Bon Jovi: Steve Jobs 'Killed' The Music Business

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Did Steve Jobs really kill the music business like Bon Jovi claims? I mean, that seems a bit melodramatic doesn't it? I'm sure all the industry needs is a liver transplant and they'll be just fine. :D

"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," he said. "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 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."
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Bad music that's woefully overpriced is what's killed the industry.
 
For me: He has it completely backwards.

iTunes, Amazon, and a multitude of other services have opened the flood gates of to the sea of profit.

Just last night I YouTube'd a Sevendust video, followed by a He Is Legend search and finally browsed on over to an Oh, Sleeper track. Along the side of suggested videos was band called To speak of Wolves. Two videos later and I had purchased one of their CD's from Amazon.

Had it not been for YouTube and Amazon I would have never seen/heard that band, and they would have never received any cash from me. I plan on checking out their other CD tonight with a large possibility of buying it.
 
Jon Bon Jovi is an amazing artist, but he is just BAT-SHIT CRAZY on this subject!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Steve Jobs has prob (more then anything) saved the music industry. He opened their eyes to 21st century technology and got them out of a business model that was stuck back in the 1970's...

Pass the pipe Jon...
 
If I'm reading this correctly, he's complaining that musicians aren't making money off of impulse purchases like they used to. I've never bought a CD based on the cover art, and I think everyone that does is stupid.
 
And to add another thing...

If we did not have such shitty acts because people want their 15 minutes of fame (Which has produced some great artists, but most of them ain't worth a shit...) on American Idol and other so called "talent shows" music would also prob be better...
 
not knowing what the record sounded like
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the chance of picking up an album youve never heard of at a record store, now a days, and actually enjoying it is slim to none. you might as well buy a scratch off ticket or just throw your money in the sewer.

the market is flooded with garbage. itunes, youtube and similar tools are all we have to help us wade thru the sea of terrible music. i do actually buy those songs and movies i enjoy, unfortunately that isnt very much.
 
ballistic90 said:
If I'm reading this correctly, he's complaining that musicians aren't making money off of impulse purchases like they used to. I've never bought a CD based on the cover art, and I think everyone that does is stupid.
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Ill admit I've bought a couple Albums because they said NIN or KMFDM on the cover. I've no regrets.
 
I'm sorry are they supposed to feel bad they killed it, are we supposed to miss it?

Henry Ford killed the horse shoeing business, it's called progress you monolithic dinosaur.

And I say this as an aspiring musicians myself who is currently pleased if people even show up to watch me live, listen to me on soundcloud or give me the thumbsup via facebook, as long as chicks dig guys in bands, guys will be in bands we just may also need to hold down a day job or get ingenuitive with how we will make money from what we do.

Selling music is so nineteen nineties.
 
The music industry killed itself by stifling any kind of creativity. Everything now is cookie cutter, pre-packaged garbage. I turn on the radio now, and I seriously cannot tell one band from the next, they ALL SOUND THE EXACT SAME!
 
TheToE! said:
qft. Most music now sucks, especially the radio. Game industry is going down the same path.
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Seems like although I find I still have a lot more quality games I can buy vs. music. The ratio isn't even close.

I have a lot more general optimism for the gaming world than the dreck I've seen the music world mired down in on an increasing basis for at least the last 20 years.
 
Last time I checked, CD's don't have a 30 second sample button on them.

Now I can understand how that is a problem for crappy music. Instead of buying a shrink-wrap album and hoping for the best, you can weed out the crap these days and avoid it.

Power to the consumer :)
 
You mean kids missed the experience of blowing their week's allowance or wages on an album that sucked because the jacket looked good?
 
as much as i dont care for apple/steve jobs i have no idea where bon jovi gets this from . i gotta agree with B2BigAl. while it is not all the same so much of it is and is pretty sad.
 
I was wondering how long before the "Today's mucis is so shallow. Nothing compared to (Insert Band, Decade, Genre)"
 
It's simple. Steve Jobs got out there and did something with what he knew and as luck had it, people became interested in what he was doing and spent their money on his products. iTunes is an extension of that. Music files are small so why not package them and sell them to people who want portable music players?

Personally, MP3's opened up the doors to more people in re: to discovering new music. It did for me. I discovered electronica that way.

Sounds like Bon Jovi has a biased point of view tunnel vision. Not to say that's a bad thing, I just don't think he realizes he is looking at the situation from tainted eyes. He is 1st person to the issue and not 3rd person.

I do agree that having physical media with photos, a cd / album is more desirable. I remember as a kid taking the entire cd insert out to make sure I saw all the pictures and words.

Sadly, mp3's have always lead to trillions of dollars in loss sales over the years and surely, as a result, record labels have not invested in more bands. So in that sense, we have lost out on new music, bands.

