Elton John Says Internet is Destroying Music

Jared writes "Elton John says that the internet is destroying good music and "stopping people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff." He laments the way that the internet and the emerging industry of digital music has created a cold and impersonal world for artists to create new music in."

Should we get off his lawn too?

[mgabrys_sf]

Seriously I'm seeing acts both prosper and thrive due to the internet. Even the more established groups like They Might Be Giants have done well thanks to the internet in reaching their fans. If anything there's probably a larger danger of background noise in the amount of chaff produced, but seeing various internet "memes" pop up from time to time I'm confident that the good stuff will always rise to the top.

Taking an even more commercial example, I wouldn't have heard much about pop-artists like Rogue Traders unless I'd seen an excerpt of Dr. Who from the UK which lead me to wiki the Aus act and find more info than a lone single - which is only reaching US market AFTER 2 YEARS - would provide. The single is available from iTunes - but I'll eagerly await the full album.

In the retro column, 80s artist Thomas Dolby released a live set recorded in front of a live audience in San Francisco onto iTunes a while back. He's got several businesses and projects going but it's nice to see him quickly produce and bring to market (thanks to the internet) some new material. This wouldn't have gotten the time of day by the traditional business model.

Good riddance I say.

BTW - check out SeeqPod. It's cooler than snail snot and the mobile client is SWEET. I've not only found hard to finds, and music out of circulation, but excellent mash-ups that would NEVER BE ALLOWED TO BE DISTRIBUTED BY THE CURRENT OUTDATED RIAA BUSINESS MODELS.

Judge != Elton John

[Flying pig]

Sorry, but I really felt the need to respond to this. British newspapers like to make out that judges are ignorant because it plays to the prejudices of their readers. In fact, the judge had to ask the question because both sides were talking about "websites" but without any definition, and (as any fool on /. knows) websites can be many different things. Judges are not allowed to intervene and tell the court what things are, they have to get the information into the trial record by asking questions.

In the same way a judge was once ridiculed for asking "Who are the Beatles", but it was necessary because again they were being talked about in a trial, but anybody subsequently reading the trial report would not get a clue what "Beatles" were. Because of the way the British legal system works, on case law and precedent, judges have to assume that a judgement may be brought up many years in the future - when, say, the word "website" will be long gone but the thing itself still exists.

Incidentally, in that case the question did show that the lawyers on both sides were themselves unclear what they were talking about - not unusual in these cases.

Re:Sucks to be you, Elton

[sgant]

You mean Bernie Taupin writes songs that are autobiographical, about people that are important to him. It's Taupin that wrote all those love song lyrics of the past...usually written to his girlfriend at the time. Elton put them all to extremely beautiful music.

I know, you did say "things important to his lyricist"...but I just wanted to make sure Bernie Taupin's name got out there.

His old stuff is awesome

[tjstork]

And by old, I mean, pre-1976

Tiny Dancer
Levon
Madman across the Water
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Crocodile Rock
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Someone Saved My Life Tonight
and I'll take Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters up against any song the Who ever did, period.

Re:Sure, Elton, sure.

[daBass]

Yeah, except that if you RTFA, you'll see that this is not a "piracy is killing music" stab; not at all. It is about people now making cold electronic music in their bedrooms rather than going out, getting together with other musicians and feed off each other creativity to make truly great music.

And I think he has a point. Shutting down the internet may be a bit drastic, though.

The Irony...

[hAckz0r]

... as he gives his interview to be published on the Internet.

The cause and effect he imagines just isn't there. The 'cold place' he sees was just hidden during the past. He never had the chance to meet the mobs of people out there without the power of the Internet before, except when he traveled on tour. And I am sure he stopped to talk to them all. The new technology merely allowed him to know about the world he never saw before, and any existing problems he never realized.

Yes, the Industry is "colder" today, for him, as that is just in his own frame of mind. The Industry has always been a cutthroat place where contracts rule, not the artist. The "people" don't make it colder, they just make it possible for a sinking artist like him to make a living and get their interviews published on the Internet, and to drive up sales.

I think you may have missed the point

[jesterzog]

Are we not fawning over "celebs" enough? Not constructing enough temple record stores, to be preached to in a condescending manner if we pick up the wrong album? Are we actually daring to put their music in the same store as a lesser known artist? Or, perhaps his music might even be sharing the same server on itunes as one of us common ruffians?

He's not commenting about music distribution, or about music cartels that manufacture awful music and buy radio stations to reduce people's choice.

What he's saying, in his own opinion, is that he thinks musicians are communicating less because the recent technology has been making it so much easier for people to produce things on their own. He thinks this is having a negative effect on the quality of music being produced, because the composition process has changed in such a way that musicians aren't getting as much feedback from each other. Celebrities, temple record stores or more competition between artists really have nothing to do with what he said.

I'm sure he couldn't care less if artists still used the Internet to distribute their work, if they worked together more frequently when producing it in the first place. (Actually I'm sure many already do, but clearly Elton thinks that many aren't.) Saying the Internet should be shut down for five years is just a provocative statement to get attention. It's a random idea to get people to think about how things might change if they ditched some of the technology they're using in their creative process.

Deja Vu

[ChemE]

This story reminds me of a BBC panel show I heard a couple of years ago when they played a recording from the '60's (?) of a music expert complaining about what things would happen if cassette tapes became widely available.
I also remember when video players first came out, it was said that people would quit going to movie theaters and that would in turn make people socialize less.

Re:That's not even relevant

[drdaz]

Me too, but that doesn't seem to be what Elton John is upset about here. He seems to be saying that he doesn't like the way the internet is changing the way music is made - from a physical-social activity to either an individual or virtual-social activity.

Re:Sucks to be you, Elton

[neonmonk]

Limp Bizkit's 'My Generation' wasn't a cover of a Who song. o_O

Have you even heard Limp's version or alternatively The Who's original??

Lyrics: The Who. [songmeanings.net]
Lyrics: Limp Bizkit. [songmeanings.net]

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Re:His old stuff is awesome

[splatterboy]

You realize "his" old stuff isn't "his" any more than Pinball wizard... Ever hear of Bernie Taupin? Their fallout was basically the reason he fell off the charts, he didn't write the music - Bernie did. The punk rock culture shift didn't help...