Bon Jovi said Steve Jobs is Killing the Music Biz? How does THAT work?
Jon Bon Jovi recently said that, in his opinion, “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business”. It’s a mystifying comment that made me wonder what really is responsible for the slide in the music business.
Jon Bon Jovi, courtesy of Screwflanders
In a recent interview in the Sunday Times of London Magazine, Jon Bon Jovi says “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.” He then went on to add, “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.”
Yikes! You’d think that for a guy who’s band grossed $146.5 milllion from North American shows in the past year and who sells millions of songs via iTunes he’d be a bit more circumspect.
Walk by any teenager today and you’ll be able to hear the music from a few feet away – they still crank it up to ten – or eleven if they can. Can’t you just see your teenager listening to his or her favourite tunes while clutching the album cover to their chest with their eyes closed? Kids today would never listen to albums – they’re far too mobile and busy. The simple act of putting a record on a turntable and placing the stylus on the album would take too long.
Kids have missed the whole experience of the record album to be sure. Not many homes feature a record player any more, and I’d venture to say that those people who do own one wouldn’t let their kids touch the thing in any event. Aficionados say that vinyl LPs offer a superior, more in-depth sound than digital reproductions do, so their home systems might not be the type that the kids could fool with.
Kids also missed the experience of playing Monopoly, listening to radio dramas and having to write letters in longhand on paper. Why Mr. Bon Jovi had to attach blame to something that’s merely the evolution of a society is vexing to me.
He’s right on one count though, the music business is in decline. “Record” sales – (why do they still call it record sales?) are down again.
Up until the 80’s LPs were king, but the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979 saw the first salvo fired across the bows of the record industry. Now consumers could copy their LPs onto cassette tapes and mix and match songs to their heart’s content. Pre-recorded cassettes didn’t really kill the vinyl industry, although music sales started to see the impact of consumers mixing their own tapes and lending records to others so they could copy songs.
Compact Disks took that one step farther although at first the ability to create your own mixes of content was so restricted that pre-recorded CDs were able to get lots of traction for a few years. In one way, Bon Jovi is correct because the introduction of the iPod and iTunes in 2001 was the first major blow to the industry.
But even the iPod and iTunes isn’t responsible for the “death” of the music industry. The Internet, and Napster in particular, probably had the largest impact of all. There’s no doubt that Napster and Torrent sites like it, along with newsgroups, offered users the ability to download just about any amount music without having to pay a cent – that’s when I think the music industry really started to die.
Online streaming sites like Pandora and satellite radio like Sirius have also changed the way we listen to music. Unlike commercial radio, satellite radio and streaming radio can be programmed to provide you with the genre of music you want to hear, so you don’t have to buy an album to hear your favourite kind of music.
What’s really interesting is that iTunes accounts for about 70% of all online music sales, and, of course Bon Jovi’s music is all there. While their iTunes LP idea hasn’t really caught on to any large extent, the fact remains that iTunes has made a lot of artists rich. Maybe not as rich as they might have otherwise been, but rich nonetheless.
Neilsen SoundScan keeps track of the music business sales and figures. They say that since 2001, when CD sales were at their peak, they’ve steadily declined. In the first of this year, CD album sales were down about 18% to 110.3 million units from 134.6 million units during that same time last year. In contrast, Apple’s iTunes announced the 10-billionth music download from iTunes on February 24th 2010.
Peter Tschmuck did a terrific analysis of what has caused the recession in the music industry, and he found that there are many parts to the decline in music sales, and no one aspect of the business is the sole reason for this decline.
As far as the experience of reading a record album cover, seeing interesting information on the band and information on the tracks etc. iTunes LP offers that at no extra cost. I downloaded Bon Jovi’s Greatest Hits and the iTunes LP portion offers a look at a video from the album, photos from the jacket, information and other interesting tidbits – it’s actually better than the old album covers were. So a question I think of is “if Steve Jobs has killed the music industry why is Bon Jovi even selling content on iTunes?” Because there isn’t enough money in the concert and CD business without online sales to generate interest might be a possible reason.
The original article that was posted as a result of Bon Jovi’s comments to the Times is what started this whole thing, and musician Patrick Pentland’s take on the quote makes a great read as well.
What do you think about this comment of Bon Jovi’s? Is he just a rock star shooting his mouth off, or does he have a point?
