John Mellencamp Here to Warn Us of Evil Internets and iPods

Pete Mortensen ()

John Mellencamp Here to Warn Us of Evil Internets and iPods

Image copyright Mercury Records

So much for the web being dead. John Mellencamp, the increasingly craggy Indiana roots rocker famed for singing about “Jack and Diane,” “Pink Houses” and having the middle name “Cougar,” has clued the world into a major news story: the Internet has destroyed the music business. Apple’s bad, too. From the Globe & Mail:

“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,” he said. “It’s destroyed the music business. It’s going to destroy the movie business.”

Seriously, you guys. Not content to make Lars Ulrich look like a visionary, Mellencamp went on to deliver the stunning revelation that MP3 audio is technically inferior to what you would get from a CD or LP.

He recalled listening to a Beatles song on a newly re-mastered CD and then on an iPod, and “you could barely even recognize it as the same song. You could tell it was those guys singing, but the warmth and quality of what the artist intended for us to hear was so vastly different.”

Now, I’m not one to question John Mellencamp’s ability to competently rip an album to a portable digital format, but I will say that I never heard him speak up about inferior audio quality when he was selling millions of cassette tapes per year.*

The music business has changed. Apple reinvented itself by understanding how and why it was changing almost a decade ago. And lots of artists, such as the Arcade Fire and Lady Gaga, understand well how to take advantage of those changes and carve out a successful living that’s less dependent on record labels than their own businesses. And dinosaurs like John Mellencamp have no idea how to be successful in the iTunes era.

And that’s a good thing. Remember: The music business needed destroying.

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*Not to mention, MP3s were successful because they were good enough sounding, which allowed them to spread like wildfire. Their inferior quality was a feature, not a bug. There’s a reason why lossless audio still hasn’t caught on for portable players.

Via TUAW and Edible Apple

23 comments »

About the author

Petemortensen

Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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Posted in Opinions |

  • Boom

    That… just… happened.

  • rucrazy

    how can you tech blogs use his photo like that without fear he will take everything you have and all your future earnings for the foreseeable future?

  • Helius

    Meh – Who cares? His music’s as dull as ditchwater anyway. The best bit of his records is the run-out groove.

  • porkchop1234

    @Pete Mortesen

    Firstly I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that the music industry needed destroying. People got sick of the fat cats gouging them and were finally able to fight back buy hitting them where it hurts-the pocket book. Bravo is all I have to say about that topic.

    As for the comment about records being superior to CD’s. A record will always have a superior far warmer sound with far superior deeper bass and sharper more well defined treble then any MP3 or CD can ever even hope to achieve. Any audiophile worth his salt will agree and laugh at anyone who begs to differ. You really want to hear the music the way it was meant to be heard get yourself a high end turntable hook it up to a high end stereo throw on a Beatles vinyl and rock out. MP3′s have their place but will never supplant a vinyl record where it counts.

  • Chris Hicks

    The sound quality was never the issue. Record companies ripping off the fans where. Thank about it the fans picked price over quality.

  • mike

    I have some JC on my ipod/iphone. Glad now I did not pay for any of his music :0.

  • Mikey

    So a has been who never really was blames the internet because no one is buying his crappy music. Oh well.

  • http://www.glenndesigns.com Darren

    I’d like to be the first to welcome John Camp Cougermelon to 2010 and congratulations for waking from that 10-year coma. Lars Ulrich could have used you during his battle with Napster.

  • Shticky-Fingerz

    I think the whole damn music industry is doped-up and cracked-out

  • Super Mushroom

    Mmm hmmm…Let this be a lesson kids: Don’t smoke crack…

  • Rd

    …better be careful JCM, i regularly download your music , mostly from iTunes, and the only way i am ever aware u have a new album out is because Apple invariably puts your albums in a prominent spot on the
    iTunes home page; that publicity could end in a nano sec.

  • Tony

    “There’s a reason why lossless audio still hasn’t caught on for portable players.”

    True, but we can now listen to quality digital audio on our home stereo systems. With 2tb drives (and climbing) we no longer have to use lossy to save space (still want to save space? Use FLAC). For my iPod I easily convert to a 128 AAC, MP3.

    So, why is the only way for me to purchase full quality audio (for most music) is to buy a CD?

    Why won’t APPLE sell FULL QUALITY audio?

  • http://www.oakbog.com Adam Rosen

    “Why won’t APPLE sell FULL QUALITY audio?”

    Bandwidth and piracy concerns. Even though our hard drives are larger, many more people are sucking down data through the Internet’s Tubes every day, so smaller file sizes are still preferred.

    Also, content providers would prefer to keep high end formats on physical media (SACD, Blu Ray, etc.) both for best performance and difficulty duplicating. Some people are going to pirate anything online, more profit and control to sell you these files stored on a physical carrier.

  • Gabriel

    Typical case of “John Cougar Melonhead” being the old washed out fart he his. His music sucked from day one. yes the internet is evil to him, it’s forgotten is lame a**. iPods/CD’s are evil to him as well because no one buys his lame over priced music. For god sake his music can usually only be found those .99 bins at truck stops. PN CASSETTE! LOSER! You won’t be missed MELONHEAD!

  • djmactech

    “Their inferior quality was a feature, not a bug”? Is this guy retarded?

  • Maxx Wyler

    Hey JC – get some better headphones and learn how to rip. I think Apple has a class for that. iTunes downloads sound better than all the crap you released on cassette. Get with the times man, REINVENT! Proud to say that you are not in my library. You even get a thumbs down when Pandora throws you in the mix. Nothing personal, it’s just that your music sucks.

  • Reinaldo

    Is he brother of John Bon Jovi? XD

  • Mark

    John Mellencamp made and makes music that entertains lots of folks. It’s not news that some are not entertained. John was one of the chosen few, given big promotion by the industry leading to big profits for both. He may think a lot of himself with all the hype and adoration of fans he has received over the years even though there are countless artists doing music in a similar vein that would be perceived as equally good had they been promoted. Is it a surprise that John is upset with the industry shake up? Loss-less music, what BS! All music is and has been recorded, manipulated, printed and delivered by equipment that introduces losses, most of the time introducing gross EQ irregularities, distortion and noise that is way more significant the the losses of “perceptual encoding” (i.e. MP3, AAC, DTS…). Yeah, go talk to an audiophile about it. They are a well grounded and centered bunch of folks who largely think that the engineering done by Edison, ok Western Electric, represented the paramount of audio achievement.

  • TheBrew

    Nicely written, Pete!

    Cheers!

  • Balthar

    Pete:

    You were doing fine until that insipid footnote paragraph. Vapid and beneath reply.

    Mark:

    The fact that the entire audio supply chain has been crapified is no excuse for the aural depredations of low-to-mid bitrate lossy end-product encoding.

    “Old school” vinyl sounds so much better than the remastered digital counterpart of the same album mainly because sound “engineers” crank up the overall loudness of the signal at the expense of dynamic range. Lossy encoding just helps remove what small amount of texture is left.

    You’re correct in one respect: all the equipment and care in the galaxy aren’t going to make some auto-tuned bullfrog sound like Sinatra.

  • porkchop1234

    Well said Balthar

  • Denny

    The music industry is finally getting what it deserves. Years and years of greed biting them on the A$$ now. I love it!!!

  • Alex K

    This guy just needs to keep his mouth shut.