Alternative Matter has issued an interview with GUNS N' ROSES guitarist Ron 'Bumblefoot' Thal. The following is an excerpt:

Q: You recently said some very really interesting things about the current decline of the music industry and how bands and musicians should react to it. What should people do according to you?

A: "Haha, I could talk all day about this. The thing is that I’m not talking about the METALLICA's and U2’s of this world, but about guys who are trying to get their first bands together and getting their music out there. It’s about delivering the music to people in the best possible way and have a future in doing that. It’s geared towards those kind of people. Where to begin? It’s really simple. Fifteen years ago when I started putting out albums you still had all the big gatekeepers like labels and distro. There was a lot of money being allocated to promote albums and making people aware of their existence. This was before the time the internet got big. The only way to do it was through hellishly expensive ads in magazines and you didn’t get the worldwide coverage you get nowadays because of internet. If you wanted to get some visibility in a record store you had to pay 500 dollars each month on one location to have it in the listening booth. That really adds up and could wipe you out. The distro would be waiting on getting paid from the stores and it would hold up paying the label, and after all the expenses for recording and promo you wouldn’t see a dime as an artist. That happened to me several times. A label wouldn’t do a lot of promotion and they wouldn’t help set up a tour, and would say I owed them twenty grand. I was busting my balls making albums and not making a dime in return. I wasn’t in it for the money, but you still need to pay your bills. You’re putting all of your time in but it’s not putting food on the table. How are you supposed to live?"

The remainder of this interview, as well as Parts 2 and 3, can be found at this location.

Meanwhile, an audio interview with Bumblefoot which recently aired on MetAlMetal in Israel can be heard at this location.