Guns N’ Roses guitarist has slammed the music industry for failing to embrace technology.
Ronald Jay Blumenthal - better known by stage name Ron Bumblefoot - believes the industry is “stupid” because they treat music fans, who share music via Napster, like “criminals”.
And the 45-year-old musician - who has played with Guns N’ Roses since 2006 - holds record executives responsible for the “mess” that has been left behind since Napster.
He told the Jakarta Informer: “The music industry started to see their customers as their enemies and everybody suffered for it. Congratulations record industry - you’ve made a mess and you still don’t know how to clean it up.”
Talking further about the music sharing site he explained the technology used was “amazing” but record companies failed to embrace it for their own good.He continued: “It’s not that Napster changed anything - it’s that the stupid music industry didn’t see this amazing technology and say, ‘My God, we could do so much with this,’ and instead tried to destroy it and tried to treat people as criminals.
“What can you do money-wise if a billion people download your songs for free? It could have been the tiniest little subscription - it could have been ads or sponsors. There are a million ways it could have been done and the music industry had a lot of time to figure it out.
“Instead, through their lawyers, they said, ‘Go sue that 12-year-old kid,’ and they screwed up everything.”
