In a recent interview with Metal Command, Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante claims that Apple had a big hand in destroying music. Here’s the statement:
“What happened with the music business is the ground kind of fell out from beneath all of us, and everybody kind of scrambled to think of ways of compensating for what had just happened or what had taken place.
And I think some bands who thought they were maybe smarter than other bands started to do things where, ‘We’ll give the music for free,’ and, ‘You tell us what you wanna pay for it,’ and I thought that was really stupid to do.
Maybe they thought that was a great thing at the time, but I felt it was just devaluing music and what we were doing. I mean, why… why would you do that? Does that mean that all these chefs from around the world are saying, ‘Just come to my restaurant. If you like the food, just pay what you want or don’t even pay at all. Don’t worry about it. I’ll survive.‘ I just thought that was a real ignorant thing to do.”
He continued:
“As much as everybody loves Apple, I also think Apple had a big hand in destroying music, and nobody really says that; everybody’s still on the side of Apple. But I believe Apple was one of the big hands in this that helped destroy music.
The record companies had a big hand in it, because they got greedy. The artists got greedy when they felt, ‘Oh, I can get a three-album deal for $75 million,’ but at the end of the day, if they’re taking all that money, what happens to the lesser-known bands who are striving to become something? Where does that money come from? I mean, it was just such a mess, and it really dug a hole for itself. And now who is paying for it? Everybody.”
Click here to entire interview.
