The Cure's Robert Smith has become something of a music industry moralist. Except, unlike many of those types of people, he does actually seem to practice what he preaches.
I'm, of course, referring to the band's great stand against Ticketmaster last year to keep tickets affordable for their North American tour. It's a tune Smith has continued to sing to in the year 2024 by railing against dynamic pricing — notably after the whole debacle where the system was employed for the Oasis UK reunion tour presale and then the band claimed they didn't have "any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used."
So it's perhaps unsurprising, then, that the frontman is also not a fan of streaming services and their royalty models, which quite famously offer musicians and songwriters next to nothing. In a new interview on the latest episode of the BBC's Sidetracked with Annie and Nick podcast, Smith revealed that he prefers to listen to music the old-fashioned way: on an iPod, as Steve Jobs intended.
The musician was adamant about refusing to "stream music on principle," saying that he had never used a streaming service. In addition to listening to vinyl records, he has a collection of iPods — tragically discontinued by Apple in 2022 — that he enjoys tapping into when he gets a hankering for a particular era after a "couple of beers."
"I've got playlists, iPods. I've got loads and loads of different iPods with stickers on them so I know in the dark which one's gonna play which," Smith told the hosts [as transcribed by Consequence]. "So, they've all got stuff on them which suits my mood. There's so much music I've got — not in a nostalgic way, but stuff that I can not just move about to but also means something to me, reminds me of a lot of times and people."
Since the theme of the episode was the year in review, Annie and Nick couldn't resist asking Smith about recent musical trends — he admitted it would be "disingenuous" to say he was fully tuned into what's current — including the changing of the guard in pop with the dominance of Charli XCX and Chappell Roan in 2024. "It would be a bit weird if I was like, 'Yeah, it's my favourite,'" he said. "I think what they did as artists is really fantastic. I think that I'd be dishonest if I said it's what I listen to at home."
Further, Smith added that he was empathetic to Roan's public struggle with her celebrity persona and weird fan behaviour, explaining, "You want people to feel like they're engaging with you. But it is a modern-world phenomenon that there's a sense of entitlement that didn't used to be there amongst fans."
Perhaps a lack of entitlement only exists in a lost world, the songs of which are played exclusively on iPods? The Cure's comeback record, Songs of a Lost World, was one of Exclaim!'s Best Albums of 2024. Listen to the full interview with Smith below.