Music Industry Quotes

I did a lot of songs that I sold, but then they never came out and I never got paid for it. You learn real fast that the music industry, in the beginning, you're not going to get paid for a while, and then you start getting the accolades. ~ Ester Dean

I believe that the art market is in a place similar to the music industry in 2005. Big changes are coming and the art market will most likely be very different in ten years. However, if you are the art equivalent of Van Halen, you don't really have to change anything. But if you are not Van Halen, then it is time to figure how to adapt to all the changes. ~ Mark Edward

I don't think I'd get caught up in the crazy side of the music industry because it's just not in my nature. ~ Pixie Lott

I thought, 'Okay, what's going to be my edge, and how am I going to define what I'm doing differently?' Once I had that key idea of the software developer as an artist, once I had that idea, a whole bunch of other ideas flowed from that, because I realized that I need to go study the music industry, I need to study the book publishing and Hollywood and figure out how they do things, why they do them that way, and then I need to borrow, and rearrange, the things that they're doing to fit my industry so that I can invent and create this new industry. ~ Trip Hawkins

Even if there were no illegal copying, the advent of digital distribution will put a lot of stress on the movie and music industry. When the distribution costs comes down, that puts more price pressure on the rest of the cost. ~ Edward Felten

I think the iPod is the true face of Republican politics, and I'm in favor of the music industry ... standing up proud and saying it out loud: We in the Chiclet-manufacturing business are not about social justice, ... we're not about a coherent set of national ideals, we're not about wisdom. We're about choosing what WE want to listen to and ignoring everything else ... . We're about giving ourselves a mindless feel-good treat every five minutes. ... We're about persuading ten-year-old children to spend twenty-five dollars on a cool little silicone iPod case that costs a licensed Apple Computer subsidiary thirty-nine cents to manufacture. ~ Jonathan Franzen

I think that when you're making your way up in the music industry, you have all these heroes and the reasons why they are your heroes. As soon as you get into the industry, your guidelines change a little bit. For me, my heroes now are great people first and great artists second. ~ Taylor Swift

I think that every band is different, and in fact that's one of the biggest problems with the old-school music industry is that ... one band would be successful according to a certain approach, and then every other band in the label gets sent down the same tube. ~ Emily Haines

Everything goes in cycles in the music industry. ~ Danny Wood

I'll be honest, watching the music industry collapse has been demoralizing and disheartening at times. ~ Trent Reznor

I wound up becoming an A&R man at London Records in the 1990s, during the boom of Britpop, the last great gold rush of the music industry. I saw incredible greed and terrible behaviour. I was greedy and terribly behaved. ~ John Niven

I think you gotta always do things that keep you excited in an [rap music] industry that's so bullshit. When you know that you have so much energy and so much to give, it would be a shame if the facilitators of that aren't enthusiastic about you doing it, because you've been doing it for so long. So you just gotta figure out ways in this insane business to keep it fresh. ~ Nas

No one really buys records anymore. You can look at sales and do that math real quick. Unfortunately, it's fast food in the music industry. People don't ingest full records anymore. ~ Tommy Lee

I really believe we in the music industry can work together to find a way to bond technology with integrity and just really hope we can teach the younger generation the value of investment in music rather than the ephemeral consumption of it. ~ Taylor Swift

There's a lot of ideology about "free", that we can have free services, free content, it's one of the reasons why the music industry which I defend has been decimated. ~ Andrew Keen

The music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment. And I'm not willing to contribute my life's work to an experiment that I don't feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music. And I just don't agree with perpetuating the perception that music has no value and should be free. ~ Taylor Swift

I play the harmonium. I had learned to use the guitar for a bit before becoming a part of the music industry, but unfortunately didn't pursue it fully. I would love to learn to play the piano because it holds a unique connect for me in terms of rhythm. ~ Kailash Kher

The music industry was invented, like, 100 years ago. I'm talking about the goddess Matangi, who invented music 5,000 years ago. She was the only thing that inspired me. ~ M.I.A.

