Gary Burton – HuffPost 10.11.13

Mike Ragogna: Do you have any advice for new artists?

Gary Burton: Well, yes. First is to not get discouraged easily. The music scene is in many ways a bigger market, a bigger industry than it was in my youth. There are more people following music and buying records and going to concerts and so on and it’s also big around the world and not just in a handful of big cities here in the US. It’s much more widely distributed. At the same time, the discouraging news is that the industry is going through a major upheaval on all stages, whether it’s jazz or pop or rock or classical or whatever. The whole music industry is trying to figure out what the new business model is going to be. Just selling records is no longer the main avenue of people getting music. Downloading is increasingly common; iTunes has entered the picture, thank goodness. It’s kind of kept the free downloading from becoming overwhelming. But getting your music to the public is a new kind of thing and we’re all struggling. We’re now using Facebook to try to get the word out about our records and our gigs and so on. I’ve got fifteen thousand followers on Facebook, for instance, and I know some other jazz people who have four or five times that many. I feel lucky to have fifteen thousand, frankly. But that’s for people that get their information less from reading music magazines and more from looking at things online. So we’re all having to learn of the new ways to get our music to the public. There’s a public out there who loves the music! It’s like all entertainment–whether you’re planning to become a movie actor or whatever–not everybody makes it to the big time. But if you’re truly inspired and can just feel it in your blood, that this is what you want to do, by all means, go for it. That’s my advice.