Gene Simmons Blames College Kids For Music Industry Woes

drcagn writes "Gene Simmons has blasted 'college' kids and claims that they have destroyed the music industry, with the labels also to blame for not properly suing them out of existence when they had the chance. When asked about Radiohead and Trent Reznor's recent support of a different direction in music distribution, he says "that's not a business model that works. I open a store and say 'Come on in and pay whatever you want.' Are you on f---ing crack?" When asked about music being free and making money off of merchandise, he says, "The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care?" even though earlier in the interview he brags that he believes that KISS's merchandise is more profitable than Elvis's or the Beatles.'"

Well, he's over 40.

[istartedi (132515)]

"If you're not a Liberal when you're 18 you have no heart. If you're not a Conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain." --Winston Churchill (at least according to the first Google hit I found).

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[AuMatar (183847)]

Note that in Europe, liberal and conservative have different meaning than in the US. There, liberal means anti-government, close to a libertarian. Margaret Thatcher called Ronald Regan the greatest liberal of our time.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[kaos07 (1113443)]

Actually considering Winston Churchill is English, and the quote has Liberal and Conservative with capitals, it's more likely he was talking about the British Liberal Party and the British Conservative Party, the Liberal Party (Now called the Liberal Democrats), is in the centre of the spectrum though in some cases lies slightly to the left. They're not to be confused with the Australian Liberal Party which is in fact Australia's conservative party. Great stuff. Also above poster is incorrect. In Europe liberal does not mean anti-government, and it is nowhere near libertarian. Just about everyone outside the US views libertarianism as some sort of extreme anarcho-capitalism being economically far right, and socially conservative (Small government). Liberal's (In Europe) lie to the left on matters of the economy and as a result believe in free healthcare, education, a reserve bank etc. The main reason for these differences in ideology, I believe, is that in the US the matter of the economy is already settling - capitalism is the only force people will tolerate, so the choice between parties lies on social issues. Whereas in Europe it's not so cut and dried. There's Communist Parties, Socialist Parties and Green Parties who all believe in government interference in the market as well as disagree with the conservatives on social issues. Anyway, how's that Gene Simmons doing these days...

Capitals?

[vistic (556838)]

Did he write this or speak this? Are the capital letters from a citation that's accurate (Bartlett's Familiar Quotations?)

In any case the quote has always annoyed me... but not as much as the conservatives who quote it (with a "when you're older and wiser, you'll come around" attitude about them). As I'm getting older I'm paying more attention to politics and getting more involved, and probably even more liberal than I was at 18.

I've also taken it to mean that when you're 40, you have money and property you want to be greedy about and protect, and so don't care as much about the welfare of your fellow man. Likewise I'm better off than at 18, and it sure doesn't deter me from wanting to make the world better overall.

Re:Capitals?

[drsmithy (35869)]

Funny, because I've always interpreted it as:

The older you get, the more you understand the value of your own labour and the more benefits you have to show from it. Hence, when older, you're far more likely to care about the government taking it from you and people like you.

Re:Capitals?

[Dr. Evil (3501)]

It's not a deep nugget of wisdom. It was a clever insult. Best not to read too deeply into it.

But then, those who are using it are probably not the best judges of brains anyway:

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112 [winstonchurchill.org]

"Conservative by the time you're 35"

"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"

Re:Capitals?

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

The problem with the hard core "don't tax me bro" crowd is that they really really believe that there is no cost in letting people starve in the streets/have no education/have no health care.

People don't passively starve in the street. They will try to find food. A large population of people who can't afford food is a serious problem, not because the more fortunate will have to step over them in the gutter, but because the more fortunate will come home to find that they've been robbed. Right now it's a truism that people don't steal to afford food...That's because they don't have to, because the government provides it.

Likewise education. A well educated populace makes a better workforce, military, and tax base. What benefits the economy benefits most the people who have the largest stake in it: the rich.

Health care. What do you think happens when a guy with no insurance walks into the emergency room with a legitimate emergency? Well, in LA, they let 'em die on the floor [sfgate.com] but in most places they treat them anyway and eat the cost. This person can't get the sort of routine care that would keep them out of the emergency room, but they can get the sort of massively expensive care that you get from the emergency room. That cost gets passed to the hospital, and then down to the first guy who walks through the door who CAN pay.

There are a lot of things in society that have a cost. The hardcore conservative really believes that those costs don't exist...Everything would be just the same if they didn't have to pay for the damn poor people. Hardcore liberals? I don't know what the hell they believe in. Fairies? I don't know. They tend to push the right thing, but for the wrong reasons...Fuzzy relativist ethics rather than simple economics.

The simple truth of it is that it is a lot better for society to shoulder costs like education, care for the disabled, workfare, etc, because if society doesn't shoulder the cost, then individuals have to shoulder the costs and that generally causes problems itself and results in a less effective solution. It's fair to talk reform, but don't try to pretend like the problem is the fact that the government spends money, while ignoring the reality of what would happen if they didn't.

Re:Capitals?

[FauxPasIII (75900)]

> i guess you'd freely give up what money and property you own because you're not "greedy", right?

Would I give up some of my money to support a sensible plan to improve the overall standard of living in my nation? You betcha! Voila une liberal!

Re:Capitals?

[FauxPasIII (75900)]

> If you look at your paycheck, you're already giving up an excessive amount of
> your money under the guise of improving the standard of living in your nation.

Eh, I'm lucky enough to have a comfortable income, so yeah, I pay a good bit. But then,
I get a top-notch highway system, a federally insured system of banks, police and
fire protection, my food and water are relatively safe, my workplace is held up to
a minimum saftey requirement... All in all I think I am getting a pretty good deal.
If we had all the money back that we've flushed down the Iraq toilet, who knows what
all nifty stuff I'd be getting for my investment in this nation?

Taxes and agression

[gobbo (567674)]

I get a top-notch highway system, a federally insured system of banks, police and fire protection, my food and water are relatively safe, my workplace is held up to a minimum saftey requirement... All in all I think I am getting a pretty good deal.

Don't assume that you're getting all that stuff from federal income tax. Most of that is allocated to paying off loans, so you're actually mostly servicing the banks, not The People.

All those nifty civilized things your tax money gets that don't count as usury or murderous are primarily coming from the plethora of other less obvious taxes: property, goods/services, state income tax, etc.

If we had all the money back that we've flushed down the Iraq toilet, who knows what all nifty stuff I'd be getting for my investment in this nation?

Yeah, I wonder just how effective half a trillion dollars would be if applied to international pro-democracy propaganda, educational support programs, donations to civil society, and even providing support for local pro-democracy institutions? You know, empowering local Iraqis and Afghanis to rise up and build an equitable system from the grassroots? I'm guessing 500 billion bucks buys a lot of freedom using non-violence-- if that's actually your goal. It's ten times the domestic annual education budget, so one could easily double the domestic budget, and 'educate' the world too.

Here's what Americans would have gotten out of such a radical foreign aid approach: goodwill, security, credibility, a stronger domestic civil sector, more freedom at home, less fear and twisting of the national political culture. Less opportunity for kleptocrat fascism at home. Very likely, actual modern democracies in target countries. A safer world, a smaller american military, fewer overseas bases and invasion forces. Less money and power flowing into Halliburton, Lockheed et.al., and a different track for the future, one that doesn't need FEMA preparing for martial law.

Re:Capitals?

[AndersOSU (873247)]

Umm, healthcare is expensive because (a) it requires doctors, who are highly trained professionals, (b) it is a matter of life and death, we place a very high value on life, (c) it uses state of the art technology, (d) somewhat parallel to c, it uses novel chemicals, which are expensive to develop, and (e) combining d and b, it requires human testing and as such is highly regulated, regulation adds cost, and (f) we live in a highly litigious society, and as such the cost of a mistake is enormous.

That's not to say it shouldn't be cheaper, or that there isn't plenty of waste, but I personally think that doctors and researchers should be paid well, I think that we should have very good (read: expensive) people managing all the systems involved, and I am willing to pay for the safety and the new technology.

Universal healthcare, or health insurance in general isn't about making healthcare cheaper, but rather about making the people with Jaguars subsidize the inherently high cost of healthcare for those with Kias.

A great universal healthcare system would reward hospitals who successfully improve efficiency without impacting quality, but and acceptable universal healthcare system will not worsen efficiency and provide affordable healthcare to poorer americans, because we find value in our working class not dieing of cholera.

Re:Capitals?

[Eivind (15695)]

It's a transparent dishonest and insulting debating-technique.

"Offcourse you say that, you're a child. All children believe that. Once you grow up and get a little wiser, you will stop believing that."

This is attacking the messenger rather than the message.

It's also insulting. It states flat-out that "Anyone who disagrees with me, has no brain."

But they DON'T... :-)

[crovira (10242)]

I would hesitate to look at Gene Simmons for any kind of intelligent statement on anything.

I never liked KISS.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Goldberg's Pants (139800)]

And this is why Gene Simmons ceased being relevant sometime in the mid 70's. Radiohead and Reznor have more creativity in their little fingers than Simmons ever had. "Oh, we'll paint our faces to cover up the fact our music sucks." Radiohead and Reznor have deviated from conventional rock mediocrity and at least been creative. Kiss just upset parents in the 70's and sang the music that now appears on MOR stations everywhere.

Or, to put it more succinctly, FUCK GENE SIMMONS!

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Lunarsight (1053230)]

Gene Simmons is a dinosaur. And, no - I don't mean that in terms of his age.

He's like the guy who still owns (exclusively) an eight-track player in a world of people who use iPods and compact discs. They fail to see innovation even when it's staring them right in the face.

He may criticize Radiohead's selling approach, but you can't argue with the results. How much did Radiohead's album make in revenue? The non-standard selling method itself probably generated them a ton of publicity that they wouldn't otherwise have had.

I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money. (Live shows and merchandising, for starters.) They should be distributing the music as a promotional tool, rather than having it be the revenue-generator itself.

These artists need to learn to stop shooting their mouths off against the very people who support them. I completely support boycotting all major label artists, but artists like this in particular REALLY, REALLY deserve it. (Sadly, we all know that many people will continue to support artists like this, because they're pathetic fanboy lemmings who cluelessly follow their favorite artists wherever they go.)

