Due to a mix of good timing (e.g., just before Napster changed the music industry forever) and good luck (e.g., the soaring rate of autism in the United States), Linkin Park are one of the last bands who have may have a legitimate claim to being “rock stars,” if we define “rock star” as someone who is “famous,” wherein we define “famous” as “a lot of random people on the street know you who are” (for example, Gene Simmons is a famous rock star, but as much as we love Joe Duplantier, he, alas, is not). And even if Chester Bennington can go out for a burger without getting hounded or at least stared at a whole lot, his current net worth is allegedly $25 million, so he’s successful by pretty much anyone’s definition save for maybe like Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch or someone like that. My point being, I can’t imagine what problem anyone in Linkin Park has with the band’s career, other than that maybe it takes groupies too long to get off of their dicks after they’ve climaxed.

So, of course, the band has gone and fired their longtime managers at The Collective. Says Mike Shitoda:

“Fuck The Collective. What have they ever done for us?”

Kidding. What he actually said was:

“We’ve decided to bring our management duties inhouse, to directly hire talent to support the innovative ideas the band plans to pursue in the coming years.”

The Collective have a lot of big, big clients (Slash, Godsmack, and Staind, for example), but Linkin Park were their biggest, and so they’re shutting down their music management division. I’m not sure how many employees there were in that division, but, presumably, there are now some people who are out of the job because of Linkin Park. So we can add that to the band’s list of sins.

What could The Collective have done differently to keep the band in their roster? Probably nothing. Linkin Park saw a way to save themselves 20% of all their earnings, and they took it. Everyone knows who they are and the lawyers they already have on retainer can read the contracts and make sure all offers are kosher, so fuck do they need managers for?

I would love it if this ended up being a major misstep that ultimately caused the collapse of the band, but that probably won’t happen — at least not until we do something about that rising autism rate.

[via Metal Insider]