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Uncategorized Tuesday, March 15th 2011 at 2:31 pm

Bon Jovi: Steve Jobs Is “Personally Responsible for Killing the Music Business”

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An aging rocker criticizing the Internet for not preserving the music industry exactly as it existed in the ’80s? Say it ain’t so! In this case, the criticizer is rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who I am informed by my officemates is quite good in concert.

Speaking to London’s Sunday Times Magazine, Bon Jovi lashed out at Steve Jobs, who is of course the man who brought us iTunes.

From the interview:

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; 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.

Never mind that iTunes is reasonably generous to the record labels (that the labels aren’t in turn generous to the artists is really a different matter), that iTunes arguably saved for-profit online music by convincing a subset of customers to pay for rather than pirate media online, or that Bon Jovi’s band sells their music on iTunes.

(MSN Music via EW)

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  • synide

    He isn’t saying that they killed it from a financial perspective, he is saying they killed it from a listener experience.

    Also, Bon Jovi is not good. Your colleagues are 40.

  • http://twitter.com/Terrormaster Terrormaster

    Oh gee I’m sorry Bon Jovi! Sorry that listeners are smarter now and are holding artists’ feet to the fire to produce entire albums of good music instead of having to buy 8+ tracks of trash riding on the coat tails of one or two smash hits.

  • Anonymous

    I don’t see how “making a decision based on the jacket” and “not knowing what the record sounded like” are things that are missing from the music industry when you’re going to buy a record.

  • Balasubramaniamgd

    Bon Jovi needs to grow up age alone doesnt matter its important to be mature and forward looking who steve jobs is !

  • Cmcwill09

    I think he means the experience of listening to a whole album as if it were a complete work (like watching an entire movie) has given way to listening to select hits (as if watching multiple awesome scenes from movies instead of the entire thing.)

  • Andrew

    Meh. I’ve never bought anything from iTunes and never will.

  • Senor Chang

    “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”

    That’s not beautiful, it was an utter tragedy. A scam. A rip off. So in other words, Bon Jovi would rather put some false artwork to entice people to buy a record and not give 2 craps if the music is actually any good.

    Hey, I’m going to make an album of snoring but put pictures of naked girls on the cover. According Bon Jerkoff, that’s the beauty of music. Idiot.

  • Senor Chang

    Cruddy pop-stars with catchy singles sell singles…. real artists with talent DO sell albums still, whether physical or digital.

    Bon Jovi is ignorant or in denial that he is a singles, pop-maker.

    On the flip side… its no different than artist getting upset that all people ever wanted to hear in concert were their hits. Jimi Hendrix is a great example… he was sick of playing Purple Haze and Voodoo Child and was annoyed that it was all people wanted to hear… which goes to show that a lot of people, even when they buy the full albums, only spin a few tracks. How many mixes did you and your friends make back in the day, pulling only ‘select’ tracks you wanted to hear over and over again?

    No, Bon Jovi’s complaints are extremely short sighted, self-indulgent and lacks any insight whatsover.

  • Anonymous

    I’m glad to see the end of the days of mystery albums. I never “decided based on the jacket”, no one did.
    The last new album I bought was a Santana album. And I don’t appreciate Santana. I wanted a single and paid $18.99 to get it. But I was sick at heart for doing so and never bought another. I prefer to buy singles.
    Albums weren’t an comprehensive piece of art, like a movie. They were just compilations of singles, with at worst, one or two good pieces and a bunch of tedious, same sounding junk. At their best, they were ten good pieces, all worth listening to. I don’t know Bon Jovi well enough to comment on his work.

  • Strangelove

    Doesn’t he know it’s ‘up to eleven’?

  • http://twitter.com/hiabex hiabex

    If I listen to the previews of an album and I like what I hear, I buy the whole album. If one or two tracks are good but the rest are not, I buy the one or two tracks. I am financially better off and the recording artist eventually can consider their album a success or an indication that some of their music sucks.