Placebo frontman Brian Molko has exploded in anger over how little Spotify pays song creators

30 years after its birth in London, the group Placebo It has become a classic of 90s alternative rock that is still relevant and active.

Led by singer and guitarist Brian Molko together with the bassist and the guitarist Stefan Olsdalthe band combines post-punk elements with glam rock and industrial rock, a cocktail that has given them much success in hits such as Nancy boy, pure morning AND You don’t care about us.

They were sponsored by David Bowiethey had as a guest Roberto Smith for their first show at Wembley Stadium and recorded with Michael Stipe. All fundamental stages of a race interrupted only for a few months due to the pandemic, but which now gets back on track and will reach its Thursday 14 March at Luna Park.

Molko speaks

Belgian by birth, Brian Molko has lived in London for many years, where he connected via Zoom to talk about the band’s current moment.

The beginning of the speech was about last year’s intense tour: “It’s never too much and it’s always too much,” he reflected.

“The important thing,” he added, “is to remember how lucky and privileged you are to have an audience that follows you. You know? My main motivation for forming a band was to never have to get a real job. I never wanted to have a boss or look for a job. really.”

He remembers and says: “I remember that one day, when I was 11 years old, I looked at my father and told him that I went to the same place every day and that I always wore a dress. He replied that this is life, and I said that ” It wasn’t for me. It was then that I decided that I would not do what was expected of me and that I had to find my own way without anyone’s support. I needed to express myself. ”

-The first thing was to try the music?

-NO. The first thing I did was act, but when I finished college what I really wanted was to start a band. So that’s what I did, even though I didn’t know how. That’s why I say, whenever you think a tour is too intense or you’re too tired, you have to remember that there are other bands working harder, and be grateful that you’re in a privileged position because you’re expressing yourself. in a very personal way to the world and people are interested.

This is the most surprising thing. And when you’re on tour for eight months, you don’t have many days off and you’re very tired, you have to remember that this is how things are. It’s everything you worked for. And the audience continues to grow every year. We’ve been playing live for 28 years and the audiences just keep getting bigger and bigger. It is something truly unique, a great location and a privilege.

-Do you want to tour all year round again or would you rather stop and go back to a recording studio?

-I would like to record another album. It makes me want to do something very creative again, but thanks to that idiot Daniel Ek, Mr. Spotify, now all the bands in the whole world can’t make a living from our recordings and we have to tour twice as much weather.

-It must be strange to know that millions of people listen to you and then you only get a few cents for each listen.

-Absolutely. Snoop Dogg said it best: “I had a billion streams on Spotify, how does that translate to just $40,000?” The compensation is just absurd, because that idiot Swede created this company that basically exploits every musician on the damn planet.

He created nothing and became a billionaire at the expense of the creators! And do you know what he’s doing now? He is investing in artificial intelligence to create weapons technology, probably to make it easier to kill people. That’s where your profits go. Fuck you, Daniel Ek! If I ever see that guy in real life, I will have to leave the room because I might not be able to control myself.

More information on Spotify

-Spotify also seems to force you to release singles instead of albums.

-I think it’s worse than that, because it’s actually not just Spotify. It all started with digital downloads, with LimeWire and Napster, so it happened a little bit earlier.

I grew up with albums that were like a whole, a piece of work. It’s going to be a little difficult for us to become a singles band because we think in terms of albums, just because that’s what we grew up with. It’s a real challenge to make an album of 12 great songs, and it’s easier to put a song here and another there. But we’ve been doing this for almost 30 years and I know that what interests me is this challenge and an album is essential for that.

-Does all your creativity go into music or do you have other forms of expression?

-In my mind I have other forms of expression, but in the physical world almost everything I do goes towards music. .

-In some ways you could be considered a poet or a writer, because you recently published a book with Placebo lyrics.

-Well, it’s a collection of letters and it’s not really a book. One day I would like to write something, maybe my memoirs, but this requires a lot of discipline and is a very lonely job. I am a person who needs collaboration to be able to give my best, as I do with Stefan.

The beginnings

-Tell me what the scene was like in London in 1994, when Placebo started.

-It was really exciting. There were no cell phones, so at the concerts people were connected to what was happening. There was a lot of it mosh AND crowd surfing from the stage, with a sort of feeling of collective euphoria in the room. Today everyone knows what the concert will be like, because they saw it on YouTube or looked at Setlists.com.

Plus, half the people in the room are obsessed with documenting rather than having fun. In the early 90s, the grunge movement and American indie music were very exciting and hid many mysteries. I believe that we have lost this together with the feeling of collective euphoria, precisely because people are less present. It’s a shame.

-It’s hard to fight it.

-We used to all hang on every word and every note they played, but now people just stand there and raise their phones in the air. That’s boring. That’s boring! What we do now before the show is ask people to put their phones away and enjoy the fleeting moments that will never happen again. We are interested in creating a sense of communion and an exchange of energy, and to do this we need human connection. I guarantee that if you put your phone away and immerse yourself in the present moment, you will enjoy the concert more. It’s a win-win situation.