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Fizzl (209397)]

KISS was never really about music. It was a huge franchise to capitalize on. Gene Simmons is not a musician. He is a businessman.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[aurispector (530273)]

This is the most accurate comment regarding Simmons. The people with interests vested in the current system naturally don't support change. Frankly, Nancy Pelosi makes me sick by being a media industry puppet with the whole finanical aid thing. Look at big pharma - sure, they're bastards but at least they make something beneficial. Pharma spends billions on research then gets a few years to profit IF it passes FDA approval. Conversely, any idiot can pen a stupid ditty which costs nothing then get approximately forever to profit from it. How much did humanity benefit from, say, the song "Beth" versus Lipitor?

The whole system is screwed up.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Heir Of The Mess (939658)]

Yeah, my Taiwanese wife recently picked up a pink Kiss T-Shirt at a market with a picture of the 4 band members from the 70s. I asked her if she liked their music....Confusion followed...She thought they were an Anime cartoon :-/

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[AdamWeeden (678591)]

Gene Simmons is a dinosaur.

Worse, he's a GREEDY dinosaur. Has anyone seen his "reality" show? My wife loves it, but I can't stand it because it's all about him trying to sell Kiss' collective souls for as much profit as possible. The guy seems like he cares much more about making money than enjoying life. He comes off as loving money more than his family. I would not look to him for advice on what a good compromise in a new market economy is when it comes to digital distribution. If his show is any indication, that man would make you pay $50 a Kiss record and thank him for the privilege if he thought he'd get away with it.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[sm62704 (957197)]

He's like the guy who still owns (exclusively) an eight-track player in a world of people who use iPods and compact discs.

I had a thing or two to say about 8-tracks a couple of years ago in Good Riddance to Bad Tech [kuro5hin.org].

This sorry piece of crap is proof positive of American stupidity. The cassette - the (now obsolete) four track, two-spindle, 1/8th inch, 1 /78 IPS shirt pocket sized tape cassette was produced before the 8-track. The four track cassette was originally made as a dictation device, but advances in tape manufacture and head design soon gave them a frequency response that came close to human hearing's limit, signal to noise ratio low enough that you had to turn it up very loud to hear the hiss, and inaudible harmonic distortion which made them ideal for music.

Nevertheless, the 8-track was born anyway. With its transport speed at twice the 4-track cassette's speed, it should have been audibly superior. However, the "powers that be" decided that 8-tracks were going to be for automobiles, which at the time were not as well insulated from outside sounds and wind as today's cars, and with the auto's horrible acoustics, it was OK for a car's music to sound like effluent.

But the deliberately bad sound wasn't bad enough. The eight track tape had a single spindle, a very clever design where the tape fed from the center of the spindle, around a capstain roller inside the housing and back to the outside of the roll of tape. This made for an expensive setup, and one that was prone to wow and flutter, as well as having the tape get "eaten" by the tape player. And unlike a cassette, if your 8-track got ate, you might as well throw it in the trash.

But wait, there's more! This thing was deemed to be for the car, while cassettes were going to be (by about 1970 or so) for the home.

This made no sense whatever, since the "portable" eight track took up as much space as four cassettes, without being able to play any longer than a cassette. In fact, you could buy a longer playing cassette than 8-track.

But the one thing more than anything else that made 8-tracks suck like a Hoover was the fact that it had to change tracks four times during an album. This usually necessitated at least one song and usually more being interrupted in the middle!

Folks finally, after about ten years, started figuring this stuff out for themselves and replaced their 8-track cartriges with 4 track cassettes. Me? I never had an 8-track, although all my friends did. I, the geek, used the far more logical cassettes since about 1966 or 7. Hah! The geek gets the last laugh again!

I honestly think a band like KISS could get away with giving their music away for free, since they have other avenues available to them to make a crapload of money

He works for the record company, and has worked for the record company for almost 40 years. You badmouth your employer at your own risk.

I have always been amused by Lynard Skynard's Working for MCA, especially the verry beginning of the song - it starts out with the buzz of an ungrounded amp, and it's obvious (to me anyway) that they put that there on purpose.

I never heard the CD version, is the buzz still there? From all the bad remixing for CD I've heard in various RIAA fare, I'd bet it's gone.

-mcgrew [mcgrew.info]

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Goldberg's Pants (139800)]

Infringing copyright? That's not the discussion, at least not in this part of the thread. This is about a rock and roll dinosaur condemning a marketing exercise that netted a band a big chunk of change.

I am not a fan of Radiohead. They've made precisely THREE songs I like. (For the record those are "Just", "Paranoid Android" and "Everything In Its Right Place"). I will never buy a Radiohead CD. However, with "In Rainbows", I slung them a few bucks to A) support the creativity of the new business model, B) Metaphorically give the RIAA the finger, and C) Maybe discover that Radiohead are actually quite good. (In actuality I'd say "In Rainbows" did nothing to make me a fan. However I did get to support a band directly, and for the $4 or so I threw in their direction, there's a couple of songs I really like.)

When Reznor gets around to releasing his next work I'll be supporting that as I am a massive fan of NIN and have been for 15 years now.

Simmons has no credibility anyway. Kiss have licensed their music for toothbrushes for christs sake. I see them advertised on TV. As you clean your teeth, the brush plays music. The advert shows a kid brushing his teeth while a Kiss song plays.

