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And Finally Artist News Digital
Johnny Marr is anti-Spotify
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 19 December 2013
Almost there now, we’ve almost asked all the musicians what they think of Spotify. And Johnny Marr is against it, on the grounds that it’s not “punk rock”.
Speaking to the NME, the former Smiths guitarist said: “It’s been a strange time for music in general [this year]. Especially with the debate about Spotify. I’m not a supporter: I think it entirely hampers new bands, and the situation that Thom Yorke and Beck have been criticising makes the old record companies of the 70s look like cottage industries. I can’t think of anything more opposite to punk rock than Spotify”.
As for an alternative solution, Marr continued: “I have no answer to the economic side of the modern music industry, but I do think we certainly shouldn’t stop valuing what bands do. I don’t like great things being throwaway. Pop culture isn’t just about ‘the music, man’. It’s a way of life, an aesthetic, and it’s not just about pressing a button and getting something entirely for convenience”.
Showing how much he supports new bands himself, Marr went on to diss Haim. Though, to be fair, he was calling them out on buddying up with David Cameron on BBC One’s ‘Andrew Marr Show’ earlier this year. “It’s really simple: they made themselves look like idiots”, said the guitarist, who famously ‘banned’ Cameron from liking The Smiths. “The Conservatives tried to do the same thing with the Smiths, to re-appropriate us in a false way, to be cool by association”.
