Chris Botti Explains Why He Is Through Making New Music at Noise11 iHeartRadio

Grammy award winning trumpet player Chris Botti says he is not interested in making any more albums.

This week at iHeartRadio music news powered by Noise11.com Botti says, “There is no place to buy CDs. They are even closing iTunes. It wouldn’t matter if you are Celine Dion or whomever it is, if you sold 40,000 units it would be a success. Can you imagine? They used to sell millions of albums a week. It’s very strange what has happened and the severity in which the music industry collapsed”.

Botti suggests that for some artists releasing music basically as merch is one option but that is not for him. “If you want to do it and give it away for free but absolutely, because that is what it is going to come down to,” he tells Noise11. “Some artists are going to be able to make a record and just give it away to their fans when they come to the show because that’s really what we are talking about. You will do it in a disc or a flashdrive. Otherwise you are just making a record to give it to Spotify so they can roll it out to their customers. Its good for Spotify but its not great for the artists at all”.

Australia is the exception to the rule. Based on this weeks charts Ed Sheeran, Pink, Eminem, Taylor Swift and Sam Smith sold more CDs than streams and downloads combined. “And good for you. I have heard that,” he relies. “Here now most computers don’t even have a CD drive, cars don’t have a CD player. Its very strange. Not that I sold as many record as famous pop stars but I still sold a lot of records. My last record did 150,000. These days it would probably do 15,000 and that would be selling at the gigs. It has radically changed”.

Chris Botti will tour Australia and New Zealand for Live Nation in February.

You can hear the full interview with Chris Botti and two of his songs with Sting and Steven Tyler at Noise11 iHeartRadio.