Mario Tarradell

The current state of the Tejano music industry isn't much different from any other genre. Not surprising, but hearing it during "Tejano Music Today: State of the Industry" made it clearer. The seminar, held Friday afternoon at the Hyatt Regency at Reunion, kicked off the 2008 Tejano Music National Convention.

REX C. CURRY/Special Contributor

Grammy-winning Tejano artist Sunny Sauceda (center) and producer-engineer Gilbert Velasquez (left), along with music reporter Ramiro Burr, discuss how artists can promote themselves.

The informative forum featured five panelists: Sunny Sauceda, Grammy-winning Tejano artist; Casey Monahan, director of the Texas Music Office in Austin; David Garcia Jr., entertainment attorney; Gilbert Velasquez, record producer and engineer; and Latin music writer Ramiro Burr, who served as moderator.

The Internet, digital downloads, copyright laws, promotion, lack of radio airplay, and the Grammy and Latin Grammy Awards all figured prominently in the discussion as a way to reach audiences.

Mr. Monahan made a telltale point, one that media types know but the fans might not, about what keeps an artist alive financially and creatively.

"Every musician gets 90 percent of his or her income from the road," he told a small but dedicated group of attendees, "not from record sales or digital downloads."

Mr. Burr emphasized that in a time of diminishing radio airplay, particularly for Tejano music, which has been steadily usurped by the more lucrative regional Mexican style, the Internet is "how you compensate for some of the roadblocks at radio."

He said artists need to make their music available at iTunes, Rhapsody and "any other online source you can find." We live in a world where a single song, not a full-length album, is what the masses want. They click and drag it into their iPods and it becomes a quick snapshot of music stacked alongside other singles.

But perhaps the most important nugget came from Sean Ross, with New Jersey-based Edison Media Research. Mr. Ross, who works with the radio and music businesses and conducts listener research, sat in the audience. He intelligently responded to the widespread notion that Tejano music is dead.

"There is always a new generation of artists that can fill clubs and sell records without radio," he said. "That usually makes radio take notice, then pick up the ball and run with it."