There is an interview with Paul McGuinness, manager of U2, in the weekend FT. McGuinness has been an active participant in discussions about the impact of network distribution on the music business (see here for example).
Given the recent discussions around Google Book Search and around indexing of newspaper content, I thought this was another interesting example of struggles between new and old world orders.
“All right, it’s been the law of the jungle many times,” McGuinness says as our drinks arrive. “But what dismays me a little about the online universe is that these corporations, like Google and MySpace and Apple, don’t have anything that’s the equivalent of artist relations.”
One day, tech groups will have their own talent scouts and digital versions of record labels, he predicts. For now, the “great cultural collisions” taking place worry him. “I find I’m often dealing with [technology] executives who are really quite careless and frequently arrogant about the cultural impact of what they’re doing. I wish there were an atmosphere of nurturing and respect, which I really don’t see.” [Lunch with the FT: Paul McGuinness]
