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…if you’re downloading his music for free.

In this interview with Billboard, Gene describes how the entire record industry is in a complete mess and how the downloading of music is killing the industry.

Now, Gene’s a guy who protects his copyrights somewhat over enthusiastically. If you’ve read his book, Sex Money Kiss, you’ll know stories of how he’s hunted down owners of KISS fanzines in order to get his dues from them for capitalizing on the KISS brand. So it isn’t any surprise when Gene tells us his feelings on the matter:

The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work.

Gene seems to have as much respect for the music industry as he does for those college kids he’d love to sue, doesn’t he?

Furthermore, he totally dismisses the Radiohead/Nine Inch Nails type of sales techniques as a flawed business model.

While I love how outspoken Gene can be, I think he’s seeing the situation from his own viewpoint and failing to look at the bigger picture. He wants to profit from his work, that’s understandable. Fans want to get music from their favourite artists at a reasonable price.

Radiohead in particular showed some fantastically inventive thinking when they decided to sell their album at whatever price the listener wanted to pay. They showed that they were considering their fans and that they wanted to find a win-win situation for everybody. Trent Reznor, knowing that fans couldn’t get his records in some parts of the world was vocal in encouraging them to download it. Prince gave away an album for free with a national Sunday paper.

Gene, on the other hand, tries to squeeze every penny from his intellectual property. Hence the face that you can get a KISS branded coffin. But when  you hear Gene Simmons talk about KISS, you hear him talk about the money. Never the fans.

The difference as I see it is that Simmons sees the fans as an income stream. A paycheck. The other acts want to spread their music to the masses, and they care enough about the fans to try new methods of distribution.

Much as I like the guy’s attitude, I think Gene comes across as part of the problem with the music industry and not part of the solution.