An Open Letter to Jon Bon Jovi On What’s Really “Killing The Music Business” | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter to Jon Bon Jovi On What’s Really “Killing The Music Business”

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83 pointssiglesias43 comments

Let the music business die.

There were musicians around long before the invention of copyright. There will be musicians when the music industry goes away.

We are in a temporary period that began with the invention of the phonograph and extended to the development of zero-cost copying of digital music. This temporary period enabled a few to become famous and rich off of the proceeds guaranteed by copyright law. We should not expect this period to last forever.

Why exactly should their product be less deserving of copyright, protection and revenue than the websites/apps/iphone games/whatever everyone here makes, copyrights, and is trying to profit from?

I suppose I could see your point if he had made the argument that it didn't deserve the same copyright software and apps get, except he didn't. AFAICT he simply said music will survive and perhaps implied copyright will likely change significantly in the coming decades.

Let them die because historically it's just a recent trend that allowed only a few to get rich.

How does that not exactly describe us and the internet, especially when we leverage the same laws and protections? The only difference between us and them is someone has to hack our servers to get our IP.

especially when we leverage the same laws and protections?

As we, do you mean a few big companies, patent trolls or the bigger set of startups? I'm not a lawyer or a big expert in startups, but it seems to me that the latter do not leverage copyright laws that much.

Copyright and protection: it shouldn't be. And Steve Jobs certainly isn't wrecking that, and legal free digital music certainly isn't either, just like open source and free apps aren't wrecking the software industry: they simply change the game.

As for revenue: it's just the markets, not everyone gets to be an artist. There's too much music out there now for people to pay for. You can argue "there will always be a market for premium content" til you're blue in the face, it doesn't change the fact that no one agrees on what premium is.

You can't say pop music is deserving of copyright protection in one breath, rationalize copyright violation in the next breath, and claim to have a serious argument.

I think you misunderstood me, I never rationalized copyright violation I meant to imply that there isn't as much copyright violation going on as people assume. I also meant both should be copyrighted, and I agree that those who argue music doesn't deserve copyright while software does are hypocritical.

But the fact that the music industry is failing (changing, whatever) right now can't only be the fault of piracy and copying. Along with those came a HUGE increase in the volume of media. Old institutions that confused themselves with being quality barriers were actually just distribution barriers operating in a drought. I support people's right to copyright their music and sell it, and sue those who copy it as well (edit: support as fairness within our system, overall I do think it sucks for both, but we don't live in a perfect world). But if people just aren't buying, maybe it's because there is a wealth of mainstream, free, legal stuff out there everywhere.

As other replies have stated, I'm not saying anything about the relative merits of copyright protection of music versus any other IP.

Copyright exists because it is intended to create social utility, a temporary monopoly guaranteed the creator and enforced by the government. I don't think social utility is served by Disney lobbying to get copyright terms extended every few decades so that nothing ever falls into the public domain. I don't think social utility is served by laws (e.g., DMCA) that disallow hackers from modifying their own hardware and showing others how to modify theirs.

I'm just saying that when rich musicians protest that something must be done to prevent the death of the music industry, we should consider whether the music industry needs special protection.

Not sure that has to do with copyright. The music industry served primarily as a distribution platform for years, though the entire time it was convincing itself it was a filter and an artist itself. It thought its profits were based on its ability to churn out hits, when in fact its profits were based on its ability to churn out SOMETHING to a lot of people. Now that distribution is no longer a challenge, it's a lot harder for Bon Jovi to compete (and a lot less likely that he will be interpreted as a signal amongst the noise).

I question that the music industry will go away. It will just change. As I said before, it is and remains primarily a distribution platform not a content filter, and there will always be distribution challenges that artists do not want to (or know how to) solve.

Also, the musicians who existed long before copyright that you speak of often needed to be sponsored by nobility just to eat. I'm not sure that's a better system.

There are still plenty of musicians out there who survive by a meal, a few pints, and a some cash from pub gigs - busking if needs be. The music for the nobility was paid for by the nobility, but all the other music was paid for by the corresponding audiences.

There aren't just two choices: sponsorship by nobility and Bon Jovi. If the "music industry" collapses one can still imagine plenty of musicians making a living from performing or other business models.

