Author of Ripped, Greg Kot, says the music industry only has itself to blame for piracy

Son of a gun-diddily-un. Just as I’m about to leave the house to fix my uncle’s broken computer—doesn’t it suck being “the computer guy” in the family?—I come across this great interview. It’s from The Sound of Young America, a public radio program based in L.A., and is with the music critic of the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot. It’s basically about the state of music in America today, and how the RIAA screwed itself over the past several years. Good stuff. So good, in fact, that I just bought the guy’s book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music, from that Barnes and Noble e-book store.

The basic premise is, that in the mid to late 1990s, the music industry started to promote the hell out of boy bands and the like, which necessitated that radio play that garbage nonstop. With the Backstreet Boys on constant rotation, there was no room for, I don’t know, actual talented musicians to get their music out there. In comes Napster, people start finding out that, whoa, there actually is good music out there, and I can download it more or less instantly, and the whole industry comes crashing down. Oh, well.

Giz gets bonus points for pointing out that OiNK was amazing, and that type of selection and quality should be what the RIAA strives for, but I’ll go ahead and say that What.cd is now better.

via O Giz

This post is tagged: greg kot, Headline, Music, piracy