I think the sports industry and the music industry are all tied in together. ~ SonReal

The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up. ~ Joni Mitchell

The music industry had virtually blacklisted me. ~ Irene Cara

When I started getting so many haters and closed doors, I decided to prove that it could be done. I was a divorced single mother of three at the time and a size 12 - not your typical model artist that labels feel work for the music industry. ~ Jenni Rivera

Music TV in the U.K. is disappearing. 'Top Of The Pops,' 'CD:UK' and shows like that have gone, and it's bringing down the music industry. We should do as much as we can to keep our music TV and producers need to be more willing to accommodate live music. ~ Leona Lewis

Downloadable music is the biggest musical phenomenon since the Beatles, and the music industry is slow to come to grips with that. ~ Chuck D

In the music industry, you meet some not very nice people, some very strange characters. ~ Midge Ure

If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry. ~ James Blunt

Radio is not a partner in the industry. I think that the music industry has continued to depend upon radio, but has ended up pandering to a medium that doesn't care. ~ Don Rose

One thing the music industry has taught me is to manage my expectations. ~ Q-Tip

THE BIG PICTURE A marketing plan is a fluid, living guide to help you focus all of your marketing efforts towards a single goal. No two are alike (well, they shouldn't be). They take into account the strengths and weaknesses of you or your band, and the innovations and new developments that are constantly popping up in the music industry. ~ Mike King

So many people equate money and success with happiness, especially in the music industry. ~ DJ Jazzy Jeff

In a way, the whole music industry is just catering to the inherent esteem issues all these artists have - it lays it all out on the line and baits the artist, like a light baits a mosquito. And you go right into it. With every comment on the internet, you go up, you go down, and it's a big shitshow full of uneducated people. ~ Willis Earl Beal

This civil action is another case of a tragedy that has become all too familiar in the music industry: a business manager and professional advisers exploit an immensely talented artist's loyalty and trust through greed, self-dealing, concealment, knowing misrepresentation and reckless disregard for professional fiduciary duties. ~ Leonard Cohen

My experience in the music industry made me very thick-skinned. Your art is something very personal and there's never a shortage of critics when it comes to art. ~ Romany Malco

I've been working in the music industry since I was 15 years old, and I feel like I've always been ahead of my time. ~ Wynter Gordon

You don't see a lot of black rock stars. The music industry tends to be segregated stylistically. It's hard for a black artist to cross over to rock music. ~ Lance Reddick

In the music industry, intelligence in women is undervalued. ~ Bat For Lashes

When I got into the music industry, I wasn't focused on being the most famous artist or even getting a major record deal. It was just to make music on my own terms or create my own image, do my own hair, do my own makeup. ~ Janelle Monae

There are a lot of producers and people in the music industry who take credit for the work of others when it's not actually their work. Especially big producers - they have a song that's written by one guy with a produced mix by someone else and then it's sung by someone else. ~ Howard Lawrence

I had left the music industry at the end of 2001, after 10 years, and had spent three years writing every single day - producing two unpublished novels, one abandoned novel, and three unproduced screenplays. The word 'no' and I were on more than nodding terms. The word 'no' and I were talking about going on holiday together. ~ John Niven

The compact disc may now be outdated technology, but a lot of music albums are still released on CD. A standard 700-megabyte CD is actually 703.125 megabytes (a rare case of the music industry giving something extra away for free), which is a total of 5,898,240,000 1s and 0s. By my calculations, the number of possible different CDs in base-10 would have 1,775,547,162 digits. Which is also the number of corners a hypercube would have in 5,898,240,000 dimensions. So whenever a musician claims they have written a new album, all they have really done is choose a corner on a very high-dimension hypercube. ~ Matt Parker

Anytime I shoot a video, I just think of anything I can do to set myself apart from everybody in the music industry. ~ Ludacris

I'm just basically trying to make music that feels good. Right now in the music industry there's a real lack of intimacy. You don't really connect with the artist as much anymore, and you don't really understand where they are. I'm basically doing music that illustrates who I am and where I am in my life. ~ Tristan Wilds

I think as far as the music industry is concerned, it's kind of been the wild, wild West in a way with the Internet, which is not necessarily a bad thing to me. ~ Queen Latifah

I wanted to be a vet, a nurse, a chef - I mean, anything but the music industry. But once I hit high school, the bug really bit me. You can't deny where you come from and what's in your genes, and music definitely was. I haven't looked back since. ~ Hillary Scott

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that. ~ Van Morrison

What I don't like about the music industry is everything. It's very Satanic, people are evil, they talk about money, they talk about things that don't really matter, and they brainwash everybody. ~ Hopsin

What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to. ~ Ani DiFranco

She now represents the Western United States, thus proving politics is even more accepting of the strange, unusual, and mostly useless than the music industry. ~ John Zakour

My hope for the future, not just in the music industry, but in every young girl I meet ... is that they all realize their worth and ask for it. ~ Taylor Swift

I don't even know what words to use to talk about the music industry anymore. But the business has changed a lot - the methods of releasing music. ~ Anthony Kiedis

