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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."
Sir Elton may be right, but fundamentally, the Internet is far more valuable than the transient phenomenon of pop music. Most of yesterday's tastes are outdated now, and as for what survives, it's enough to tide us over until the Internet and the creative classes evolve to a more beneficial relationship with each other.
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?
What's been lost is trivial to what's been gained. I had a grin a mile wide when I realized that some of my favorite artists, talented but not at all well known or mainstream enough to get a label's attention, could be purchased from the same itunes interface as the latest plastic pop idol.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Antisocial people can make music by themselves without the need for the Internet. Sociable people will make music together with or without the Internet and may even use the Internet to help communicate when collaborating on a project. Technology is a convenient scapegoat, as usual.
Maybe Elton John just doesn't get the new ways to create, play, and distribute music? To be fair, Elton John's generation and those before destroyed live music in the household, as who needs Joe-Fred johnson to strum his banjo when you can hear professionals first on record, then radio, then TV, etc... So why shouldn't we move the music to another "space"?
I wonder if someone were to give Elton John an internet literacy test how he would do. Considering the British judge Justice Opensha had to ask what a website was while presiding over an internet "terrorism" case, I wouldn't be surprised if Elton John considered the internet nothing more than a Kazaa screen.
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That's all well and good if you happen to be in or very near one of the small handful of cities that are 'music centers', but for would-be musicians who aren't in those places and have no reasonable means to get there, the music industry was just as cold before the internet as it is now, if not colder.
Unpleasantries.
And I think that's exactly what a lot of people are terrified about. I've bought a fairly large amount from itunes, and none of it's been from a riaa label. Pandora, lastfm, and word of mouth over the internet actually give me the chance to discover new music that would have been locked in a garage or small town ten years back. And itunes, and similar, the chance to purchase from them. It's a win for the consumer, but a huge loss for both the labels and the select few they decide to favor.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Blaming the transmission medium for making the environment "cold and impersonal" is like blaming high HIV transmission rates on semen. fairly silly. The environment is what you make of it.
Try creating music that people like
;)
And sadly like most SlashDot nerds, you still sign along to the Lion King even though it makes you want to cry.
Sadly kiddies on SlashDot have no clue of the impact Elton has on Music.
Let's see, hmm, a true music writer with perfect pitch, ya that just doesn't work in today's Britney, lipsync crowd.
what is he talking about
just because he doesn't understand how to use the internet to meet people, doesn't mean he can make stupid statements like this
I have an entire network of friends who, using only their computers, instruments of choice, and the internet, make great music between each other
we're literally friends, and this is real music
if anything the internet is what will finally set music free
giving everyone an equal chance to put their stuff up
it may dilute it all a bit (an effect I hope for with a lot of genres)
but in the end we'll have more options as listeners
and musicians will have more options for making money
Next week on slashdot: sculptors suggest we rip out highways so that people can better appreciate sculptures and fountains.
Its the same old story. VHS killed hollywood (and betamax, lol :( ). Radio killed live music. Cassette tapes killed the music industry. So it goes.
Someone really should go show old elton Myspace music section. There are ALOT of young local bands who are finally getting some exposure due to the internet.
And thats from myspace, the most retarded site on the net. Put some money into something non retarded, and the possibilities are mind boggling.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Yes, and....
- No one ever listens to the radio now that albums are available.
False
- No one ever buys music now that audio cassettes can be dubbed.
False
- No one ever buys movies now that VHS cassettes can be dubbed.
False
- No one ever buys music now that CD's can be duplicated.
False
- No one ever buys movies now that DVD's can be duplicated.
False
- No one ever buys media now that they can download it on the internet.
Is there a trend here or is it just me?
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
FTFA:
And there's the problem. He's stuck in his ways, and the internet is a threat to those ways. Lets be clear - the internet is helping new artists make music and distribute it (for free and for money) without requiring a restrictive contract with a record company.
Consider The Boy Lacks Patience. He's an amazing performer, and he is all the things that you said Elton John is. Yet, despite that I lived in the same city as him for about five years, I would never have heard of him if it wasn't for the internet.
A couple of months ago, a freebie brochure-cum-mini magazine fell out listing all of the rock music festivals going on in-and-around Europe over the summer - no lies, but there were *at least* 70 music festivals!
I guess one reason for this is the ludicrous prices of concert tickets and the rip-off sellers like Ticketmaster that charge *extortionate* booking fees simply for putting a couple of tickets in the post - the fact is that a festival is going to give you "more bands for your money".
