27 time Grammy winner Quincey Jones has a novel idea as to why records aren’t selling as much as they used to.
In a recent interview with GQ magazine, Jones said “We had the biggest record in the history of music, but it was on vinyl - they had to buy the record three times because it would wear out! Digtal doesn’t wear out.
“I don’t know the answers. We got a lot of people working on it, the smartest people in the busines. Alan Kaye, Shawn Fanning who started Napster at the age of 18, just fucking around. It blew the record business off the map. It’s very complicated.”
He spoke of iTunes as well, saying they are “there to sell iPods. It was [computer scientist] Alan Kaye who said, Steve [Jobs], make the [iPad] screen 5 inches by 8 inches, and you'll own the world. That's why I respect him so much.”
It wasn’t the leap into zeroes and ones that made the biggest impact on music, however, it was the Fender bass.
“We had the first Fender Bass in 1953,” he said. “Leo Fender brought it in to Martin Montgomery when I was with Lionel Hampton on our way to Europe. We did an article on the front page ofUSA Today in 1999, and the question was, what one piece of technology affected your genre most? It was the Fender Bass. Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock & roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section and that changed everything.”
Jones has produced a huge list of artists, including Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Donna Summer and Aretha Franklin.
He has a signature series headphone set being released by AKG this month.
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