There's a guy at the record company who's 30, and he says, I would not listen to these songs except in this context. Somehow the recording process, the arrangements, make it more accessible.
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 u...
When certain bootleg companies started off and they would take maybe ten per cent of whatever they got and help fuel new bands, which I'm cool with, I think that's a good idea. Most of the record companies are not doing that.
I produce the records. I don't hand over control to some really expensive producer who then talks to the record company and then tries to bend me to their will - for commercial purposes.
I was signed to A&M, I was signed to Lou Adler, who had a company within a company, which was A&M Records, and everything - James Taylor, Rita Coolidge, Carole King - I worked on all of that stuff.
I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do.
The record company's worst fear is that you'll fall in love or get rich.
Since the decline of record companies and music sales, I've always played live.
Art is basically communication, and I think everyone who's a music lover has had that experience where a record or a recording has kept you company when no one else is around. And I think that is what I'm hoping that people get out of my music.
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 albu...
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 o...
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 t...
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.
So why sign your name in blood for more? It seemed like a sensible arrangement for me. I didn't sell large numbers of records and the record company paid advances they rarely recouped.
While my six-song EP is unlikely to set any sales records, it's one of my biggest personal achievements - on par with starting my own company. On par with selling my own company.
If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can foc...
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...
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 bre...
I was forced to be an artist and a CEO from the beginning, so I was forced to be like a businessman because when I was trying to get a record deal, it was so hard to get a record deal on my own that it was either give up or create my own company.
I'm confused that there is a lack of faith in listening to and deciding what is a great song and instead going for these formulaic, bad songs over and over again. But that's what happened when people from beverage companies bought record labels and r...
It's a battle between record company, between producer and between mastering engineer. Because the louder you make your record in a digital process, the more dynamics are squished out of it. Nobody knows exactly what happens, but the dynamics in the ...
