Mariah Carey: music industry full of "frickin' idiots"

Mariah Carey thinks the music industry is full of “frickin’ idiots”.

The pop star is disgusted with the “stupid” way record company executives dealt with the emergence of the internet as a way of distributing music. The 39-year-old singer says life is “bleak” for many musicians, unless they try to find a way of harnessing the power of the internet.

“Big, powerful music-industry executives made a giant mistake, and now we’re all paying the price,” she fumed. “Frickin’ idiots! They gave the music business away on the internet. If they had just sat back and said, ‘Maybe let’s figure this internet thing out, it could be something cool,’ we could have found a way to distribute music online on our own terms, not somebody else’s.

“Prince had already shown them the way. He was so far ahead of the curve, putting out his own records on the web. Everyone else was stupid.”

Mariah is currently pioneering a new business model for music. She has signed deals with brands musicians have traditionally snubbed and pushed into new industries like tourism, food and drink. She is even attempting to make the internet work for her, instead of just using it to sell albums on websites like iTunes. The star has a team of people who use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to market her image and music.

She told Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper: “People look at my image and they see, oh, the curly hair and the little tight black dress. Tra-la-la. Those stupid executives may have given up on the music business but I haven’t. It’s bleak out there for musicians. We have to do something and I’m going to.”