The ultimate guide for killing the art in music + Interview with John Kalodner (Foreigner, AC/DC)

Video / Visuals by Stanka / written by Alen Mischael Vukelić

All photos: PublicDomainPictures/organictalks.com

The first time I copied a mp3 file, I knew right away that this is going to be a disaster. No, of course not the copying itself, but the fact that I could drag and drop a music file from one hard disk to another within seconds, was quite a shock to me.

In the 80s and 90s, one still had to pay for music and do all sort of crazy things to get one’s hands on a rare and classy album that was out of print. I think no other industry got hit by the digital era as hard as the music business.

One million gigabyte for a cent

See, one could say that “sharing” made music availability easier for music lovers, but it isn’t. It, in fact, it destroyed an essential part of the creative process, which is money. You might laugh about this one, but think of all the epic albums of the past, where some recordings – sometimes – took a year’s work to completion.

We always think of the artists/musicians, but we shouldn’t forget that there was a huge team working in the background to deliver the record to the end-consumer – us. All this work has cost a lot of money, because top producers like Quincy Jones and A&Rs like John Kalodner had to be paid from the revenue made from the record sales.

Come and loot me

Probably, there are many more reasons for the desertification of music, but this is surely one of the most important arguments to make. However, when I came across this interview with John Kalodner; I was astonished to find out what he has to say on this issue.

He says that the record companies were completely unprepared for the digital era, and somehow underestimated the impact it would make. He further says that they are probably the only one who have let loot themselves, almost invited everyone to steal their music!

This is just an excerpt; he goes into much greater detail, of course, where he also explains the creation of the mp3 file and how “sharing” could have been prevented, and so on.

Music for the brain, not for the heart

There was one question that arose in me spontaneously; is it possible that some people in the background of this industry wanted this to happen? Music is a powerful tool for mass communication, perhaps the Lennons and Marvin Gayes were culturely too influential – according to somebody – and they decided to do something about it?

Isn’t it much easier to deliver uncomplicated, pre-programmed pop corn music – by art-employees on SSRIs – to a public you wish to control, than to have millions of de-programmed free-thinking people running around completely detached from ideas like government, traditions and consumerism?

If you had the power, and if you were sick in your mind; what would you do?

Music is king

We can argue about whether art should be for free or not, but we cannot argue about the fact that this so-called art – today – sucks. As simple as that; and I would gladly pay for another great masterpiece by an unfortunately unknown artist we will never hear of, because there is no money and no patience to develop his or her talent.

Many people don’t know that the small record companies of the past sometimes waited up to three and even more albums for an artist to start earning money for them. I hope this is just a passing thing, and that we will witness fantastic music as we have all along. I don’t know exactly how, but I believe that art will find its way through the bushes – ’cause we people are quite thirsty out here!

About the interview

This article is also about the A&Rs (Artist and Repertoire Executives) of the world; not just any A&R’s, but those who made it possible that we could listen to almost all of the significant music artists of the 20th century. These were the people who picked no names out of the mass of artists to accompany them on their way to stardom.

Here is an interview with legendary A&R John Kalodner who signed artists like Foreigner, AC/DC, Peter Gabriel, and Phil Collins to Atlantic Records; later, at Geffen Records, he worked with Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Jimmy Page and many others.

Credits go to ArtistsHouseMusic who made the interview.

 John Kalodner On Music and the Digital Age

John Kalodner Full Interview

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