Thursday, June 15, 2006

Hacking and Cracking With Pete Townshend

There is a little story in Billboard about the near future of the Who. Here are two interesting bits:

"This selection [the mini opera 'Wine and Glass'] is 11 minutes long, we will blast through it, and if the crowd gets distracted they can buy our fabulous merchandising."

...and...

"Townshend has hinted at, but not revealed, 'a very cool idea for how to launch our new record using the Web. If we can pull it off it will entirely change the way the music industry operates. If you are a Russian or Chinese Internet music seller, or a bootlegger, and you are refusing to pay a share of what you charge your customers to the artists who made the music, my cunning plan will ruin your year.'"

I had no idea that Townshend was into programming, but his master plan sure sounds amazing. But beware: Advanced Artists love to make grand proclamations that they forget about immediately. (Remember when Madonna's new record was supposed to sound like Franz Ferdinand? And remember when Townswed said that this record would take another five years to record?) If I had to bet, I'd say nothing will come of this.

No comments: