In a new interview with Sonic Perspectives contributor Jonathan Smith, CRADLE OF FILTH frontman Dani Filth once again spoke about the decline of the music industry as consumers value access over ownership and experiences over assets. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):”I owe it to my brethren in metal and music not to have a fucking Spotify account because they don’t pay people. And it’s not just them — it’s just platforms in general. And I appreciate the fact that from that people could discover you from another band and whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever; I’ve heard it a million times. But I’m old school. I want CDs, I want vinyl, I want my bands to be paid because if they’re not paid, they’re not bands anymore. And I know so many people from big bands that since the pandemic have gone, ‘You know what? I’m taking a proper job. So you’ll see me less often. We’ll still be doing albums, but probably once every five years,’ because music — it just seems like daylight robbery.”Dani continued: “If you owned a delicatessen or a fucking supermarket even, people aren’t allowed to just come in and help themselves to free produce, which is what people think they’re entitled to do with music because it’s a periphery thing and it’s in the air. You can’t physically touch music. But how do you expect bands to survive without that? Okay, yeah, sure, music’s getting bigger and bigger. But that’s because Taylor Swifts of the world and the Ed Sheerans, whom we’ve just done a song with, are everywhere. If you work in a delicatessen or you work at a building site and you’ve got the radio on, chances are you can hear one of those two or Beyoncé or whatever, or Megan Thee Stallion within fucking five minutes of putting it on. And it’s kind of a mind control because you adjusted to that. You remember those songs ’cause that’s all you hear.”Filth noted that producers of audiovisual content like TV shows and movies have also been hit hard by online piracy. “Obviously, they really try [to combat piracy] with movies, and there’s more money involved in movies — obviously,” he said. “But in England, we used to have these, not up to very recently, this whole advert they had before the movie starts where ‘video piracy is killing the movie industry’, and they even go to the point where they’d have this slamming prison doors, in IMAX quality sound, THX. ‘You’re going to prison if you watch a bootleg movie.’ But not the same for… I know back in the day [they had a message on the back of albums saying that] ‘home taping is killing music,’ but nowadays it’s like a fucking free for all.”Dani went on to say that heavy metal fans buy physical product in greater numbers than is the case with fans of other genres of music.”I think the metal scene is probably one of the most loyal and also one of the most agitated scenes,” he explained. “Everybody hates, ‘Oh, that band?’ ‘I love ARCH ENEMY. Do you? What about IN FLAMES? Oh, no. They’re fucking shit.’ The metal scene is so carnivorous and so cannibalistic, yet probably the most loyal. And, yeah, people, they wear their hearts on the sleeves and wear the bands on their battle jackets. And they’ll go and buy the blood-splattered vinyl or they’ll buy the special edition, if there was one.”Dani previously blasted Spotify in a June 2023 interview with Sakis Fragos of Rock Hard Greece, saying: “It’s been deteriorating ever since… I think 2006 was the year that everything swapped from being comfortable for musicians — well, not necessarily comfortable; it was never comfortable. But [it went to] just being a lot harder with the onset of the digital age, the onset of music streaming platforms that don’t pay anybody. Like Spotify are the biggest criminals in the world. I think we had 25, 26 million plays last year, and I think personally I got about 20 pounds, which is less than an hourly work rate.”For example, the other day my girlfriend… She’s got an ill cat; her cat’s very sick and needed a life-or-death operation,” he continued. “She’s a well-known tattooist, and she posted a thing online about… a GoFundMe for her cat, and she was gonna do a raffle and people could win a tattoo, et cetera, et cetera. The point of it is a lot of people were, like, ‘Why the fuck should we pay for your cat? You’re going out with a multimillionaire?’ And she was, like, ‘Excuse me, I don’t think you understand how the music industry works nowadays. One, he’s not a multimillionaire at all. Two, I’m my own person, and this has nothing to do with him.'”I think people just have this amazing ability to [believe] that when you have stuff out there, like physical product, that you’re earning a fortune from it,” Filth added. “They don’t realize you have so many people taking pieces of the pie — record company, management, accountants, blah blah blah blah; it doesn’t matter. If you’re not getting any money in the first place, there’s not much money to share around. And nowadays, the reason why people put out limited-edition vinyls and stuff, it’s for collectors — they’re the only people that buy it; other people just stream it for nothing. That’s why you’re finding a lot of bands, since the pandemic, are not touring. Petrol’s gone up. Tour bus hire’s gone up. The cost of living’s gone up. Yeah, it’s very hard for bands at the moment. But it doesn’t help when people just have this in-built idea that it’s not a privilege to get music, that music is something that should be given away free. I mean, I don’t walk into someone’s shop and just pick up — I don’t know — a pack of bananas and say, ‘Well, these grow on trees. They should be free. I’m walking out with these.’ I’d be arrested for shoplifting. But it’s fine for people to download… Even before albums are out, you find fans, like, ‘Oh, I’ve got a link to it,’ and they put it up and then instantly any sales you’re gonna get from people buying it for a surprise are out the window because they’ve already heard it and then they just move on to the next thing.”Yeah, the music industry is on its knees at the moment,” Dani concluded. “I still enjoy making music — don’t get me wrong; I love it — but, yeah, the musician nowadays is finding a million things against them. It’s a hard time.”CRADLE OF FILTH will release its 14th studio album, “The Screaming Of The Valkyries”, on March 21, 2025 via Napalm Records.[embedded content]