A Conversation with Glenn Tilbrook (continued)

PM: How important is the Internet in your current scheme of things?

GT: Very important. I have to say, my first point of view on the Internet is as a user, and it's wonderful, absolutely brilliant in terms of reaching people. And in terms of people knowing what I'm up to, and the exchange of information between people who are interested in me--well, I find it very hard to imagine doing what I'm doing now ten years ago and it being anything like the same.

PM: It couldn't have been, no, absolutely. You can touch a lot of people and be touched without having to Be there.

GT: Exactly, exactly that.

And then there's the whole MP-3 downloading stuff. At one point I thought it would hurt only the big people. I now think it probably hurts everyone, but just incrementally. Not that I'm losing sleep over it, but I know that sales--from what I was hoping to do to what I'm actually doing, there's a big difference. I was reading in Billboard last week that the sale of singles dropped 60 percent last year.

PM: Holy jeez.

GT: They've got to be worried. I'm worried to a certain extent. People come up and give me compilations they've made, and it's great, and I love it. And I can't deny the technology is brilliant, and who wouldn't use it? I use it. I can't criticize other people for using it.

PM: Yeah. Artists have to find ways to use the technology so that we don't get screwed by it, and so that it works for us, because it's not going away.

GT: The thing I find, technology has just run away. When Apple ran those Billboard ads last year, "Rip, Mix, Burn," to me that was Apple saying, "Please do that, because that's what you can do with this." That's just terrible. It would be as if cassette manufacturers 20 years ago held up copies of albums and said, "You can make copies of this for your friends." And you remember the big fuss they put up about cassettes.

PM: Oh, I remember, yeah.

GT: If anything, the record industry has learned nothing in terms of ways to combat that. At that time, LPs were still packaged, and the packaging was a much more attractive option than cassettes could offer. But now you can Xerox the cover and rip your own copy of it off. The way I try to look at it, if people are going to do that, they're going to do that. There's nothing I can do to stop them. And if it means someone says, "Hey, I went to see this guy last night, check this out," and people say, "Yeah, I like that," then maybe they'll come and support me next time.

PM: There are some very, very interesting articles by Janis Ian. I don't know if you know her as an artist.

GT: Sure, yeah.

PM: But at janisian.com, she wrote a very provocative series of letters to the industry on this topic. I don't know if you've seen them, but you ought to check it out. It's interesting, and it will get you thinking in a variety of ways about what we're discussing here.

GT: What was the gist of what she was saying, or is too complicated to summarize?

PM: Well, I would cheapen the depth of her argument--

GT: Okay.

PM: But she was saying, "Hey, it's not all bad. Here are the ways that it's good." And she really researched and thought it out very carefully. She's a smart person. And I think she'd put your mind at a greater level of ease about it.

GT: Right, right.  continue

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