Bill Hicks put it far better than I could. "Here's the deal, folks. You do a commercial - you're off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story. Okay? You're another whore at the captialist gang bang and if you do a commercial, there's a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink."

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[tacocat (527354)]

Rather than blasting Simmons as being an irrelevant wanker, I think there's a more useful observation.

The business model of music distribution is changing. It's not really a debateable issue anymore. It's just a fact. But changing to what?

I think Radiohead went overboard. There is not a valid business model when you say, "Pay whatever you want". If you disagree with this conclusion than consider how you will respond when your employer or customers decide they will start paying you whatever they want to and if that's not enough for rent, too bad for you. It's no way to make a living.

But what is important here is the Radiohead has demonstrated that you can make a lot of money selling CD's for really cheap once you manage to get rid of the pimp-ish middleman known as the record industry. The record industry used to have a stranglehold on all things related to radio play, music sales, concert promotions, and other product sales (shirts and posters). But so far, the internet has demonstrated a means for the bands, with a little effort on their part or someone far less expensive than the RIAA, to provide music sales and product sales via the internet. Now all they need to do is set up a means of doing concert promotions and (most importantly) radio play. Without the radio play, they have a hard time getting anything else going.

The Recording Industry must realize by now that their original business model is a bust. This is supported by their efforts to sue rather than change or adopt. But they are also losing a lot of the legal battles. You can analogize this to Monopoly busting or even Union busting.

The future of the Recording Industry may look something like this: A much smaller industry in terms of people employed with a more passive role of providing the framework for bands to connect to concert halls, stores, and radio stations and allow the radio stations, concert halls, and stores to determine their own purchase volumes and schedules. More like the NYSE in that people bid/buy resources based on demand in their geophraphic and demographic areas.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Squirmy McPhee (856939)]

There is not a valid business model when you say, "Pay whatever you want".

Nonsense. When you get right down to it, virtually every business transaction follows this model -- it's just that we typically look at it from the seller's point of view rather than the buyer's point of view. Think about it. If you need a widget, do you obiently pay whatever the widget seller demands? No, of course not. You decide what you're willing to pay for the widget, and if the seller won't give it to you for that price or less you look for another seller or simply live without the widget. The bottom line is that you're not going to pay more than you're willing to. The reason we look at it from the seller's point of view is that the supply of widgets is limited, which means the seller doesn't necessarily need to sell to you, only to enough people that he can sell all of his widgets. But when you're talking about a digital product in the modern world, the supply can be unlimited. Once an unlimited supply is available, the seller has no choice but to accept whatever people will pay, even if that's nothing. You don't want to give it to me free? Fine, I'll go to someone who will. The software industry has, to some extent, figured out how to deal with this -- just look at the number of people making a living off free software -- but the entertainment industry is still trying to control the price of what has become essentially an infinite resource. I can't imagine they're going to succeed any more than they would if they tried to put a price on sunlight, but regardless they're in exactly the same position they would have been in 50 years ago if they priced records too high -- if they demand more than people are willing to pay, sales will suffer.

Of course, with the current legal campaign it's difficult to tell just how much a "free" movie or song will really cost. But then, between DRM, rootkits, and the claims by some in the *AAs that ripping/copying for personal use is not fair use, it's also difficult to tell just how much a CD or DVD will ultimately cost. I, for one, am not willing to take on this cost uncertainty, so I don't download and I have pared my 100 CD/year habit down to almost zero.

Re:Well, he's over 40.

[Shotgun (30919)]

Sorry. Everyone claiming that "pay what you want" isn't a valid business model have no sense of history. Listen to a little CCR to get a clue.

Performers have been dancing a playing on the street corners ever since there were streets and corners. Throw out a hat and start playing.

You don't need a penny,
Just to hang around,
But if you've got a nickel,
Won't you lay your money down.

Now we have the internet. The corner just got really big and really busy, and those nickels start adding up really fast.

amusing

[mgabrys_sf (951552)]

Someone who was always about the merch and not the music would complain. Unless of course he's missing his weekly coke-money that came in from his risiduals which have all but dried up. Or perhaps the band just sucked and the kids have moved on 30 plus years later. I love the fact that industry that made most of it's money on the backs of the youth market has all but watched that market not only walk away but become outright hostile when sued (imagine that).

In other news of the worthy for Gene and his ilk - water is wet amazingly enough.

Re:amusing

[ravenspear (756059)]

Indeed, I find it fascinating when labels or musicians insist on trashing college (and high school) kids on their music purchasing preferences, suing them, or otherwise treating them like crap when most of their revenue comes from this same audience. That sort of policy will certainly encourage them to give you more of their money. :rollseyes:

The industry's only hope of recovering is to realize that their model needs to change to reflect current trends. I am in college and while I have downloaded music for free occasionally, I know a lot of people that do not. What I have also noticed is that regardless of whether people I know download or not, very few buy new music on CDs anymore. Some just listen to old (70s, 80s) music, and others I would assume can't afford to buy it. But whatever the reason, the younger generation seems to be saying to the industry "hey industry, we are no longer interested in the product you are offering and/or the way that you are offering it".

