Hasta La Gadget!

Jon Bon Jovi has a bone to pick with Steve Jobs. He wrote in the Sunday Times Magazine that Jobs is “killing” the music industry, that iTunes is to blame for the death of the album, and that no one experiences albums anymore the way artists intend to them to be experienced. 

The argument is far from a new one, a number of musicians blame digital music stores and services for killing the album, and blame digital music in general for the “death” of the music industry, but considering iTunes rakes in money from music sales and controls over 66% of the online music market, it’s doubtful the industry is going anywhere anytime soon.

Bon Jovi says that kids today aren’t getting the experience of buying music in a music store based only on album art the way their parents did, and they’re missing the experience of listening to an album end-to-end as a story. At the same time, both of those issues: the trend towards buyers wanting to preview music before they buy and the desire of music fans to not spend money on an album that contained one or two songs they wanted both pre-date iTunes, or digital music sales entirely. 

Still, Bon Jovi also bemoans the end of the neighborhood music store as more people take their purchases online, and the end of physical distribution of music, both of which can – directly or indirectly – be at least partially attributed to digital music sales. 

[via TUAW]