LACUNA COIL's ANDREA FERRO On Making It In Today's Music Industry

Bob Zerull of Yahoo! recently conducted an interview with singer Andrea Ferro of Italian heavy rockers LACUNA COIL. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Yahoo!: Do you think with the music industry change there will ever be big bands like that? Stadium bands?

Andrea: Nowadays, as things are right now, it is impossible for me in rock music at least. There is just not enough time, money invest to let a band become that band. You need at least three records for a band to become developed properly, their style. METALLICA, if you think about it, their first record was great because it was new and fresh, but then their best album came later, "Master Of Puppets" and "…Justice For All", those big records. It's the same for all the bands. You know sometimes you have a band that has a great debut and then they go down. It usually takes at least three records to develop a personality for a band. There is not that kind of time anymore. If you don't make some attention in the first year or two when the band comes out, the label is not investing in you because they're going to lose it. The kids are not buying the albums anymore. Everything is changing and moving to digital. It is hard to say where it is worth to invest in a band. Even a band like us, we have a name and we can tour Europe, South America, Japan, or America here, and it is still tough for us. We have built a name in the years, but it is still very difficult to make a living out of it. We live with it, but we don't make a lot of money out of it anymore.

Yahoo!: I don't think a lot of people realize that a lot of the bands now don't make what they use to make.

Andrea: It's a job, for most of the bands. Even for a band like SEVENDUST. They sold some gold records and stuff. Nowadays it is a job for them. They have to go out on the road to make some money. The market has changed so much. It's not true that it is easier now. It's easier to get attention for one day, but tomorrow there will be another millions band on YouTube. You can put your band on YouTube and everyone can watch it for free. But then, tomorrow there are another twenty bands that just move your video somewhere else.

Yahoo!: So where do you invest all of your efforts? Is it touring?

Andrea: Touring a big part because you still make some money out of touring. But the problem is, everybody goes on tour now because they don't make money from the records anymore. The market is saturated. Even South America., before nobody was going to South America. Now everybody is going to South America, or India, or Japan, or Thailand, or Indonesia. I don't know. I don't see a clear way out in the immediate. Maybe there will be in three years there will be a new technological innovation that will move to a new spot.

Read the entire interview from Yahoo!.