"Close the internet" to save music
 

Sir Elton says the internet is destroying music

So according to Sir Elton, creativity is being destroyed by blogging, and the internet it sounds like as a whole. His very feasible solution :rolleyes: is apparantly to shut the internet down.

He also thinks that music sucks now a days compared to the 70s, and this is the reason.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Sir Elton is a fucking stupid old man who cannot relate to today's audiences and needs to shut the fuck up asap.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

who the fuck is he to bitch that the internet is destroying the industry?

first off, sir elton hasn't had a hit since his diana's dead song in 1997. he still makes his royalty EVERY time a commercial or movie uses one of his songs. so he can retire and live like the royal queen he is.

second. why blame a new form of technology, when the ones he should blame are the clueless suits that keep conglomorating the major labels.

back in the 90's the industry was capitalizing on music sales by releasing lots of bad albums that had 1 or 2 good songs. i remember working at blockbuster music (95-99) that lots of customers snickered at the fact that they had to shell out an avg. of 16.99 for a full-length CD when all they really want is one song.

if label honchos werent busy snorting all that cocaine in 1999. they would have paid attention to this new thing called the internet. even more so, to that 19 year old college kid who created a little neat ftp program 'napster'

instead they were caught with their pants down and cucumbers up their asses. so they push desperate for 'anybody' who can make a song. and then fake-promote it to make such anybody popular..even if its just for one song, and try to make most of it sales from CD's..their only form of 'bloated' profit left since they still control those prices.

And as time goes on, such anybody has his/her own group or entourage who in turn get their shot at making a track. and so forth and so forth.

it becomes a downward spiral. which seems endless.

so some smart guy in england thinks of making a tv show in which he finds talent and lets the nation be the A&R. THAT has now become the phenomenon of this decade. and it further proves how distant corporate labels are to the people.

the internet wouldn't 'kill' the industry if the industry didnt listen to the people first right?

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

All royalties earned from Elton's sales go to charity.

The internet comment is kinda strange. But I do agree the over free sharing robs from the artists.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

well some of the amazing artists from 70s, like neil young, still selling records and having great reviews so sir elton should ask himself that why he wrote amazing albums like "tumbleweed connection" in 70s then become a self parody, writing royal family anthems.

but i agree with him digital killed many things, like, if you want a 70s style good quality vinyl of "prairie wind" by neil young, you have to pay 55 euro. horrible.

that music is definitely better on vinyl in terms of sound, its not comparable with itunes shite. i'm not an expert but i can say that as a music fan.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

someone needs to shut ageing rock stars down, who's best and most prolific era's are not now....

for christ sakes, we get the Stones touring every fucking year, and the same old rockers churning out the smae old hits on money making tours... Genisis, Floyd, The Who, The Police... stop bloody moaning and let other people get on with there own things - we live in a modern world, you're getting old Dwight, just stop getting in the way of progress... not everyone liked your music when you were churning out morribund ballads in the 80's

the internet is here, and now

and how the hell do you turn it off??

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

:D the whole idea of the internet is that you can't turn it off really... there is multiple redundancies so one agency is not in charge/responsible of one thing anymore.

i personally don't think that digital has ruined anything directly. i think that MTV has hurt music, and the internet has improved it. We are becoming exposed to so many smaller bands and independent labels because of the net.

agreed with kowalski about the first regression in music quality happening on the net though

radio -> vinyl -> cd(uncompressed digital) -> mp3 (compressed digital) WTF?!?! technology is getting better and we have the tech to reproduce stunning quaities but we regress instead... (this is probabably a non-existant point because to notice the difference between a good mp3 and a cd and vinyl you have to have thousands of dollars of stereo equipment or a couple hundred into headphones).



overall: elton john is a complete whiney ass-wipe, not good for anything in my opinion, and i agree with BSSat, that all these aging rockers gotta let go and make room for the new ones: lcd soundsystem, !!!/out hud, white stripes, arcade fire, etc etc

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

music sucking nowadays has nothing to do with format or technology or the internet. well, maybe the internet is ruining music because now schlock is a lot more accessible to people but i dont think that's the point he was making.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

i can remember the days when i'd wait a long time to get an mp3 off of napster due to file sharing connections from dialup.

it hasn't been too long that hi speed is ubiquitous where modems once were.
hence an mp3 rather than a WAV file.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Maybe getting rid of the internet would improve music, but think of how bad it would screw up porn! Bet you didn't think of that, did you Sir Elton! Not such a great idea now is it?