Jon Bon Jovi is correct and he is not correct. But……don’t blame Steve Jobs or itunes. Blame technology if you want. If Jobs hadn’t brought itunes to the world, someone else would have. I grew up in the vinyl age and have over 4000 albums gathering dust. Try indexing 4000 albums.
As far as kids missing the experience, well, think about it. They were not brought up with vinyl. They don’t know what they are missing. But they have 1000s of tunes on their ipods and in total control of what they want to listen to.
And then you have skype and facetime. Are we feeling sorry for MA Bell?. Don’t think so.
Concert tickets are simply unaffordable for the masses. Do we go see Bon Jovi and forgo filling up the car for a week. There is nothing like a great live concert, but at 100+ for a decent seat, you really have to think twice.
Sorry Jon, I don’t agree with you. Its a different world.
yeah, i read that Bon Jovi article last week and i just thought it made him seem like a cranky old man nostalgic for the “good old days”. sure, he has a point about it being special to go into a record store and have an album grab your attention because of its cover art, but you can still do that on itunes or amazon, or anywhere else where you scan the albums and a thumbnail jumps out at you. or by using the “people who liked this also liked…” options. because sometimes just cuz the album art looks cool doesn’t mean you’re going to like the music!
the music industry was brought to near-death by greedy executives who didn’t change with the times quickly enough. Steve Jobs and other online music retailers have SAVED the industry by allowing people to buy songs at a reasonable cost (remember the days when you would buy a music single on tape or LP, and to get two songs was three to four dollars??). people still pirate music, but far less than if the only legal way to buy music was on physical media from a store.
Technology is not responsible for the decline in music. In Canada where Rap and hip-hop are no so dominant, the music biusiness is thriving. The best of all other genres with the exception of Country, originates in Canada … Celine, Michael Buble, Beiber, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, Arcade Fire, Diana Krall, Sarah McLaughlin, the list goes on.. In the US the pop culture has gone into reverse. Contrary to popular belief, rap is not really music..at best it is poetry set to rythym and at worst is is baggy assed pants ball grabbing crap. As a result video is taking over in that genre where the performance is paramount. And besides, musicians are people and not gods..who says that one singer is worth 50 million a year? This is the result of marketing, not talent. Nope … greed is the cause of the decline in music.
Technology did not “kill” the music industry, what did were the Senior Executives of the major labels (recording companies) who failed to recognize the importance of technology in moving forward the industry. Anyone who has worked in the IT side of the house in a recording company (Sony, EMI, ect) will tell you that to get money for technology projects was/is insane – but to blow 500K on a video was simple. The major labels controlled the manufacturing, sales and distribution – it was all very clean and very successful – no need to “heavily” invest in technology. But then along came the internet in the average household – now the ability to control the distribution was lost, anyone could push out an album not just to a few friends on a tape, but to 100,000′s with a simple click of the button. The major labels tried to squash the napsters etc… but they failed to realise that instead of controlling the internet they needed to embrace it and build it into their distribution systems. Now you have the labels playing catch up – Vevo and 7Digital, iTunes etc… will they succeed? Yes they will, the demand is still there, in fact the demand is even higher today, because we are now seeing the true beauty of music – the ability of music to transcend political borders, languages even faster via YouTube and other Social Media platforms. The demand for global music is increasing and the technology is now available to do so (instead of waiting 4-6 weeks when you’d order an import LP).
Folks use the technology to expand your knowledge of music Go Global and Enjoy :-)
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Here is a cheap solution. Flood the market with Cheap and good quality audio cassettes. Stop digital releases that includes CDs – majority of MP3 have been sourced from CDs before they land up as Torrent files. The only way possible is to rip them from tape and thats where they lose their quality. A lot of people would disagree with this and condemn it as “going backward in time” but the surprising truth is that like it or not ->it works<-.
The point is not to have poor quality hiss and wrinkle tapes which people think – but high quality TDK and Maxells.
The tape trick has been largely an underground movement. Artists will know that digital releases do not have an economic value – it is and always will be raining free food – of course the record label will get something out of the nothing. The Internet is not the place to make money but to do charity work.
High technology really means freebie revolution – its been good for the listeners. After all wasn't it the same record label which forced customer at one point of time to spend 5 or 6 times the cost on the shiny disks ripping of the low rung customers?