Top 100 Music Business Quotes
#1. I feel like I've survived so much, and been through so much. And sometimes I miss the innocence of those times. Life was different. New York was different. The music business was different. I miss the simplicity of it, the naivete of everyone around me.
Madonna Ciccone
#2. I think no matter how you think about your music, you're ultimately in the music 'business.' I think you have to be business-minded in some sense. And for me, the real goal ... is positive intention and social change through music. It doesn't mean that can't turn a profit.
Mary Lambert
#3. The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don't exist any longer.
John Oates
#4. There are peaks and valleys in anything and that is especially true for the music business. It is very inconsistent. But if you are wise, you can let those downs really bring you to another level of your personality.
Bryan White
#5. I think the music business is probably not happy with what we've done, because the people buying the record have actually got to pick what they want to buy, rather than being told what they should buy.
John Otway
#6. I suppose that by being absent from the music business, it appeared that I just dropped out, but really I never did. I was continuously working and doing various things.
Cat Stevens
#7. Getting back to the point, a guy like Jerry, he deals with the business, and he doesn't see it as being evil or ugly, it's what you have to do, and I mean I know there's some really ugly parts to it and parts which drive me nuts, but not in the same way as music business.
Trevor Rabin
#8. I think the music business is becoming more difficult. It's really taken a big hit with piracy, so it's a lot more difficult. I mean, it was kind of an impractical career choice when I did it 25 years ago, but nowadays it's truly reckless.
Cliff Martinez
#9. Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say 'This is a good song' as somebody who is in the music business.
Kenny G
#10. You shouldn't be in the music business if you're posing.
Rod Stewart
#11. The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.
James Surowiecki
#12. When I get asked for advice for a young person starting in the music business, I tell them, 'Play every chance you get, and be real lucky.'
Johnny Gimble
#13. I came from the music business, which reputedly has the biggest egos, but I really think the airline world caps it.
Tony Fernandes
#14. I've always just adored music. It's my first love, really. I admire and respect people in the music business. You really have to work hard and diligently. Sometimes actors can be lazy and get away with it, but you can't do that if you're a musician.
Blythe Danner
#15. I've been around the music business for a long time now, and I've had a lot of chances to do movies. But I didn't really want to do any until I found stuff that started to hit me in the right place.
Tim McGraw
#16. Punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business.
Moby
#17. As a child, I was always very interested in music and had friends who were in the music business. I kind of accidentally fell into it and loved it. There was no reason not to - it was a great career.
Hooman Majd
#18. In those days, if you wanted a new car or a holiday, you'd phone up the office and they'd send you some cash. You never had a bank account. I don't know anyone from the music business in the Seventies that it didn't happen to.
Ozzy Osbourne
#19. My lifelong friend and mentor Frank Barsalona is gone. And the music business as we knew it went with him.
Steven Van Zandt
#20. I was tossed all over the place growing up, which I guess prepared me for the music business, but the one thing that has always been there, that has never ever left me, has been country music.
Kellie Pickler
#22. The kids of today have taken over the music business - most of them very young. Simply because they write and jot down a few notes, they have the idea that they can write songs.
Rudy Vallee
#24. You can't ever really replace Jon Anderson because he's been such a force in the music business.
Chris Squire
#25. I think the Grammys are nothing more than some gigantic promotional machine for the music industry. They cater to a low intellect and they feed the masses. They don't honor the arts or the artist for what he created. It's the music business celebrating itself.
Maynard James Keenan
#26. The '60s was a magical time in the music business. So much creativity and talent. I think a lot of it came from the fact that we had grown up before rock n' roll. We listened to all the great songwriters and big bands, songs with great lyrics and melodies. I think that really influenced everybody.
Frankie Valli
#27. The one thing about the music business is that there is no rulebook. It's not like the NFL or something where there's four downs to get ten yards or baseball where it's three strikes and you're out.
Zakk Wylde
#28. I feel like once the song is done, you put it out there and if people want to do bizarre remixes, if people want to make strange videos, great. You know, like chaos theory applied to the music business.
Moby
#29. The music business is motivated by money. Music is motivated by energy and feelings.
Erykah Badu
#30. When I got into the music business in 1976, there weren't many women on the roster. As a woman, you don't complain; you work twice as hard, and you do your job.
Reba McEntire
#31. Things can turn ugly so quickly in the music business, especially if you have an unexpected success.
Dean Wareham
#32. I think in certain areas the demand is greater than it has ever been, and my business is better than it's been in 30 years. The music business is so precarious, as you know-you've got to make it while you can make it, and that's exactly what we're doing.
