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Sean Kinney

ALICE IN CHAINS Drummer SEAN KINNEY Says SPOTIFY And PANDORA Are ‘A F**king Ripoff’ For Musicians

Manos Spanos
In a brand new interview with the Bismarck, North Dakota radio station 96.5 The Fox, ALICE IN CHAINS drummer Sean Kinney was asked if he thinks that any new bands can become as successful as ALICE IN CHAINS, despite the fact that all the streaming-music services and illegal music downloading have dramatically affected record sales. "I'd hope so, but I think it's gonna be really hard, because everybody wants it now and they don't have to do anything to get music," he said (hear audio below). "So it's kind of devalued music. You don't go and get it, then wait for it to bring it home. And you don't listen to albums. As many people don't listen to albums in their entirety; they cherry-pick stuff. "You know, when you don't put anything into getting something, then it doesn't have much of a value… On a bigger scale, it is what it is, but it's just sad, because music is so important to so many people and such a huge part of the world and how we connect and what brings together. And when you put a value of zero on that, I'm more afraid of what the future will be of that. Now you've devalued such an important art form and part of everybody's life. "So I would hope that people would stick with bands, but when you put nothing into going to support a band, they can't financially continue to be supported, because they're not being supported financially; it costs money to go places and make music." He continued: "So, yeah, it'll be interesting. My fear is, like, when big rock bands that can still go to an arena and play that show — METALLICA and stuff like that — decide to not do it anymore, who will take their place? Is there anybody that can? Right now I'm not feeling super positive that anybody can. And that could go missing for generations of people. That whole experience can be lost. It's like the experience of listening to an entire album. It's an experience. And now how you experience music is being reshaped and hopefully something will shake up." Asked how he feels about the fact that music fans are seemingly more interested in streaming individual songs from artists than listening to entire albums, Kinney said: "You have these Spotifys and Pandoras where you get access to almost every piece of recorded music on the planet. And then that's great for the consumer. But for every person who's ever recorded music, it's a fucking ripoff. Because, I think, I hear people are starting to post their [royalty] checks [online for having their music streamed]. You get 10 million plays of your song, and you get a check for 111 dollars." He added: "It's a weird time we live in; it's a real balancing act. And so basically, you'd hope to get an audience and you can tour. Try to break even, or maybe make a little bit to make a living on tour. But it costs a lot. Gas prices aren't lower, and instrument [prices] aren't lower. Last I checked, I think CDs and stuff like that cost the same, or less than they used to, so I don't know. I really don't know how to deal with that. It is what it is. We just go about it by doing what we want, and play music and stuff. If it comes to a time when we can't afford to get to places, and we do, we invest to go to a lot of places. We're not leaving there with a briefcase of dough. If it comes to a time where we can't do that, we just won't be able to do it."
04 min read

ALICE IN CHAINS’ DUVALL: Illegal Music Downloaders Are ‘Sticking It To Themselves’

Manos Spanos
KLAQ's Lisa Sanchez conducted an interview with ALICE IN CHAINS members Sean Kinney (drums) and William DuVall (vocals) on August 31 at Revolt On The Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below. On the state of the music industry, how the Internet affects musicians, and where they think the record business is going: Kinney: "Any music that can generate money will be the dumbest, shittiest lip-syncing crap that's made for the lowest common denominator, made for the masses, just kind of like reality TV — cheaper, shittier, dumber, dumb it down. "The next LED ZEPPELINs and everybody they're playing right now, they'll never get a chance because if you don't support these things, there's no infrastructure to let a band turn into a band and mature and grow. It's financially impossible. I mean, we're out here doing this. We get paid for what we do, but we'll spend almost every penny we make to do this. We spend almost all our money to do this, and we're fortunate. To move six semis and twenty buses. Each bus costs 30,000 dollars a month. That's not counting gas. It costs millions of dollars to do this stuff at a certain level. And it's what we love to do. And we're fortunate that we kind of make it work." "The record companies fucked every human that ever recorded music in the history of music. Every single person — [from] the first recordings — has been permanently fucked because the record companies didn't get their shit together and nobody regulated anything and found a way to distribute [digital music] right."
03 min read