Top 100 Money And Music Quotes
#1. Because music wasn't free yet, they wouldn't really offer MP3s so you had to buy things to see if you liked it or not. Which is crazy if you think about how much music you bought and then didn't even like the stuff. It was a different world where bands made money off their music.
Marnie Stern
#2. Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds - even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it's music to Italian ears.
Kenneth Fisher
#3. Because I can go to Vegas and make the money I do, I'm able to spend a lot more time producing music that I love.
Diplo
#4. We were all crazy about music and almost all the money we had, we spent for equipment.
Lauryn Hill
#5. I fell into hip-hop right from the beginning. I was a teenager in the '60s, so I was putting all my pocket money into buying LPs. I followed the ascent of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Stevie Wonder. I followed popular music very closely, and I've never stopped.
Simon De Pury
#6. The music business will be revitalized by musicians, not the labels or Live Nation. When the musicians decide to put music first, instead of money, the public will flock to the fruits and the scene will be healthy again.
Bob Lefsetz
#7. When you don't act right to your family and friends, that's bad, but they also have the opportunity to experience the 'good' side as well. Disappointing the fans is an entirely different thing because the fans love your music and save up money to see you in concert.
George Jones
#8. You've got to care about the music ... You'd better not be doing it for the publicity, the fame or the money. And you'd sure better not be doing it because it's a way to make a living, 'cause that ain't always going to be easy. You got to believe it, believe in the music. You got to mean it.
Waylon Jennings
#9. The music is fun and all that, but first and foremost it is a business, it's about money.
Steve Brown
#10. It's very hard to be an artist, on my first album, and I'm like asking for money for a music video for every song - it's so hard to do. You have to pick your battles for sure, but I definitely want - and I've always worked to make it all connect - for all of it to feel cohesive.
Melanie Martinez
#11. There's good stuff going on in modern pop music, but a lot of it is really materialistic and only about money.
Joe Goddard
#12. There are things which money cannot buy; which no music can bring; which no social position can claim; which no personal influence can assure; and which no eloquence can command.
Billy Graham
#13. I don't ever want anyone to hear my music and look at it as just gratuitous violence, or hustling and money-getting - I try to tell the perspective of the woman, the man, the mind, why.
Pusha T
#14. I don't believe in competing, because there's room for everyone. You have to compete with yourself, because your duty to grow as a human being and keeping your humility is much more important than your music career. You can get money, women, travels, but all that's an illusion.
Juan Gabriel
#15. The game is an analogy for life: there are not enough chairs or good times to go around, not enough food, not enough joy, nor beds nor jobs nor laughs nor friends nor smiles nor money nor clean air to breathe ... and yet the music goes on.
Steve Toltz
#16. The money factor had been kind of my excuse as to why I hadn't put out any music. So I just found the cheapest way to make music and get it to people, and that was via the Internet.
Sam Hunt
#17. Musicians talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art
Jean Sibelius
#18. It takes a lot of money to make music and get it to people. It takes a lot of time to make a record sound good.
Grieves
#19. People ask you all the time, 'Why do you do this? Why don't you quit, man, take your money and go home?' I just do it because I love making music.
Ronnie Dunn
#20. Miles got a mystique about him-plus he's at the top of his profession. And he's got way, way, way more money.
Dizzy Gillespie
#21. Life is what we are alive to. It is not length, but breadth. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, history, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, it is to be all but dead.
Maltbie Davenport Babcock
#22. I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn't want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running.
Lady Gaga
#23. Excuse my charisma, vodka with a spritzer. Swagger down pat, call my shit Patricia. Young Money militia and I am the commissioner. You don't want start Weezy 'cause the F is for finisher
So misunderstood but what's a world without enigma?
Lil' Wayne
#24. You don't want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.
Adam Rich
#25. I think to find an escape route out of a music industry that is becoming more and more focused on making money.
Jens Lekman
#26. Music is composed on computers and other electronic equipment; producers don't want to spend money on orchestra.
Sivamani
#27. I sold my soul to the devil. I'm going to hell. I'm headed to hell. I want the money, the women, the fortune, and the fame. That Means I'll end up burning in hell scorching in flames. Satan'll be in to see me later to see if I'm interested in being partners. Devil worshippin', Satan music.
Eminem
#28. Look, Salvador Dali did not paint because he needed the money. No conversation about materialism and music makes sense. You make music and that's that, it doesn't matter why.
Robert Plant
#29. A lot that was happening in 2005, 2006, good and bad, the beats reflected it. It was a lot of money around. People was making music to throw money to.
Gucci Mane
#30. 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
#31. I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.
Robby Krieger
#32. It is not the money but the self-respect and wanting to create good music.
Barry Gibb
#33. I'm not trying to stay in the same place and I'm not trying to compete with what's currently in fashion. That would be dishonest. But, at the same time, I'm different and the music reflects that to some degree.
Eddie Money
#34. There is hardly any money interest in art, and music will be there when money is gone.
Duke Ellington
#35. Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free.
Brian Joyce
#36. In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.
Iggy Pop
#37. The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.
