“A creative person would prefer their music to be stolen and enjoyed than ignored. This is the dilemma for every creative soul: he or she would prefer to starve and be heard than to eat well and be ignored.” Pete Townshend, The Who.
This quote was published on nme.com this morning. Townshend reflects on the musician’s dilemma between exposure and making a living in the music business. He’s obviously from the old generation of musicians and one of the lucky ones that actually made an amazing living off his music and the sales of his band’s albums. He calls apple a “digital vampire” with its complete control over the digital download world and high commission rates.
I think it’s a bit old fashioned of Townshend to oppose this new world that we’re living in where everything is social, everything is shared and everything is immediately made available. In my view Apple should do more to use its power to encourage young new artists and musicians to keep creating and have the ability to make money from their music. On the other hand, Apple actually saved a lot of the music industry back when it was all Napster and pirate downloads were ruining the industry completely.
Maybe thinking of new ways to distribute and engage people with new music (like Bjork’s app world for example) would be the way forward. Exciting times indeed.
Read the article on nme.com and post your comments here.
