If you’re a priority artist, then you get an amazing amount of exposure and money thrown. If you are more niche, then it’s not necessarily the way forward. If you want Instagram followers and fame, then the major labels are still really great for that.
It’s horrible when people are only interested in buying labels, because it doesn’t bring them the happiness they think it will.
You rarely get money out of labels, except for when they open up a budget for a project. Other than that, it’s a do-or-die type thing.
Our enmity toward God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren’t interested in changing their opinions to agree with God’s.
As someone who grew up with a father who was the prime minister, many people liked me, and many didn’t. I don’t pay much attention to labels and certainly don’t let people define me through the labels they apply. I stay focused on what I need to do.
I do like nice things; we do live in a great house, but I don’t choose my friends by how much money they have or what labels they’re wearing.
The Internet might be killing the business for music labels, but it is working well for independent artists. I released my songs online and I got positive response from a lot of people.
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.
You have major labels that are willing to take unconventional approaches because the old model is crumbling in front of us.
And since discriminating fans can pick and choose exactly what they want to buy, artists and their labels are more conscious than they’ve ever been of making sure that every song on a new album is as good as can be.
The only thing major labels can really offer is money.
I now believe that major labels can only work with people who care more about fame and money than the quality of the art they produce.
I hate record labels. They think they know everything. I want to hear them try to sing it.
Both labels are super awesome, with super awesome people who want to get stuff done. The biggest difference is that Sub Pop is already established, but working with Burger seems like we’re part of something. They’re growing, and I’m growing with them. They’re my friends, and we’re doing it together.
I thought it was a prank. There is no way six different major labels trying to reach out to me. But it was actually happening.
Big labels can buy you radio play, they can buy you social media likes and YouTube views. I don’t have any of that, but I’m still getting a Top 3 album and Top 20 singles.
When most of my solo/single tracks started making a buzz globally, labels started placing my songs in movies.
At the end of the day, it’s not the labels buying the music: it’s the people out there, and you have to be behind the music and not anyone else. You’re the one representing it, you’re playing it for everyone; you’re doing promotion and travelling around the world.
If anything, I’m the most hesitant to bring on a label. That terrifies me. I think people believe major labels are linked to success. They’re absolutely not that.
Sometimes America is so great because it brings all of us together, but sometimes it can be so limiting because it puts labels on things.
I’ve always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn’t pin you down too much, like other labels would. It’s just newer, it has less baggage. I’m happy to be in that category.
I think we need to not speak over black women, not assign them labels.
A lot of big labels will just sign bands like a write off.
Some opponents of GMO labeling claim that disclosing genetically modified ingredients will increase food prices. But every shopper knows food companies routinely change their labels to make new claims and highlight innovations.
As an adult and a parent, when I’m not acting, I’m not acting. I’m being a parent, and I’m on the school run, and I’m sewing labels onto socks. That’s what I’m doing.
The good thing about having a hit record is you don’t need too many people. Because now your record is on fire, and I already have a great team around me, so why run to the labels?
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.
I would prefer a society where we don’t have to explain ourselves. But I get that many people just need those labels to understand it. And if I make my situation or beliefs more understandable by putting labels on it, I’m happy to do it.
I was very much not a follower of labels in school. If anything, I was labeled ‘uncool.’
It’s a very generational thing: I am not interested in labels. I am who I am. I will love who I love, and that’s the way it is going to be.
Back in the day, I don’t think record labels were looking at Las Vegas too much for new acts, until the Killers came out.
To voice one’s curmudgeonly thoughts – ‘I hate tattoos,’ ‘If that kid says ‘like’ even one more time, I’m going to fire him,’ and such things, instantly labels one as a geezer.
It’s sad, the enslavement of the black underclass to designer labels – we’re an age that cares more about Versace than Vermeer.
I’ve tried to avoid labels, but they always find you.
My customer isn’t wrapped up in labels and money.
We are quick to stick labels on others – especially those who don’t fit in with the norm. ‘Harold Fry’ is about a broken marriage; ‘Perfect’ is about a broken person. They are both about finding kindness where you least expect it.
Okay, let’s talk about cartoon labels for half a second – some people think anything with a dog or a car or a colorful alien is garbage, which is not true. Look at Big Moose Red. It’s, like, a $6 wine with a cheesy label, and it’s actually a solid wine.
I truly believe, as an institution, most major labels should just die.
People at the record labels were like, ‘We don’t want to sign you, you’re girls’ – sexist, ridiculous nonsense.
So So Def has been one of the most successful and consistent labels in the game in the last 10 years.
I heard during our label-searching that some labels hire statisticians instead of A&R people. They’ll reach out to the bands that will statistically perform best monetarily instead of going out to shows and having an opinion on which music is good or bad.
The labels are in a jam. For a company to do well in music now, it’s got to be in all aspects of the business. And Live Nation is the risk-taker. It’s leading the charge.
Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.
I’m not a labels type of guy, so every time my coach tries to call me a safety, I correct him and tell him I’m a hybrid.
It was always remarkable to me how ignorant the labels were of the listening habits of their own customers, and how obstinate they were in denying those habits and then trying to essentially alter those habits instead of retooling their business to adapt to them.
I hate labels; the problem is that if you say you’re one thing, it’s hard for people to imagine you as something else. Music is way more complicated than that.
I have friends that are reps and run labels, but I don’t like to get into that world. I just like to pick what I like with my ears and play it for no other reason, not because of the label or the rep.
Not all my shoes are designer. In terms of clothes, everything is on the same level for me. If I like it, it doesn’t matter if it cost £200 or £2. I’m attracted to things rather than labels.
I’m a brown-skinned Indian immigrant, low-caste untouchable – I don’t know how many labels you want to put on me – who’s fought all his life.
I tell you why I like Chanel so much: when I started off, no one wanted to give me clothes to wear. Absolutely no one! All the labels said, ‘Who is she?’ But Chanel believed in me from the very beginning.
What really matters is how God sees me. He isn’t concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man’s soul.
As a DJ, it’s my job to break new music. And instead of it just being the stuff that’s coming from the major labels or the big pop records, I’ve always gravitated to something that’s just different, you know?
I don’t like labels.
Sometimes magnificent visual art takes root in the humblest of soils. Advertisements painted on old barns, tattoos, fruit crate labels, hot rod embellishments – all these media and many other non-galleried forms have hosted and fostered esthetic delights that satisfy any rigorous definition of art.
Until the ’90s, major labels were looking for a certain look. This Sony guy told me I was ‘too black, too fat, too short, and too old.’ Told me to go and bleach my skin. Told me to step in the background and just stay back. I had the voice, but I didn’t have the looks.
I don’t like to put labels on anyone. I’m a reporter. I’d rather observe and describe and question.
There were so many different labels coming to me and they just didn’t seem right, but 300… they wanted me bad. It felt like a family.
