“Nick Mason is the only member of Pink Floyd to have played a part in every one of the band’s often turbulent incarnations. He bluntly stated in a new GQ interview that he thinks that Apple’s iTunes is rather passé,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
It’s been interesting seeing how badly that went down. Let me be completely clear about my position: if Apple had come to me and said, ‘Nick, we want to release your album in exchange for £50m’, I couldn’t have thought of a better idea. [pause] Radiohead did something similar a few years ago [2008’s In Rainbows], and it worked. But this has backfired. It’s made everyone think again about how they want their music delivered, given or sold. Look, U2 are a great band, and Bono’s an extraordinary individual, so this isn’t an anti-U2 tirade.
But it highlights a vital aspect to the whole idea of music in the 21st century. What’s also interesting is that Apple seems to have gotten off scot-free. No-one’s blaming them. Apple has done great things, but it has also contributed to the devaluation process.
That said, iTunes is already beginning to look rather passé, and instead it’s Spotify that looks like the future. What we need is another two or three billion people using it, then it would make more sense for musicians.
Because of the internet music has become devalued. Maybe music was overvalued previously but it’s been devalued to a point where I think it’s a problem now because we miss out on a lot of good music that could be available but isn’t. — Nick Mason
More about MP3 player sound quality (or lack thereof) and a video of Mason discussing Apple, in the full article here.
Lets just all go back to vinyl and be done with it.