Exodus' Jack Gibson discusses his frustrations with the music business, specifically that he no longer believes it exists.
During a recent appearance on the Danielle Bloom podcast, the bassist was asked what advice he'd give to to young musicians. In response, he revealed that he was "jaded" and shrugged his shoulders, before explaining the reason behind his vexation towards the topic.
"I don't know what to tell young musicians today because I am jaded", he explains. "And it isn't that I'm just jaded, it's that there's no music business any more.
"When I was young, there was a path, there were steps to take. You got your band together, you put your music together, you started looking for shows, and if you could draw people to your shows, then the next step was that label people would be interested."
Gibson continues: "Then you had to get your promotional pack together to give to the labels that were interested. And then you tried to get signed and then you tried to make records and sell records And those steps don't exist at all any more.”
Instead, the bassist laments over how industry executives are now only interested in a band's impact on social media.
“Now the step is make a band, or not even make a band. Let's just go viral", he adds. "I don't know how to do that. Don't ask me how to f**king do that. I'm in my fifties. I don't know how to do that shit. It's totally a mystery to me".
As Bloom points out how the music business has undergone a drastic change since the 1960s and 70s, Gibson replies: "There's no business. Once they started giving the music away, there's no business. We don't sell shit for records. If we don't go out and sell T-shirts, we don't make money. I'm a T-shirt salesman. I'm not a musician.”
Airing further ill-feeling towards the future of the industry and its growing-infatuation with technology, he continues, “And any day now, we're all gonna lose our jobs to these f**kin' robots. Once the AI figures out how to actually make music that people enjoy, they're not gonna pay us to do shit."
To lighten Gibson's despair, Bloom argues that even if AI music does become popular, there will still always be a demand for live music performed by real humans.
"Well, that's true", the musician answers. "But at this point in time, most of the music business isn't that; most of it is licensing and commercial jingles and music editing. All that's gonna just disappear.
"Like, who's gonna pay somebody to write music for a movie? When one guy can just go [punch a few commands into a computer] and it comes out. And we're not gonna know the fucking difference.”
Today (July 26), Exodus will start their European tour with a performance at Chania Rock Festival in Crete. In the autumn, the thrash metallers will hit the road across North America, kicking off in Tampa on November 2.