I don't like a lot of the modern music but I don't see any shortage of live gigs to go to and the whole live music scene is very vibrant - hell, even heroes of mine like Uriah Heep and Magnum, all of them approaching their 60s, are touring quite regularly *and* charging reasonable amounts for tickets.
The sad fact is that Elton John is a "has-been" and has now become more media celebrity than musician - these days, he's more known for his gay marriage to his partner, wild parties & sucking up to Disney to write film soundtracks rather than the classic music he did during the 70s like "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Captain Fantastic".
Nope, I can't stand music downloads & most modern music either but the fact is that I can still buy CDs at reasonable prices (not in rip-off stores like Virgin or HMV) and there is more than enough live music for me to go and see - so what anyone else does is up to them, I'm in my 40s and well catered for...
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Clearly Elton John hasn't listened to the radio for the past fifteen years. Ignorance is bliss.
But for the internet, I'd never have discovered the amount of music I have that actually has real art value.
Don't be too critical of Sir Elton...
Transformative technology doesn't unfold smoothly. The dominant paradigm is shattered, twisted, shocked by the changes inflicted upon it. To the person born to and comfortable with the dominant paradigm, it would look like the death of everything they know and love. They would be quite rightfully frightened and saddened by what they see. But that is born of their devotion to the past, and their inability to see the future. To the catepillar, butterflies look like the end of all things.
In this messy, rattle-trap process of revoltion, evolution, many new things pop into and out of existence overnight and the new stable state, the new paradigm begins to develop. It is not a pretty process, and the along the way, it's easy to become judgemental and lose sight of why people moved down this path to begin with.
I can only imagine what it will be like when great artists can meet together virtually, collaborating with hardly more than a moments notice, anywhere in the world. What amzing art they will make for the ears, and the eyes, and all the senses, and the spirit, and the mind. What will be the possibility of an artist who can sing neural songs of profound thought and experience, and what will be possible for our children's childen when they have access to every beautiful thing ever devised at almost infinite speed and resolution. The internet of today is a tinker toy. It's an externalization of the human brain, still in it's most primative state. Nobody is surprised that a salamander or even a gopher is not sufficiently sophisticated to be a channel of great artistic beauty. Why should it be any any wonder that as amazing as it is, our ability to truly connect is stil l terribly limited, that our ability to "ART" is constrained by this tiny, narrow channel. The possibility however, that is something an artistic soul should rejoice in.
Relenquish nothing, instead we need to push forward faser, harder, we need to stop thinking small. Watching the enterprise of of today's technology wasting precious time and energy polishing turds and calling it business... this is the real trajedy. Let's build something worthy of human artists, worthy of the art of being human. That would be the fulfillment of real transformation. That would be a worthy aspiration for a true network of human beings.
The rebirth of music, created by real human beings to be shared with real human beings, music that only represented the minority of content readily available in the 20th century will again become the majority and the only people to miss the parasitic music publishers will be the parasitic publisher executives.
Elton is just isolated by wealth and mass media manufactured fame, and is lamenting his lost ability to share the creative process with the grass roots artists, as he approaches his end of times. The Internet will usher in a new era of live music in preference to dead recordings.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Sure. Mozart had an impact. Then he died when he was thirty five. We'll never know if he was really any good because we'll never know whether the stuff he would have produced when he was fifty or sixty would be just as good.
Elton John is saying something much more interesting than the usual "file sharing is killing the music industry" line, and it's silly to dismiss him because he hasn't moved with the times onto hip-hop or something like that.
What he's saying is that the music industry is in a creative crisis, and that the source of that crisis is a kind of breakdown in communication between artist and artist and artist and audience. This really is a different take on the problem. What makes it an interesting (not necessarily correct) viewpoint is that our tools for communication are better than ever. However the time-shifting convenience of those tools make the communication less immediate, less in the moment. It's like a chess grandmaster who stops playing tournaments and stays at home playing against a computer. He can spend every waking moment now playing chess, but he is no longer contributing to chess culture.
Personally, I'm not sure I buy this. Have artists stopped playing in clubs? Or giving concerts?
I think the biggest problem in music, at least in the US, is the end of independent ownership and management of radio stations. Radio is the most important tool for disseminating musical innovation, and once the distribution channels are centrally controlled, innovation is squashed by corporate gatekeeper. There is less room for individual advocacy, as local management and jobs disappear to be replaced by robot stations playing a predetermined format. Go any place in the country, turn on the radio, and you get just varying proportions of the following formats: Pop hits, oldies, country, sports talk, right wing talk, Christian radio. It's like every restaurant in the country had to be a McDonalds, Red Lobster, KFC, or Chili's.
