Google’s VP of content partnerships David Eun may be softly-spoken, but his message for the music industry was loud and clear in yesterday’s MidemNet interview: “Allow innovation to thrive, encourage it… you have to iterate, you have to keep on experimenting. And unless the music industry allows that to happen, we’re still going to be scratching our heads looking for new music solutions.”The clear implication was that this isn’t happening. “There is a culture of ‘here’s my interests – meet them. And if you can meet them, maybe you can have access to our content’,” said Eun. “And in that approach, there’s often not really a consideration of the other person’s business – ‘If you can’t make it work, that’s your problem’.”Eun was keen to stress that there are plenty of people within the major record labels who “get it”, but that also there are plenty who don’t. “There are a lot of people who who are still very defensive,” he said. “Sorta protecting business models, protecting what they know.”But he returned to his theme of advising the industry not to suffocate or slow down innovative startups later in the interview. “If you know you’re in the business of harvesting tomatos, allow them to grow and become ripe. Don’t just pick little green ones off the vine.”For more on Eun’s views, including why Google ISN’T trying to screw the labels with YouTube, read our liveblog.
Google’s Eun tells music biz “allow innovation to thrive”
