Beefs 2012: The Black Keys' Patrick Carney Slams Sean Parker over Spotify

BY Alex HudsonPublished Mar 27, 2012

Sean Parker may have changed the face of the music industry, but he hasn't exactly endeared himself to musicians. He came under fire when he founded Napster more than a decade ago, and now as a board member of Spotify, he has incurred the wrath of Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney.

In an interview with Grand Rapids, MI's WGRD 97.9 [via MTV], Carney responded to Parker's recent claim that Spotify would generate more revenue than iTunes within two years.

Here's why Carney doesn't like the streaming music service: "Because he's [Parker] an asshole. That guy has $2 billion that he made from figuring out ways to steal royalties from artists, and that's the bottom line. You can't really trust anybody like that. The idea of a streaming service, like Netflix for music, I'm totally not against it. It's just we won't put all of our music on it until there are enough subscribers for it to make sense."

He continued, "Trust me, Dan and I like to make money. If it was fair to the artist we would be involved in it. I honestly don't want to see Sean Parker succeed in anything. I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists."

Of course, only time will tell if Parker can continue to establish Spotify as a viable, industry-leading service here in North America.

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