Quotes About Record Companies

#1. I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.

Don McLean

#2. It's typical of record companies. They sign you because you're unique, and then they want to put you in a mold so they can sell records.

Al Jourgensen

#3. You're starting to see new record companies and business models taking shape, but it takes time.

Simon Le Bon

#4. Well it's because the record companies are pumping away with their commercial stuff. I think it's a shame.

Marian McPartland

#5. These record companies are going to be going out of business pretty soon, because people are just going to be downloading what they want to hear.

Lester Bowie

#6. There are no record companies in Waikiki.

Bruno Mars

#7. I wouldn't say that we're proactively out there hunting down brands to try to fulfill some piece of a larger battle plan or something. If they have things they want to get to us, we're somewhat easily accessible through our managers and record companies.

Lars Ulrich

#8. Well, the good news is that there's quite a lot of cynicism about major labels within radio and the press. I think they have been largely disillusioned by the manner in which the record companies have developed music.

Mick Hucknall

#9. Pop was initially ignored as a moneymaker by the recording industry. In the seventies they were still relying on Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett for their big hits. You know, most of the budget for the record companies in those days went to the classical department - and those were big budget albums.

Tony Visconti

#10. Everybody can perform, there are so many outlets. Musicians are no longer limited. In the past, the record companies made most of the money. I for one am not sorry to see them fade away.

Jake Holmes

#11. [After college] I was going to study at the Sorbon and become a diplomat. Being a diplomat comes in handy when you are dealing with record companies.

Gloria Estefan

#12. The intentions of record companies are not good, from the musician's perspective.

Melissa Auf Der Maur

#13. Record companies, I found out, can put out compilations without your permission.

Pink

#14. If you get rid of a lot of the poseurs by destroying record companies, maybe it's a good trade-off.

Mark Mothersbaugh

#15. This constant pressure from record companies to come up with a hit single or something like that, I find completely tiresome.

Robert Wyatt

#16. There aren't enough people who are scaring the kind of people who work at these record companies.

Greg Ginn

#17. Money don't rule me, record companies don't rule me.

Link Wray

#18. Stop doing what the record companies are doing and do what's in your heart.

Leif Garrett

#19. The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part.

David Byrne

#20. I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs.

Tony Bennett

#21. Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

Graham Parker

#22. Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.

Ornette Coleman

#23. The situation is not good with the record companies. It's just not working out, so I don't plan to record until it's straightened out. In the meantime I'm happy doing my movies and writing the music for the theme songs, whether I sing them or not.

Irene Cara

#24. I'm really lucky that my record companies have been patient with me and leave me alone and give me the time to make it right in my mind.

Sarah McLachlan

#25. What record companies do these days is drain the blood dry of an album, take six singles off it, and harm the longevity of artists' careers by doing it.

Elton John

#26. Rock 'n' roll started to make so much money and generated so much income for the record companies that suddenly it was no longer evil.

John Landis

#27. Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.

David Crosby

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

Michael Jackson

#29. Make a record in your bedroom on a cheap computer, play it on pirate radio, and that's what's it's all about. You can do something really exciting and you don't need any record companies. The way I do everything comes from that, the impact of those two things.

Kieran Hebden

#30. The digital revolution has disrupted most traditional media: newspapers, magazines, books, record companies, radio.

Ken Auletta

#31. The record companies fell apart - quite deservedly. Their corrupting, all-binding contract nonsense had to stop.

John Lydon

#32. You have record companies that sign acts that they think are great, and then they never do anything. Acts that they don't think are really going to do much end up having a career. I don't think anyone really knows what it is that drives somebody to get on their computer and want to download a song.

Jason Aldean

#33. A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.

Marco Brambilla

#34. The music business has changed incredibly. There used to be 50 record companies. Now there's only three, and it's just getting smaller and smaller. But then again, you have the Internet, so anybody who has music can get it out there.

Joey McIntyre

#35. They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't about singles.

Nikki Sixx

#36. Today's consumer is less interested in possessing things and more in experiencing them. That's something the music industry needs to get its head around. Do we even need record companies any more?

Jimmy Chamberlin

#37. I was always told that I was too strange or that I was too cheesy by different groups of people, like the record companies said I was way too weird and the indie people wouldn't even let me in their band.

Mika.

#38. At the beginning, at my shows, there were a lot of press and people from record companies. Now there are people who are there to just listen to the music and are genuine fans.

Seinabo Sey

#39. 'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.

Imelda May

#40. We had an EP out and all of a sudden we find record companies are interested in us, and we're thinking, 'Oh, that's really nice, but we don't think we're ready for it.'

Debbi Peterson

#41. I understand quarterly billing, how the record companies run.

Nikki Sixx

#42. Kids are taking music for free all the time. They have Spotify, Pandora ... The record companies aren't making the kind of music that they used to make. Artists make their money on tours, not from album sales.

Malcolm D. Lee

#43. It's all false pressure; you put the heat on yourself, you get it from the networks and record companies and movie studios. You put more pressure on yourself to make everything that much harder.

John Belushi

#44. Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records.

Mos Def

#45. Oh, you know record companies ... at the end of the day, it's business. If you analyse it, you're just a piece of meat. The minute you go bad, it's: 'Next!'.

Enrique Iglesias

#46. One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.

Moby

#47. When radio stations started playing music the record companies started suing radio stations. They thought now that people could listen to music for free, who would want to buy a record in a record shop? But I think we all agree that radio stations are good stuff.

Niklas Zennstrom

#48. I challenge record companies to show me evidence of a single penny they've lost due to Napster.

