By Shannon Carlin
Pink Floyd‘s Nick Mason is still upset about that surprise U2 release. But he’s not mad at Bono and the guys, he’s got a bone to pick with Apple.
In a new interview with GQ, Mason talks about the “U2 debacle” stating he thinks “it’s been interesting seeing how badly that went down,” as in that surprise release that ended up on everyone’s iTunes.
But Mason is quick to admit that if he was offered the same deal, he would have taken it.
“If Apple had come to me and said, ‘Nick, we want to release your album in exchange for £50m’, I couldn’t have thought of a better idea,” he said. “Radiohead did something similar a few years ago [2008’s In Rainbows], and it worked. But this has backfired.”
Related: Doctors Like to Perform Surgery to Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’
Mason says this isn’t “an anti-U2 tirade,” but he does think that for as much criticism as the band got, Apple should get more.
“It highlights a vital aspect to the whole idea of music in the 21st century,” Mason explained. “What’s also interesting is that Apple seem to have got off scot-free. No-one’s blaming them. Apple has done great things, but it has also contributed to the devaluation process. That said, iTunes is already beginning to look rather passé, and instead it’s Spotify that looks like the future. What we need is another two or three billion people using it, then it would make more sense for musicians. At the moment, the pay-out, particularly for unknowns and only slightly-knowns is… pathetic.”
For this complaint, Mason says Pink Floyd isn’t thinking of taking their music off streaming platforms. He just thinks there’s a better way to share his band’s music with people.
“Pink Floyd is certainly not saying, ‘we won’t do it like that,'” he said. “We’ll stream, but we’ll stream with higher quality audio, and with a lot more video, or other graphic interfaces that will make it part of a fuller entertainment experience.”
Read the full interview with Mason here.
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