Artifact Page #2

I didn't even know if he was a real person.

You always see this

mysterious little name Flood.

He produced Depeche Mode.

U2.

Nine Inch Nails.

PJ Harvey.

Smashing Pumpkins

and the most important, obviously, is:

Thirty Seconds to Mars, so...

His wide range of creativity,

it's inspiring.

For me creativity is about

vulnerability,

taking risks,

showing one's true emotion

and to be able to make

everybody feel as though

they can make mistakes,

they can put themselves out there

and there's no recriminations.

Jared took on a huge responsibility

and a huge burden

when he chose to start making

"This is War" without a label on board.

He didn't know what the

future held for the band.

It was very scary because

he was letting me know like:

"Look, we are alone.

There ain't gonna be any money coming in,

whatever we, as a band,

or really me, Jared,

as like the leader,

did good business to save

some of the money that we made,

that's now going to pay for our album

and our producer and our studio

which may result in zero Dollars."

We had to bet on ourselves,

even using Vegas terminology:

it's like if we are the black square,

we put everything on black and

we roll the dice.

We are heading to see our

manager Irving Azoff

and our lawyer Peter Paterno.

How are you doing?

Good.

Okay, what do you want to do?

What I would like to happen is:

I would like to go to court,

I'd like to sit in front

of a jury of my peers.

I think in any lawsuit

that's a slam-dunk,

you still have a 20%

chance you get screwed.

Let me ask you a big picture question:

Signing a record deal with a traditional

record company or not.

What are the other options?

My view has always been that any deal that

doesn't involve a major

record label is better

than any deal any major

label will offer you,

because you have your ownership,

your masters.

The other issue too,

that you have to keep in mind,

is that even if you signed

with one of these other alternatives,

EMI is still suing you.

It seems that we're between

a rock and a hard place.

Either signed some antiquated dinosaur deal.

But what's the new model of it?

The new model is worse, so the antiquated

dinosaur deal is a good deal.

Why there isn't a new model that's better?

People are listening to

music more than ever.

Cause they're all losing money.

They're not buying it.

They may be listening but

they're not buying it,

they're not paying for it.

It makes it even

less valuable.

If it were a traditional record company

we wouldn't be sitting here,

we would have settle that a long time ago.

We drew a bad card.

We drew a guy from outside the business

who doesn't play by industry rules,

who doesn't give a sh*t.

We can't get them to settle.

They're not gonna settle now.

They said to me:

"I don't care how long it takes.

I don't care how angry

it makes the other label groups.

I would go to court to a decision."

The record business is in a very

very serious trouble.

If you look at historically

other businesses

that have gone away, I think there is

this kind of gradual decline...

Well gradual,

it has been pretty severe, but like this

and then it just reaches

a kind of tipping point

and just falls off the cliff.

The economics around

the record business

is based on selling albums.

You know growing up you

had to buy the entire album

to get the song you loved,

you had to!

You had no choice!

And now, what happens is:

A kid is sitting at home and goes:

"I've got to hear that Kings and Queens song,

I got to hear that!"

They don't have to get in a car

or ask their parents

and save up 12 bucks to go buy.

Now you're given a choice and

you can buy the song you love

without buying the album,

you gonna do that,

not only that, when you can buy...

Have it for free.

Record sales have dipped 20% a year

for the last 6 years, now.

That's a lot.

The music business has

really become decimated

and it has been largely

because of illegal downloads.

Others factors too.

But the predicament we're in now, is

that an entire generation

of music listeners,

virtually everybody

under the age of 21,

has grown up in a world

where, for their entire sentient lives,

they've never had to pay for music.

And they look at people my age and

who buy music they think we're saps.

Why would you pay for something that's free?

It would be like paying for air!

I've heard someone

like Trent Reznor say:

"You know, you work

for a f***ing year on something,

and you put all this time

and you spend all this money

on creating these songs and a cup of coffee

like the other day,

cost more than your song."

Consumers wouldn't walk into a grocery store,

and steal a loaf of bread and have it

but it became okay to steal music.

That really isn't something

you blame the labels for,

you know, that's technology.

The labels have never been

cohesive enough to create

their own future

distribution systems.

Which is why it took

a computer company

to start iTunes, hum...

Have they've been smart enough

they would have co-owned

their own digital delivery

like iTunes, you know,

that was a big mess up.

When Apple, which is a great company,

don't get me wrong,

is the third largest company in America

and the biggest music retailer in America,

I think that's concerning.

It's a device manufacturer.

The labels are

petrified and terrified.

They don't know

what's going on,

they don't even understand

their own industry anymore,

they've been too big and

too slow to change, so

I do think they're just gonna start to crumble.

Let's play "Kings and Queens"...

There is definitely something in there,

let's try it again.

I think this is the part (I think so too)

I'm sitting here...

I'm singing it in my head.

It's infectious, I want to hear it again.

That guitar creeping up... I mean...

Great! ... Yeah! ...

So, I know, for making records like this,

the hard work,

the struggle is all part of it,

it's about being truthful to yourselves.

That's what I mean about now.

It's like you can take it and embrace it.

And go with it.

Be a bit off balance,

try out a few mad things

and there you are in a great place

to do that.

In the middle of all this,

we got some good news: we were nominated

for a Latin MTV award.

So, we packed our bags

and flew ourselves to Mexico.

After an exciting and unforgettable night,

we woke up to discover

that we had been served

with legal papers from EMI.

You have to understand this whole story

really began before we started the album.

Before we got sued, when we were

in friendly renegotiations with EMI.

And that was going well,

Irving was talking to them.

We had met some efforts

to address some commercial

terms of the

Thirty Seconds to Mars agreement

that I think,

we all recognized,

were probably inappropriate.

And then, something happened.

That effort stalled out for whatever reason.

Soon investors won't be able

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