Agreed. Not sure why, but there is this notion that when an industry is created it is immortal - not only that, but also always increasing in profit, margin, market. Strange, really, since by now we should all understand that the very fabric of life revolves around evolution, and of course, death.

And of course the music industry really isn't going anywhere. Lady Gaga could charge $0 for her music and she'd still be very wealthy. Look at 50 cent -- he made north of $100 million off of his endorsement of Vitamin Water alone. It's just a guess, but I doubt he's ever made that much from his music.

To have a thriving popular music scene, you need lots of people to try their hand. Even the very best songwriters are lucky to manage about 20 classic/hit tunes (exceptions: Beatles, Stevie Wonder). For the charts to be listenable depends on the thousands of bands that only produce a few potential hits their whole career. It's only the money that can attract artists in sufficient numbers to achieve this. If there's no money in the industry, people wont bother. Music will suck.

Musicians don't become musicians to make money. The vast majority of all active musicians don't make any real money at it. They do it because they enjoy it.

If music was where the money was, we'd be discussing chord progressions, not data structures on this board. :)

The vast majority of active musicians don't make any memorable original music whatsoever. Sure, we'll have lots of good performers always, that won't change, but what popular music needs is huge numbers of relatively unskilled 'musicians' taking a stab at songwriting. That happens because there's money in the game. Otherwise we'd just be left with a dull cottage industry.

There needs to be money, but there's nothing saying it has to be big money. I'd happily take ten Jonathan Coultons over one Bon Jovi.

The more money there is, the more people will take a crack at it. It's sort of like the App Store and the explosion of great indie apps.

You're arguing that the music industry will be worse for lack of people with no discernible talent or even interest in music becoming songwriters for pecuniary reward. Seriously?

Yes, absolutely. What discernible talent did John Lennon have when he got involved with the industry? There is no level of training or 'talent' that has ever reliably led to great songwriting. Nobody has a formula for great songs, it's not like programming where one a great hacker = always a great hacker, able to get the job done. It's all just shots in the dark. You can already see as the money falls out of hip hop that it's dying out and fewer young rappers are appearing.

Steve Jobs has applied a "correction" to the music industry by enabling the end-customer to buy just what they want. Of course this reduces music industry's revenues so they become upset.

Steve Jobs really saved the music industry from piracy. People were once pirating music using Napster and ilk. Steve created a platform where people could buy (and still not have to pay for the whole album). I used to look for music from my own country, with generally no stores around. Now I can buy from Amazon.com with ease and I do.

Music is not the only industry to be (or still to be) reformed by technology. When was the last time I approached a human travel agent to buy my air tickets? How many times do I use postal service today? Or make expensive international calls? Read paper newspapers?

Now with E-readers, it's print industry that's retaliating to the "changes" coming from technical development. It's gonna happen, so they better start living it themselves and rather make something out of it for themselves.

I love the argument that "pro tools is killing the music industry"

No. Pro tools and the internet saved the music industry, and Steve Jobs helped.

The smaller bands are bigger than ever, and the bigger bands are still huge. I'm definitely not an Arcade Fire fan, but the fact that a band like the Arcade Fire can win a grammy on a label like Merge is something special that's not going to go away soon. Every once in a while this happens, and the result is something that drastically changes the industry, things like Sun records, Def Jam, etc...

There will still be a music industry and record labels, but the industry paradigm is shifting away from the corporate megalabels of the 80s and 90s and clearchannel derivative radio stations to something much more decentralized and exciting.

When my wife - a huge and long-time Bon Jovi fan

I can commiserate. My wife is a huge and life-long fan of all kinds of music that I can't stand - ranging from mediocre to wildly annoying. If I had to listen to her music all the time, it would generate a lot of friction. I've never been able to tune out music I don't like. Call it a personal failing. Having unwanted music invading my brain feels like having my ears raped.

The iPod saved me from this and helped us live in quiet bliss. If good fences make good neighbors than good iPods make good spouses. I'm happy to let the old industry model die.

> Call it a personal failing.

Some would say that you give love a bad name.

I agree with the author almost almost every point. There is one which raised a question in my mind.

The author states:

"The music industry is the problem—too many bad songs are the problem. It’s the reason the audience doesn’t roar when you talk about playing a new track or two that were added for a re-release of your greatest hits. If your greatest hits were from the last three years, imagine how much money you’d be making on album sales even beyond your touring."

When he says "greatest hits" here, what exactly is he referring to? Am I right to assume, that he means that bands, just like startups, need to be continuously iterating and innovating?

If so, then I'll sympathise a little with the frustration a musician must feel.

I think it's fair to say that musicians make their money of their long-time fans, which implies that they need to keep people happy with their music for a long period of time.

I think this is slightly harder for a musician, since unlike a startup, they don't explicitly have a "problem" to solve. For myself, I used to be a great Linkin Park fan, and I still think that 'Hybrid Theory' and 'Meteora' are 2 of the best albums around. They lost me after that unfortunately, and being 14 at the time when Meteora was released means that I never gave the band any cash.

On the other hand, there are other bands that I've been following for a long time whom I still gladly pay for their music. E.S Posthumous released their album 'Makara' last year, and even though its on YouTube, I still paid for the thing --- Thanks to iTunes =) [by the way check them out - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0kH781DV0U] The same goes for bands like 'Mr Big' and their album 'What if','Nightwish' with their album 'Dark Passions Play', and Steve Vai with his recent 'Live in Minneapolis' album.

I use those bands as an example because they've been around for awhile (10 years or more) and still can provide innovative, new music that retains the same appeal as their previous work, but yet provides a distinct WOW factor to it. ie: same but different.

I personally think that very few bands can do that, and the industry that supports long-term creativity like this will inevitably be small.

So that's a long way of saying that I agree with the author's premise, and that the music industry of the past is bound to see a major change (relatively shrinkage) thanks to the inherent nature of the craft along with the new-found efficiency of distribution.

The author inadvertently proves Bon Jovi right:

"My wife has carried around all of your albums (and many more) on Steve Jobs’ Apple devices since she bought her first iPod years ago. I know from personal experience that she taps into your collection at home, in the car, and on vacations—literally at the drop of a hat, whenever she wants. If she hadn’t, I would have forgotten about your band back in the 1980’s. No CD player or radio station would have changed that, I can guarantee you."

The long tail of internet stores like iTunes, Amazon, or Rhapsody allows us to access far more music than we ever could before. It's much easier to listen to old and obscure music than ever before. Thus instead of spending out money on whatever new album is being promoted in the front display of the music store, we're spending our money on the old bands. That $300 the author spent on Bon Jovi is $300 not being spent on new and upcoming bands.

Spending that $300 on new and upcoming bands is not the only other option though. If iTunes etc weren't around and one was only presented with the album at the front of the music store, personally I'd be spending the $300 on beer long before buying Bieber's latest.

The biggest problem facing that new and upcoming band is not that I will spend money on old bands instead. It's that I've never heard of them so don't know if they're any good and will spend my money on something other than music. iTunes (+Amazon, Rhapsody etc) does more to solve that than anything else Bon Jovi or the rest of the music industry have done.

I almost want to agree (because $300 is an obscene amonut of money to spend on a concert), but seriously, Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber don't seem to be struggling.

Can I just say I love the fact that there is an anti-copyright movement taking hold of youth today across the globe. Ten years ago when I used to try to tell people the way I felt, people either called me a cuckoo libertarian (proto-tea party) or a socialist. Now it's totally normal, assuming you are talking to someone under 30.

It never seems to be that way with GNU/open source software though. As soon as you go against the spirit of the license, people talk about "theft" and "stealing"...when in reality, it's just bytes on a computer...just like proprietary software, music, and movies.

I don't see what sharing music with your friends and incorporating GPLed software into closed/proprietary systems have to do with each other. Nobody's selling their torrents or claiming the music as their own.

What do you propose to replace copyright? I agree that it's been abused but I know a lot of people that depend on selling copyrighted works to feed themselves and their families.

I remember working in music retail in the early 90s, around the time when most 'singles' were taken away from retail floor space. We migrated to some cassette singles, and some CD singles, but the selection went from decent to dismal in just a few months - and in most stores in my area, not just our mall location. I was told "demand is down" by some regional bigwig, but people kept coming in asking for a single of some song on the radio they'd heard, and all we had was full CDs. These just happened to be discounted (for the first few weeks of a song's radio release) to make the price more palatable, but it felt shady to me.