In this context, the crushing of Internet radio is the worst thing imaginable, because it is crushing the last legitimate outlet for individuality in music distribution. File sharing may be a problem for the music industry, but unauthorized sharing is really the only outlet left for individual music advocacy.
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He has something right about blogging - the current state of affairs was made possible by the Internet. People think that they protest by expressing thoughts online, commenting and writing. Newsflash - you don't protest by blogging, or commenting, or making videos. You protest in the streets.
The reason why you have less angry people on the streets, protesting and marching against RIAA, against the Wars, against bad leaders, is because the Internet creates an illusion of "we are doing something by getting together and expressing it everywhere". It's just an illusion. People that would otherwise make a huge difference by marching, protesting, suing, find it much more comfortable to Blog, which is just meaningless masturbation.
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I'm tired of whiny (star) musicians being all like "Wah, the internets ate my moniez". If they really loved music, they'd make it even if they had to pay for it, like most of us who like to program/mess with computers and do it even if it costs us money (open source/new gadgets/etc). This just shows me that they're in it for the cash and have no regard for the music they make.
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The thing to keep in mind is, the internet is much more important than popular music. The music industry as it is today could suffer a horrible, painful death and we would still be better off than before the internet came around. Music was around long before "the industry", and it'll be around long after.
Sure. Mozart had an impact. Then he died when he was thirty five. We'll never know if he was really any good ...
Mozart created a body of music that has survived over 200 years after his death. And you still won't say whether he is any good?
DAMN your tough!!!
Download my free songs!
The only thing I can imagine would do it is some pandemic virus that makes everyone tone deaf.
That's funny. Listening to what passes for popular music these days, I'd've thought that already happened.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Everything I've seen with him in the media over the past several years shows me he's turned into a bitter old man. He had the immature rant at the airport, had it out with Tina Turner (the dude is called a "diva"), and broke down in public at one point. He's entitled to his opinion, but other classic artists have embraced and revered changes due to the Internet. He's deciding to see the glass half empty, as it appears he's done in general anyhow....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Read his remark: "it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span." Do you think that's a serious call to shut down the Internet? I don't. I think it's an off-the-cuff call for musicians to interact more with each other and audiences. Do I personally agree that the Internet will turn all musicians into Moby? Nah. Then again, Elton John might just have insight into the musical world that you and I do not.
Elton has a bias against technology. He says so in the article. He doesn't use it. So how can he possibly know what its affect on music is? His reputation carries a big weight because of his past brilliance, but we have to be careful that we understand the limits of his insight.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Elton John has the gall to say there's a breakdown between artist and audience when he's charging $150 per ticket to see him? Fuck the arrogant bastard.
Sir Reginald is totally displacing here. The Internet is not the problem with modern music; on the contrary, it's the only thing keeping music alive. The large record companies are killing music by providing an endless supply of "marketable" pop claptrap. All of the musical innovation today comes from independent artists who have virtually no chance of ever getting a lucrative record contract. Guess where these indies distribute their music? Guess where they collaborate?
When it comes down to jamming, they still do it in basements and garages, like they've always done, but the sharing of ideas is possible like never before because of the "problem" that Elton is complaining about.
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It's interesting to hear this from the perspective of a very mainstream composer. Fascinating that he feels so disjunct from his listeners. Because for most independent and small artists, the Internet has brought them much CLOSER to their audiences. The increased communication, sense of community, and the niche culture of the Internet has been hailed as a boon by small artists. Suddenly the major label barriers to audience access have fallen down.
Perhaps what Elton is really describing is the disconnect of the artist who does not concertize. Smaller, independents described above make the majority of their income in live performances. Online communities and media all drive these artists' fans towards the concert hall. Elton is still operating in the paradigm where the album is the primary unit of communication with your audience. You do concerts and tours, but really only to promote a new album. Fans' reactions are taken on a per-album basis. There's no question that this model is getting less effective, and that can feel like a disconnect if you're stuck operating that way.
And BTW, Elton may be a real composer, but let's not compare him to Mozart. In his short life, Mozart revolutionized music. A poster here commented that he never got old enough for us to see if he was "really any good." As a classical musician, I can tell you that 600 compositions is MORE THAN ENOUGH to tell if a composer is "really any good". And Mozart was one of the greatest.
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