So, instead of attempting to find out why this has taken place and shift their focus to offering a product that the market does want and will pay for, they have instead attempted to force continuation of the antiquated distribution mechanisms through litigation. This is a strategy that will ultimately end in failure, for obvious reasons which are too numerous to list. The real question is whether the industry will realize this and adapt before they go totally bankrupt. I suspect they will not and it will thus take the dissolution of the current structure before any permanent future strategy can be designed. It may have already been realized to some extent with the current increase in non-DRM digital outlets, although I am not sure if any of the current ones represent the final form of what the market is demanding.

Of course, there is another more insidious element of the industry's "kicking and screaming" approach and that is the efforts they have taken to buy off the legislature. If they can succeed in getting their non-economically viable business models made mandatory by forcing them upon us as the law of the land, then it will take significantly longer for the questions of future distribution models to be worked out.

just read this guy's wikipedia

[Paktu (1103861)]

This is not the first stupid thing Mr. Simmons has said or done. [wikipedia.org]

In a later Fresh Air interview, satirist Al Franken related to Terry Gross his own encounter with Gene Simmons. According to Franken, he was awaiting a racquetball partner at a club when Simmons, whom Franken had not recognized, challenged him to a match, stating "I'll kick your ass" only to suffer an embarrassing loss to Franken. Simmons responds by calling for another match and when Franken indicates that since his racquetball partner has arrived, he can't play Simmons again, Simmons responds by making loud "bock, bock, bock" chicken sounds. Franken then offers to play Simmons with $500 at stake, at which Simmons walks away.[3][4]Franken tells Terry not to blame herself for her experience with Simmons, and that Simmons behavior at the racquetball made him "the most awful person I've ever met."

Re:just read this guy's wikipedia

[ocbwilg (259828)]

That's funny. It's a fairly well-established fact that Gene Simmons has an amazing aversion to gambling. His rationale is that when it comes to business and money, he always wants to be on the winning team. With gambling, there's a chance you'll lose. Even "his" well-publicized $100,000 bet at the Kentucky Derby wasn't placed by him, it was allegedly done behind his back by his wife. But it's also entirely possible that it was done as a publicity stunt to stir up interest in him and his various projects (Family Jewels, the IRL, etc).

At any rate, it's fairly obvious that he doesn't know what he's talking about. And it is odd that someone who has made the overwhelming majority of his "music-industry" money from things other than album sales would take such a vehement stance against the newly emerging models for the music industry. But it's clear from the example he gave that he doesn't understand the market. He equates what Radiohead did with "Opening a store and saying 'Come on in and pay whatever you want,'" but his example is comparing brick and mortar stores (expensive to open and mainatain) with a web-based distribution service (much cheaper, much less overhead). The two business models (the one he expressed and the one that Radiohead tried) are completely different.

What might be more interesting would be his response upon finding out that Radiohead made at least as much money from their With Rainbows experiment than they have from traditional album releases, and that there's still a "special edition" CD to be released and sold yet. My guess (based on Gene's past behavior) is that he wouldn't care. He's very focused on making money at every opportunity, and I suspect that the notion of an unpaid download offends his sensibilities, even if the system is still generating more revenue for him than the traditional model.

Don't even get me started about his stupid comments like "Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid's face should have been sued off the face of the earth." Nothing like trying to sue your customers out of existance. After all, it worked for SCO.

Krispy Kreme and ol' Gene

[Ethanol-fueled (1125189)]

It's clear what Gene Simmons' priorities [ew.com] are.
Oh, besides being a greedy bastard.

Disclaimer: I do not read EW -- I just remembered that quote from a guitar magazine awhile back ;)

Music's dead?

[Entropius (188861)]

The headline says it all.

"Music *industry* woes".

Music, itself -- the part that involves people getting up on stage and singing/playing/whatever, and maybe selling recordings if they're good enough -- is doing just fine.

People still write songs and play them, and will keep on doing so independent of the success or failure of any particular method by which others profit off of them.

Re:Music's dead?

[stormguard2099 (1177733)]

A great analogy in my opinion would be if every professional sports team suddenly disbanded. We wouldn't call this "the end of sports!!!!1!111" because there would still be people who go and play after school, on the weekends. Not because they are contractually obligated to or they are intent on some sort of monetary gain but because they enjoy it.

In the same sense, people are still going to make music even if every label closed tomorrow and no one ever sold another cd. Obviously this is an exageration but the point remains the same. If every single comercial avenue of music closed down there would still be people making music.

Re:Music's dead?

[easyTree (1042254)]

That's a good analogy. To my mind, neither of these pursuits (sport, music) would be any the worse from having the business people removed from their operations.

Today is a new world. Certainly within music, noone needs the _industry_. Producer and consumer are able to communicate directly via the internet. The industry's contribution is to insert themselves in the process for the purpose of taxation, which serves only them. Without them, the tightness of the feedback loop (consumer is able to give their feedback immediately after downloading the album and the musician is able to take those comments on board and may choose to alter their approach (or not), moments after reading it) is surely going to lead to everyone being a whole lot happier.

Radiohead and Reznor are demonstrating this; surely that obvious, even to someone who paints their face?

Anyhow.. it's painful to watch the industry-formerly-profiting-from-music die (and it's putting up a great fight), but die it will. If we stop feeding it, that will help.

Say hello to tomorrow :D

Re:Music's dead?

