14 DAY TRIAL // Jon Bon Jovi is accusing Apple’s CEO of single handedly killing the music industry, in an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine where the rock star recalls the good old days when kids took their allowance money and bought an album without knowing what it would sound like.
Bon Jovi blames the increasing popularity of digital downloads for the failing music industry, saying “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. God, it was a magical, magical time,” he continued.
Bon Jovi admits that this may not apply the same today, “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 Bon Jovi doesn’t say is that iTunes simply did the obvious when services like Napster, Audiogalaxy, MP3.com, Gnutella, Kazaa, Morpheus, and Limewire were at their peak.
iTunes provided a ‘legal’ way to get music online. And who’s to say music shouldn’t have gone digital?
Sure, nostalgia is good and all, but time moves forward, and so does technology. Does Bon Jovi mean to say that kids today would be better off carrying around walkman players, and pouches full of cassettes?
Clearly iTunes was something bound to happen, and if Steve Jobs hadn’t done it, someone else would have.