Elton John Says Internet is Destroying Music 709
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."
Exposure (Score:5, Interesting)
I suggest (Score:5, Interesting)
Your move, Elton.
Ticket prices (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet is helping me make it as a musician (Score:5, Interesting)
But at the time all I could do to distribute my music was to manually duplicate cassette tapes. I just gave a few to friends and family. CD burners were still horrendously expensive, as were CD-R blanks.
When I got my own website, I offered some free downloads in Sun's old .AU format. I think it's 8-bit, so it didn't sound that good, and the downloads were quite large. But MP3 and psychoacoustic compression was still a ways off.
The copyright on my music said "All rights reserved" at first, and I specifically forbid sharing my songs over the Internet, but instead requested that those who wanted to share my music direct others to my website.
But I had always been a big fan of Richard Stallman and Free Software, and I knew that the right thing to do would be to copyleft my music.
I'm not signed with any record label, not even an indie one. I'm completely on my own. But my music gets downloaded by hundreds of people each month, with the downloads growing over time.
By learning to play by ear, I didn't learn to read sheet music. But for several years now I've been taking piano lessons and learning to read music, with the aim that when I can pass the entrance audition, I will enroll in music school to major in musical composition. I want to compose symphonies someday.
The Internet is, frankly, a miracle to me as it is enabling people throughout the world to get to know me and my music. When the time comes that I play professionally - or hopefully, symphony orchestras play myy compositions - I expect that there will already be a base of fans who will buy tickets to my performances.
Please download, share and enjoy:
- Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft [geometricvisions.com]
I call it "The Rough Draft" because I always intended to compose more pieces for at, and when the time came, to re-record it and to have a "glass master" CD pressed.The lot of it is under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5 license. There are various formats as well as sheet music in PDF and Lilypond (source code) format. (I would be honored if any of you learned to play my music.)
I've been playing at Open Mics for a couple years now. I recently moved to Silicon Valley, and often visit Santa Cruz on the weekends. If you'd like to hear me live, check my live performance schedule [geometricvisions.com]. (It presently says I'm in Vancouver, but I'll update that in the next day or so.)
I'm also planning to buy an amp so I can play my keyboard on the street. When I do, I'm going to have a sign hanging off of it advertising "Free Music Downloads", and will have a box of my free music download handbills [advogato.org].
Last weekend I spent four hours walking up and down Santa Cruz' Pacific Garden Mall passing out the handbills. I got many reactions - most people think it's too good to be true, that there is some kind of catch, but most who accept the handbill are quite delighted.
You could really help me out if you shared my music over the Internet.
Re:Sucks to be you, Elton (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, the new music world should be about choice The internet creates choice. And if that internet destroys the musicindustry(I'm talking about formatted music like britney's) GOOD: bring on all the new types of music!
Re:Fuck! The Dude is, like, a 100 now (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, I've known people who cut themselves up for attention-whore purposes
I like a lot of his newer stuff, but then, musical tastes are very much an individual thing.
He's not even right (Score:5, Interesting)
Check the Sun article
Now, where did I hear something like that before? Oh, yes: Spider Robinson's 1983 Hugo Winning Short Story, "The Melancholy Elephants" [spiderrobinson.com]—
Sir Elton John's musical talent may be argued either way, but it doesn't change that he still is an Ignorant Idiot [wikipedia.org].
Re:Sure, Elton, sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering that "One Cure Fits All" (2006) was among their better albums ever IMHO (and I have been listening to them since they got started around 1990), apparently this 'interweb' thing isn't necessarily as detrimental as Sir Elton believes.
Re:Television (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Most of the people who listen to it-mainly club-goers, girls age 13-25, and guys trying to impress said girls-are not focusing on the message, but the beat. Now the beats we are talking about here, are not particularly hard to create. You need a beat, and SOMETIMES a catchy melody to play over it, but often you will find that recent hip-hop doesn't even have that. It just has a "kickin" basebeat that is easily danceable.