Erykah Badu
#38. I think that commercials can really ruin a song. You know that the person sold the song for a good deal of money, and that was the tradeoff. But, music and picture can marry in a beautiful way, and the reverse also.
David Lynch
#39. People have taken time out of their day and spent their money to come sit down at a concert. And it's jazz music-it's not easy for them to get to it. I don't want them ever to feel that I'm taking their presence lightly.
Wynton Marsalis
#40. education and money. I go to church with the kids for the same reason Genie and I play our grandchildren classical music and litter the floors and chairs all over our home with open art books. Jack, age three, eats his lunch with a big Goya book propped in front of him asking for the
Frank Schaeffer
#41. I like being 35, I like having a bit of money to spend on music and useless gadgets. The net is providing new ways to communicate and cooperate that just didn't exist in the 80s.
Malcolm Wilson
#42. I think we're returning to more of the original vibration of music and creativity through the removal of this distortion called the music industry. That's where we're heading. And it'll cut out a lot of music if people ever expected to make money.
Jane Siberry
#43. Britney and I wore matching denim outfits [to the 2001 American Music Awards]. Yeah, another bad choice. I'd probably pay good money to get some of those pictures off the internet.
Justin Timberlake
#44. If I don't need the money, I don't work. I'm going to spend time with my family and friends, and I'm going to travel and read and listen to music and try to learn a little bit more about how to be a human being, as opposed to learning how to be somebody else.
James Spader
#45. 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
#46. We started playing music from an early age and so we wasn't really aware of that side of it, the weird thing is the more successful you get the more free booze and drugs you get, they should be given to the bands who don't have the money.
Ville Valo
#47. How did he keep playing when money got
really tight, and there was no more food in the house? How did he play on when it became clear he was flunking out of school? Was music really enough when the whole world seemed to be collapsing around him? Or was it just the only thing left?
Antony John
#48. Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
Kurt Vonnegut
#49. You know, I never did music for money. I did music to hear myself in the club, and to hear my creation on the radio.
Swizz Beatz
#50. There's much more money being brought into the advertising and communications business than in the music industry.
Steve Stoute
#51. It's not that you don't make any money doing conscious rap music. You make a lot of money doing this, but if you're greedy and you're not satisfied with $500,000 a year, and you want $2 million a year, then you will suffer as a conscious rap artist.
KRS-One
#52. I wish we were all hippies and did yoga, lived in cottages, smoked weed, accepted everyone for who they are, and listened to wonderful music. I wish money didn't make us who we are. I just wish we could redo society.
Bob Marley
#53. If you want money, buy lottery tickets. If you love music, practice and keep your overhead to the bare minimum. Keep your promises, who you are is more important than what licks you know to any band leader.
Steve Morse
#56. Napster is essentially using the music to make money for themselves and that's the part that's both morally and legally wrong. That I think is more relevant than whether or not I'm losing money.
Hilary Rosen
#57. All I had was the will and the love for music. I couldn't read music or write it. No connections, no car, no money, no bankroll, no clothes, no nothing.
Barry White
#58. I don't find a lot of people actually saying things through music any longer. They are not trying to say anything with their music, they just want to make money with it. I think it's important to actually say something real, something meaningful, rather than just write some trash and try to sell it.
Robben Ford
#59. I never made any money from my music. I don't make that much; I make it flip-flopping between five and ten different disciplines.
Charlemagne Palestine
#60. When I started DJ'ing, it was no big thing. There was no money in DJ'ing, and you did it purely for the love of playing music.
Paul Oakenfold
#61. I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.
David Byrne
#62. Folk music isn't owned by anybody. It is owned by everybody, like the national parks, the postal system, and the school system. It's our common property. There is nobody's name on it. Nobody can make money on it. It's not copywritten.
Utah Phillips
#63. I became alienated from this religious upbringing, and started making music. I wanted to be a big star. All those things I saw in the films and on the media took hold of me, and perhaps I thought this was my god: the goal of making money.
Cat Stevens
#64. I was lucky to get into computers when it was a very young and idealistic industry. There weren't many degrees offered in computer science, so people in computers were brilliant people from mathematics, physics, music, zoology, whatever. They loved it, and no one was really in it for the money.
Steve Jobs
#65. If Barbra Steisand wants to make a picture called 'My Pink Fingernail,' the studios will go, 'Gee, Barbra, what a wonderful idea! Money is no object! Take two years in preproduction and write the music, and you'll direct.'
Mickey Rooney
#66. Even in junior high, I always knew I had a talent for music and I knew I could make money that way.
Bob Seger
#67. The music rights at the time cost me $12,000 in 1964 money, which is about double now or whatever. But I cleared everything. I had a lawyer in New York. And it was cleared for use in a short subject, not a feature.
Kenneth Anger
#68. With charity, money is purified. By service, our actions are purified. With music, our emotions are purified and with knowledge our intellect is purified.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
#69. I think the Internet has hurt music more than it has helped it. The idea of giving music away for free just bothers me. And, when one band or artist gives it away, it devalues the rest of the product from those who would like to make some money or a living from it.
