Pixies’ Frank Black Is Cool with Streaming, Not iTunes
When you’re Frank Black, the main-man of the alt-rock heroes otherwise known as Pixies, your 
opinion on the music industry that is, matters.
In an interview The Daily Beast, Black was asked about his opinion on the current landscape for musicians – the landscape that includes controversial services like Spotify and TIDAL.
“I’m fine with streaming. That’s all I listen to now,” admitted Black. “iTunes is too much of a pain in the ass. I have an iTunes account, but I mean, Jesus, between the Cloud and the iTunes Match and ‘did I buy this?’ and ‘did I not buy it?’ and ‘did I lose it?’ and all that shit, it’s kind of annoying. That was the best setup a few years ago, but now that there’s streaming—which can be annoying too, because it’s all just accounts and passwords—it’s a little bit of an annoyance, like a lot of technology. But in general it seems to work.”
After that response Black was asked if he is at all concerned about the financial ramifications artists can face from streaming services.
“I can’t worry about that. It’s like, how many things can I fucking worry about, you know? I’ve got a lawyer, I’ve got an agent, I’ve got a publisher,” said Black. “They can worry about that stuff. I don’t have time to fucking take a stance on everything. There’s an opportunity for my music to be heard and potentially paid for? Great, do it. Is it the best that I can be paid? Is it the worst that I can be paid? I don’t know. I don’t really have a lot of options. All you can do is play your cards, and hopefully it all works out.”
“I can get all involved and take a stance and develop an opinion, but at the end of the day, I’ve got too much to do,” he continued. “I’ve got five kids. I just want to fucking play music and make art. I’m not criticizing other people who have highly developed opinions about all this, but I just don’t have time for it. I don’t have any interest in it. I just want to play music, and fortunately I’ve got my t-shirt money, I’ve got my concert ticket money, I’ve got my commercial usage money. It’s no different than when I started out. Technology changes and formats change, but it’s basically you generate creative content, you try to get it heard, you try to get it paid for, you try to collect what is due to you, and, you know, file for your taxes (laughs). What else can I do?”
Preach!
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