Mariah Carey is fuming at the short-sighted, small-minded record execs who failed to harness the potential of the internet for downloading music. She cited artists like Prince, who sold his music online long before anyone else. Mariah flat-out called them idiots and stupid (though at least she didn’t name names) and pointed out that they’re supposed to be intelligent, powerful people. Instead they proved they’re hardly innovative.
MARIAH CAREY has blamed music industry bosses for failing to spot the internet download trend - accusing record labels of letting their artists down by allowing illegal file-sharing to become commonplace.
Carey is adamant label bosses should have realised the potential of the internet a long time before illicit song swapping became prevalent, and she’s furious because the practise means many musicians lose out on precious royalty money.
The Hero hitmaker insists that although record labels are slowly beginning to grasp the potential of the internet, they will never be able to repair the damage done by illegal downloads, because many consumers now feel entitled to get their music for free.
She says, “Frickin’ idiots! A lot of big, powerful music industry executives made a giant mistake and now we’re all paying the price. They gave the music business away on the internet. If they had just sat back and said, ‘Maybe let’s figure this internet thing out, it could be something cool,’ we could have found a way to distribute music online on our own terms, not somebody else’s.
“Prince had already shown them the way. He was so far ahead of the curve, putting his records out on the web. Everyone else was stupid.”
[From Contact Music]
I don’t blame any musician for being pissed that their music is being given away for free. I don’t think the solution is to alienate their fans – remember when Metallica sued the fans who downloaded their music? But musicians work hard on creating their songs. No matter how much money they do or don’t have, it’s their work product and the deserve to be compensated.
Though the RIAA spent a great many years suing the pants off people who shared music for free, it hasn’t helped artists, who now have a serious problem selling music. If the record companies had created a large, legitimate venue for music downloads before – or even right after – Napster and other file-swapping programs became a hit, they could have saved their profits. But now that people have gotten in the habit of downloading music for free, it’s hard to change that mindset. iTunes helped out a lot, but it still took several years from the time file swapping software came out until iTunes had a good collection of music to buy.
All that said, Mariah’s doing alright. She’s super successful so it’s not like she’s hurting. I can’t help but wonder what her goal is with all this. It’s a fair point, but it’s something people were saying a long time ago. I wouldn’t think that randomly pissing off record industry bigwigs would help her out any. I completely see her point, I’m just wondering why.
Here’s Mariah arriving at her London hotel yesterday. Images thanks to Fame Pictures .