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

surely that was Elton?

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

ya, i hear ya. the net is great for porn... i just stumbled on a new great porn site: www.dirty.org

:D

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

i agree with him actually. the internet has done more harm than good and i think if it were possible, to shut down the internet for a few years and see what happens, it might do some good for everyone. the internet is still new to me, really, i didn't have any access until 5 years ago.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

so you agree with him that the quality of music is bad nowadays because of the internet? i dont mean quality as in format, but quality as in the music itself.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

a buddy of mine worked at a university computer lab and would sometimes get the non-traditional (IE older) student asking him what time the internet closed. But I digress...

there's simply no excuse to be prattling on like this. He charges 40 bucks a user to post on a forum not unlike this one, he streams his concerts for a hefty fee, but still feels the need to whine sour grapes because the internet democratizes people's tastes away from the monolithic display cases featuring whatever handful of artists who sold their souls to satan at big box record stores. But what i think he's actually doing is admitting that if he had been recording his shit now instead of then, he might have remained a myspace page.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Let us not get ahead of ourselves here.

If the artists themselves agree to promote themselves via the information ether it's all fine and dandy.

But when you consider all the songs on these sharing sites, there is a degree of injustice to those who put dedication and effort to create the end result. Don't even get me started on some of these home-made videos up on YouTube and such that have images not even remotely related to the message of the song.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

well ok if you define internet to mean piracy and pr0n, then yeah he's got a point. My perspective is that it still is something more than piracy and porn.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Elton's proposal of shutting down the internet and having these independent/homebrew artists go out and "communicate" isnt necessarily going to make these artists all that much better.

if someone made crappy music, whether it was distributed as a cassete tape or an mp3 file, how it was distributed wont change the fact that it's crappy music.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Plus how would people in the middle of nowhere even here about this great new music? Thank goodness I don't have to read stuff like Spin anymore or rely on the radio that I can pickup where I live.

edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-36u4xUCF0

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

i think everything is worse cos of the internet. seriously, pretty much every unprecedented bad thing that's happened over the last 10 years you could link to the internet.

the only good thing i like in the internet is the ability to communicate so quickly, first through usenet in the 70s/80s, message boards in the mid 90s, IM in the early 2000s and now we've got myspace and things like that. but that has serious downsides to it- have you noticed how al qaeda has increased in size so much since around 1999 when the internet started getting really popular? regular people are able to communicate through the internet en masse mostly undetected; but so are terrorists, paedophiles, pornographers, serial killers, and certain species of apes.

that being said, it would be impossible to close the internet, just as it's impossible to prevent all those people from communicating with it to do awful things.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

many of those examples are bad in my opinion. the internet has given us a wider scope on news and information, and alternate sites for news as well. al-quaeda in many peoples opinion doens't even exist (in it's reported state) and is more of a unorganized group than you'd imagine....

anyways, this is diverting from the main point...

I am very suprised that you think things are worse on the internet. I would know about 1/10 of the music that i do know about today, not be able to obtain rare uw bootlegs, unable to order special edition albumns from japan or uk, be reliant on local radio, magazines, friends and movies to introduce me to new music, ...

the list goes on too. do you think that music out there right now is worse than 20 years ago before the internet? i could probably name more albumns that i love from this year (which has been a strikingly good year for music for me) than from the 80's in total... (obviously possibly because some would be fresh in my head vs the others which i have forgotten about temporarily) but i think there is still a point to be made there.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

It's probably about the same, with more access now to obscure stuff. But the internet does just have to be about the now, I've discovered great stuff from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s that I would have never even heard of (or have been able to buy) without the internet.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

next thing you know Elton will say we need to start handwriting everything and using telegrams instead of relying on cellphones/email/texting :p

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

hahahah. you are right kagenaki koe, that is the most rediculous statement by elton john there, it almost seems to be a joke, as the internet did change the world for communication and HAS changed the way we listen to music...

he's just totally cooky

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

For one, I wouldn't be having this discussion if it wasn't for the internet. ;)

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Maybe he was just talking about his own music? Or does he think that his transition from the "Tiny Dancer" days to the "Circle of Life" Disney days was a seamless one?

