Ah ha ha. What a dickhead! Jon Bon Jovi has picked a fight with Steve Jobs, the founder and head honcho of Apple claiming that “Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.” Looking through his rose coloured glasses and no doubt having a sook that he has to tour all the time because he sells a fraction of the records he did in the 1980s, he told an interviewer that iTunes was to blame.
“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,” he says. “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?'”
Well, what happened Jon, is that times have changed. As respected American industry commentator Bob Lefsetz has pointed out in an email to subscribers, Jobs was “Not responsible for broadband, Napster, CD burning, hard-drive swapping and the rest of the elements that contributed to the demise of the old recording industry. As a matter of fact, Jobs was last. Macs came without CD burners. And Rio released the first MP3 player. All Steve Jobs did was make the experience easier and more elegant. And provided a way for the rights holders to get paid via the iTunes Store. Yes, before then, music online was FREE! There was nowhere to pay. But you know all this. It’s only Jon Bongiovi who does not. That’s what happens when you surround yourself with yes-men, you lose contact with reality. You start to believe you’re a grand pooh-bah with all the answers when really you’re an uneducated nitwit with too much money and fans lost in the same old century you are.” Ouch!
