Real player: here’s an interesting little interview with an A & R man at BMG, focussing on his views of MP3 and online music. Can you spot the contradiction here:
“How has the internet changed the music industry? What it is going to do is to empower further the artist. The worrying thing is having to listen to all the unfiltered music that’s out on the web coming direct from its creators.”
Empower the artist, heh heh. His main point seems to be that MP3, as a medium, will be a fad. Well, maybe or maybe not, but what he’s not considering is that once you have a listening demographic in place who think of music as something that you get for free, all the innovations in the world aren’t likely to help. People pro- or anti- MP3s or file-sharing are thinking technology and they’re thinking commerce, but they’re still not thinking culture.