What's your take on Napster and those types of services?
Well, again, I don’t think any artist makes any money at all with a major label deal. I think you have to sell 15 million records before the records companies can't “hide” your royalties in their accounting. I think Napster is a great way to get your music out there to the fans. I've heard a couple of things that were said in front of the Senate Judiciary committee on Napster and I really agree. Musicians, if they are smart, realize they are like waiters who work for tips. They are in a service industry. If they do a good enough job, their fans will “tip them” on their way out. That means in the form of T-shirts or merchandise at concerts, concert tickets, all of those other things that the bands do have in their control. What they really don’t have in their control, when they are on a major label, is the control of their royalties during their income strain from record sales. Trust me, I have been there, I've done it. So any of these artists that are complaining that people have free access to their songs and aren't “paying” for it, instead of going to the record stores and buying CD’s, you know what? I haven't heard any one of these big record companies complaining about how their “artists” are being ripped off. They have all been saying how “they” have been being ripped off. That's not cool. I think Napster is a great way for bands to promote their music. I do see both sides of the coin. I think that the people who should really be concerned and the people who the public should be concerned about the songwriters who actually write the songs because that's the only way the songwriters get paid. Traditionally they have gotten paid from albums being sold. I think if a system can be set up where the songwriters of the songs get paid, where there's some kind of fund or something like that or a membership fee that goes into a fund and people get paid that way based on like ASCAP or BMI or any of the other songwriting societies...I think it would be an incredible win-win situation and I think that the major labels should be nervous because, you know what, they've gotten lazy. And things like the Internet, things like Napster, they really level the playing field and it can take it back to what it should have been about before MTV ruined the industry...which is music.
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