George Shearing
#33. What happens in the music business is that if you step out of your little spot to do something else, the sand falls right into where you stood and you're gone, you're history.
Nancy Sinatra
#34. I still like to play the guitar, but I rarely have anything to do with the music business these days. I mean, there is no music business anymore, is there?
Steve Jones
#35. I needed a break, and going to culinary school turned a lightbulb on that I didn't have to make music. The people in the music business forget that not only is there an entire world of people out there who do not care what we do, we are not creating the wheel.
Kelis
#36. Miley Cyrus, like all of us, needs to be loved. We all come from complicated parents ... I understand her, and I love her, and I think things will be different with her. But you know, in the music business, sometimes you have to shock a little.
Richard Simmons
#37. Forget about surviving 40 years in the music business. Just surviving 27 years of Nicole Richie has been a struggle-and-a-half, I want to tell you. I stand here as a survivor, I want you to know, for all the parents out there.
Lionel Richie
#38. The music business, and the travel that comes with it, is stressful, challenging, redundant, exhausting, exciting, and often very depressing.
Mark Kozelek
#39. There's so many people in the music business or even in general who will tell you that you can't do this or that just because you haven't already had success but I feel like anyone can do anything they put their mind to as long as they stay devoted and stay passionate.
Jeremy Davis
#40. [Commercial radio] is owned by one or two corporations now, and they're not in the music business. They're in the advertising business ... So let's not kid ourselves. If you want to hear music, go buy a guitar.
Elvis Costello
#41. When you're in the music business, everything is very personal, because you are invested in everything; there's a very deep, personal attachment to your music.
Larry Mullen
#42. On the downside, to paraphrase Thom Yorke talking about the music business, we're still having to deal with the stench of the last fart of the dying corpse of this regressive vision that America is a white, middle-aged, male, conservative country.
Edward Norton
#43. Singers come and go; the music business waxes and wanes. The blues are popular and unpopular, often at the same time.
Linda Barnes
#44. Music has always been an important thing to me in my life and understand I've worked in the music business.
Taylor Hackford
#45. New generations have unprecedented power to make great changes. Take the music business for example. The new generations have toppled the music industry by file sharing, downloading, and Myspace. Rock 'n' roll belongs to the people.
Patti Smith
#46. The music business is rougher than the movie business. In film you get noticed in a small role, even in a movie that bombs. But in records you better have that hit or else it's 'See you later.'
Amy Madigan
#47. There's no difference in dealing with the music business with the majors than any other competition. The music business is way more cutthroat than any other business.
Suge Knight
#48. I've done well, I've been disappointed, and I think it all goes back to you. Of course the labels are going to be the labels. It's the music business. You are a business. That's what they do. So you've got to protect yourself.
Mary J. Blige
#49. I'm not really interested in participating in mainstream culture. Participating in the mainstream music business is, to me, like getting involved in a racket. There's no way you can get involved in a racket and not someway be filthied by it.
Steve Albini
#50. I'm feeling like the music business is reaping what it's sown. It's going through what inevitably it was going to go through. It was a very decadent, very glamorous business that took advantage of a lot of people for a long time and didn't do things right and had a poor business model.
Adam Levine
#51. That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
Jackson Browne
#52. You will have to look a long way before you find a bunch of scum-suckers more greedy, humourless and deserving of death than the suits in the music business.
Terry Pratchett
#53. At the end of the day, there's only a few major stars in the music business, and then there's all these people that are aspiring to be that.
John Legend
#54. When I went to City of Bath College, I studied the music business.
Gabrielle Aplin
#55. I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting.
Adam Kluger
#56. When you are a journalist in the music business, as I was, you end up dying or going to the gym - I chose the gym.
Tony Parsons
#57. The truth is an artist like me who doesn't get the type of promotion that we see more commercial artists receive, and especially in this climate of the music business, you have to be creative about how you promote yourself.
Chrisette Michele
#58. Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.
Moby
#59. My brother started in the music business, and I was an actor - we were both in the entertainment industry, but doing separate things. Then he went over to New Line and started their soundtrack department, that's how he got his foot in the door.
Noah Emmerich
#60. Nowadays, with the state of the music business, for any artist, whether you're up-and-coming or you've been in it for awhile, you have to explore different revenues and different ways of expressing yourself.
Mary J. Blige
#61. The music business is really, really small. The real music is becoming almost extinct, if you don't stay true to who you are.
Mary J. Blige
#62. I'm a binge writer. I work in the music business fulltime, in artist management and developing songwriters and recording artists, and so juggling my job I carve out as much time as I can on the weekends.
Ruta Sepetys
#63. I've learned the importance of loving what you do. I have also learned more patience due to the nature of the music business.
