Music

Tom DeLonge says streaming music is like massacring elephants

by Mark Teo

Blink-182 might be best known for fart jokes and masturbation-related puns, but Tom Delonge has a serious side, too. Indeed, the lip-ringed singer is straight-faced about two things: His terrible, Bono-aping Angel and Airwaves project and his contempt for streaming music. Like Taylor Swift, who pulled her landmark 1989 album from Spotify last month, Delonge thinks that streaming music is killing the industry—and, he told Faster Louder, playing Take Off Your Pants and Jacket on Rdio is akin to slaughtering a majestic endangered elephant.

No, we’re not exaggerating. That’s exactly what he said.

I tell people condoning streaming is like condoning the Chinese that are killing elephants for their tusks and carving ivory statues. It’s cool to put on your shelf but if you really think about what you’re doing it sucks. Streaming music is doing the same thing to artists—might not be killing ’em but it’s killing the industry. It might be cool for you as somebody that likes music but you’re not really thinking about the effect it has. We’ve got to value our art, you know?

OK, maybe Delonge is being a little dramatic, here. But he nails an essential point: It’s been incredibly difficult for these services to turn profits, and artists certainly don’t see huge returns from streaming-music royalties. While the payout rates for each service vary, one thing remains constant: Shitty-ass payouts. Aloe Blacc, who who wrote the most-streamed song in Spotify history, only saw $4,000 in return. Barenaked Ladies would need more than 9,000 streams of “If I Had a Million Dollars” to buy a box of Kraft Dinner. And artists like Trent Reznor and Dr. Dre have fought back, launching the artist-centric Beats Music.

Which is to say that yes, streaming services can be unjust to artists. But ivory-trade unjust? Is the streaming music industry akin to the illegal slaughter of the 22,000 animals killed in 2012? Or of the 41.6 metric tons of ivory flowing into different markets? Or of the reduction of the elephant population—which was estimated at 3 to 5 million in the 1970s—to 500,000?

Yeah. Try again, Tom.