Notorious skinflint Mick Jagger has shown a surprisingly laissez-faire attitude to illegal downloading of music in an interview with the BBC, comparing being a recording artist now with his first ten years in the business back in the 1960s. When asked his thoughts on illegal downloading of music he noted that it at the moment in the business it is a ‘grey period … it’s much easier to pay for things – assuming you’ve got any money’. Considering he is one of the richest men in the UK, he was also rather nonchalant about illegal downloading personally, saying ‘I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don’t make as much money out of records’.
Jagger also has a good memory after being in the business for fifty years and remembers times like now, when record companies didn’t pay artists for recordings, a situation which led to him being one of the canniest businessmen in the industry. Jagger mused philosophically ‘I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies wouldn’t pay you! They didn’t pay anyone!
Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.
So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn’t.’
