Jon Bon Jovi has taken aim at Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, accusing him of "killing" the music industry with iTunes.

The rocker is saddened that the "magical" experience of buying records in a store is disappearing, brick-and-mortars stores being eroded in part due to iTunes' success.

Bon Jovi tells The Sunday Times Magazine, "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 continues, "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."

http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx ... fid=100055

Heh. There was something cool about walking into a shop and buying a new CD (or whatever ), but how many times did you come home with two decent tracks and a load of dross? It's still that way today with some artists. I'd suspect his real problem with Jobs/iTunes is people not having to do that anymore

I have to say though, making music so widely available has actually helped make it that little bit more impersonal, kinda clinical, coupled with an industry that wants to stick it's head in the sand.

At the same time they'll claim that it's also eliminated the situation where friend of said kid asks to borrow his new CD, makes a copy and listens to the music without having paid for it.

Sounds like they want it all .

In summary : knobhead.

I've a funny feeling adidan will agree with you

Well, not entirely.
He does have a point about the buying experience.
I fondly remember going rummaging about in little out of the way record shops looking for that rare 7" single or picture disc (of whatever size) that just got tossed on the racks with every other record of the time.
I've still got a lot of rare records in my vinyl collection in my Mum's house in England.
The experience he describes is now pretty much gone forever, that much is true.
But blaming Jobs, I'm not certain of the wisdom of that.
Market forces were going the way of the download anyway with Napster, what Apple did with the iTunes Music Store was just legitimise that process.
You can't blame a man for that (well, clearly Jon Bon Jovi can).

Mark

I can see where he's coming from. I used to love going to a store, choosing an album to buy, then spending the rest of the day listening to it. If it was a good album, you could easily listen to it over and over again, until you knew the lyrics and melody by heart. After a while, you'd stop listening to it and move on to something else and do it all over again. Maybe a few months (or years) later, you'd listen to it again and it'd bring back memories of the time when you listened to it first - your life, how things were, reminiscing.

I can name maybe a track or two from the last few albums I've downloaded. I no longer listen to tracks again and again. I can listen to an album and not take in a single thing. Such is the way with mp3s.

Having said all that, it's evolution/progress. Stand in its way and get flattened.

Buying music based on the jacket cover?

No, Bon Jovi, I will, in fact, preview the actual music instead.

10!? Still, once you're deaf you won't have to listen to Bon Jovi albums.

I rarely recall track titles anymore, where in my younger days I could've even told you the names of the filler - this may be due to age though

So very true. I've practically stopped buying music now that I've amassed the collection I have and can pretty much get more free music than I have free hours - but apart from absolute epic stand out moments that make me search through mix tracklists for the artist/track to branch off my searches - I've lost touch with the "details" - and certainly have less "connection" with the releases of today than I do with the purchases of old. It is a shame.

One of my all time favourite albums was purchased this way. It was to be the start of something beautiful...

Bon Jovi killed music.
He is up there with Simon Cowell

No, sorry, it's a long way from cheesey rock/Godawful faux-country to the Peter Mandelson of the music industry

I well remember 1987 Castle Donington - Monsters of Rock - Bon Jovi headlined that year.

Jon BJ and co. had a nice laser show, shame their music was frikkin sh!te.

Anthrax and Metallica blew them into the weeds, even Ronnie James Dio made them look crap.

I discovered Danielle Dax’s music that way The covers in (wait for it) Our Price (the smaller of the two which were in Watford during the 1980s which seemed to do less mainstream stuff) were intriguing. Somewhere back at my parents’ is some vinyl. I hope it’s survived. It’s a bit chaotic there.

They certainly were 'intriguing.' *sigh*