Dave Rowntree

#49. I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.

Ornette Coleman

#50. Western record companies haven't always dealt with African musicians in the best way. Giving them a lot of money and telling them they're going to be bigger than Phil Collins is the wrong way to do it!

Youssou N'Dour

#51. Several record companies had rejected my song 'Owner of A Lonely Heart' on the grounds it was 'too left field.' I never create to make a hit just to satisfy some record company executive's quarterly profit statement.

Trevor Rabin

#52. First of all, you needed a budget to do the video. The record companies would pick and choose who got videos.

Nina Blackwood

#53. Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.

George Clinton

#54. My audience is the baby-boomers, the bulk of the population. This is also a group that is being ignored by most record companies because they're not the Top 40 hit singles market. They forget these people still listen to music.

Helen Reddy

#55. I think the good thing about the Internet is to give something away and to sell something else. Get a business model like that because the old brick and mortar record stores are falling apart, and the big record companies are collapsing under their own weight.

Roger McGuinn

#56. Since the decline of record companies and music sales, I've always played live.

Adam Ant

#57. What was great about the 80s was that you still had record companies who would get behind developing you as an artist. You had these bonkers heads of department and A&R people who, even after a flop album, would let you make another one.

Marc Almond

#58. Everything about my life was culturally rich, and all the people I met sort of reinforced the wackiness that was normally inside of me. No one said, 'You can't do that,' until I got to real record companies, that is.

Nile Rodgers

#59. The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?

David Crosby

#60. The only thing the record companies put out now is 'Best of,'

Elton John

#61. Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.

Dimebag Darrell

#62. If you are a superstar, or whatever you want to call yourself, a person who's had outrageous success, and you decide to go indie and tell the record companies to screw themselves? That takes a certain amount of courage. And bullheadedness, really.

Daryl Hall

#63. And looking at today's music scene, I think it's cool that there are a lot of consumers and fans not limited by what radio and the record companies tell them to buy.

Juice Newton

#64. I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.

Estelle

#65. One startup I dream of funding is the one that kills the record companies.

Paul Graham

#66. 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

#67. When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music.

David Crosby

#68. Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

Stan Getz

#69. 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

#70. Those record companies don't know what's happening at all.

Ritchie Blackmore

#71. The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!

Gunther Schuller

#72. I think record companies are criminals.

Jon Bon Jovi

#73. You could have a zillion Facebook followers. Those people don't buy records. It's about a hundred to one ... Record companies, they don't have any money, so they see social media as the free marketing ... So ... 'Billy, light yourself on fire and stand upside down, and that'll market the record.'

Billy Corgan

#74. 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

#75. It's always very special for me to work Chicago. Both of the record companies I was with, early on, were based in Chicago. The music was always huge there.

Frankie Valli

#76. I've been wanting to sing for a long time. I've been singing all my life, and I've tried different record companies, but it seemed like - it was such a struggle and so hard to get out there. So, I said, 'I'm gonna go on American Idol and see how far it takes me.'

Fantasia Barrino

#77. I don't hear record companies coming up with any good ideas or suggestions. Historically, if it ain't their idea, it ain't no good, so you got that to contend with.

Levon Helm

#78. I don't think that old-fashioned idea of record companies exists any more.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

#79. The music pot is broad. It's just unfortunate that the record companies cry the blues as frequently as they do.

Vance Gilbert

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

Leslie West

#81. 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

#82. Albums aren't even selling anymore and there's a reason for that. Record companies are just signing single and ring tone deals and it doesn't seem like they're focusing on albums.

Rahki

#83. We've managed to have a long career that is still quite vibrant, yet we've never had to kow-tow to record companies who said we weren't commercial enough.

Alex Lifeson

#84. There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.

Prince

#85. I left the entertainment industry part of my life behind in 1983, when we decided not to work with major record companies anymore.

Arlo Guthrie

#86. In reality, there's a limit to putting a record out yourself. When it comes to working with major record companies in the context of them owning anything, though, that will never happen. Ever. In my life.

Kevin Shields

#87. I think all record companies should be run by a musician. Just as you wouldn't trust your health to an electrician.

Paul Bley

#88. You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.

Joe Perry

#89. 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

#90. Most of my relationships have been like that - with record companies. I've never had a legitimate business relationship with a company. I've always had a personal relationship with someone in the company.

Ornette Coleman

#91. 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

#92. I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity.

Robin Gibb

#93. Finally, I would like to remind record companies that they have a cultural responsibility to give the buying public great music. Milking a trend to death is not contributing to culture and is ultimately not profitable.

Tony Visconti

#94. The only thing I have no control over is the politics that goes on within the record company. It's always been the same, but it's far tougher now, because record companies are run by financial people; before, they were run by creative people.

Enrique Iglesias

#95. There are very few record companies who will entertain a middle-aged woman coming to them with original material.

Alison Moyet

#96. I put 'Ghost' online hoping to make a couple hundred bucks, but then the next day, I took meetings with five different record companies.

Halsey

#97. Artists were nurtured back in the '70s. Their music was developed by the record companies.

Gary Wright

#98. Leaving the record companies tweaked something inside me and I realised I don't have to deal with labels to make something happen. If I want to meet someone, I don't have to go through the label - I'll just go to them. I took my life in my hands and social media has just helped me do that more.

Imogen Heap

#99. I applied for three jobs in record companies and was offered all of them. I took the most glamorous-sounding job in the promotions department and it began my love affair with the music industry.

Nicki Chapman

#100. I used to run record companies, and I went to the advertising business at 29 years old.

Steve Stoute