Simmons is a goof -
Quite the ego on that guy. His points aren't as strong as he thinks -
The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There's no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that's what going on.
Who's to say it was nature's intent that music be given an intrinsic financial value?

Simmons might think the "new business model" Radiohead and NIN are trying out is a failure but the fact is it's not new at all and has continued to prove itself to be infallible.

Music existed long before people were copyrighting, packaging, and distributing recordings for profit and will continue to exist and be made long after people stop buying it.
In fact, the pay-for-live-performance model precedes the album-sales model by centuries.
Only in the last, what? 60 years did the album sales deviate from that trend and overtake performance revenue? And that's only for the biggest name stars? Great for Gene that he capitalized on that erratic trend.

I'm not a proponent of stealing music at all but there's a reason Radiohead and NIN have dropped the labels - the industry wants the whole f*cking world to make it as easy for them to make a lot of money as possible, and to find ways to continue that gold rush in perpetuity...lables are demanding cuts of the merchandising and touring revenues now to offset what they deem they're losing due to piracy and rising costs. Eveyone makes money but the artist, and when deals fall through it's just too easy to blame the end-consumer who may or may not be stealing music.

In a sick, weird, unintentional way, all of us stealing, crooked, internet-thiefs might be liberating the artists from corporate tyranny and putting the power, if not the money back in the hands of the artists. I'll trust them to discover or devise the most efficient and effective way or distributing their work to the consumer.

Back to the bottom of the joke-trivia card deck for you Gene.