Thomas Dolby – HuffPost 7.13.11

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

Thomas Dolby: Well, I think you need a wider variety of skills than you did when I started out. You’re going to be competing with fifty-thousand other artists just like you, and in order to do that, you’re going to have to be very creative and think of new ways to promote yourself as I have done. I think on the plus side, I’d rather be competing with other artists on a level playing field than competing to get a cassette tape listened to by an A&R man, which was just the beginning in my day. That was just the beginning of the whole mountain you would have to climb before the public would ever hear your music. At least now, you can put a video up on YouTube of you singing into your laptop in your bedroom, and if you’re brilliant like Jessie J, for example, then you’re going to wake up the next morning and be a global superstar. I think that’s a much healthier state of affairs than when I first started out.

MR: Yes, the business definitely has changed, including the payoff.

TD: Yeah, the new payoff, I think, comes faster for some people because they don’t rely on the star-making machinery of the industry, which was so intangible. By the same token, there may not be billionaire rock stars living in villas anymore. I think that a much larger number of people will be able to make a living from music, and I think that is a healthier thing for the music itself. The stranglehold that was on music by a handful of companies is no longer there anymore. It’s really wide open, and it’s very inspiring to young kids starting out, and very conducive to a great new era of popular music.

MR: Plus you don’t have to rely on a handful of stations making or breaking you or your record.

TD: Yeah, it’s definitely a brand new age, and I think that I’m one of the lucky ones, in a way, because I’ve a leg up. I was very fortunate that I established a name for myself during that previous era and then I took some time off, and now I’ve come back and there are all these new tools available to do the stuff that I like to do, so it’s very exciting.