Iggy Pop has lashed out at the modern music industry and has sympathies for music fans who illegally download songs. Calling the state of the industry as “laughably maybe almost entirely pirate,” the Godfather of Punk says that fans have been “totally left out, screwed and abandoned” by record companies. Speaking to an audience in Salford, England at the annual John Peel Lecture, Pop also criticized the recent release of U2’s album by Apple for denying listeners any choice. “Part of the process when you buy something from an artist. It’s a kind of anointing, you are giving people love. It’s your choice to give or withhold. You are giving a lot of yourself, besides the money. But in this particular case, without the convention, maybe some people felt like they were robbed of that chance and they have a point. It’s not the only point. These are not bad guys.”
Pop commented on the current financial state of the industry, and of the people who make the music, including himself. “If I had to depend on what I actually get from sales I’d be tending bars between sets. I mean honestly it’s become a patronage system.” Punishing bootleggers is not helpful to anyone, he feels. “There is a general atmosphere of resentment, pressure, kind of strange perpetual war, dripping on all the time. And I think that prosecuting some college kid because she shared a file is a lot like sending somebody to Australia 200 years ago for poaching his lordship’s rabbit. That’s how it must seem to poor people who just want to watch a crappy movie for free after they’ve been working themselves to death all day at Tesco or whatever, you know.”
