Downloads Hurt

Siegel wrote 18 songs for the Eurovision Song Contest, including the 1982 German hit "Ein bisschen Frieden." He owns Jupiter Records and has registered over 2,000 titles with Germany's music rights authority, GEMA.

DW-WORLD.DE: Mr. Siegel, what do you think of the shift of music distribution from records to CDs and now to Internet downloads?

Ralph Siegel: It's a huge catastrophe. It used to be when you wanted a CD you had to go out and buy it. Now you pay 99 cents that the artist has to share with the Internet site -- there's actually not much left.

It's getting harder and harder to put new products on the market, because the marketing costs are crazily high. This download nonsense isn't enough, it's just drop in the bucket. When the normal means of distribution for a CD, which you can hold in your hands, is lost, the business -- sooner or later -- will be reduced to a couple of big acts or purely Internet-based platforms where some people put something on the Internet and then hope to make a couple of euros off it. That won't be enough to keep the music market above water.

But the trend seems unstoppable.

That's completely true, but it's a negative trend that I think is terrible. Of course it's wonderful that these days everyone can say, "I composed a song and put it on the Internet" and then see what happens. But turns it into a hobby occupation, and professionalism gets watered down.

You can put 100,000 songs on the Internet, even from new composers, but no one knows what to find where. And no one receives any more support. In and of itself, the Internet is not a support, because after an artist is listed on the Internet someone needs to work with him, which I think is the most important thing. He has to learn new things. There has to be a job description for artists getting into this profession again.

When there are only small revenues and small amounts of money generated, no one is going to be interested in getting involved in training artists or getting them started on paths that take 10 or 20 years. This is what the music industry has done, but it can only do it when it has the opportunity to make money. But this small-time business going on now is downright absurd.

Young artists like will.i.am from the "Black Eyed Peas" as well as the band "Shiny Toy Guns" say they can make a living from it.

When a couple of people can do it, that's wonderful. Of course there are always a few good examples, a few people that it's good for. But in the long run this won't be the case. I don't think so anyway.

It's just like all the newspapers that open up and then close down. I think it's dangerous. There always has to be some professionalism in the world. By the time a little Internet site makes it worldwide -- that's going to take a long time and an Internet shop isn't going to be enough.

Something has to be done for the artists. Management has to nurture them, there has to be a real structure and the Internet can't do that by itself. It's one thing to present or market something -- which is a good -- but it's not everything.

What are the advantages of the old-fashioned means of distribution you promote?

The biggest problem is that the Internet isn't alive. The exchanges you have in conversations and in cooperating with others, or in a lot of other private ways, are what keeps music alive and are what music needs.

Creativity can't just be hunted down in the ether or created alone in a room. I know what I'm talking about, I've been in front of a computer many a time in the past 20 years and always look forward to when I can be with my artists in the studio or out on the road. The human touch is very important. I don't get that from the Internet.