Record Companies Quotes

• I took my life in my hands and social media has just helped me do that more.

  Imogen Heap

  Hands, Media, Social

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• Blackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.

  Joan Jett

  Stay Strong, Mean, Years

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• My whole team, it wasn't about putting the album out, it was about getting off the record company and going independent or going to another label. To the point we were like, 'Listen, just take 'Lasers.' You can have whatever percentage off the next ten records I do for the rest of my life. I just do not want to be here anymore.'

  Lupe Fiasco

  Team, Independent, Lasers

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• I wanted to produce Nancy LaMott's albums, so I created my own record company.

  David Friedman

  Firefighter, Albums, Records

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• I still have every record company sending every new, hot track to me, to do music videos, so I'm chained by the foot to pop culture. I still know what kids dress like and speak like, and I still hang out with them. It's just the nature of my day job. I am a freak of nature that has to understand them.

  Joseph M. Kahn

  Jobs, Kids, Feet

  Source: collider.com

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• I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.

  Miles Davis

  Kids, Rocks, Years

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• I can do whatever I want, I can have my band, I can use different people, I can use studio players, it's complete, total freedom for me. If I want to make a video, now that I own my own record company, if the video has an American flame being engulfed by a huge puddle of oil, I can do that, I can say that if I want to.

  Richard Patrick

  Player, Flames, Oil

  Source: puregrainaudio.com

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• I saw the Ramones, early on at a country-rock palace in Denver. They were opening for some record-company band, so the local music establishment, and I emphasize the word "establishment," was there in force, and the handful of us who knew the Ramones were up in front. And half the fun was, you know, not only were the Ramones the most powerful band I had ever seen at that point, but they made it look so simple - that anyone could do it, hell, even I could do it. This is what I should be doing.

  Jello Biafra

  Country, Fun, Powerful

  Interview with Jodi Vander Molen, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. February 1, 2002.

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• I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down.

  Lupe Fiasco

  Rap, Eye, People

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• It's hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don't seem to want to talk about music, it's all marketing, and that's part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that's not repulsive.

  Henry Rollins

  People, Marketing, Records

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• The fans like the idea we do what we want. It's not an act. Screw the record company and the beaten path. Without MTV or radio, we still have a huge underground following.

  James Hetfield

  Mtv, Ideas, Fans

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• You have to be talented and you have to be lucky. Record companies are not signing classic rock groups anymore.

  Leslie West

  Rocks, Groups, Lucky

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• It is really sad for the new artists. Where's the next Elvis, where's the next Beatles, where's the Zeppelin? They're out there but they don't have a chance because once upon a time we [musicians of the 60s] had record companies, and they would support you and have point of purchase material and they would give you advances. In other words, they gave you the air to breathe to find yourself and spend the time to learn how to run.

  Gene Simmons

  Running, Artist, Support You

  Source: www.billboard.com

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• I find it ironic that now water is more expensive than music. On the one hand, record companies can't go crying when they've gouged consumers for decades, charging exorbitant prices for CDs that cost 29 cents to make. On the other hand, when music is free, musicians starve.

  Tom Morello

  Hands, Cds, Water

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• There are a lot of people, especially the younger generation who don't feel that they need to support the artists by buying their music because they grew up learning that record companies are evil.

  Bob Mould

  Artist, People, Evil

  "The GQA: Bob Mould". Interview with Lauren Bans, www.gq.com. June 22, 2011.

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• At the (record company) meeting Paul just kept mithering on about what we were going to do, so in the end I just said, 'I think you're daft. I want a divorce.'

  John Lennon

  Music, Divorce, Thinking

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• The record companies really do conspire against the artists. Especially the black artists

  Michael Jackson

  Artist, Black, Records

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• Radio is aimed at the 30-year-old market, so you have to have great music and appeal to get that age group. And you need a record company to believe in you. It's like a bit of the perfect storm.

  Kenny Rogers

  Believe, Years, Perfect

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• When you make a lot of money for a record company, they don't want you to evolve. Growing older, you naturally do.

  Alison Moyet

  Records, Growing, Want

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• I think the consumption of music is at an all-time high. But I think the ways that record companies are trying to monetize it is just all over the place. At the end of the day, music is in the clouds. Before, you could hold it, look at it, turn it around. Now, it's just in the air.

  Jay-Z

  Thinking, Clouds, Air

  Interview with Elvis Mitchell, www.interviewmagazine.com. January 11, 2010.

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• I don't get particularly precious about things like this, though. Like the record company said, "We need a radio edit that delivers the hook" - I don't even know what they consider the hook in that song ["Oh No"] - "that delivers the hook sooner." So I'm like, "Okay. I see that." And they were all walking on eggshells, like is this going to be sacrilegious to me or something, to mess with this art I've created? And I'm like, "Great. I get to tinker with it, I get to mess with my song some more."

  Andrew Bird

  Song, Art, Needs

  Interview with Genevieve Koski, music.avclub.com. January 20, 2009.

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• I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.

  John Fahey

  Records, Forget, Wasting My Time

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• We never let go. Ever. Even with punctuation. It's frightening. I can't see anyone from any record company ever writing an email to Neil and not getting it back, with corrections.

  Chris Lowe

  Letting Go, Writing, Scary

  "The Pet Shop Boys' Commandments". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. October 19, 2003.

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• All the things I used to count on to get my music out there - record companies, they're all gone. And radio stations, they're gone - they're completely controlled by the government. If they're not controlled by the government, they're controlled by a programmer who's controlled by the government. Mainstream radio is suspect. You can't trust it.

  Neil Young

  Government, Radio, Gone

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• The internet has not granted us more control in relation to the record company because we're still bound by an agreement with them not to release our music without their consent. But they generally let us do what we want, anyway, so it doesn't matter who's officially in control.

  Rivers Cuomo

  Agreement, Records, Want

  Interview with Jason Crock, pitchfork.com. January 28, 2008.

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