Peter Gabriel Applauds Internet Music Efforts

Grammy award-winning performer Peter Gabriel this week applauded attempts by artists Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails to experiment with new ways to sell music.

“I think it’s fantastic that these new models are appearing,” said Gabriel, one of the founders of the band Genesis, told CNET News blogger Greg Sandoval in an interview on Monday. “You don’t need very many people to make a project economically viable if you’re distributing yourself.”

Gabriel himself is no stranger to technology initiatives. In 1999, he cofounded On Demand Distribution in Europe, one of the earliest music download stores. And back in 1992, he co-founded Witness.org, an early political online video site that still thrives today. On Tuesday, The Filter, a company that Gabriel has invested in, went into beta and is due to open to the public next month, the article said. The new engine will help make recommendations for digital film, video, music, and literature people like on the Web.

“I’m not someone who really is out to destroy the record business,” Gabriel said in the article. “But I think it has to reinvent itself as a service industry and be competitive with other entities…what I don’t like is the old model where (the labels) own you and can ignore you and you’re just put up on a shelf. That model is gone or should be…unless you get that big Live Nation-type deal where they are paying you so much that it’s a very comfortable prison that you’re in.”

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