Young Graduates Need to Integrate After College Years

For many the dreams were high already back in high school: Working as a professional in New York City or Los Angeles, earning a respectable living and declaring to parents "I'm good now." The trend of the industry, combined with the current economic downturn, couldn't be gloomier for young professionals who have earned their Master's Degree, but cannot find opportunities. I've heard building a credible resumé used to be a priority while planning toward a bigger goal. Now, there are so few opportunities that falling to unemployment is more than a likely scenario. Sorry to be so blatant about it.

Sometimes the post-teenagers are perceived as being lazy folks hanging out with laptops and writing nonsense on Facebook. Young graduates today, sometimes called the first Millenium Generation of professionals, are aware, able and available for the real thing. We are technologically savvy, have solid craft, and lots of energy. Our generation of people need the industry to listen to our call, give us that necessary fine touch of practice sometimes called internship, and finally trust us some real responsibility in what we can do. The problem is not the closing clubs, that's only a symptom. We need a record label such as Blue Music Group to be our medium, but so far the new signed artists are way too few. How do you guys select them, by the way? Being out there in the wild is what leads us to writing all this "nonsense on Facebook."

In college we adored the signed stars of the music industry, Pat Metheny Keith Jarrett, Sting, Chris Potter and John Patitucci. Only a few years later it feels as if these stars were somehow a phenomenon of a golden era which is gone now. I mean they are good, but they never had to work as hard as young artists today. In fact, they are stars because they were given the opportunity to find the right agency to channel their music to an audience. Where are all of us going to go today? Most labels are shrinking and even many in the older generations are not signed anymore. The 90's model of independent productions doesn't work now, since the internet information chaos drowns anyone who doesn't have a big budget. Therefore, Blue Music Group, what can you do to help us? We want to do what we are best at, and not fall in the cracks.

Letter edited on March 14, 2010