39 Music industry Quotes

All the information you need is available to you to have a successful career in music, if you're paying attention, and not closed off to anything. Remember, Perseverance is King.

KISS is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left.

Anybody who picks up a guitar and tells you that there's some inner message that they're trying to convey . . . it's nonsense. They're not being honest. The reason they're doing this is they wanna get lots of chicks and they don't want to work for a living.

Getting this caliber of musicians together [for '90 Millas' CD in September of 2007] is almost impossible to do again.

It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can't afford the music. I'm not condoning downloading music for free. I don't think that's really fair, but I understand it. If you brought CD prices back down to $8.98, you would solve a lot of the industry's problems.

The first time I saw Bruce he was opening up for Jethro Tull, before he had a record deal. I went to see Bruce because I was singing in that area with different bands and I wanted to get in a good rock band and he had the best rock band.

It's strange, simply because when the format changed, it wasn't really an organic change. It was a forced change. If you go into Tower Records, Sam Goody or Musicland, the places where 80% of people buy their music, there's no option to buy vinyl. It's not there and it's too bad. The funny part is, I remember when I was younger, the only shops that would sell CD players were the audiophile shops where everything was really expensive. Now the only place you can buy a new turntable is those same places that were responsible for switching the format. A lot of the audiophiles like the vinyl so much more.

I had offers from at least 20 different bands. It wouldn't be fair to mention names, but some bands were really known, some were not, and there were countless calls from musicians who wanted to be on my album.

'RCA wanted a sweetheart kind of girl. Trust me, it's fights, always fights, just to be myself.'

'No I'm not the first king of controversy. I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley, to do black music so selfishly and used it to get myself wealthy '

What happened is the music listener has become much more of a connoisseur and a king of his own destiny. You can no longer shove an album down their throats and say, 'Here's 15 songs, four of them are good, you know. Spend 20 dollars on this CD.' It's not going to happen. That's what has taken the music industry down.

When I did 'Unwrapped' -- that's one of my favorite albums I've ever done in my life -- I love it when someone listens to the whole album. But I would rather them be able to buy some songs that they like, [rather] than not buy the album at all . . . . You can't fight technology. You can't fight, you know, the consumer.

The music industry is a cruel and shallow money-trench. A long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side.

'As long as you make the record you want, sales don't matter. We have our music and our fans. Everything else is subject to the whims of the marketplace.'

The Squares [his former band] never really fit in. We weren't rock enough. We weren't alternative enough. We weren't new wave enough and we weren't punk enough. Maybe we just weren't the right people for the band.

Kate journeys into new and exciting territories. She is an original in a music world dominated by cover versions, regressive movements and identikit superstars. The direct opposite of the archetypal rock star: compulsively introvert in a world of screaming extraverts, middle-class and deeply English amid England's all-pervasive working class American ethos, boldly feminine in rock's macho climate. Her melodic genius and articulate lyrics make the rest seem moronically simplistic.

The top rockers have a mythic aura about them, the 'superstar,' and that's a basically unhealthy state of things, in fact it's the very virus that's fucking up rock, a subspecies of the virus I spoke of earlier that infests our culture from popstars to politics.

After spending nearly 20 years contracted to a major label, I have mixed feelings about their demise. These companies have profited immensely from your insatiable desire for listening and helped musicians for several decades to reach you. They grew fat and excessive. They exploited and they monopolized. They edited and censured. They've been rapidly loosing their means of production, distribution and promotion to the internet. They have been economizing by dropping artists, cutting staff and folding into one another but they can't keep up with the pace of disintegration. You might not have ever heard my name if Elektra Records hadn't made me one of their artists for hire. I'm both grateful and resentful and you probably are too.

I have no problem with bootlegs, although every time I say that, my lawyer says, 'Oh yes you do.'

The audition definitely went well. They (Def Jam) locked me into the office - till 3am. And Jay Z said, 'There's only two ways out. Out the door after you sign this deal. Or through this window...' and we were on the 29th floor. Very flattering.

Look, I am selling records. This is what I do for a living. I am selling records. I never thought it was going to be a matter of life and death.

Dicko said that he thinks Mark has a problem with her and thinks she doesn't have a recordable voice. Mark agreed but said if David Hasselhoff can sell records so can Hayley.

