Former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters joined the chorus of artists decrying music streaming services such as Spotify. In an interview with The Times, Waters called the Silicon Valley executives behind such services a “gallery of rogues and thieves.”
Waters stated that he is glad to have been born in 1943 rather than 1983 and expressed sympathy with younger musicians who must deal with the aforementioned “rogues and thieves” interjecting themselves “between the people who aspire to be creative and their potential audience” in order to “steal every fucking cent anybody ever made.” Waters criticism echoes similar complaints from Beck, Patrick Carney of the Black Keys, former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke and producer Nigel Godrich (who notably made the comment that “if people had been listening to Spotify instead of buying records in 1973, I doubt very much if [Pink Floyd’s] Dark Side [of the Moon] would have been made. It would just be too expensive.”)
In the same interview, Waters reiterated for the Nth time that he will never reunite with his surviving Pink Floyd bandmates.
[…] Roger Waters understands barriers. The former Pink Floyd bassist did pen The Wall after all, a double album built around the concept of self-imposed isolation behind the title obstacle. And on his third solo album, Waters returned to the subject of being cut off, only this time the separation was not due to some mental construction of white brick, but technology instead. […]