[rolfwind (528248)]

What is interesting is that Simmons puts the greatest argument against records in that article himself:

There is nothing in me that wants to go in there and do new music. How are you going to deliver it? How are you going to get paid for it if people can just get it for free? I will be putting out a Gene Simmons box set called "Monster" -- a collection of 150 unreleased songs. KISS will have another box set of unreleased music in the next year.

2 boxed sets of unreleased music - at best second rate crap that was not good enough to put out the first time - coming. All to just make money as he admitted in the first sentence was his main motivation since making music for it's own sake or attracting new fans isn't enough by itself.

I don't know what motivates musicians, but knowing enough young visual artists, when they start out, most of them are ambitious, just want to make an impact on the world, and make their living doing what they love which doesn't necessarily mean making a fortune. Making an impact seems to be especially important to them -- although I don't know if that's just intended as a road to money.

Re:Music's dead?

[DavidShor (928926)]

Sure, there will always be some music played. However, the equilibrium music production reached when the only incentive to produce is one's own joy is less than the amount that produces a social optimum.

When someone plays music, it benefits people who listen to the music as well as the producers. In an ideal world, people who listen to the music would prefer to pay the musician for extra music then have no extra music at all. So in order to achieve socially optimal music production, artists need to be compensated for the utility they bring listeners.

To some extent, this is done by the prestige and fame system, but this seems to create rather curious incentive structures and marginal effects.

Not that this justifies the RIAA stance, there is quite a bit of evidence that our copyright system actually discourages production by allowing artists to live off the earnings of previous songs. Even if it is against the immediate interests of listeners and artists, we need to create an incentive structure that is best for society.

Personally, I think that we should reduce copyright times to 4 years, as research has shown that period maximizes the incentive to produce music. Marketing can be expensive, so sometimes musicians will release their music free, but that is their choice. At the same time, fines for downloading copyrighted materials should be decreased drastically, to about two times the purchase price, so that the dispute can be handled in small claims court, minimizing transaction costs.

From the department of redundancy department

[AcidPenguin9873 (911493)]

Seriously. There is a story about this on Slashdot at least every other day with no actual new legal/economic/industry developments, resulting in the exact same comments and arguments rehashed. Yes, I know I can just ignore it. Yes, I must be new here. But what's wrong with some constructive criticism of Slashdot?

FWIW I think the only way we'll see the stories disappear is if we stop reading and commenting on them (which means /. loses ad revenue and will stop posting them).

Re:From the department of redundancy department

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

This one is slightly different

Standard /. story goes Senior record company exec doesn't understand how the world is changing

This story is Burnt out, over the hill musician doesn't understand how the world is changing

Re:From the department of redundancy department

[whogben (919335)]

I'll support you in your campaign not to post on this topic - here I am matching your commitment, comrade!

Pity he's not writing any new music

[ElMiguel (117685)]

I would have enjoyed a few KISS songs on how The Man is being let down by "college kids". "Obey the law or be sued" would make for a catchy refrain.

Fine and sue all nite

[Nazlfrag (1035012)]

You torrent everything we've got
You keep downloading and your disk gets hot
You drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy

We'll twist the facts till they go in a spin
The lawsuits just begun, we'll get you in
You drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy

You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'

I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day

We keep on saying you'll be fined in a while
Smoking crack and opening shops just ain't my style
You drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy

Our lawyers demand everything you've got
Baby, baby thats quite a lot
And you drive us wild, we'll go sue crazy

You keep on shoutin', you keep on shoutin'

I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day
I wanna obey the law all night, and not get sued every day

Nothing new here

[retro128 (318602)]

Everyone in the old guard says that digital distribution won't work. They watch CD sales slip away and think it's because of piracy, when it's actually the old business model falling apart. Sue college kids...Yeah, that'll get sales up. People are done buying 13 tracks of crap for the one song they like. The future is a la carte. Guys like Gene Simmons can either sink or swim, though granted I doubt he could sell his music to anyone under 40 anyway.

The richer they are

[rolfwind (528248)]

the greedier they get.

I don't know much about Kiss, but I imagine he's getting to that age where he wants to tour less (and thus make less merchandise sales) and thus would like to live off royalties.

why do where care about Gene Simmons?

[freedom_surfer (203272)]

Gene Simmons also advocates public executions for drugs. If it weren't for drugs how could half his fans endure his music?

Gene Simmons?

[damburger (981828)]

Seeing as how my first thought on reading the summary was 'who is gene simmons', I think its fairly safe to say the final score is:

College Kids 1, Retarded Old Drag Queen 0.

Outside the box

[Stanislav_J (947290)]

I once had a small business (really more of a hobby than a major enterprise -- something to bring in some extra wampum) in which I sold unusual esoteric merchandise to a small group of fanatics (I think at most I had a few hundred folks on my mailing list). Sales were down and the economy was bad, so one month I did a "name you own price" special -- you tell me what you want and what you think is a fair price and we have a deal. And I had a higher net profit in that month than any other that year. Apropos of nothing, perhaps, as I know every business and industry is different, but the basic point is that often it is the unconventional business model that turns out to be the most successful. The more set you are in your ways, the more you stand to lose as the world passes you by.

But do we really care?

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

First off, some people need to RTFA, he is NOT talking about himself, but about new bands who dream of success who he claims will not be able to do it (or at least not the way he defines success, getting really rich of your image).

So?

