Quotes About Record Labels

#1. Some record labels want to package you in a certain way and we didn't want that. Once the record company saw we had some substance and were not a one hit wonder. They got 100% behind us.

Christian Burns

#2. When our video of 'Smooth Criminal' came out, suddenly we started getting all kinds of offers. We were getting calls from TV shows like 'Ellen DeGeneres' and from record labels.

Luka Sulic

#3. Record labels collude with some of the radio stations, and the radio stations have their play lists, dependent upon what they call the, quote, 'hits.' What's commercially viable gets recycled, endlessly repeated, and as a result of that, the progressive music can't break in.

Michael Eric Dyson

#4. I've always had to deal with being biracial, even in music. When I came on the scene, I'd go to these record labels, and they'd say things like, "Lenny Kravitz. That's a weird name." I'm brown-skinned and I've got these dreadlocks and I've got this Jewish last name.

Lenny Kravitz

#5. We were 6 feet under. A lot of people gave up on us, including fans and critics and show promoters and record labels.

Jacoby Shaddix

#6. There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

Fred Armisen

#7. In a sense, the music business and I haven't always been the best of bedfellows. Artists often have to fight their corner. Your music goes through these filters of record labels and media, and you're hoping you'll find someone who'll help you get your work into the world.

Annie Lennox

#8. Island Records was the first record label to ... acknowledge me. After that, quickly, Republic Records, and then Atlantic Records, Sony Records and Warner Bros. It was all the labels at once. It was absolutely insane, like, knowing that this many record labels were interested in me.

Shawn Mendes

#9. I'm the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.

Ester Dean

#10. If people stop being interested, it's because you haven't written a good enough album. Music will always be the most powerful thing. It doesn't matter what record labels or journalists say. It's the song.

Tom Odell

#11. This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

Andy Taylor

#12. Even though we're not the most punk rock band, the way we've done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves.

Brandon Thomas

#13. I love the road. That's always been my goal. I've said that to many record labels. I want to make records. The road is my favorite. Some people hate the road, I love the road.

Gary Allan

#14. The people who are competing business-wise out there want what other successful labels and artists have. I don't want what they have; I want my own path, my own sound, my own identity. Record labels care nothing about identity or artistic freedom, they want good business.

Joe Nichols

#15. I hate record labels. They think they know everything. I want to hear them try to sing it.

Jessica Simpson

#16. 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

#17. The rise of the Internet has caused the demise of the record labels, and has destroyed the music business of old, but it's also created new opportunities for young artists.

Judy Collins

#18. I'm recording another demo for another batch of record labels that we'll shop it around to.

Ahmed Best

#19. In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that.

Dave Van Ronk

#20. When you come off 'The X Factor,' you're more likely to be a failure than a success because people almost want you to fail. There's this kind of feeling that you're separate from everyone else. You get it from artists, people in the industry, people at record labels.

Olly Murs

#21. I am a singer first and foremost. I was lucky enough to have a manager, when I was 15, who knew the heads of a lot of record labels at the time.

Hayley Orrantia

#22. I think that's the problem in a lot of music. We've got these record labels.

Teena Marie

#23. My record producer [David Kahne] said the major record labels these days are like dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid. They know it's going to hit. They don't know when, they don't know where it's coming from. But it's sort of hit already. With iTunes, and all of that.

Paul McCartney

#24. I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Gavin Bryars

#25. It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

Evan Dando

#26. Knowing record labels and knowing the kinds of things they would object to-they just object to everything that's interesting.

Aimee Mann

#27. I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, 'Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we'll talk.'

Taylor Swift

#28. Record labels have enjoyed a 100-year monopoly of selling plastic and now they're up against a different format.

Ian MacKaye

#29. Nowadays, it's a lot more in the kids hands. You don't really need a record label. You can get the money together yourselves. You can just do it through Myspace. There are bands that are huge, without record labels today. Now, I think it's a lot more, in kids hands.

Mattew Nicholls

#30. The record labels used to spend money on advertising, and social media has replaced that entirely - it's putting magazines out of business. It's put big companies into completely reinventing their strategies.

Steve Aoki

#31. I got all these books about, like, what you need to know to enter the entertainment industry. And I remember I sent my music to record labels, and I took these little DVDs and sent them all over the place. And either no one got back to me or they just kept saying, 'You're too different.'

Lindsey Stirling

#32. In the end, it is your responsibility to read the small print, whether it is for gig contracts, record contracts, investors, management, booking agents, or anything else. You can blame everyone else for your mistakes, but when you make them, you end up being the one who has to pay.