2. What is hard about rap is not the actual rapping, but the creating of long interesting poems that are filled with pleasing linguistic tricks (Eminem is probably the best example of such a talent)... And while some rap artists are awesome at this, and have a ton of talent, the average pop rap song is filled with cliches and repetative thug talk that really doesn't give any kind of interesting message, at least not one that is even remotely thought provoking not to mention original.
3. I said that the rapping part isn't that hard, but it isn't for everyone, certain voices can pull it off easy, but rapping is not that difficult(at least to do at the level of an average "hip-hop" star) and the ability to do so is not so rare (like perfect pitch, for example)... I have several friends that are not rappers in any way shape or form, but give them some drinks and you will be shocked at how well they can mimick the best in the business.
Now, I know that there are people that are all like "underground yo!"... and while I hate them for completely different reasons, they don't all fit into the reasons stated above... The parent was talking about popular rap music, which is, in general, absolute corporate garbage-with a beat that people dance to.
Generally speaking, the people who like the underground rap scene are just massive douche bags, who are miserable and melencholy and have tendencies towards violence since they don't, themselves, have any good ways of expressing themselves. I hang out with a bunch of these guys, and while I don't mind them, their whole underground rap thing is pretty stupid. Like hardcore music, it's for angst filled 20 somethings.
Re:Sucks to be you, Elton (Score:3, Interesting)
Some of the songs are from Elton's perspective (Someone Saved My Life Tonight is an example) but yes, many are Bernie's, such as Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting, which is about Bernie's time in bars when he was younger.
Thanks for following up.
Re:Sure, Elton, sure. (Score:3, Interesting)
The band name came from the description of how they did the recording.
Re:Ticket prices (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe he should check with Trent Reznor... (Score:2, Interesting)
Besides, Trent released a couple of tracks in a format that alows anyone (ANYONE) to mix it, remix it, cut it, mash it, to basically get a taste of what it feels like to play with the "source code" of music. Trent even said that the draft of the album was made up while they were touring, with a laptop, on buses and planes and all.
Heck, they even "leaked" selected tracks via USB pen drives on bathrooms on concerts, and I think that the objective was to spread them, using (you guessed!) the internet!
Now, could any of this be possible without the internet? Maybe, but the thing is that the internet is a new "tool", to wich the artists either adapt, or will violently bash against (like in the case of Sir Elton).
5 years without internet... the thing is that a lot of people (like Sir Elton) just don't get it, today the internet is becoming more and more a "essential" service on the civilized world, much like telephone, gas, electricity and the likes.
Re:Sucks to be you, Elton (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say it's more than just that. The biggest problem in music is the end of independent ownership and management of everything related to music on any kind of large scale. You name it, it's either owned or controlled by the RIAA mob, or it's basically irrelevant to the majority of the industry. Plenty of small-scale stuff happens, all the way down to people just talking to each other about it, but none of it reaches the necessary critical mass for any of the ideas generated to travel far beyond the (social) vicinity of the place where they started.
The root cause of all this is obvious: whenever anything significant starts to happen, people start thinking about how they can make money from it, and then they start thinking about how to maximise their profits from it, and then the RIAA mob makes them an offer.
His old stuff is awesomely gay (Score:1, Interesting)
Happy Jack
My Generation
Substitute
I Can't Explain
The Kids are Alright
Magic Bus
I Can See for Miles
And these are all before Tommy.
Your only excuse would be if you're female.
Re:Sure, Elton, sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was at school, a few of my friends were in various bands. Most evenings they would be involved in online jamming sessions, where they would make music with other musicians in different parts of the world (since this was the modem era, I presume they were streaming MIDI commands). They were feeding off the creativity of other musicians who they would never have had a chance to meet in the real world.
Band web site with forums and even (*shudder*) MySpace provide a great way for bands to get feedback. If you play in a club, you have a very limited potential audience; the subset of people in a specific area who like your style of music. If you publish your music online then the potential audience is much larger, and so is the number of people who will provide feedback.
