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Todd Terry's Back In The Day Blues

Author: Jonty Skrufff
Friday, October 26, 2007
US house pioneer Todd Terry accused most major label employees of 'not knowing what they are doing' in the latest issue of One Week To Live this week and suggested more DJs should be A&Rs to rectify the industry's failings.

"The music industry could have been 15 times more successful if they had hired music people, but they hire a person who is their friend or a corporate head that doesn't really know about music," the New York
legend complained.

"This is why the record business is the way it is now. Money is spent on everything BUT the music," he added.

The hugely prolific producer blamed the industry's previously hugely lucrative remix culture for enticing record makers away from the dancefloor, a point he applied to himself last year, in an interview
with Skrufff.

"Remixing was just a phase; I did a bunch of remixes but, to tell you the truth, I didn't believe in it," Todd confessed, "If the record couldn't stand on it's own, why did you need twelve different remixes
of it to make it popular."

"Now every song in the dance community is a novelty, because we don't have artists who can really portray it by playing real shows, or a DJ who's always out there DJing to push a track and really make it work," he continued.

"Now you don't sell records, you play gigs. Before it was about selling records so you wouldn't have to do gigs. Now I basically give the records away, because it's better promotion for me to do the gigs. And that's how I make money, by playing gigs; I don't make money on record sales alone anymore. By the time you release a record anywhere, it's over; in four or five days. In the past you used to sell ten/twenty thousand copies whereas today you are lucky if you sell three [thousand]," he added.
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