CANNES, France -- Peter Gabriel was saluted in grand fashion here Monday as the 2008 "personality of the year" during the annual MIDEM international music conference, an award previously handed out to such music-biz luminaries as Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, Clive Davis, Quincy Jones and Montreux Jazz Festival founder Claude Nobs.
But the musician and technological innovator skipped the opportunity to revel in the past that this kind of honor affords.
Accepting a glass trophy from MIDEM President Paul Zilk before a group of about 300 industry movers and shakers that also included his mother and sister, Gabriel remarked that "It's time to put the corpse of what we know as the record industry in the ground and let some other beautiful things start to grow out of it."
Few appeared to take offense, as the forward-thinking musician echoed comments he'd made earlier in the day and that others have been raising during the five-day gathering of nearly 9,500 participants from 91 countries.
In both settings Gabriel, 57 and hobbling on crutches with a broken foot from a recent skiing accident, urged musicians and industry executives to embrace rather than fight the technological changes and shifting culture patterns that have put the music business into a nose dive in recent years.
One specific response of his own is the recently launched We7 Internet service that generates free legal music downloads by pairing music with brief advertisements that create the revenue to pay artists. Gabriel has sunk $6 million of his own money into We7, which he said has logged about 1 1/2 million downloads since it went online last year.
The advertising-driven download model is one that many companies represented at MIDEM are experimenting with in different ways, and Gabriel acknowledged the potential pitfalls of so directly mixing art and commerce.
"It's climbing in bed with the devil," he said shortly before the award dinner at the Carlton Hotel. But the day of keeping the two segregated may well be over.
"I'm a big fan of Neil Young," Gabriel said, "but the artist who has complete control of his music and keeps his music completely apart from advertising is probably a thing of the last century."
The way Gabriel sees it, most young listeners are accustomed to hearing music in advertising environments. So by combining the ad-sponsored downloads for free with commercial pitches tailored to each We7 user's individual interests, ads can "become less annoying and more informational. It's about not selling dog food to cat owners."
