You can’t beat an old rocker flying in the face of the man. Neil Young has decided to let everyone know what he thinks about piracy, and it turns out he’s probably a fan of Megaupload.
“Piracy is the new radio,” Young told All Things D. “That’s how music gets around.” I couldn’t agree more, Neil.
It’s worth me adding a disclaimer here: I am a huge Neil Young fan. He could say a lot of things and I would probably just nod sagely agreeing with him. Only, on this occasion, I actually do agree to an extent. Piracy is a way to explore new music. Sure, there are other ways to do that legally these days — I’m thinking Spotify — but different methods suit different people. Each to their own.
Also turns out Neil Young is keen to revamp digital music as a whole. “It’s not that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s being used isn’t doing justice to the art,” Young said to All Things D. “The MP3 only has 5 per cent of the data present in the original recording. … The convenience of the digital age has forced people to choose between quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have to make that choice.”
“Steve Jobs as a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous,” Young said. “But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.” Despite my fandom, I might disagree at this point: somehow I expect Jobs would have done it better than Young. [All Things D; Image: 6tee-zeven]