Re:Sucks to be you, Elton (Score:3, Interesting)
Internet radio offers far more variety than the local radio stations here in the UK - I've lost count of the number of CDs I've bought after hearing them through Pandora [pandora.com] or other more traditional online stations. I can easily find a station playing the music styles I want to listen to, rather than .
Maybe Elton should consider the benefits the Internet can offer, rather than concentrating on the negatives such as illegal p2p filesharing that the record companies spoonfeed everyone.
As a musician myself (piano/keys in a jazz quartet and also a corporate/party band) I really appreciate what the internet has done for us: we get lots of our gigs through people finding our website [top-drawer.net] (or being directed there from other sites / recommendations / business cards) and downloading / listening to the live demo tracks. Granted, the site needs a major update, but without the internet I'd be stuck running off demo CDs and leaflets and posting them to agents / venues.
Actually a very good question. (Score:3, Interesting)
However the more I thought about it the more I realised it was a very good question. Just think about some boundary cases. A mirrors. Two different domains on the same IP. Two subdomains on the same host or different host machines. Two different domains with different NIC/IP on the same host machine. Two different user domains on the same host. Wiki's, forum, static and dynamic content on the same domain, on different sub-domains, or on different hosts and/or NIC/IPs. A web front end to usenet, chat, aggregator or RSS feeds.
I would moderate the Judges Question insightful.
Re:Sure, Elton, sure. (Score:5, Interesting)
For me personally, over the years I've spent a lot of time on various guitar related forums (when not surfing Slashdot), I was able to learn a lot from other (better) players all over the world who I would never have had access to otherwise. I've collaborated with other musicians over the Internet by sending MP3's back and forth and mixing everyone's parts into one song. Hell, I even met my current band mates on an Internet classifieds site.
However, there is no substitute for playing with other people in a real live situation, that's where you really learn very quickly from other players, but to say the Internet is hurting musicians is pretty stupid. It kind of reminds me of the old days when they said BBS's and the Internet were preventing people from being social, when in fact it was the opposite, people were spending all their time chatting online and emailing.
All of you didn't get it!!! Just RELAX and THINK! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's an incredible experience to you play with others and to actually build on each other's sound. There is an immediate sense of fulfillment. Also the audience loves to see people struggle to make their sound. It gives a good show. A digital solo at 220 BPM is nothing like a live solo. Nobody cares about the digital solo because nobody sees any skills in that while a guitar player, and even some bass players, can actually show what they are doing while dancing and moving around.
With the current level of technology, you don't need the guitar, bass, drum, orchestras etc. You could have an orchestra of synthesizers and the keyboardists could do the same thing and even more for less money. Yet, I think everybody would be bored and would wonder why they didn't simply listen to it on their computer. Eventually though, all of the instruments might become simple toys to play around a fire. A bit like how the harmonica was quite popular and practical once and now nobody cares about it.
Internet keeps the Air Guitarists in the Air (Score:2, Interesting)
How can the young music industry be worse in a day when any average Joe can make their music instantly accessible to millions or potential listeners? Gone are the days of making hundreds of demo tapes and hoping one will end up in the right hands
People who want to create still create. People who just want to listen to music (and have no business playing, like myself) can make their own CD's and playlists/mixes from other's work.
Finding band members (Score:5, Interesting)
For the love (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sure, Elton, sure. (Score:4, Interesting)
100% agree there. I am also primarily a guitar player for the last 20 years. I've since stopped doing the band thing for right now and am composing/writing music on my own. While I definitely agree with you that there is no substitute for playing and collaborating with others, I think you'd probably agree that technology/computers have made the process of CAPTURING those magic moments that occur much easier and thus have contribute hugely to music creation as a whole.
