Pink Floyd Sees Streaming Green

That doesn’t mean, he added, that there isn’t still tension between labels and artists on the subject.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal Tech Café, Mason said Pink Floyd never liked the idea of fans “cherry-picking” album cuts, but now see streaming services as the future of the music industry and CDs as a “dying art,” according to the WSJ.

“Spotify for us was a success,” he was quoted telling the crowd. “A lot of people have been streaming our music, and importantly also a lot of people who weren’t yet familiar with our music. Perhaps I would say something different were we having this discussion a year and half ago, but now it’s becoming clear that streaming is not another form of piracy, and you can argue that more music is being listened to now than … in the past.”

But he reserved some harsh words for the record industry.

“Record companies need to work more comfortably with artists,” Mason reportedly said, “or they will lose out.”

He said labels haven’t paid enough attention to artist relationships and can no longer afford to develop artists.

“We’re going to have to find other ways of identifying the grassroots talent out there and bring them into the spotlight,” he said. “As artists we used to have a ladder that we needed to climb, and there were clearly defined steps we needed to take, but now it feels like the first four rungs are missing.”

Noting that the real money in the game has shifted from recorded music to live performing and merchandise, he told the audience artists should carefully watch the trend of musicians using technology to take control of their own careers, including music distribution and touring.