He can criticize when he comes up with even one new track that rivals what he was releasing back in the 70's.

OT : where are the days of discussion lists now?
 

post # 348

post # 311

----

ever noticed how us former dirtylisters seem to move on with life, yet somehow some invisible power brings back here on occassion?

i'm on #115. i need to catch on and wreck a little havoc with some other posters, huh? whattaya say scott? lets take it back to the old school!!

:D

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

"What's the "D" stand for, Jeddy?"

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

What the fuck.

Dude.

seriously, pretty much every unprecedented bad thing that's happened over the last 10 years i could link to leprechauns.

[COLOR="Red"]SERIOUSLY[/COLOR].

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

I fucking hate filthy leprechauns.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

Leprechauns hate freedom.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

But they love the internet.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

it took the internet for them to find their pot of gold... those rainbows are useless, you can never get to the end!

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

does anyone remember that episode of 'are you afraid of the dark', with the leprechaun in it? i fucking hated that guy. he scared me.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

says you. i know plenty of leprechauns who were happy with usenets and their commadore 64s.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

there is no way to say that the internet has hurt the music industry. perhaps there are those that only steal music but it has made others purchase so much more. i cant begin to count all the late nights of online drunken album purchases at this point. from amazon, itunes, other online record shops, and even older vinyls on ebay. i didn't even consider ever getting vinyls until they became so easily available online. i know quite a few people who have experienced the same sort of renewed interest.

it gives you such a wide variety that you will find things you want to buy you never would have found, even if you're living in a major city. and then as stated earlier, the people in bumblefuck nebraska (no offense nebraska people) would just be in trouble if they were interested in different types of music.

certainly you are bombarded with shit at so many turns, but that's the nature of a global forum. if you have everyone in the world putting they're thoughts and ideas in a single place you are bound to have as many if not more terrible ideas. they were always there,but now everyone can see/hear them. it goes back to the old saying "opinions (we can substitute ideas in there as well) are like assholes. everyone has one. most of them stink."

i do agree with sir elton to a degree. people do need to get out there more. people are living in their own little cocoon of computers, cell phones, atms, automated phone services, etc. you see people walking around towns and city streets and it seems like every other person has little white headphones sticking out of their ears paying almost no attention to anyone around them or even traffic (the number of teenagers and 20 somethings ive almost hit because they were listening to their ipod and step right out in front of me in ridiculous.) and now you have people even watching movies while walking around. and im not saying that these devices are inherently bad, but people do seem to be isolating themselves far too much with them.

it's unfair, to say the least, to blame all the worlds problems on the internet. perhaps a more fair statement to make would be that many (though not all) of the unprecedented bad things that occur in the world are a result of advancement in technologies and then the abuse or our own naivety of that technology.

the internet is like the walmart in southpark. though i guess it was actually destroyed wasnt it. arent the name servers for the whole of internet in only six locations though? or am i completely wrong on that? if you knocked out all six that would effectively shut the thing down for a time at least.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

i thought anyone could have a server if they wanted one.

but i do agree with your thoughts.

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

He's also a guy who ranked STITI as the 2nd best album of 1996 in a Rollingstone Magazine poll.

I'm not saying he's right, but given his contributions to music and also given his well-groomed music tastes, he's not exactly just one to slag off. :)

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

:eek: you cannot be serious??????:eek:
I find his music tedious in the extreme in the most part and the internet would be better off without it....so maybe the bloated corporate hair transplanted buffoon should ban his own stuff from the net and leave the rest of us to get on with it...........

Re: "Close the internet" to save music
 

I liked that album in 1996 also, and I'm completely full of shit.

Writing a few good songs 20-30 years ago doesn't give you a free pass when it comes to being an irrelevant douche today.

Seriously. Look at what he said:

What the fuck does that even mean?!

AM I ON CRAZY PILLS?!?!