Blog of Jon Wright

What on earth is Elton John talking about when he says the internet is killing music. If anything the internet is helping music escape from the straight jacket that it was in before.

Ok i agree with him when he say's people should do less blogging, but that's an entirely different argument.

Saying the internet is bad for music is like saying having hundreds of TV channels is bad for TV. Sure there's a lot more crap TV around, but there's also more choice.

And it might just be me, but i thought the 80's was the worse ever period for music. The 90's were not that cool either. I think if anything the internet has broken the stranglehold that record companies had over its audience. Radio stations churning out the same junk as if on permanent loop, young talented bands being overlooked by record companies because they didn't fit the profile.

Now thanks to the internet we have YouTube, internet radio, forums like MySpace where bands like Symphony X and Dream Theatre can connect with their audience and still sell out world-wide tours even after twenty years. Thanks to iTunes we don't have to be charged £13.99 for a compilation CD full of dross. Now we can pick what we want from that CD and download it for pence.

The downside of course is music piracy, but your never going to get rid of that. For me it was the record companies resistance and reluctance to embrace the internet in the first place that helped caused part of that problem (remember Naptster).

As a musician i had to drive around and advertise for like minded musicians at great expense and disappointment. I don't live in London so the choice was never there for me which consequently forced me into buying a computer and building my own small studio so i could keep on writing and producing tunes. These day's i can collaborate and chat with musicians all over the world and as a result my playing ability and musical palette have extended threefold.

Perhaps the privileged musicians who had success in the 80's and 90's are not making as much wonga as they did in the past. But for us musicians that were no so lucky or didn't fit the profile, things have never been better.