I still have my entire cd collection. I stopped buying music around 98/99 when mp3's came out. And before anyone wants to correct me, no, I am pretty sure it was around 98. I know, I was on efnet then, in #EDITED and #snes with all my bbs friends. There was a group of guys that formed a group called DAC, "digital audio crew" and they used Goldstar 4x cd-roms to rip cd's. Back then, it took about 40 to 45 mins to encode one mp3.

Jesus, 12 - 13 years ago.
 
Shambler said:
I was wondering how long before the "Today's mucis is so shallow. Nothing compared to (Insert Band, Decade, Genre)"
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Except there's some truth to it. A lot of the music today and in recent years really does suck by just about any criteria you could cite.
 
He is partially right about itunes. As artists get screwed paying out large percentages of their royalties to itunes for minimal service and crappy quality output they recieve in return.

He is also right that that irrelevent jobs bitch is an idiot.
 
Q-BZ said:
Except there's some truth to it. A lot of the music today and in recent years really does suck by just about any criteria you could cite.
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I believe this same sentiment is said over and over and over again as new bands come up and old bands fade out. It is a broad generalization and simply untrue.

Well, my last sentence doesn't quite fit. What we both have is an "opinion" and technically ours aren't true or false.

However, I would say that your opinion of today's music "sucking" by "any criteria" is baseless. It has no merit and I would say that the majority of people on this board would agree. There is simply too much music out to listen to, judge, and form an opinion on an entire Decade and/or new Genre.
 
Heaven forbid I get to actually listen to a snippet of music before purchasing it.

Even the evil Blockbuster tried this in the '90s, although resealing CDs was a dumb idea. I always hated 1) paying $15 for one good song and 2) finding out the live/radio/single/etc version was not the one I had been thinking of when I bought the disc.

Bye CD, I hardly knew ye ('cept for the 500+ I still own).
 
Shambler said:
I believe this same sentiment is said over and over and over again as new bands come up and old bands fade out. It is a broad generalization and simply untrue.

Well, my last sentence doesn't quite fit. What we both have is an "opinion" and technically ours aren't true or false.

However, I would say that your opinion of today's music "sucking" by "any criteria" is baseless. It has no merit and I would say that the majority of people on this board would agree. There is simply too much music out to listen to, judge, and form an opinion on an entire Decade and/or new Genre.
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Fine. IMO. I stand by everything I wrote.
 
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," he said. "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 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
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Not Apple's fault Bon Jovi sucks these days, every other band around the same age has either packed up and left the music scene (although Axle Rose refused to quit himself, and produced crap), or in the case of U2, they have adapted their sound over time...and they didn't ditch the fans for a short stint at a bad acting career.

Bon, or Mr Jovi (either way sounds dumb separated), should have taken his own words to heart, go out in a "blaze of glory", not an old farts rant trying to be hip.

And is he saying I should have made purchases on whether I liked the front cover over musical content?

I have never made a purchase because of album artwork, it's always been based on if I like the sound of the tracks, or if it's a group that has already worked it's way into may favourites, so I'll go out and buy their stuff again. Again not Apple's fault that Bon Jovi's fan base is a bunch of mid 40's houswives, with a crush on a mid 40's to early 50's singer/bad actor.
 
No sir you have it wholefully wrong.

#1, Steve Jobs didn't do jack, neither did apple, the formats a players existed before them, they become popular with theirs that is all.

#2 The companies that you worked for and the "artists" that came after have done the most to kill the industry, You didn't make decisions based on the jacket alone, by the time you saw the jacket you probably had heard the single or the set of singles, people had listening parties and the really good ones people had most likely before you did - this is forgetting that band regularly made appearances on shows TV and radio and well as toured like nuts. Once a band had a good sound you could feel good about buying the album and it became a name you could trust.
 
The real issue with iTunes is the fact that you are buying highly compressed, vastly inferior versions of the original product that simply do not withstand the scrutiny of a decent audio system. As such, iTunes is simply not an option as an audiophile.

However, since both major high resolution audio formats have failed, audiophiles have been locked into the lame sounding 16bit CD format. (Sony SACD and DVD-A both bombed) However, the best and only option for better than CD quality is digital downloads. HDTracks.com is starting to catch on and recently released 24/96 versions of Rolling Stones and Who albums that sound spectacular.

Apple is rumored to be negotiating for HD downloads. So for music lovers and audiophiles the trend that iTunes has started will ultimately be a big win.
 
Killing the music industry is the least of what the Anti-C...... Er.... Mr. Jobs has done. I would hope he is remembered for things like using the medical system for priority service and creating the Apple Gestapo. Oh and poisoning working in China, and inventing the internet ( Oh right that was Al-Borg).

Agree or not, Steve fan-boy or hater, even if true, this has to be one of his smallest and more inconsequential achievements.

