Roger Waters Calls Silicon Valley Executives 'Rogues and Thieves'

With the recent emergence of Jay Z's Tidal and the steady popularity of Spotify, artists have been flocking to support or challenge streaming services. The latest to combat music streaming is former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who calls Silicon Valley executives "rogues and thieves" concerning change within the music industry.

In an interview with the Times UK, Waters further clarified how problematic it is for artists to flourish in a society where their music is essentially given away. To Pink Floyd fans disappointment, Waters also made it clear that a reunion was "out of the question."

"I feel enormously privileged to have been born in 1943 and not 1983," Waters said. "To have been around when there was a music business and the takeover by Silicon Valley hadn't happened, and in consequence, you could still make a living writing and recording songs and playing them to people. When this gallery of rogues and thieves had not yet injected themselves between the people who aspire to be creative and their potential audience and steal every fucking cent anybody ever made."

A collection of artists including Waters, Taylor Swift, Radiohead, AC/DC and more have pulled their records from Spotify due to the low artist pay-per-stream while the company fo Spotify as a whole rakes in large quantities of cash from advertisments and subscriptions.

"The amounts these services pay per stream is minuscule—their idea being that if enough people use the service those tiny grains of sand will pile up," Talking Heads frontman David Byrne once wrote against Spotify.

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason divulged his feelings about streaming in congruence to U2's Songs of Innocence release via Apple. "Look, U2 are a great band, and Bono's an extraordinary individual, so this isn't an anti-U2 tirade," Mason said. "But it highlights a vital aspect to the whole idea of music in the 21st century. What's also interesting is that Apple seem to have got off scot-free. No one's blaming them. Apple has done great things, but it has also contributed to the devaluation process [of music]," he told Rolling Stone.

While having no involvment with Pink Floyd's recent LP The Endless River, Waters is currently working on a remix of his 1992 solo LP Amused to Death. When questioned about a Pink Floyd reunion, he echoed that "A reunion is out of the question," Waters said. "Life after all gets shorter and shorter the closer you get to the end of it and time becomes more and more precious and in my view should be entirely devoted to doing the things you want to do. One can't look backwards."

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Roger Waters, Spotify, Pink Floyd