The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious-and justified in that response-but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll-and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music. ~ Steve Winwood

You know I really don't like to think about the fact that I'm a girl in relation to the music industry. I was just a kid who wrote down thoughts to organize her brain and that turned into music, like any other writer or musician ... so, I happen to be a girl. I don't consider that part of it really.. It may disappoint some feminists out there that I don't want to harp on women and men being equal. ~ Lacey Mosley

The people who blame everything and every body else for their lack of success, tended to continue to have a lack of success.
Your Proactive, problem solving minded, assertive and responsible approach is going to carry you much further than whining, blaming, pointing fingers and justifying your failures. ~ Loren Weisman

Music industry is so fickle, there's so many politics. I think a lot of people don't pay attention to the credits or the artistry no more. I think there's so much concern about what's going on right now instead of the actual artistry. But that's how the record business is, but for acting, I got that covered. ~ Bow Wow

The business has changed so much that they're able - we're able these days in the music industry to be able to control our own destiny. ~ Bobby Brown

We have seen the damage already caused to the music industry and we have to continue to make the public and government bodies globally aware of the damage that will happen if DVD piracy is not brought under control. ~ Callum McDougall

I've never been in the music industry, only acting. ~ Victoria Jackson

Everyone has learned how to monetize music except the music industry. ~ Pete Wentz

In a phone interview in 1994, Celia Powell stressed two sentiments: music was her father's life; it was the driving force of his existence, in her opinion. And she thought the music industry had very much taken advantage of him.121 ~ Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr.

It's not my job to tell people how to consume music. I just want them to consume music. ~ Eric Alper

I don't think that the real enemy of the music industry is illegal downloading; I think the real enemy of the music industry is radio. ~ Perez Hilton

I'm less concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going right.
Plenty of people can do that.
I'm more concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going wrong.
That's a rarity and shows true honor, true character and will lead you that much closer to success. ~ Loren Weisman

I was like the roadie, I was carrying gear, checking things in at airports, making sure they had flowers backstage and interfacing with promoters who were sometimes really nice and sometimes a little seedy. It was a great apprenticeship, to be in the music industry. ~ Annie E. Clark

When I was first starting out in the music industry, I was always coupled in the same sentence with Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera - and I was probably the worst of them. I think a lot of people back then thought, 'Mandy Moore ... she'll probably go back to where she came from in a year.' ~ Mandy Moore

A lot of people ask me, 'How did you have the courage to walk up to record labels when you were 12 or 13 and jump right into the music industry?' It's because I knew I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in middle school. Because in the music industry, if they're gonna say no to you, at least they're gonna be polite about it. ~ Taylor Swift

Starbucks has changed the rules of engagement for the music industry. ~ Howard Schultz

Indie music is 'it' now. It's kind of a revolution to the music: 1980s, 1990s music was getting very sanitized; they were complying with the music industry. Music was getting more and more dead in a way. Now, because of the social climate that's very severe, the artists are compelled to start being real. It's really great that indie music is now. ~ Yoko Ono

Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you're making your own records and selling them online. ~ Gus Van Sant

L.A. to me feels like music industry, and Nashville to me feels like music community. ~ Sheryl Crow

We've learned the lesson that the music industry didn't learn: give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it. ~ Kevin Spacey

When I watched American Idol, I always thought Simon was the most realistic. Simon's like, It was absolutely horrid. That's what they tell in the music industry. ~ Toni Braxton

I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletand check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing. ~ Janis Ian

About 1990 there was a huge shakeup in the music industry and the 6 major record companies fired all the music people and hired business graduates to take over the spots. So the music became not as important. What really became important was the bottom line, how much money you could make. ~ Geoff Tate

If people are talking about you, that's great. You start making more money, that's great. You get to go to weird places, that's great. The music industry is weird, especially with the Internet. People are calling you all kinds of weird stuff, like 'jangly.' ~ Mac DeMarco

The music industry is such a different world from the acting world. Everything is really last minute, but I love the challenge, and I love owning my material and being able to put out what I want. ~ Hayley Kiyoko

I think we have to change our thinking and the music industry has to shift and look at how people are acquiring their music now. They want it differently. They're getting it in a different way and you just have to adjust. ~ Warryn Campbell

The Grammys make me hate music, and certainly everyone in the ass-licking music industry. ~ Trent Reznor

Mentorship is really important. I really like to talk to people who have been in the music industry much longer than me about artists' block, things I'm struggling with, or the music business. It's really important for artists to have a community. Sometimes you can feel quite isolated. ~ Bat For Lashes

