In an interview with The Liquid Conversations, MISFITS guitarist Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein discussed the current state of music industry
saying he only does fan meet-n-greets these days because of financial reasons.
You can read the part of the interview below (as transcribed by Ultimate-Guitar.com):
The Liquid Conversations: Over the years, how has the industry changed and how you had to adapt to it?
Doyle: “The thing that sucks the most about it is that everybody steals music. You spend thousands and thousands of dollars to make a record and all of these scumbags are just stealing it.
“And then they want more, and then you’re a dick because you’re doing a meet ‘n’ greet for 50 f*cking bucks to make up for it, which you don’t want to do. You think I want to meet all these f*cking people? I don’t.
“When I’m done, I just want to take a shower and go to bed. I just worked, so…”
The Liquid Conversations: Looking at that aspect, you feel that people, the fans, put some undue pressure on you because of something like that, because you charge $50 for a meet ‘n’ greet?
“They can kiss my ass. You want to steal sh*t? If I was making motorcycles and they came and took one, would that be a crime? Why can’t we punish people for stealing songs? There should be a $10,000 fine for that.”
The Liquid Conversations: The industry, certain aspects of it protect you, but a lot of it doesn’t. It’s weird because you put so much time and effort into it, and it’s almost like people are literally stealing from you like you said.
“Yeah, they should really f*cking fix that sh*t. Shut the internet down for a day and fix it.”
The Liquid Conversations: With you doing your own stuff with your label, how do you approach that?
“How can I approach that? What can I do? As soon as somebody buys it, where is it? Somewhere where it’s easy for others to steal.”
The Liquid Conversations: You sell it once and everybody just shares it a million times. You mentioned Spotify – it doesn’t even really matter, no one’s making money from it anyway…
Doyle: “You make nothing, it’s $9 a month, and you can listen to a song 10,000 times if you want. If there’s enough time in that month to listen to it 10,000 times, I don’t know…
“I can’t do the math, but how much do you think the bands get? It’s like a hundredth, maybe a thousandth of a penny you get. My girlfriend [ARCH ENEMY singer Alissa White-Gluz] went to their office, said that sh*t was insane. I would’ve went f*cking mental, I would’ve started breaking everything.”
The Liquid Conversations: I’ve had a conversation with a couple of people this year. An artist friend of mine – he’s a drummer with a band – he gets upset when people say, ‘You’re so lucky to do this because you don’t have a real job.’
“Oh yeah? You have to be a f*cking athlete not to do this job.”
The Liquid Conversations: He’s like, ‘How is this not a real job? I’m away from my family all the time.’
“It’s a f*cking important job that should be paid a lot more. We keep everybody from killing each other. We’re the entertainment.
“Without music and movies, what do you have? Chaos. Everybody goes f*cking mental. This ain’t no party man. We live hard, we live rough.”
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.