I like Gene Simmons. There I said it. And while I don't side with most of his political convictions, I find his obervations often perceptive. He's a smart man who intentionally sometimes dumbs down his statements for maximum provocative effect. If you have worn leather bat wings for most of your professional life you are allowed to do that me thinks.
The interview he gave to his son (since when is he a journalist?) contains some points I would agree on. The much derided "record company moguls behemoth" of the sixties, seventies and eighties wasn't a welfare operation and is probably responsible for ruining enough careers. But it also financed enough people that today wouldn't have a chance. I don't believe that in this day and age a band would meet the patience, say, DP did who recorded four albums within two years until the fifth one - In Rock - finally cracked the market. I don't believe that a young Bruce Springsteen would receive the budget to record Born to Run today after two failed albums that went nowhere. Judast Priest needed two albums from Gull and another two to three from CBS before making it. That type of "getting behind someone" (and I'm open to the argument that decisions on who the record companies of old got behind were often arbitrary, unfair and not always based on musical merit), albeit to cash in eventually, I just don't see in today's market.
And all those people moaning about CD prices: Cost of living-wise, a CD today is cheaper than LPs were in the sixties. And provides a greater longevity of music media storage than vinyl ever did.
But the worst thing about the decline of the CD (or any similar media) as a media for music is the end of the album culture as we know it. And I was always an album (I want to hear Sgt. Pepper, Machine Head, Sad Wings of Destiny, Wish You Were Here or Destroyer from the beginning to end, not just individual songs from those albums), not an individual songs or singles man. But that is exactly what we are back to today, the single (piggyback with the video) which took a backseat to the album by the end of the sixties has basically returned and dominates everything. That devalues music as an art form IMHO. Everyone's I-Pod these days seems to be what a K-Tel International hit sampler was in the seventies, yuck!
Now you can all slaughter me. Come on, I deserve it. I'll crawl back underneath my CD rack (it's probably fair to say that I buy 10 CDs or more every week, I'm not to blame for the downfall of a business model with vast cultural implications!!!).