Moses Avalon is one of the nation’s leading music-business consultants and artists’-rights advocates and is the author of a top-selling music business reference, Confessions of a Record Producer. More of his articles can be found at www.mosesavalon.com/blog.
Jon Bon Jovi says that Apple killed the music business. Now he is public enemy number one on the blog-o-sphere. Does he deserve it?
Jon Bon Jovi has learned a lesson of the Internet age the hard way. The lesson he learned is that the techies, who wave the freedom-of-speech flag when it comes to music being free and net neutrality, are not so cool about free speech when it criticizes one of their gods, like Steve Jobs. Indeed, they respond rather childishly to just about anyone, no matter how famous, if even the slightest opinion about Internet-related services is anything less than 1,000,000% positive. (Read what Bon Jovi said here.)
Now, in the before-time, no one cared what geeks thought. They were in the back room. But blogs have given them the big stick in the public debate. And they want respect. They are getting it, but also proving the old adage: power corrupts. Using their new tools, they have silenced and intimidated those that are a threat. If they agree with you, you are launched to the top of a mountain; if you disagree with their position, they can out-SEO you, out-blog you, and make you look ridiculous in a matter of seconds across the entire globe.
Most politicians and other public people learned this lesson years ago. Even I got a taste recently of how infantile some of these cats can get if you throw the slightest criticism at them. (I noticed an error in a Techdirt blog wherein it called IPS licensing fees a “tax” for music. The guy freaked out on me and called me a “liar” all over Twitter.)