Bon Jovi's comments make much more sense if you replace the word "kill" with "change." iTunes and others have changed the music industry and they're not done yet. The experiences he had are gone, but there are new ones enabled by technology. The music industry is exactly as doomed as it was when you could record and musician's voice on tape, when live shows were suddenly not the only way to hear a song.

Thanks for all the music, Jon. It'll be my time to whine like an old fogey when kids are subvocalizing a tune and Pandora makes a new radio station to match that song.

You omit the MPAA's definition of "kill". Their definition of "kill" is "forcibly reduce our obscene profit margin to something more in line with our actual costs of production and distribution".

Focusing on Jon Bon Jovi's complaint that listening to an entire album has become less common as many people buy only the songs they want from itunes: he does have a bit of a point. I'm 37 and my album-oriented listening habits didn't change when mp3 came around. I still prefer to listen to an album at a time. It was jarring to me ten years ago when I checked out the music collections of people born in the 80s and see that they had few full albums and tended to shuffle play.

Putting the blame on Steve Jobs is wrong. Napster was the first big source of individual tracks. One reason: on dialup it took maybe three times as long to download a track as it did to listen to it. An album would take hours. This bandwidth problem made it efficient to only grab the track you wanted. There was a cost even if no money changed hands.

And early mp3 players were tiny. Flash based players often held less than a gigabyte and many 5 or 10 gigabyte ipods were sold.

Steve Jobs did drag the music industry, kicking and screaming, into providing for pay the same type of service as Napster. Apple recognized that individual tracks at low prices were the only format that consumers would accept as a Napster substitute. That price structure gives itunes customers then and now a powerful incentive to buy individual tracks.

Music piracy has effectively no bandwidth or storage constraints any more. People commonly rip to 320 kbps mp3 or lossless FLAC. Flash memory players are 16-64 GB. So I would guess that someone who downloads for free is much more likely to grab the full album, or even a box set or discography, than the paying listener. So maybe piracy will be a counter influence to itunes in terms of album oriented versus single oriented listening.

What part of the authors argument puts money in Bon Jovi's pocket exactly? Particularly when they make the bulk of their money (or at least "made") from album sales? I'm assuming Bon Jovi is making the argument that iTunes has reduced (maybe greatly) their profitably from those album sales. By both reducing the money spent and commoditizing music in a lot of ways.

I get where Bon Jovi is coming from. I'm not saying he's right, but the feel good bits and bobs about carrying their music around and sharing it with your wife doesn't make Bon Jovi more profitable. They're far past the point of deriving a lot of value from word of mouth, they're looking to milk the cash cow. iTunes is apparently spoiling that party a bit.

I'm not saying I feel sorry for them in the slightest, but the authors argument likely wouldn't hold much weight with the band either.

Depending on the musician's contract, a lot of them make essentially nothing from online sales. That isn't the fault of the internet or the consumer, just bad contract decisions on their part.

Sara Hickman talks about that here: http://es-es.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=145402217798 – skip down to "SECOND SOURCE" and read three paragraphs.

I'm not sure that the bulk of Bon Jovi's money comes from record sales. His tours have brought in something like $500,000,000 in the last 6 years. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Jovi)

Everything I've heard on the subject is that bands make more money touring than recording. I believe this is because even though the costs of touring are much greater, the record companies take the majority of the money from album sales.

I don't understand how he could think that fans are better off basing their music purchases on http://www.google.com/images?q=bon+jovi+album+covers rather than on http://www.emusic.com/artist/Bon-Jovi-MP3-Download/11661659.... or the iTunes store equivalent.

As a used to be huge Bon Jovi fan in my teenage years, I am amazed they are still around and can fill concert halls at prices like that. I know they used to be popular but let's face it, they are not AC/DC or U2 who can get away with tickets starting at $110+. Especially considering that as far as I am concerned the last real Bon Jovi albums were Crossroad and These Days in 1994/96 and I don't remember hearing or seeing but 2 new songs in the last 15 years.

Gag me with a shovel... can't get any more pretentious than this teenie bopper pop star. Equally pretentious are his so called fans who think their portable music devices certify their hipness.

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