Jon Bovi Jovi: 'Steve Jobs personally killed the music industry'

Steve Jobs has been blamed for many things, but never something like this. The music industry should call him its bane, or its murderer, according to Jon Bon Jovi. In an interview with the Sunday Times magazine (subscription required), Bon Jovi laid the ailing music industry squarely at the feet of the Apple CEO.

He said,

"Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it.

"God, it was a magical, magical time. "I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: 'What happened?' Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business."

Perhaps the music industry, which has to appreciate the iPod and iTunes for at least keeping the money coming in, but with a different model than previously, should look at itself and greed somewhat for the lower profits it is seeing.

It is, of course, the case that the music industry as a whole is in decline, that folks buy singles more than they do albums, and that physical media (CDs) have lost their gloss. At the same time, the music industry isn't about to bail on iTunes.

It is true that what Bon Jovi describes sounds more about the buying experience than the listening experience. And after all, if these children want magic, they've got the iPad. don't they?