People know you as an actor, and labels are so comfortable for people. That syndrome is always hard to get past.
As much as I think that in the future we won’t need labels, at the moment they’re really important. So I’m making myself embrace that. I truly am proud to be queer. Even watching ‘Queer Eye’ is something that inspired me to say that. So that’s the power of representation.
We really were poised to make ‘Rumours 2,’ and that could’ve been the beginning of kind of painting yourself into a corner in terms of living up to the labels that were being placed on you as a band.
Buying a matching blouse and skirt from the same store is a crime. A clever mix of chic and cheap hits the jackpot. Know how to mix styles and labels.
Labels don’t want artists to put out mixtapes because they don’t monetize it.
Independent artists and labels have always been the trend setters in music and the music business.
I’ve signed with major labels, and I haven’t had any control over the money.
My music is more than me writing a flashy soul song. They’re heartfelt songs about my family and true stories. I have also songs that aren’t personal, but just painting a picture. I don’t like being put under labels, but my music is going to continue to stay classic and timeless forever.
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.
I think part of what happens is that small labels want to get bigger. And bigger is not better.
Read labels in your favorite products. Look for short lists of simple, less-processed ingredients with names you recognize as food. If you find some of the same ingredients in your cereal as your shampoo, maybe it’s time to switch to something simpler.
Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we’re not interested.
People don’t know how to reach record labels, and a lot of time labels don’t listen to stuff that’s sent in randomly.
SoundCloud took a community-first approach to building its business, prioritizing finding artists to post on its service over making deals with music labels to license their music, the approach taken by Spotify.
My style of singing has always been referred to ‘soul’ singing when it fact it’s more influenced by English R&B Blues Shouting. I’m closer to Led Zeppelin as a vocalist than to Ella Fitzgerald. It was torture dealing with major labels.
Given how dangerous it is for someone to consume something they are allergic to, you would think that companies would just make sure they print labels which have the allergy information on.
I would say, people use labels all the time, but I’m kind of a traditional Catholic: Personally, I’m opposed to abortion, and personally, I’m opposed to the death penalty.
I cut the labels out of my clothes because they scratch. Clothes are just little workhorses, aren’t they?
What’s even more unsettling is the way these people hide what they’re doing from the public. They strip the labels off miracle wheat when they ship it, for instance, and say, ‘Watch out. Don’t plant too much and don’t depend on it too much.’
Labels like ‘Chinese Science Fiction’ or ‘Western Science Fiction’ summarize a vast field of work, all of which are diverse and driven by individual authors, with individual concerns.
I was seeing on the ground floor that labels weren’t investing in females, and it trickled upward because I was in radio with none to play. I know that I can’t change today, but what I can do is work on the culture for tomorrow.
Would I describe myself as new Labour? I’m Labour, organised Labour. I think labels have a limited use and that’s where you really get into boy stuff sometimes, just sticking on labels.
Sure, the labels and publishers get the rights for songs to be remade into a ringtone. So part of what we do is to work with those content owners to make sure that there are rights in place for every piece of content to be made into a ringtone.
I wanted to break the idea of what male performers are supposed to show, what performances girl groups are supposed to show. I really wanted to break those labels, showing that dance is a form of art.
I would largely attribute my identity – as it relates to music labels and corporate music giants – to Dave Chappelle and his relationship to and firm standing in Hollywood.
I wanted to stay independent because I figured there was no way I was going to be able to have control to create the type of music I want. I was basically ignoring a lot of labels.
I would write ads for deodorants or labels for catsup bottles if I had to.
It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn’t mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don’t realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, ‘Just let me do what I do.’
They always like to put labels on me.
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.
I always thought of indie-rock as being rock music by bands that were on independent labels, and that’s a great thing.
You know, I am just a musician and I have no idea these days what good and bad is in terms of labels.
For me, I love to dream big, and I love to find ways to be a bit of an explorer. These days, it seems like everything is padded and comes with warning labels.
Binaries aside, we are the products of our relationships with our identities – cities we have built, bodies we have embraced, kindred souls we’ve cherished, our memories, our dreams, the fears we hide, the pain we hold – identities that cannot be reduced to a collection of labels.
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.
My job is basically organising things, putting labels on them and keeping them straight!
I don’t have any labels for myself, really. Sometimes, when I am out with my wife, I am just Mr. Thompson. Or at my daughter’s school, I’m Gaia’s dad. I don’t think of myself as Greg Wise, actor.
I think putting labels on people is just an easy way of marketing something you don’t understand.
Every Southerner, I think, knows people like Bill Clinton, maybe not quite as smart and maybe not quite as liberal, but kind of a glad-handing, country-club yuppie Southerner. The problem is we don’t have labels for middle-class Southerners.
With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there’s a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn’t let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.
We, as a people, we have a strong need to categorize everything. We put labels on everything and it’s a totally understandable need because we are animals and we need to understand order and where to fit in.
I’ve pretty much run the circle of labels and dealing with that whole kind of battle, because you’re the one creating the music, but you’re not the final say. That’s always been hard.
As a rock fan, you read of the big labels and the multinationals and the big tours with road crews and semi-trailers full of gear, and playing stadiums. In the ’90s, that’s what we did.
I never used to get calls from artists or labels, but once you have a top 20 hit, you start getting them.
Generally, you are held to a sound and that becomes your sound. That gets branded as your sound, and all the copycats start with it because the labels are looking for that sound.
Labels are curators of taste, and the best ones know how to monetize what an artist is trying to do.
I never feel confined by gender, by labels, by expectations, by stereotypes. I’m free to be myself.
We had labels offering us deals the first year we formed – 1995 – but we were afraid of them going, ‘Let’s change this and that.’ We had labels telling us to get rid of our singer. I look back sometimes and go, ‘Imagine if we had done that-what a shame it would have been?’
There’s a lot of big guys who can play-make. We put labels like, ‘Oh, he’s a point guard, he’s a center.’ But sometimes your center can play-make for you and not just be the center, boxing out for rebounds and playing in the post.
One of the reasons I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to keep things in print. I got tired of labels dropping things out of print when they don’t sell.
I think you’ve got to keep it simple, keep it fresh. Stay away from all that processed stuff, read the labels.
I talked with labels and they wouldn’t help with my international career. They said, ‘Saara, if you’re in Finland you just have to sing in Finnish.’ That led to this situation where I felt very lonely. I was really sad and still I was doing gigs all the time. I’d go onstage crying but I was still trying to sing.