Oh and lets not forget what he did to Fake-Steve-Jobs, the people at Engadget, and of course his mentally powered warp drive unit installed into his brain (must be gamma leakage from that causing his cancer) that he is able to use to manipulate reality in real time.

I wonder what date all those ipod/pad/phone items and all the Apple hardware past and present is counting down to in order to trigger the brand of 666 on each owner?
 
Bon Jovi needs to learn to STFU

http://www.novustv.com/celebrity-news/bon-jovi-named-top-touring-act-of-2010/

In an ongoing global travel appointed by AEG Live that saw the band playing stadiums and arenas, Bon Jovi Grosses Boxscore reported for the period November 20, 2009 to November 28 January 2010, of $ 146,507,388 and 1,591,154 for the presence of 69 ‘re sellouts. When Bon Jovi was the peak year in 2008 with the Lost Highway tour, the journey is completed with a gross of $ 210 million, the largest-10 all the time.
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I think, more of what Jovi was thinking was that the whole sit-down-and-listen-to-a-CD-end-to-end experience is long gone, along with browsing at the local shop and just pulling up albums, looking at the jacket and making a decision based on that.
Sure, you can "better" spend your money now, and make "informed" decisions, find more artists and supposedly spend your money on them. But, there is something about rummaging through bins of music, buying one, peeling off the plastic wrap, putting it on and just listening to it. That is vastly different than downloading one track of low quality and playing it through even worse earbuds.
 
To me the important part of what he's saying is there aren't albums as a whole that fit a theme to become a piece of sonic art anymore. You really need to listen to some albums from first track to last to 'get' the album. Play something like Tool's Lateralus all the way through, and you'll get what I'm saying. You can't listen to a short blerp from Tchaikovsky and 'get it'.

There's a good amount of truth to the first part of his statement.

The other part just sounds like whining about money.
 
Jon Bon Jovi, former big hair rocker turned country singer (cuz that is what happens to rockers past their prime.. see Robert Plant as a prime example) doesn't know his own industry very well and/or has never read or listened to Rolling Stone reporter Steve Knopper's book "Appetite for Self-Destruction (The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age)". If Bon Jovi knew his industry to any significant degree, he would have known that many of his assertions were faulty..

1) "the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like"

Like many of us were going to keep doing that after buying an album that only had 1 or 2 good songs on it. Also record stores could carry only a fraction of the diversity of music that is really available. I would highly bet that it is much easier today to find a much wider range of music on iTunes or Amazon than the K-Mart I frequented during the 1970s ever had! I also remember "the beauty" of ordering 45s from this huge red record catalog book, then waiting a couple of weeks or so for it to be sent to the store, and then finding that "Layla" and Nilsson's "Jump Into The Fire" were only half as long as the versions I heard on the radio.. a waste of 75 cents or so.. but only a waste to me, not to the record company.

2) "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"

Who wears "headphones" anymore? Why isn't Bon Jovi blaming headphones manufacturers for switching to earbuds? Napster and downloading MP3s were a reaction to buyers having no more ability to buy 45s and record companies forcing people to buy only entire albums. And then having people getting tired of buying albums that only had 2 good songs on it. Bad albums killed the "whole experience" more than anything else has ever done. Also, back in the 70s all that was really "interactive" in my room WAS my stereo.. so naturally I sat in front of it and listened a lot to music. But nowadays my kids' rooms are full of computers, TVs, cell phones, DVD players, gaming consoles and other electronics. No one just sits and listens to music anymore like my grandfather did listening to classical music on his reel-to-reel. Everyone multitasks now while listening.

3) "Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."

At least Bon Jovi isn't also blaming Napster, MTV (the 80s version), the Internet, Usenet, the legal loophole that allowed computer CD-ROMs to rip & burn without copy protection, all the excess spending, partying, and bidding wars for talent of the record companies, as well as the price gouging that occurred when vinyl albums were $6 but for the same content CDs were $16 and artists only received a 6 cent increase per album sold. Glad that the music industry was perfect and wasn't in trouble until iTunes started. I think what Bon Jovi means by "music business" has nothing to do with end user, the buyers and listeners of content, but "the money making business of the music business". I would believe that the average listener of music today has the ability to hear and own a wider variety of music than someone 20 years earlier. The "music business" was a tightly controlled world. Now it is a lot easier for anyone with the talent to get their music heard instead of having to go through Bon Jovi's "music business" of the 80s & 90s. Everyone now has a greater chance of being heard and making a name for themselves and Bon Jovi doesn't like it.

4) "I hate to sound like an old man now"

I am probably older than Bon Jovi and his "get off my lawn you kids" attitude is making him sound pretty old. I guess he is where he belongs, with the country music crowd since most of their music basically seems like 80s pop to me. He should feel right at home!

SERIOUSLY.. read/listen to Steve Knopper's book "Appetite for Self-Destruction (The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age)" It really kicks the llama's ass!
 
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