Now, when you're just "jamming" with some people, you can have a laptop there recording everything so that when someone does something "accidentally brilliant" 10 minutes into a jam session, you have it captured in a very clear, editable form. I don't know about you, but for me, this has been invaluable. There's nothing worse than doing something that just works for a song/piece and then never being able to do it again. One of the deciding factors in my buying my workstation keyboard (a Roland Fantom X6 [roland.com]incidentally) was what they call "skip back sampling". That is, it's constantly recording what you're playing, so if you do something great, you hit a button and boom, you've got a perfect digital copy of what you did. Many a great tune has been born out of an odd chord voicing, an interesting poly-rhythm, or the elusive "blue note".
Re:Finding band members (Score:5, Interesting)
It may wind up killing the species of "musician" who get unbelievably filthy rich off a couple of hits and then can sit around the rest of their life commenting on how technology is destroying the vehicle they rode to their destination. But that's a small price to pay for the swell of music now available at humanity's fingertips.
The internet is not killing music.
It's only killing corporate dominance of music.
Re:Sucks to be you, Elton (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Consider the source.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not particularly. A similar level of sensationalism to Fox I believe. Highly sensationalist and very much inclined to take things out of context. Elton probably commented in an offhand way that he didn't really like the internet much and the Sun decided to extrapolate.
Re:Finding band members (Score:4, Interesting)
And with so many bands playing and releasing their music on the internet these days, that's never going to change, even if someone made a website to function as a central depository to catalog music. There's just simply way too much of it available. Chances of more than a few hundred people ever hearing your music are pretty much non-existent, unless it's heavily promoted.
So I guess that's why he's saying the internet is killing music. Yes, it gives you a world-wide venue, but it makes it harder for people to find it. Of course, making your stuff available on the internet does not automatically preclude your band also having a local presence, but it often happens by default as it's so much easier to simply upload your music than it is to find local gigs, haul your equipment around, etc.
I Respectfully Disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
Musicians certainly do get together in order to record music. If he's only thinking of the single musicians that work in their studios, he's not really exploring the internet. The band that I'm in has released over 200 songs for a project called Song of the Day [thesongoftheday.com]. We're releasing one song for every day of 2007. And we've collaborated with over 30 musicians to do it. My band gets together at least a few times a week just to write and record music.
We would never have taken on this project if we didn't have the internet to distribute it. In fact, that's all the internet has done: it has made worldwide distribution possible for every artist. It lets fans decide what they want to hear, rather than music executives.
We released what we think about file sharing and worldwide distribution on our website here [beatnikturtle.com], which I am copying below, because it's what I would say to Elton if I had the chance to talk to him.
he is SOOO wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
My silly questions (Score:2, Interesting)
What does Sir E.J. have against people putting together their own music? Just because he thinks they should go out and buy somebody's CD sold by a big record company instead? I thought pop music was about entertaining the people (``pop'' meaning popular, of course), not about making somebody else wealthy or wealthier. If people are entertaining themselves with their own music, isn't that more creative not less creative? And if someone is entertained by an amateur's YouTube video how is that necessarily less legitimately enriching than being entertained by a commercial artist?
As for going out and playing with other people, that's great, but who here imagines Sir E.J. goes to a local bar to jam with the average joe as the average joe's equal on Blue Mondays? When he plays with other people they're usually under his direction which, with respect to musical communication, means he's essentially playing by himself. So then he says he doesn't have an iPod or mobile phone as if that means no one else should have or even want them. Well, I don't have a mansion and wouldn't want one even if I could afford it so I don't think he should have one.
As for protesting versus blogging, couldn't you put together a much more coherent argument for your point of view in a blog than you could on a protest sign? And who ever said a blogger is less likely to protest than anyone else?---Oh yeah, Elton John did. That means a lot.
As for the blogger writing to say Sir E.J. has a good point, how many negatives is enough? ``Regardless'' is good enough for me, but if you're going to use ``irregardless'' why not use ``not irregardless'' or better yet ``not hardly irregardless''? Anyway, not hardly never irregardless of whether Sir E.J.'s music is good, bad, or indifferent, after all the attention his music got in the past, I think he's looking to blame something for the relative lack of attention his music gets now.