World famous guitarist, Pete Townshend, of one of the greatest rock bands ever, The Who, has taken Halloween as the perfect opportunity to make a statement. He has lashed out at Apple, calling their model of selling music – iTunes – “a vampire.”
Townshend made the comments in BBC 6 Music’s inaugural John Peel Lecture, named in honour of the legendary DJ. Townshend was famous for regularly smashing his guitars on stage, an act which later grew into exploding drum kits.
Amongst the lack of services that digital music stores offered artists (Townshend mentions record labels providing “editorial guidance” and “creative nurture”), he spoke out about the lack of scouting for new music and the ability for record labels to get a new band off the ground. Currently bands must submit independently produced music to iTunes for approval. If you’re a band that’s just started out and happen to be really good, this is where a record label would sign you up and help you out a little bit. iTunes doesn’t do that. He said:
Is there really any good reason why, just because iTunes exists in the wild west internet land of Facebook and Twitter, it can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire, like a digital Northern Rock, for its enormous commission?
iTunes accounts for more than 75% of all legal downloads. An Apple spokesman declined to comment on Townshend’s remarks. The flaw in his argument is this – iTunes is a store. Not a label. Musica and Look and Listen don’t provide bands with money to create music, the simply sell it. A young band would think it silly to approach Musica and say “we have this great idea for an album, wanna fund it?”
Here’s the thing: Would a band rather starve and have their music heard, or have money and be ignored? I’m sure Pete is doing just fine with his personal net worth of £40 million.
[Source: BBC]
