

Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs is killing the music business - phatbyte
http://beatcrave.com/2011-03-15/bon-jovi-says-steve-jobs-is-killing-the-music-business/

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zacharycohn
"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."

Most kids these days also don't know the joy of waking up at 4am in the middle
of February to head out to the barn to shovel out the cow and horse excrement
from the night before.

~~~
thwarted
"...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."

I think he's saying kids today don't get to experience disappointment and
strong feelings of buyers remorse.

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scott_s
When Bon Jovi say,

 _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._

What I hear is,

 _Damn kids, get off my lawn._

When new customs replace old customs, the people who grew up with the old
customs are often sad that the new generation won't have them. What they're
doing is imagining their youth without their customs, but they're not able to
put the new customs in their place because they just don't know them. The next
generation may get just as much enjoyment out of the new customs.

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olivercameron
"...not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still
pictures and imagining it."

So, what he's saying is, Steve Jobs killed the music business because people
can now preview tracks, decide "Bon Jovi is terrible" and then proceed to not
purchase anything. In essence, Steve Jobs has saved people millions of dollars
from buying music they don't like.

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phatbyte
I was about to say the same thing with different words. But yeah, you pretty
much have put it in perspective.

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blehn
First, the business part of music is easily the worst part. If it has been
killed, no real loss there. Most of the good musicians aren't making much
money anyway.

Second, it would be more appropriate to say that Jobs _saved_ the music
business, by giving consumers an easy way to access and _pay_ for music when
Napster/Kazaa/Limewire/Bittorrent were quickly becoming the preferred
distribution channel.

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chwahoo
“...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.”

I can't count the number of mistakes that I made in album purchases based on 1
song I sort of liked in my high school years. In this regard, I think the
industry has been disrupted in a good way.

It's true that albums are losing ground to singles due to the choice that
comes with having your music on a computer and the convenience of picking and
choosing songs when buying or sharing, but don't give blame (or credit) to
Apple for that.

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woan
I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary that the music business is
tanking. I don't really buy the disappointment with buying a crappy album
argument. Radio stations used to play entire albums at launch when I was
growing up. I might be disappointed with a track or two on an album but it was
very rare that I would purchase a complete stinker.

His point that there aren't a lot of concept albums anymore where people
listen to every track is an interesting one though there were hardly a lot of
concept albums in the heyday of rock that those that were are very notable.

One issue that is not iTunes specific, but the ease that we can play digital
music including custom and autogenerated playlists may also have something to
do with it. With CDs and albums, there was a physical cost to jumping around
and most of us were not ambitious enough to create mix tapes. Maybe just the
convenience factor of accessing our existing libraries reduces the purchases
of new music.

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S_A_P
This just in, everyone under 40 says Bon Jovi killed the music business. :P

ok, snark aside- noone is powerful enough to single handedly kill an industry.
Its the culmination of bad practices/changing technology/ and many other
things that few have the power to completely understand.

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vparikh
Well if the artists start releasing albums that are worth buying, then this
wouldn't be an issue. Seriously. Name an album released in the past two
decades that is even close in scope and depth to Led Zep I-IV, or Dark Side of
the Moon, Jashua Tree, Revolver, etc.

If you want people to buy more albums, the solution is really simple -- MAKE
GREAT ALBUMS.

~~~
Ingaz
Current 93, Coil, Ulver, Gridlock, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Architect, Shpongle -
in fact amount of good music is always near the same.

But you must search it.

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hakunin
What he had is an emotional sentiment. What's interesting is why do people old
enough to talk about "kids these days" are not wise enough to think back to
one generation before them? I think the answer is along the lines of: everyone
knows this, but let me just be sentimental for a moment. After all, it's my
turn to be old.

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swampplanet
Why should anyone have to imagine? Why should they have to pay for a whole
album when only one song is worth paying for? That's the problem with Bon
Jovi, most albums weren't worth crap and he wants us to pay for crap. That's
stupid.

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protomyth
previous: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2328952>

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AndrewMoffat
Aiming vague anger and frustration with a systemic problem at a small subset
of people seems to get us in a lot of trouble. (Jews, The Government, Blacks,
Democrats, Upper Class, Gays, Steve Jobs, etc, etc, etc, etc)

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lotusleaf1987
"You know who never complains about the shift to digital music? People who buy
and listen to music.": [http://betterelevation.com/2011/03/15/jon-bon-jovi-is-
functi...](http://betterelevation.com/2011/03/15/jon-bon-jovi-is-functionally-
retarded/)