Steve Mahoney
#70. People are used to seeing kids jump around. You know, the target audience, the audience that's spending money on music, like rock and hip-hop - they're used to seeing people get really physically involved in their music.
Eric Lewis
#71. When they look back on me I want 'em to remember me not for all my wives, although I've had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high livin' money I made and spent. I want 'em to remember me simply for my music.
Jerry Lee Lewis
#72. When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body president. The guys I liked were quirky and different: They listened to music I'd never heard of, never had lunch or gas money, and could always make you laugh.
Sarah Dessen
#73. I could have probably gone on and still played the part of the guitar player of Limp Bizkit, but musically I was kind of bored. If I was to continue, it would have been about the money and not about the true music, and I don't want to lie to myself, or to them or to fans of Limp Bizkit.
Wes Borland
#74. It was the case in the 70s and 80s that people believed music could change the world. But now people aren't making music because they want to change the world; they're making music because they want to just make a ton of money.
Sinead O'Connor
#75. My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
A.R. Rahman
#76. I traveled and made money and I wouldn't let anybody get between me and my music. If I belong to anything, I belong to my music ... What you were born to do, you don't stop to think, should I? could I? would I? I only think, will I? And, I shall!
Eva Jessye
#77. Anyway, it fell through because they ran out of money. That was when I learned not to waste your time getting your hopes up or to believe something until it actually happens. We broke up for various reasons, but it was a good band. Jim and Don produced some magical music.
Jamie Muir
#78. Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.
Justin Vernon
#79. The music that really moves me is music that's written by people where there isn't a lot of money and they're really singing with just their voice and a guitar about their feelings and about their life. Their poetry is relatively simple, in the sense that it's about their soul in jeopardy.
Anton Yelchin
#80. Money is important, but I gotta like the song to play it. I won't just jump on anything because someone asked me to jump on it. I'm a musican. I love music. I gotta like it and feel comfortable with it.
Juicy J
#81. As for the music business itself, the key things have not changed that much. It operates like any business and money still keeps things moving.
Tom Jones
#82. Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.
Kyp Malone
#83. Pop music is created by repression - and then the system takes it and makes even more money with it!
Michel Gondry
#84. I am best served in my life's goals if I lay in the dark, brood, sleep, listen to classical music, spend time with my few friends, and chase women. That's what I do. I chase women. I spend time with my few friends. I brood. I sleep. I earn money, and I work.
James Ellroy
#85. Unfortunately, music devolved instead of evolved. The music business got into the hands of lawyers and accountants rather than the entrepreneurial creative people, and that's when the beginning of the end started. It's all based on money instead of art and creativity.
Gary Wright
#86. He would have enough money ... for a family that would fill his house with beautiful music and the silence of good books.
Ann-Marie MacDonald
#87. Most people think its sex, money, and drugs but Hip-Hop is about lyrics, storytelling, and everybody having a different style. That's just another idea of beautiful, being yourself and creating music that represents you and what you like.
Rapsody
#88. The fact that people still know us is, in my opinion, a result of our music and of the big money that runs the music industry today. The people who control the industry are accountants who recycle everything in new, nostalgic packages, and everything else, to make more money.
Rick Wright
#89. You've got to be happy, you have to do this thing [music] for the love. It's not like you go into music because it's going to make a lot of money. It's something you do ... that's the thing. You got to accept all that hard work with it, too. And enjoy it, and love it.
Creed Bratton
#90. I've always been interested in both writing and music. When I first started getting published, I also worked as rehearsal pianist for the Boston Ballet, touring with them all over the U.S.A. and Europe - I wasn't making enough money from writing to support myself.
William Sleator
#91. I'm not the guy that wants to be famous and make loads of money and sell loads of records. I don't want that. I just want to be true. I want to be ... I want to serve music. I want to be honest.
Damien Rice
#92. The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.
Hunter S. Thompson
#93. I'm fascinated with the attitude of younger rock bands, even ones that are making money at it. I don't ever hear them talk about it as a "career." It almost makes me think there isn't even a music industry anymore, like an atom bomb fell and it was just eradicated forever.
Travis Morrison
#94. That was part of the whole original concept. We were thinking, it's off-season, let's do a really fun, local-oriented event, raise money for good causes and bring some music to the valley.
Andy Kaufman
#95. There are periods where you think, "What am I doing?" or "What am I doing it for?"; that's a more scary question. "I've made s - -loads of money, I've left my mark in music, why am I still doing this?," and it takes a while to answer that question.
Noel Gallagher
#96. I think all music - not just rap - has fallen into this very diluted, delusional state, where everyone's singing about money and having cars, and having all this fun; when really, people are losing their homes.
Ice-T
#97. The mention of money did intrigue him, since he did prefer wine, women, and song to beer, whores, and accordion music.
Pip Ballantine
#98. I'm making music that I love and I want to hear. At the same time, things like making money, making crazy money - you gotta find ways to reach to everybody but uplift everybody.
Tyga
#99. I was fairly poor but most of my money went for wine and classical music. I loved to mix the two together.
Charles Bukowski
#100. For me, the best things in life - meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures - are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money.
Ray Dalio
