Steve Jobs Interview in Rolling Stone

Interesting interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs about iTunes, Apple and the record industry. I particularly liked his assessment of the current issues in the record industry and conclusion that record contract advances should be done away with:

The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and tell an artist, "We'll give you twenty cents on every dollar we get, but we're not gonna give you an advance. The accounting will be simple: We're gonna pay you not on profits -- we're gonna pay you off revenues. It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime. We'll go ahead and risk some marketing money on you. But if you're not successful, you'll make no money. If you are, you'll make a lot more money." That's the way out. That's the way the rest of the world works.

This has been my pet theory for a while, that this whole system of advancing and recouping seems really dumb given how stupid cheap it's getting to make a record. Marketing still costs plenty though (and is a pain in the ass) so I think there must still be a role for record labels in there somewhere.