First, a caution: I tend to rant a bit more than usual in this post, and I use and quote certain “unprofessional” terms, such as “old farts.” Perhaps most offensive of all, I quote Gene Simmons (by way of Ars Technica).
Before I tell you my thoughts on the Gene Simmons episode, though, you should know that later in this post I’m going to tell you about the Ars Technica article showcasing competing views on valuing and monetizing from two record industry executives. Neither of the two discusses unauthorized copying as an issue, but instead they discuss how to make recorded music a desirable purchase.
KISS bass holder (it’s questionable whether one can really call The Demon a bass player if one also uses that term to refer to musicians such as John Paul Jones, Geddy Lee, Flea, John “Ox” Entwhistle, Duff “Rose” McKagan, and Willie Dixon) Gene Simmons has weighed in again on the unauthorized reproduction of music by music fans. Ars Technica reports that he is engaged in a “puerile” battle of what passes for wits with “Anonymous,” the nom-de-clavier of 4chan’s electronic militia.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/gene-simmons-vs-anonymous-whos-the-bigger-asshole.ars
According to Ars, Simmons regrets not having been more vigilant in his marshalling of the RIAA cavalry back in 2007 when he uttered this battle-cry:
The record industry doesn’t have a f***ing clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s [sic] no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask. (Billboard, by way of Ars Technica: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003671447
Ars Technica further reports:
And earlier this year, Simmons returned to the idea of suing everyone in sight. “Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars,” he said at the MIPCOM conference. The music biz “didn’t have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we’re left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There’s no industry.”
Incidentally, being the optimist that I am, I can’t help but notice that if The Demon is accurate in his statistical analysis, then as many as 800,000 – 900,000 people may have returned to their jobs in the industry since his grim pronouncement in 2007.
I’ve been wondering what to say about this for a week. Gene Simmons’ audacity is nothing new; his ignorant boorishness, however, is impressive (I had always thought of him as arrogant but intelligent until this latest). Some old farts become curmudgeonly but interesting, their grumpiness being a product of the same experience that leads them to pearls of wisdom. Age has done nothing to Mr. Simmons but make him more greedy, less productive, and conveniently forgetful of the fact that music – even the schlock he cranked out with KISS – is an art form and dependent on popularity rather than scarcity to be successful.
Music not shared is music not heard, and a band not shared basks only in obscurity.
I couldn’t come up with anything useful to say for the past week, because it just made me rant, as you’ve seen above. Then came another article in Ars Technica this week, and it helped me put my rant in context. Continue reading →
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