"Kids don't go out and buy CDs, they make their own, they download them from the Internet"
About this Quote
Bach’s line lands like a shrug aimed at an industry that kept insisting yesterday’s rituals were eternal. “Kids don’t go out and buy CDs” isn’t nostalgia; it’s a status report from the early-2000s fault line when rock’s old business model started looking less like tradition and more like denial. The phrasing is plain, almost bluntly parental: kids do this, not that. It frames the shift as behavioral, not moral - a crucial move. He’s not scolding a generation for stealing; he’s pointing out that the consumer has been replaced by the user.
The subtext is a quiet threat: if listeners can copy, burn, and download, then scarcity evaporates, and with it the leverage labels relied on. “They make their own” is especially telling. It gestures at mixtape logic reborn in digital form - curation over collection, playlists over shelves. Ownership becomes secondary to access and identity-making. Music isn’t a product you acquire; it’s a material you manipulate, trade, and fold into your social life.
Coming from a hard-rock frontman whose era was built on physical sales, the quote also reads as a reluctant realism. It’s a musician acknowledging that the gatekeepers aren’t just losing money; they’re losing control over how music circulates. The cultural context is the Napster-to-iTunes transition: piracy, convenience, and a new expectation that songs should move at the speed of the Internet, not the speed of retail.
The subtext is a quiet threat: if listeners can copy, burn, and download, then scarcity evaporates, and with it the leverage labels relied on. “They make their own” is especially telling. It gestures at mixtape logic reborn in digital form - curation over collection, playlists over shelves. Ownership becomes secondary to access and identity-making. Music isn’t a product you acquire; it’s a material you manipulate, trade, and fold into your social life.
Coming from a hard-rock frontman whose era was built on physical sales, the quote also reads as a reluctant realism. It’s a musician acknowledging that the gatekeepers aren’t just losing money; they’re losing control over how music circulates. The cultural context is the Napster-to-iTunes transition: piracy, convenience, and a new expectation that songs should move at the speed of the Internet, not the speed of retail.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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