Sick music industry staffed by idiots

Mariah Carey and the first signing to Gary Barlow's new label, opera singer Camilla Kerslake, have been saying some stuff about the way the music business is run. Carey reckons the whole industry is run by "frickin idiots", while Kerslake says the way pop groups are put together is "sick".

Mariah was talking specifically about how the industry coped with the advent of the internet, telling The Times: "A lot of big, powerful music-industry executives made a giant mistake, and now we're all paying the price. Frickin idiots! They gave the music business away on the internet. If they had just sat back and said, 'Maybe let's figure this internet thing out, it could be something cool', we could have found a way to distribute music online on our own terms, not somebody else's. Prince had already shown them the way. He was so far ahead of the curve, putting out his own records on the web. Everyone else was stupid".

Who can save the music industry? Why, Mariah, of course. She explained that with her various money-making schemes, including selling advertising on the artwork of her new album, she is trying to find a new business model that will save the industry. She continued: "There are no limits to what we can do. The process of creating something should have no boundaries. Those stupid executives may have given up on the music business but I haven't. It's bleak out there for musicians. We have to do something and I'm going to".

Meanwhile, Camilla Kerslake feels that pop music sells itself short by only looking at things in the short term. Having found that by the end of her teens she was already considered too old for a pop career, she turned her attention to opera instead.

Speaking to The Sun, she said: "I did a girlband audition and I got in. I'd been trying for about five years and finally I'd got some recognition. About a week later they asked for my birth certificate. They looked at me a bit funny and said, 'You're 20 and by the time we launch this band you'll be 22, and that's far too old. I was like, 'Are you joking? Twenty two!' I was completely destroyed. But I think for me that was a big turning point. I started to think, 'Even if I could make it as a pop star, do I want to work in an industry where my shelf life is so stunted?' I thought, 'I can't work in an industry like this - it's sick'. Classical is what I was born to do, not pop".

So, there you go. Enjoy the rest of your day, you sick idiots.