Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs is killing the music business

"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."

Most kids these days also don't know the joy of waking up at 4am in the middle of February to head out to the barn to shovel out the cow and horse excrement from the night before.

When Bon Jovi say,

God, it was a magical, magical time. 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.

What I hear is,

Damn kids, get off my lawn.

When new customs replace old customs, the people who grew up with the old customs are often sad that the new generation won't have them. What they're doing is imagining their youth without their customs, but they're not able to put the new customs in their place because they just don't know them. The next generation may get just as much enjoyment out of the new customs.

"...not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it."

So, what he's saying is, Steve Jobs killed the music business because people can now preview tracks, decide "Bon Jovi is terrible" and then proceed to not purchase anything. In essence, Steve Jobs has saved people millions of dollars from buying music they don't like.

First, the business part of music is easily the worst part. If it has been killed, no real loss there. Most of the good musicians aren't making much money anyway.

Second, it would be more appropriate to say that Jobs saved the music business, by giving consumers an easy way to access and pay for music when Napster/Kazaa/Limewire/Bittorrent were quickly becoming the preferred distribution channel.

“...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 can't count the number of mistakes that I made in album purchases based on 1 song I sort of liked in my high school years. In this regard, I think the industry has been disrupted in a good way.

It's true that albums are losing ground to singles due to the choice that comes with having your music on a computer and the convenience of picking and choosing songs when buying or sharing, but don't give blame (or credit) to Apple for that.

I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary that the music business is tanking. I don't really buy the disappointment with buying a crappy album argument. Radio stations used to play entire albums at launch when I was growing up. I might be disappointed with a track or two on an album but it was very rare that I would purchase a complete stinker.

His point that there aren't a lot of concept albums anymore where people listen to every track is an interesting one though there were hardly a lot of concept albums in the heyday of rock that those that were are very notable.

One issue that is not iTunes specific, but the ease that we can play digital music including custom and autogenerated playlists may also have something to do with it. With CDs and albums, there was a physical cost to jumping around and most of us were not ambitious enough to create mix tapes. Maybe just the convenience factor of accessing our existing libraries reduces the purchases of new music.

This just in, everyone under 40 says Bon Jovi killed the music business. :P

ok, snark aside- noone is powerful enough to single handedly kill an industry. Its the culmination of bad practices/changing technology/ and many other things that few have the power to completely understand.

Well if the artists start releasing albums that are worth buying, then this wouldn't be an issue. Seriously. Name an album released in the past two decades that is even close in scope and depth to Led Zep I-IV, or Dark Side of the Moon, Jashua Tree, Revolver, etc.

If you want people to buy more albums, the solution is really simple -- MAKE GREAT ALBUMS.

What he had is an emotional sentiment. What's interesting is why do people old enough to talk about "kids these days" are not wise enough to think back to one generation before them? I think the answer is along the lines of: everyone knows this, but let me just be sentimental for a moment. After all, it's my turn to be old.

Why should anyone have to imagine? Why should they have to pay for a whole album when only one song is worth paying for? That's the problem with Bon Jovi, most albums weren't worth crap and he wants us to pay for crap. That's stupid.

previous: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2328952

Aiming vague anger and frustration with a systemic problem at a small subset of people seems to get us in a lot of trouble. (Jews, The Government, Blacks, Democrats, Upper Class, Gays, Steve Jobs, etc, etc, etc, etc)

"You know who never complains about the shift to digital music? People who buy and listen to music.": http://betterelevation.com/2011/03/15/jon-bon-jovi-is-functi...