Neil Young doesn't do many interviews, but when he does he always makes very valid statements about the state of the industry and the prospects for being able to make a living as a musician. Noisey sat down with him recently.
Something needs to be created not for me, but for the art. What about the young artist who's trying to get started but has nowhere to go because there's no value, there's no value in the song, there's no way to put the song out and get anything back so that you might be able to buy an amp and buy a truck to take your band to another gig? You put out a great record and a lot of people heard it, but nobody got paid. That's like all the songs I ever made, everything I ever did, they pay me for my songs but nobody pays Crazy Horse, nobody pays the bands, nobody gets any royalties. The thing is, it's not about me and my guys, the older guys. It's about the people that we don't know, that I haven't met. It's the 10-year-old musician. Where the fuck are they going to get going? They can't. This is a grave situation for the arts. I don't want to be negative. We have to figure out a way to be positive about it.