Same thing happened in the Punk Movement in the late 70's. It's like, major labels were signing punk bands right after the band's first gig, y'know, a punk band would start, play one gig, and get signed to a major label right away, 'cause it's a trend. That just shows there are a lot of old school dinosaurs in the record industry who need to be weeded out.

Kurt Cobain often ridiculed rival Pearl Jam, arguing that it lacked the underground purity of Nirvana - that it was simply an old-line commercial rock band in grunge clothing. But Cobain, who was 27 when he died, liked Vedder personally, and that made him feel guilty about the put-downs. 'I'm not going to do that anymore,' he said in a 1992 interview. 'It hurts Eddie and he's a good guy'; L.A. Times 5/1/94, 'He Didn't Ask for All This' (Cobain about Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam)

Hello, we're major label corporate rock sell outs. (04/17/91 at the O.K. Hotel, Seattle, Washington)

I meet a lot of people, dude, and I've never been star-struck, but I met Scott and I was like, 'Hi Scott - my name is durrrh' He was like, 'Are you alright, dude?' and I was like, 'Yeah - I mean, my name's Chester and I think you're great, I just wanted to tell you' I felt like a total schmuck! He was like, 'Well, are you in a band or what?' and I was like, 'Yeah, I'm in a band called Linkin Park' and he was like, 'You just played today, right?' and I went, 'Yeah' and he went, 'I've heard real cool things about you - good luck!' and I was like, 'Nargggh' And I mean, when I met him, I was in the middle of talking to the bass player from Green Day and these bands are like of the same calibre, but talking to the bass player from Green Day, I was totally comfortable - 'Yeah, dude, what's up, man? It's cool to meet you!' - and here comes Scott and I'm like, 'Urrrgh!' I don't know why - maybe I'm gay!

We all chose the next single. Me, Jay-Z, Evan and Carl. There was actually a fight because there was so many second singles

I just feel bad for all the kids who are forced to buy their music from big chain stores and have to have the edited music

'You know Debbie Gibson writes all her own songs?' No! Fucking just pull me up a chair. 'Yeah, she writes all her own songs about her own real life experiences. 'Yeah, what's the next one called? Mom why am I bleeding? When did we start listening to pre-pubescent white girls? I musta missed that meeting. We have at our fingertips the greatest minds of all-time, the knowledge and history of the greatest thinkers of ALL FUCKING TIME, but no, what's that little white girl saying? Let's go put Debbie Gibson's thoughts on compact disc so they'll never be destroyed.

There's often a lot of stupid ideas like 'you all dress as fruits and pretend you're selling underpants' or 'we'll put you on a bed of nails and drive a truck over the top and photograph you' for the cover.

Only the fact that people have written about the reissue have I realized that it spent seven weeks at No. 1. At the time I did it, I can't remember even taking any notice of it.

I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too ... I got a song about that ... But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it.

Of course [Kate Bush] is still relevant. I wasn't actually in the country when her music first came out, so I only discovered it three or four years ago. What's amazing is that something like 'Wuthering Heights' still sounds so different. I actually saw her about nine months ago, we were just passing at an industry event and I went up to her and said I was a big fan and asked her about the new record. She was really excited about it but quite nervous because she felt that everyone was hyping it up a bit and she just wanted to bring out an album. You know, she's a musician.

'We have all been affected as composers, as teachers, as musicians by recordings to an extent that cannot possibly be calculated as yet or predicted for the future. The music which is being most widely disseminated and most widely discussed, and therefore most widely imitated and influential, is that music which is available on records. The music that is only published is very little known. I don't think one can possibly exaggerate the extent to which the climate of music today is determined by the fact that the total Webern is available on records, that the total Schoenberg is becoming available.' Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

Here's the thing. I always hear that whole 'metal is dead' crap. The truth of the matter is that when we started the Ozzfest, media-wise, yes, metal was dead. But as far as the kids went, it was still huge. It was just that radio and MTV decided it wasn't in vogue with what they wanted to do at the time, so the average person didn't hear too much about it. That's why when it comes to picking the new acts each summer, we have people out there on the internet and in the clubs looking for good music and finding bands that people are excited about. I want to know what the kids are into, because I don't trust the industry.