Times change. Once you had far more theathers and far more places where plays could be held. Then the movie theather arrived and put countless performers out of business. Were once a musician was playing in bar now there is a sound installation. Where once there was an entertainer, now there is a big screen TV.

Movie theathers too took a hit with the arrival of television. Live tv broadcasts took a hit when VCR's arrived and even more with DVR.

Coal mines are gone in holland, because we discovered a gas field and bam, lots of people unemployed. Daf cars (trucks still exists) is gone and again, people out of a job because less and less people are needed to make cars and there are countries that can do it cheaper.

IT is being outsourced as are call center jobs.

The next generations job prospects are going to be different then today's.

In a way, he says that himself, no band has managed to overtake KISS in merchandising. HE himself killed the dream off new bands in becoming the next kiss because he refuses to step aside. Shame on him.

Lets say that not a single musician can make money anymore. Unlikely but lets assume it for a second, not a single person can make a single penny creating music. So?

Where is it written that you should be able too? I am by training a baker, I am fairly good at it, (but not exceptionally so) and I left the business because it is a dead end. People buy their bakery goods from the factory and opening a new bakery shop is far to expensive and legally impossible. Zoning restrictions, a bakery works at night and produces noise and smells while by its nature it has to be in a residential area. That don't mix no more. The hygience laws have become so strict that it costs a fortune to fit out a new building and the costs (and shortage) of skilled labourers, plus the restrictions of what they are allowed to do means you need a massive amount of very expensive equipment, which because the demand for small scale equipment has plummeted is increasingly expensive.

In short, society has killed the small baker shop. Of the people in my entire school only a handfull are still in the trade, a most of them because they inheritied the business from their parents.

Do I see Gene Simmons give a shit about that? No. Why then should I give a shit if some other person has to give up his dream of being a paid artist and find another way of making a living.

Lots of people try to make an argument that music sharing doesn't hurt the industry or that artist can compensate or that there are different methods of selling music.

I like to take it one step further, why should society give a shit wether music creators can make money? Do we really want to make rigid laws for all people just so a few can make a living the job they want? I want to bake bread. Should YOU be forced to go to a seperate store in your area for your bread rather then go to the supermarket? Should for instance the dutch be forced to serve pie again on their birthday from the local bakery rather then "vlaai" (a kind of pie coming originally from a dutch province that comes from a chain of stores that get supplied by a factory).

If you say no to that, then you should say no to everything the RIAA wants as well. Society should not have to bend over backwards just some people can make music for a living. Get a job.

Disingenuous argument

[Arabani (1127547)]

Regarding giving away music and making money off touring/merchandise:

Well therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you're considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on.

His use of gold as an argument for why music shouldn't be given away is disingenuous. He's arguing that gold, not having any intrinsic value, derives its value from the fact that people "agree" on a certain price. But that's not the case (if it were, DOJ would be quite busy with price-fixing investigations). As any first-year economics student knows, in a (free) market, prices are determined by supply and demand. Gold is in high demand (because it's pretty, as well as having some industrial uses), but has an extremely limited supply (297 tonnes mined in 2005, costing an average of $237/troy ounce to extract [wikipedia.org]). Therefore, $237/troy ounce is the minimum price of gold given a free market and assuming mining corporations are profit-seeking enterprises. It seems clear that the price of gold is in fact a very poor analogy to the price of music, because music is a) NOT in limited supply (one could argue the supply is infinite, depending on the medium and one's definition of "music"), and b) the marginal cost (how much it costs to produce another unit) is orders of magnitude lower than that of gold.

As an intellectual exercise, let's stick to Gene's flawed analogy. Gold has a price because there's this idea that people "agree" that it should have a certain price. Now let's examine Radiohead's experiment. They're saying "you name a price, and we'll charge you that much". And so on an individual basis, each fan is agreeing with Radiohead that the price of the new album should be X dollars. Seems to me that Radiohead's model is exactly what he's arguing for. So tell me, what's wrong with giving away music?

Regardless, somebody needs to let Mr. Simmons know that he's living in a brave new world, and unless he has a burning desire to move in with the dodos, he needs to realize that the old models might not work anymore. That, or maybe he's trying really hard for the arrogant, self-righteous bastard image.

Simmons went into music to make money

[simong (32944)]

I found a copy of Simmons' biography in a second hand shop and while it's an interesting read, he's a pretty dull guy. No vices apart from womanising, and it's fairly obvious that he saw music as a way of avoiding the day job, which he's managed to do for 35 years. It comes as no surprise that he mistrusts the way that the music business is going, and can't see the difference between file sharing and paid-for downloading. He is the epitome of senior music industry management - late 50s, tour jacket wearing, stuck in that notion of selling 'product'. Not being able to buy Kiss online won't trouble his income much, and it probably doesn't occur to him that more of his income these days comes from touring, merchandise and just being Gene Simmons. I can imagine that he was a slow adopter of the CD format too, and probably made sure that he got a good deal out of them before Kiss got digitised for the first time.

Gene Simmons is a dolt (proof)

[raidfibre (1181749)]

If you're unsure that Gene Simmons really isn't an idiot, read this transcript of his interview with Terry Gross on NPR:
http://www.rof.net/wp/carriep/TERRYGRO.HTM [rof.net]

Terry Gross: Are you trying to say to me that all that matters to you is money?