Randy Travis
#64. Some artists are told what to like and told definitions of what the music business is. That's a problem. Music is artistry, and you want your music heard, your act known. But artists don't know. They are ignorant the minute they sign a contract.
Chuck D
#65. Pop music I have always loved best. But the more extreme, fascist-led examples of the music business I tend to detest the most.
John Lydon
#66. Most people involved in the music business, and it's probably not just the music business ... aren't necessarily people that I like.
Buzz Osborne
#67. But the music business is no more about truth on the outside of the Christian ghetto than it is on the inside.
Mark Heard
#68. I wanted to do an acting role in a movie that had nothing to do with the music business or in which I would play a singer or a songwriter. When I act, I don't even want to be thought of as Ne-Yo.
Ne-Yo
#69. You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.
Barry McGuire
#70. I think musicians and artists are the most philanthropic people I know. Their charity record of the music business would hold up to the work of anybody.
Glenn Frey
#71. The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.
Alan Greenspan
#72. It's very tough for a woman in the music business, and he really was such a motivator from the beginning, when I was super-shy, and he saw a lot in me on a personal level that he knew could carry through on the stage.
Gloria Estefan
#73. Obviously, as the music business has suffered tremendously, with being able to illegally download everything, it's also become amazingly easy to find new bands, because everyone can put their stuff online. Even if you can't find a record label, you can find these awesome bands, all over the world.
Jorma Taccone
#74. Commitments are one of the worst things to have in the music business. They're very annoying.
Neil Young
#75. Before the whole [music] business was calibrated around the selling of records. I never could have imagined that live performance would become kind of a vortex of the business. It's such a seismic shift really.
Arthur Fogel
#76. Being in the music business requires having a very strong resolve. You must be completely committed to the craziness that will inevitably ensue when pursing a career in music. There is no one who is immune to this. Not even the biggest music icons.
Wendy Starland
#77. Don't cheat yourself out of music. Music is one thing. The music business is another thing. Save enough of yourself to keep living anyway. Save enough joy in your heart to enjoy it. Let your reward be in the doing of it.
Bill Withers
#78. It's a scary question for a musician or songwriter today - what does the future hold? It is a strange time in the music business too; it feels like we are all in some kind of transitional period, stuck between old technology and new.
Dean Wareham
#79. I am involved in the creation of software, and I'm also in the music business.
Frederick Lenz
#80. If you had ever heard my album you would know that I could never consider the music business!
Dwayne Hickman
#81. Who would want to break into [the music business]? It's like a bank that's already been robbed.
Randy Newman
#82. I have very much enjoyed being in the music business in different roles through five different decades.
Peter Asher
#83. I never thought of having platinum albums and winning awards. I just wanted to write songs and sing when I started out in the music business.
Randy Travis
#84. I always knew, that in some way, I'd be connected to, and involved in, the music business.
Jeff Healey
#85. I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing ... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change.
Tom Petty
#86. There just is exponentially more money in the movie business than in the music business. As a result there are more people involved in the creative process.
Adam Duritz
#87. I really worked with icons in the music business, which really had a strong effect on me. It wasn't just pick-up gigs.
Kevin Eubanks
#88. I've always treated the music business as a business.
Simon Cowell
#89. My goal in this music business is to be here as long as I'm alive. I want my music to be here. I want to be the Michael Jackson and the Prince of hip-hop. I want to be a legend. I want to change the world. I want to give them songs that mean something.
Petey Pablo
#90. The music business has let me touch a lot of people with my talent.
Britney Spears
#91. The best decision I ever made, period, was to get into the music business.
Ja Rule
#92. I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
Alan Greenspan
#93. I like thinking of myself as invisible. I find it a very advantageous way to live. Unfortunately, its not the way the music business works. If you don't create some kind of public image, it gets created for you.
Tom Verlaine
#94. Great music can come from anywhere around the globe. And there has always been a music business. It just wasn't recorded, nor was it centered in New York, London, Los Angeles or Nashville but rather St Petersburg, Vienna, Berlin, Milan and Paris.
Seymour Stein
#95. I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.
Frank Black
#96. Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly - they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves.
Jackson Browne
#97. I have never had a great love of the music business, I never have.
Ginger Baker
#98. The music business doesn't take up that much of my time. I probably should put a little more energy into it.
Alan Jackson
#99. In 1989 I sort of got back into the music business and one of the reasons I got back in is [that] I put the first All Stars band together. It's actually progressed from that every other year, or every two years, I've put that together ... more and more realizing that's what I do.
Ringo Starr
#100. It's a small percentile of people who see one dime out of the music business.
Chad Kroeger
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