I think to find an escape route out of a music industry that is becoming more and more focused on making money. ~ Jens Lekman

I initially wanted to work in the music industry more on the A&R side. While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business, so you could say I had a natural knack for the advertising world. ~ Adam Kluger

I find that as a female boss in the music industry, it's difficult to actually be treated as if you actually are the boss and to have people act on your instructions and take you seriously. Like you call up people who are working for you and say, "I'd like to see such-and-such document," and they tell you that you don't need it. Then you have to spend time convincing them that it doesn't matter whether they think you need it or not, they're supposed to hand it to you. ~ Sinead O'Connor

I have been in the music industry ever since I was six years old. I have been inspired by so many great artists and of course trying to be original at the same time. I try not to work under boundaries while I'm making music. ~ Asher Monroe

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine. ~ Gerry Rafferty

Good new songs are the backbone of the music industry. There isn't an artist out there who could survive without hit songs. ~ Kara DioGuardi

I recognise a lot of myself in these kids who enter shows like Pop Idol. It's very hard to get into the music industry and you have to take every opportunity that you can. Something like Pop Idol is a great opportunity but unfortunately, I think it's tainted by the people that make these shows. ~ Melanie Chisholm

Roc Nation is such an incredible, unique team, especially in the music industry. Everyone genuinely loves and cares about each other. ~ Rita Ora

The music industry can feel wonderful, but it can also feel very cold. ~ Sara Bareilles

Mick Jagger has produced some great films and brought us stories about the music industry that have changed the way we think about how music is made. ~ Olivia Wilde

I hope that the movie industry will learn from the experiences of the music industry and will be much more constructive in their approach to P2P. ~ Sam Yagan

A whole generation of veteran composers has never taken a stand or provided an example and has produced in the music academies generations of docile workers for the music industry. What can you expect from downtrodden workers who see music as a type of profession, like stenography, and not an act of creation that by its nature is subversive? ~ Itay Talgam

I want the music to be heard as close to when I made it, as much as possible. I don't want to get into some "future of the music industry" thing, or where I stand on digital this or that, but I think it's ridiculous that a lot of people in the industry plan so far ahead that it makes a lot of improvisation impossible and makes a lot of people's expectations fixed and not fluid. ~ Bradford Cox

In the music industry I get a lot of public judgement. Any time the topic of my religion surfaces, there are always people who react negatively, telling me to leave my crazy beliefs out of it. The problem is, I can't. My beliefs are as much a part of my being as my music, or my family, or my obsession with earthy-tasting cereal. Luckily, after all the rejection I faced on my mission, I'm no longer afraid of negative reactions. I've already heard it all--- face-to-face. Hateful comments still hurt, but they don't hold the same weight they once did. Besides, say what you want, but I'm a short-haired angel. (Or at least I was to one man on a subway.) ~ Lindsey Stirling

If I hadn't had that decade in the music industry and, perhaps more importantly, time to reach the point of being sick and disgusted with it, I wouldn't have written 'Kill Your Friends.' That book gave me my whole career. ~ John Niven

No matter what does, or doesn't, happen for me in the music industry, getting to play the Opry as a kid was always be a highlight of mine. ~ Charlie Worsham

I'm tired of the music industry these days! They polish everything until it no longer sounds real. The raw uncut sound is something I think no genre but alternative and Aerow music retain. ~ Clive Langer

Why is is that all people in Hollywood think, oh short, black and tattoos, ohhh he's in the music industry? No motherfucker, I'm an Author. ~ Slicktor Victor Robinson

I don't think piracy is going to kill the music industry. But digital technology and the ability to download will change the packaging from CDs to a single-based business. ~ Richard Parsons

Well, I know a guy, he's from far far away
He's a songwriter, he got something to say
He says, "People in this city are too busy to hang out
This town's so spread out, no one would hear you if you shout"
Everyone's got a script to sell and someplace else they want to be
There's always a lock that would open if you could just find the key"
(It Ain't Easy Being Green) ~ Shannon McNally

The music industry is a vicious business. It chews women up and spits them out. ~ Tori Amos

I saw the 'Popstars' programme and to me it looked more like 'Opportunity Knocks' than the kind of cutting-edge postmoderism that The Guardian would like to have us believe it was. I think what it's more about is the public and the music industry's bloodlust. It's just like someone itching to say 'Oh, confound it all, let's bring back hanging, that was good entertainment'. ~ Luke Haines