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.