Gene Simmons: I will contend, and you try to disprove it, that the most important thing as we know it on this planet, in this plane, is, in fact, money. Want me to prove it?

Terry Gross: Go ahead.

Gene Simmons: The first thing you need -- besides air, which so far is free, and by the way if you went scuba diving, you're paying for air -- the other thing besides that is food, it's what we need to survive. I don't know what other tool I would use besides money to buy it. Although, as a woman of course you have the ability to sell your body, then get the money, and then, with that, get food. But ultimately money is part of it. And so --

Terry Gross: [laughs] You -- you -- you are weird.

Gene Simmons: Really? How do you get food?

Terry Gross: Well, not by selling my body. But --

Gene Simmons: But that's a choice you have that I don't. But getting to the money part, money is the single most important thing on the planet, including the notion that uh, love gives you everything. That's a lot of hogwash. Because although I subscribe to the romantic notion of life --

Terry Gross: Well, let's cut to the chase. How much -- how much money do you have?

Gene Simmons: Gee, a lot more than NPR.

Terry Gross: Oh, I know. I -- you're very defensive on money, aren't you?

Gene Simmons: No, I'm not, I'm just trying to show you that there's a big world out there, and reading books is wonderful. I've certainly read, well, perhaps as many as you have, but there's a delusional kind of notion that runs rampant in --

Terry Gross: Wait, wait, could we just get something straight?

Gene Simmons: Of course.

Terry Gross: I'm not here to prove that I'm smart --

Gene Simmons: Not you --

Re:He's right though

[DingerX (847589)]

Well, Gene Simmons is right, sorta, when he points out the core issue:

The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy.

Property is, at heart, an agreement between people about things. My computer has nothing intrinsic in it that makes it mine and not yours: we just agree that that is the case.

There's something very basic in humans that less us understand the concept of "mine" and "yours", and apply it to physical objects. But what about ideas? Intellectual property is much more difficult for most people to wrap their minds around. For example, you don't understand it either. "Downloading stuff that you didn't pay for" is not stealing. Stealing is a criminal act where you deprive someone of the use or enjoyment of property. Making a copy of a work is not criminal, nor does it deprive the copyright owner of anything. It can be against the wishes of the copyright owner, and the copyright owner can assert that you inflicted damages, but it is not stealing, just as hijacking an aircraft is not committing insurance fraud.

So, we've got property rights that are agreed upon by a society, or so we think, and some of those, few people really seem to understand, and yet affect everybody. Worse, these are relative young "rights". Copyrights came in with mass printing and were built to combat mass printing. With the cost of duplication practically nil, and the means of communication readily available, Copyright law, as it is now, is just impractical: it's designed for mass infringement cases, not as a means of generating revenue.

On the one hand, human behavior in these matters has not changed since the beginning of written communication: people copy what interests them, and don't immediately grasp the notion of paying for an instantion of an idea (they do, however, immediately grasp the importance of paying someone to produce ideas). On the other hand, we have a handful of companies with a business model based on the high cost of mass production and distribution confronted with a change to an environment of cheap distribution and individualized production. And there's no worse citizen than a fading elite. The music industry in particular made this worse by focusing on saturating the market with a few insipid "hits", and overexposing the listeners: to the average person, that song that they're hearing several times a day isn't worth anything in itself.

So to answer your question: nobody's saying downloading music without paying for it is ok. I say that, yes, downloading music without paying for is ok, when the copyright holders make it available for free.

Re:He's right though

[FireFury03 (653718)]

I never understood this idea, so popular on slashdot, that downloading stuff that you didn't pay for is somehow not stealing.

It is wrong, and illegal, but it isn't stealing.

• Stealing is where you take something and the owner no longer has it. This is a criminal offense.
• Copyright infringement is where you copy something. The owner still has it, but the owner doesn't get paid for the copy (note: this is not the same as the owner "losing money" since the infringer may not necessarilly have bought it anyway). This is a civil offense.

Stealing and copyright infringement are covered by different laws and they have different effects on the victims of the crimes and society in general, they are not the same thing.

That doesn't make copyright infringement right. However, there needs to be some flexibility here.

For example, I generally download an album before I buy it. If I like what I hear I go out and buy the CD, if not, I delete what I downloaded. If I can't hear something before buying it I probably won't buy it because I've bought too many CDs I thought were going to be good and turned out to be complete crap. And what's wrong with this? Consider it promotion for the bands - if their music is good then it makes them more money because I'm more likely to spend my money on CDs I _know_ are good rather than taking a gamble.

Can anybody fill me in as to why downloading music without paying for it is ok?

It isn't. But can you fill me in as to why the following behaviour is ok:

• Suing thousands of people who can't afford to defend themselves despite having only circumstantial evidence that they have committed any crime (and thus forcing potentially innocent people to settle at great expense)
• Preventing customers from accessing content which they have legitimately purchased, by means of various (potentially illegal) DRM systems (which often the customer is not informed about prior to purchase).
• Criminalising people who who want to listen to their legally purchased CDs on their MP3 players.

At the moment, the quality of the official product is frequently substandard compared to the blackmarket product. People generally like paying and staying within the law, but when it starts to become impossible to use the legally purchased product, is it any surprise that people stop buying it?