I’m never prepared for Noel Gallagher to be the voice of reason, but sometimes …

The consumer has become all powerful now, and the consumer is king.  So the consumer gets what he wants.  But as I understand it, the consumer didn’t fucking want Jimi Hendrix, but they got him, and it changed the world.  And the consumer didn’t want Sgt. Pepper’s, but they got it, and they didn’t want the Sex Pistols, but they got it.

And now there’s an attitude in the music business where it’s like ‘let’s keep the consumer happy because that’s what keeps the music business going around.

Digital Music News pulled this quote from an interview Gallagher gave this past weekend at Coachella. He was talking about the degree to which the record industry has become market- rather than artist-driven, but it’s worth considering in most endeavors these days. Nobody knew they wanted fast food until Ray Kroc provided it. Reality television was first considered the stuff of PBS until Survivor helped make it a mainstream staple. On the other hand, CDs, DVDs and videogames made in imitation of popular albums, movies and games lie unwanted in secondhand bins around the country.