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Arcade brothers fire at the majors (sort of)

By | Published on Tuesday 5 October 2010

Noting that the New Yorker had recently remarked how their success on an indie label proved that bands no longer needed major label deals for global success, Pitchfork recently asked Arcade Fire’s Butler brothers, Will and Win, about the role of the majors in the modern music industry. I’ve merged their answers into one for easy reading. 

So, here’s what Will/n said: “Major labels just lost their way. It’s like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals. They were just flailing about and throwing money around. They weren’t thinking about putting out good music or embracing new things. When we were getting courted in the early days of ‘Funeral’, we would get taken to these dinners, and it was just like, ‘We’ll take the dinner, but who’s paying for this?’ I guess Led Zeppelin is. But, at the end of the day, we were just like, ‘Would we be paying for other peoples’ dinners?’ It’s such a weird thing”.

The bros continued: “They’d probably be doing fine without the internet. The way they handled the internet was just boneheaded. I know it was terrifying, but I just read Greg Kot’s book about downloading, ‘Ripped’, and they were not smart. But it’s certainly not a black-or-white thing. The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Björk. It seems like the internet really threw them for a loop”.

You can read the full interview here.



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