Doug Morris: "There's no one in the record industry that's a technologist. That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do? We didn't know who to hire. I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person – anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."
Universal Music CEO on Technology
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Is this supposed to make us feel sorry for them? It explains a lot, obviously, but I still don’t feel a single shred of remorse. “We didn’t know what to do”? Please. When the CEO of a company blames his company’s failures on the fact that he “didn’t know what to do”, do you think the investors give a damn? Maybe if you actually tried to learn something about it, you could figure it out. Hell, the rest of the population (at least most of them) seems to have figured it out just fine. Why can’t the CEO of a major corporation who gets paid millions of dollars a year do the same? Admitting you were wrong is a good first step (the only one really), but that still doesn’t change where we are.
No Excuse.
I’m in agreement here…
Ignorance is no excuse.
Of course, historically, humans have reacted similarly to change. There are hundreds of stories about groups of people reacting aggressively towards something that was new and different, instead of trying to embrace it and accept it. Hollywood time and again seems to be able to illustrate this type of story, with films like Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands, and countless others. And yet, Life Immitates Art. The Music and Movie industry are the proverbial angry mob towards file sharing, instead of trying to embrace the new technology, they would attack it, squelch it, burn it at the stake, and pain all those who *do* embrace it as criminals.
And when all is said and done… their only excuse is: “We didn’t know what to do.”
Heres a clue to get you started: Think before you act. Contemplate how you can turn a threat to your advantage, rather than starting a witch hunt.
And with all that said… do you think his admonitions are going to equate to change? Or will they simply continue to be ignorant to the new order, and run themselves into the ground?
And that’s why they chose DRM
“anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me”
and indeed they did.
Universal invested a small fortune in DRM systems.