If you’ve ever downloaded music illegally off the Internet, it appears you have an enemy in the form of Gene Simmons, one of the founding members of the band KISS.

While the list of musicians seeming to “get” the concept that music piracy isn’t going anywhere, and are attempting to change their own contracts to fight it, some other’s seem stuck back in the stone age.  Gene Simmons seems to be firmly in the latter camp.

In a recent interview with Billboard, Mr. Simmons expressed some rather… strong views on people who download music from peer-to-peer networks.

Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask.

The interviewer then asked what Mr. Simmons thought of the new business model being attempted by Radiohead (internal link) and Trent Reznor (internal link), wherein consumers name their own price for a download.

And that’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say “Come on in and pay whatever you want.” Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?

KISS has not released a new studio album in nine years, and with his current feelings towards the industry, it is doubtful there will be a new one any time soon.

The question is: Which side is correct?  On one side, you have artists like Madonna, Trent Reznor, Oasis, and more leaving their labels for more modern distribution methods, and on the other side you have Gene Simmons, who, thus far, is the only named musician to speak out against it.  One side will more than likely be correct, but only time will tell us which.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 6:04 pm under Music, Piracy.

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
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