Audio Fidelity’s Marshall Blonstein – HuffPost 7.29.11
Mike Ragogna: What advice would you give to new artists?
Marshall Blonstein: I would say approach the industry with the attitude that you are going to make it on your terms and in your own way. I wouldn’t think of things in the old terms of needing a record company behind you to make it. In this day and age, you can pursue a career from wherever you are – you don’t want to hop on a plane to New York and start banging on the doors of record companies, it doesn’t happen like that. The best thing you can do is find a club and go make your chops at a club – get used to singing in front of a crowd, and get comfortable writing songs. Just play anywhere and everywhere you can, then, when you get the chops, go find a place where you can play a gig. Go 50 miles from your house, then go 100 miles from your house. After that, try setting up a tour where you can open for someone. Make some money and try to survive doing this and I believe eventually you’ll find your niche. There are artists now who only have their material available at their concerts and online and they can sell 100,000 albums a year – it’s not unusual for artists who don’t have record contracts to sell 50,000 to 100,000 records on their own. When you sell that many records on your own at $14 apiece rather than the $2 you’d get from a record company, all of a sudden, it becomes a wonderful way to spend your life on the road. Plus, you’re doing what you love to do. At that point, the record labels will find you, you don’t have to sit and wait in some lobby for a record executive to say no for whatever reason. So, I would suggest forgetting the old way of thinking about going and seeking out the record companies and instead, go through the internet and through YouTube because now you can do it on your terms and better than ever before. If you’re still thinking you can send a demo into a record company and have them be impressed and contact you, it’s not going to happen. We still consistently get checks from iTunes for blues compilations that we created years ago, so the internet has become an incredible tool in getting music to the masses.