I don’t like record company people very much, so I don’t want to be one of them.
You don’t need a record company to turn you into anything.
When you make a lot of money for a record company, they don’t want you to evolve. Growing older, you naturally do.
I’m not into ‘The Voice.’ It’s an affair between a television network and a record company.
People often expect me to be very serious, but it’s not like my record company told me not to smile in photographs, because I was like that anyway.
If you’re part of a record company, you’re a manufactured product. It doesn’t mean that you’re not talented.
A lot of people thought my career was over. If you’re not releasing records, then something must be wrong. Either the record company doesn’t like your music, or you’ve been dropped. It has to something negative. It’s not like you wanted to take a break, or want some balance, or smell the roses.
With technology you can now be your own record company, director, producer, etc. If you have talent, you can display it on the Internet and the world will tell you their thoughts in the matter of seconds!
My record company certainly wants me to play live, badly, but I have no such plans. My only motivation to do such a thing would be money, and I don’t think that’s a good reason to play live.
People weren’t buying as many records. My record company did not want me. I went through three record companies, went on tour at the wrong time. It destroyed me.
Do not let any record company disturb your creative flow. You are not writing for the record company. You’re writing for the public.
Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.
All through the kind of late ’80s and ’90s, every A&R record company man was saying, ‘Now what we want is another record like ‘Back in the High Life.’ And, of course, that’s not the way to make music at all. That’s the tail wagging the dog.
When the oldest surviving record company goes all in on a conductor, everyone notices.
The new artist is meeting the general public before they meet the record company. They’re able to put the material on YouTube and have a million views before they even meet an executive at a record company, and get the deal based on that.
Missing You’ almost didn’t get on the No Brakes’ album, because the record company said, ‘The album’s finished. We don’t need any more songs.’
I have just enough people paying attention that I have the freedom to be in charge. And I have a great record company – Nonesuch understands what I’m about.
When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to… because I was looking for a deal. I didn’t have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.
It’s hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don’t seem to want to talk about music, it’s all marketing, and that’s part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that’s not repulsive.
It is true that the record company are always thinking of new ways to flog New Order to people.
We’re probably doing better business than we thought we would do especially considering the disappointing way the record company has handled the album.
I love to deer hunt and fish and drive down the back roads in my truck. All those things basically equal freedom to me – and not having to return that message or call from my record company or management.
Giving a record company an album is like giving a gangster your baby or something.
I’m developing a record company. I’m learning how to supervise music on a film.
I’m a DJ, and I live in Williamsburg, and I run an independent record company.
We didn’t want to be tied to that damn teenybopper market. We tried to convince our record company that we could do more than silly AM hits, but they wouldn’t listen.
I was really amazed when I started hearing ‘Songbird’ on the radio. I couldn’t believe that the record company promotion department had actually convinced radio music directors to play it -because there wasn’t anything like it on the radio at the time.
To be on this set today, I feel very blessed for the second chance and for the opportunity, my record company believing in me and everybody here just showing me so much love and support.
It’s not like it used to be where everybody has a record company to belong to.
I was wildly out of style when that television theme song suddenly pushed its way onto the Top Ten. It was certainly not the record company trying to make that happen.
The Internet has been a blessing and a curse. The curse we know: A lot of people appropriating your intellectual property without paying for it. But I think it’s important to realize the blessing of the Internet, which is that everybody has a voice and you can break through, even without a record company.
I talked to the record company about what I had in mind. They said they wanted something lush. I figured the best thing to do was let them hear what I had in mind.
When I was a teenager, I had a record company after me. They wanted me to be a pop act. They said they wanted me to be the next Sonia. I was 16 at the time. I said, ‘No thank you.’
I love to deer hunt and fish and drive down the back roads in my truck. All those things basically equal freedom to me – and not having to return that message or call from my record company or management. At some point, I need to recharge.
My guitar survived Kosovo, then I went to visit a record company back in London and fell off my motorbike with it on my back, smashing it to bits. I was travelling at two miles per hour.
The record company has fought for themselves, never for me.
When a record company looks at me I’m very hard to market, I don’t really fit anywhere, It’s hard to get me on the air, and I’m hard to demography, but! because of that I’m not subject to trends like you pointed out.
And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it’s catchy, and you’ve got a little bit of help, I think that’s all you need. But there hasn’t been that in music.
Every time I release an album my old record company releases another one.
The record company really pissed me off when they told me to lose weight. I couldn’t be bothered with looking a certain way. So I left the business. I don’t regret it.
There’s timing. And then there’s also certain people at the record company who worked incredibly hard and were incredibly enthusiastic about what I was doing.
The record company doesn’t know what to do with me, because I’m not a Lily Allen, but I’m not really an indie artist, either. All the best artists have been in the middle.
I arrived in London and I was terrified. I never wanted to be a celebrity – one minute I was in school and the next I was in London talking to people at a record company. If anything, I didn’t feel in any way worthy.
Sometimes when I have an idea, and I say, ‘Okay, let’s – it will be great, maybe, if I sing in English, a couple of songs.’ Now, the record company and everybody’s like, ‘No way, you have to sing in Spanish.’ And that’s, you know, really good for me.
A record company used to be a very good thing, but they ended up soul-destroyingly trapping people in the accounting department. And you couldn’t get any further, and the heads of each department were changing all the time, so you couldn’t have any permanent relationship within the corporation.
Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you’d think that I’d have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I’m doing. Actually, they’ve just kind of let me take the wheel.
Interscope is run more like a rock band than a record company. It’s run in a very spontaneous, heartfelt way.
Radio is aimed at the 30-year-old market, so you have to have great music and appeal to get that age group. And you need a record company to believe in you. It’s like a bit of the perfect storm.
Success came to me in my late 20s. I started touring when I was a teenager, so I had already seen the good, the bad, and the ugly side of the music business. Plus, setting up my own record company taught me a lot.
There’s the famous thing that the A&R man from the record company is supposed to do: He’s supposed to come into the studio and listen to the songs you’ve been recording and then say, ‘Guys, I don’t hear any singles.’ And then everybody falls into a terrible depression because you have to write one.
Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you’re in big trouble if you’re borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We’ve got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.
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