Ex-QUEENSRŸCHE Singer GEOFF TATE: The Music Industry 'Doesn't Resemble Anything As To What It Was'

In a brand new interview with CrypticRock.com, former QUEENSRŸCHE and current OPERATION: MINDCRIME singer Geoff Tate was asked how he feels the music industry has changed over the years and how the focus has shifted in terms of how he reaches his audience. He responded: “Really, what the difference is, is that the economy got taken out of the industry. I really wouldn’t even call it an industry anymore. It doesn’t resemble anything as to what it was. For example, to sell a record, when we had the [QUEENSRŸCHE] ‘Empire’ record out, EMI was spending six million dollars on promotion for that record. Six million dollars. The promotional budget for modern records is, like, $2,000. [Laughs] It’s not even in the same solar system.

“You’re kind of on your own all together to market your record, sell it, talk about it, and to make arrangements for everything. Record companies don’t do that anymore. They don’t have the capital to spend that kind of money, because they don’t have the sales.

“For guys like me that grew up in that system, it worked really well; it was a beautiful system. It employed thousands and thousands of people and provided work for people to support their families. The artist and everybody made money, which was great, but now it doesn’t do that anymore.”

He continued: “There are very few people that can make a living doing this. People from my era can, because, of course, we can tour and we have an audience out there, scattered across the world. But for new bands out there, it’s really difficult for one to gain an audience and it’s nearly impossible to tour. It’s economically impossible. I hear it all the time from bands I meet at shows: how can we get on tour? Sorry, I can’t really help you, not everybody. You can take a limited amount of bands or artists with you at various times on your tour, which I do, but it’s up to them what they do with it. Hopefully they have come out with enough CDs to sell on the road and generate interest in what they do. Will they record another record, will they go out on another tour, who knows?

“As a band, you really have to handle stuff, where, back in the day, the record company did a lot of that for you. They made the appointments and the scheduling, they gave you your support, they helped fund your records. We signed a deal with an escalating recording budget; it just kept getting bigger and bigger over the years, but that’s just unheard of nowadays.

“You don’t need to spend $300,000 to make an album; that’s ridiculous. Technology has changed that. Technology has done amazing things in this time we live in.”

Tate added: “It is so fascinating because of how easy it is to talk to people worldwide now, you can really get a good consensus of things. For instance, it used to be that you were so isolated living in your country and you pretty much just knew what was going on in your area, your demographic, your region. Very few people knew what was even going on in other parts of the country. Then it started opening up and people became a little more aware.

“It’s really strange to the rest of the world that, as Americans, we don’t barter. We just accept the price that’s on the sticker and we just pay it. Other people in the world think we’re crazy for that. Why on Earth would you do that? That’s a starting point of negotiations, but we’re uncomfortable with that. Other places in the world think it’s crazy that we allow our police force to hunt down our citizens, like, ‘What are you doing? You allow guys with guns to hunt you.’ They stand there on the highway and point radar detectors at you and try to get you in a speed trap. You know, it’s bizarre. Compare that kind of stuff nowadays and that gets people talking and people start asking questions in a pub, or at dinner, or at social gatherings. Why do we allow a cop to put us in a speed trap or to hunt us like that? And that starts the dialogue. Well, because of two reasons: they’re going after income to get money, and the other reason is that our cars are not safe on our roads. Other people will ask the question, well, how can that be? We have higher speed limits where we live in our country and our roads are what, safer? I don’t know. Are our roads not safe in this country, is that why speed limits are so low?”

Frontiers Music Srl released “Resurrection”, the new album from OPERATION: MINDCRIME, on September 23.

In April 2014, Tate and QUEENSRŸCHE announced that a settlement had been reached after a nearly two-year legal battle where Tate sued over the rights to the QUEENSRŸCHE name after being fired in 2012. Original QUEENSRŸCHE members Michael Wilton (guitar), Scott Rockenfield (drums) and Eddie Jackson (bass) responded with a countersuit. The settlement included an agreement that Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson would continue as QUEENSRŸCHE, while Tate would have the sole right to perform the albums “Operation: Mindcrime” and “Operation: Mindcrime II” in their entirety live.