

An Open Letter to Jon Bon Jovi On What’s Really “Killing The Music Business”  - siglesias
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/backstage/comments/an-open-letter-to-jon-bon-jovi-on-whats-really-killing-the-music-business/

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mcculley
Let the music business die.

There were musicians around long before the invention of copyright. There will
be musicians when the music industry goes away.

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.

~~~
wdewind
Not sure that has to do with copyright. The music industry served primarily as
a distribution platform for years, though the entire time it was convincing
itself it was a filter and an artist itself. It thought its profits were based
on its ability to churn out hits, when in fact its profits were based on its
ability to churn out SOMETHING to a lot of people. Now that distribution is no
longer a challenge, it's a lot harder for Bon Jovi to compete (and a lot less
likely that he will be interpreted as a signal amongst the noise).

I question that the music industry will go away. It will just change. As I
said before, it is and remains primarily a distribution platform not a content
filter, and there will always be distribution challenges that artists do not
want to (or know how to) solve.

Also, the musicians who existed long before copyright that you speak of often
needed to be sponsored by nobility just to eat. I'm not sure that's a better
system.

~~~
hessenwolf
There are still plenty of musicians out there who survive by a meal, a few
pints, and a some cash from pub gigs - busking if needs be. The music for the
nobility was paid for by the nobility, but all the other music was paid for by
the corresponding audiences.

------
alok-g
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.

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.

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?

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.

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juiceandjuice
I love the argument that "pro tools is killing the music industry"

No. Pro tools and the internet saved the music industry, and Steve Jobs
helped.

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...

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.

------
nhebb
_When my wife - a huge and long-time Bon Jovi fan_

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.

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.

~~~
pluies_public
> Call it a personal failing.

Some would say that you give love a bad name.

------
yewweitan
I agree with the author almost almost every point. There is one which raised a
question in my mind.

The author states:

"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."

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?

If so, then I'll sympathise a little with the frustration a musician must
feel.

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.

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.

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 -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kH781DV0U>] 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.

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.

I personally think that very few bands can do that, and the industry that
supports long-term creativity like this will inevitably be small.

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.

------
bokonist
The author inadvertently proves Bon Jovi right:

"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."

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.

~~~
archangel_one
Spending that $300 on new and upcoming bands is not the only other option
though. If iTunes etc weren't around and one was only presented with the album
at the front of the music store, personally I'd be spending the $300 on beer
long before buying Bieber's latest.

The biggest problem facing that new and upcoming band is not that I will spend
money on old bands instead. It's that I've never heard of them so don't know
if they're any good and will spend my money on something other than music.
iTunes (+Amazon, Rhapsody etc) does more to solve that than anything else Bon
Jovi or the rest of the music industry have done.

------
hammock
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.

~~~
rick888
It never seems to be that way with GNU/open source software though. As soon as
you go against the spirit of the license, people talk about "theft" and
"stealing"...when in reality, it's just bytes on a computer...just like
proprietary software, music, and movies.

~~~
angus77
I don't see what sharing music with your friends and incorporating GPLed
software into closed/proprietary systems have to do with each other. Nobody's
selling their torrents or claiming the music as their own.

------
mgkimsal
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.

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jordanroher
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
_record_ and musician's voice on tape, when live shows were suddenly not the
only way to hear a song.

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.

~~~
pwg
You omit the MPAA's definition of "kill". Their definition of "kill" is
"forcibly reduce our obscene profit margin to something more in line with our
actual costs of production and distribution".

------
bcaulf
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.

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.

And early mp3 players were tiny. Flash based players often held less than a
gigabyte and many 5 or 10 gigabyte ipods were sold.

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.

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.

------
enjo
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.

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.

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.

~~~
rfzabick
I'm not sure that the bulk of Bon Jovi's money comes from record sales. His
tours have brought in something like $500,000,000 in the last 6 years.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Jovi>)

Everything I've heard on the subject is that bands make more money touring
than recording. I believe this is because even though the costs of touring are
much greater, the record companies take the majority of the money from album
sales.

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rfzabick
I don't understand how he could think that fans are better off basing their
music purchases on <http://www.google.com/images?q=bon+jovi+album+covers>
rather than on [http://www.emusic.com/artist/Bon-Jovi-
MP3-Download/11661659....](http://www.emusic.com/artist/Bon-Jovi-
MP3-Download/11661659.html) or the iTunes store equivalent.

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kahawe
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.

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hootmon
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.