Loren Weisman

#33. When you record for a label, they own that material in perpetuity, meaning that they can release, chose not to release , or repackage it any way they so choose ... with or without the permission of the artist.

Edgar Winter

#34. At heart I've always been a music fan. That part of me has never changed since I was a little kid, sitting in a room watching a record go round, looking at the colour of the labels.

Elton John

#35. To see a lot of the smaller labels disappear or get gobbled up by the bigger labels, that's a shame. It was a bit of a shock at first to see the demise of the record stores.

Phil Collins

#36. I was always looking to record, but how much I actually pursued it was another thing. The major labels weren't that interested in me, and the smaller labels didn't have any money to do anything.

Dan Hicks

#37. The Internet has obviously wiped music off the human map - killed the record shop, and killed the patience of labels who consider debut sales of 300,000 to not be good enough.

Steven Morrissey

#38. There is such a thing as good interference from your record label. I don't think I get enough interference from my record label.

Elton John

#39. If a record label will sign you in order for you to be moulded into something that can make more money for them, then you should get out of there if you're that artist.

Matt Corby

#40. Its been nearly 1.5 years since the last PLUS 8 record, but it seemed fitting that this record in particular, made by a skinny white kid from Canada, became part of the labels collection and history.

Richie Hawtin

#41. For decades, Billboard had to rely on record-store owners and radio stations to report the most-bought and most-played songs. Both parties lied, often because labels nudged or bribed them to plug certain records, or because store owners didn't want to promote albums they no longer had in stock.

Anonymous

#42. And the next album I do is going to be different because I'm going to change. I already did that thing where I had a band - and I had a great time with a band - but it was almost like pandering to get a record label deal.

Laura Bell Bundy

#43. There's no school you can go to where you can study how to run a record label. Every day was a learning experience.

Bruce Pavitt

#44. The first record I made when I was 17. Labels merged and plans didn't work out, but plans never work out as planned. But I never stopped making music. I never had a backup plan. I never thought, 'Maybe I should just write, or maybe I should ... ' I just kept going.

Ashley Monroe

#45. I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

David Byrne

#46. 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

#47. All I want to do is give the world my heart ... Record label tryina make me compromise my art.

Erykah Badu

#48. I think that every record label has its trials and tribulations, its ups and downs. The only thing you can do is hope to recognize what it is that makes you great, and to try and continue to capture it.

El-P

#49. I was offered seven deals from seven different major labels between 2009-2011, and to be quite honest ... nowadays, you need a hit record, a great radio team, an amazing PR firm, social media, a big budget, a team that is ready to work extremely hard, and the drive and passion to win!

Ashanti

#50. It's what's on the record not what labels on it. You know, that's like getting a box of cornflakes and eating the cardboard.

Elvis Costello

#51. When you become a commodity to a record label because you're making them millions of dollars, you can take all of your artistic integrity and throw it out the window.

Mark McGrath

#52. The band has always been such a huge part of my life and it kept me very busy. That, in combination with something like running a record label, just means my whole life revolves completely around metal music and I can't do that anymore.

Blake Judd

#53. When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

Matthew Sweet

#54. The big labels have less of a stranglehold on artists and how they record and where they go.

Kim Wilde

#55. When I first tried to get a record deal for my original music, labels didn't understand what these instruments were meant to be doing

Suzanne Ciani

#56. We aren't as concerned about the live aspect as other labels. The best live bands are the easiest to record.

Greg Ginn

#57. If you're an artist trying to put out your own record on your own label, it's hard to get a distribution deal because no one wants to sign a deal with one entity. They want to sign distribution deals with labels, who have lots of product, lots of artists.

Aimee Mann

#58. 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

#59. If it's a good record or a good recording, then word of mouth will build for that reason, not before the fact, not before anyone's heard it, not because of MySpace or the label.

Spencer Krug

#60. There's a vast fraternity of record collectors, and the record store was their hub. There was not a lot of information on these groups or the labels so you'd gather [there] and it would be like a library. - Lenny Kaye quoted

Gary Calamar

#61. You know you're a hopeless record nerd when your time travel fantasies always come around to how cool it would be to go back to 1973 and buy all the great funk and jazz and salsa records that came out that year on tiny obscure labels and are now really rare and expensive.

Adam Mansbach

#62. I think the record industry has gotten to be more about labels wondering what the new single is rather than labels nurturing artists. It's gotten away from making a full album of music that someone would want to listen to all the way through.

John Varvatos

#63. My first record wasn't even with the Fugees. I was signed to Big Beat Records, so I was signed back in 1989 to the label that the Knocks are on now. You can always tell which generation had the pulse based on how they see things.

Wyclef Jean