenced By Def Leppard and released 3 LPs between 2 Def Lep ones.
As to music listening 10 disc CD changer in the car will do.
I do dislike mp3s and would _NEVER_ pay for one, why pay for poor sounding rubbish.
I am afraid I followed the wrong side in the music market 8-10 years ago, lots of people thought - better quality and spent lots on DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD, but instead the market went to heavily compressed stuff.
Now I love the HD music formats, they have all of the advantages of vinyl* and of CD. And the disadvantage only my DVD player plays them.
* Except cover
I am going to have to listen to a SACD when I get home now!
Before all the mp3 fans kick off, Rock music can sound terrible when lossy compressed, it loses something, it loses a lot of atmosphere.
So liking heavy rock is snobby?
Don't think so.
I have decided Deep Purple I think.
What is wrong with wanting good quality?
As to Bon Jovi - ever listened to the first 2 albums? Runaway was good wasn't it?
They were good, Slippery When Wet was the start of the downslide.
As to sound quality I will take my Doors LA Woman DVD-A and you will never hear an mp3 anywhere near it in quality.
I don't think people ever bought quite in quite as random or uninformed a manner as Bon Jovi seems to imply. I rarely bought an album based on the jacket artwork, it was always an informed choice based on one of four things:
1) I liked and enjoyed previous work by the artist.
2) I had heard the song on the Radio prior to release, or a friend had played it too me.
3) I had listened to a part of the CD in store on one of a sample stations. (Or in earlier days on the in store record deck).
4) Reviews of the album in the press.
For me digital downloads simply make option 3 a bit easier, it doesn't really change anything else.
Back in 1988 he released his Lovesexy album. This was designed from the ground up to be listened to as a full album in one, continuous sitting. Just to make this point the original CD was deliberately cut to have only 1 track on it that was three quarters of an hour long. Interestingly this made the DJ versions meant for radio, cut with 9 tracks, very expensive collectors items.
Point being, if artists are so horrified at the concept of individual tracks being downloaded and degrading the experience of the album as a whole, I'm assuming there's nothing to stop them putting their album on iTunes as a single mp3 that costs £11.99.
... just recreate the album in digital form - Make a f*ck off big 60min mp3, with no gaps. (is it possible to put timecoded metadata in an mp3?, if so track title problem sorted!)
Personally, I prefer listening to entire albums but none of the iCrap allows you to play one album after another, short of creating a playlist, which is just an arse.
Time to write an CD -> mp3 ripper/combiner.
I love albums, and I thing that even the youngsters will buy them for the whole concept, if it is a whole concept album vis-a-vis "Dark Side of the Moon". The "Two Hits Plus Filler" deserves to die.
Some "Filler" turns out to be good, but that's why Amazon and iTunes have their "Discovery Features"
Death of the Music Industry? Hardly. Death of the "Buy it Blind" model? Yep, Sure, Buh-Bye!
As long ago as 1985 (remember 1985?) a sage man once surmised the death of the industry was from "Sales are Slumbing... Could it be One Too Many Lousy Records?!?"
*Eric Buchard, et al...
Yes he's right, but he doesn't go far enough. Buying songs by the song rather than by the album does indeed prevent the experience of the overall concept and the possible discovery of a gem hiding behind the single that got you to buy the damned thing in the first place. Totally agree.
But the jacket? That wonderful piece of the overall album experience was lost long before mp(x) recordings, when the format went from 12 inches by maybe 24 - if the buyer was lucky, the group was established and the cover artist/conceptionalizationist commissioned wasn't too expensive and knew his/her/their stuff - to 5 inches and a bit of folded paper. Many of the CD re-issues did not reproduce original album art at all in the early CD days, and I didn't see any of the artists whining about the loss of experience to the public, just a lot of hand rubbing in anticipation of being able to sell the same albums to he same audience for a second time. Where were you then, JBJ? Of course, much of your recording life was entirely CD-format so I rather thank you lose that point.
Of course, the two-facedness sorry multifaceted outlook of musicians is well documented. Notice how many artists who loudly complained of how the recording industry was ruining their sound with compression (used even in the old LP Record days for technical reasons having to do with not making the records sound like crap) now have web sites dedicated to selling digital downloads, in which the original compression has been seen and raised manyfold so the masterwork can be squeezed down the pipe before the buyer looses the urge to buy and so that it will fit on a pocket player.
Yes, Steve Jobs has done his bit, especially to entrench "software thinking" in the venal little hearts of every music maven (imagine if you could play your purchased music anywhere you liked *without* telling iTunes beforehand, but now you don't own the recording, just a license for it). But that cart has been pushed to the brink of the cliff by many people over the years, and the artists themselves bear much of the blame for what has transpired.
Which means they can moan all they want, but they can't do so and retain a shred of credibility.
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Until iTunes, I had not purchased music for a couple of decades.
Since iTunes I have purchased single songs from artists such as Nancy Sinatra to Beyonce (on iTunes)
As far as Albums are concerned, I have just bought Norah Jones iTunes Extras, a fantastic experience.
Obviously, now I will not purchase any Bon Jovi on iTunes, I will go to the store for that instead, but considering that I haven't gone to a store to purchase music in the last couple of decades, the reality is that I will probably never buy any Bon Jovi music now. (BTW, as I pass music stores, I do see little cubicles with headphones for customers to sample the music as well)
Steve Jobs has reinvigorated the music industry for me.
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