Jimmy Iovine Quotes

There's a lot of artists whose contracts are written in such a way that they do not get paid for what's happening on streaming services.

Companies like Spotify, the new Apple service, and all the others are really going to have to pay artists more. And I think it's a matter of time; I think a lot of these companies and the individuals that are involved in them realize that as well. They know that artists are not getting what they should be getting.

I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists.

I suppose Spotify is a good thing. The ads are quite annoying, but a lot of people seem to like it and use it. I don't myself, but it seems like a good idea, and the labels are getting a huge amount of money off it, but the artists aren't, so that must be good for them... but not us.

If you're an artist, and you put out a record - most artists only have one or two hit records - that has 100 million streams, on certain services you only get paid on 75% of those streams. How's an artist going to live like that?

From the artist's standpoint, are you getting more from streaming than you used to, prior to the days of the Internet? No - and I don't know if those days are ever going to come back - but at least, technically speaking, it's the legal way to do it.

If you get 100 million streams on a song and you're only being paid on 20 percent, the check's not going to look good. The money's not going to look fair.

I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough. When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well - but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.

What Spotify pays me is not even enough to pay the musicians playing with me or the people working on the discs. It's not working. Something is going to have to give.

In this age when people expect to get their music for free, we have to work out how we can protect the rights of creative artists so they are compensated fairly and that the record business itself remains sound and healthy.

I get letters from young people telling me that they're broke and download my albums for free. They ask me what I think about that. I now have a standard line. I tell them, 'I would rather be heard than paid.'

There's no problem with fans and bands. There's a problem with the economics of the outside disruption of the industry.

Streaming is a really big market for me. We've been doing great in the streaming market, so it's not something I want to alienate at all. Streaming counts now. They're treating artists the way we deserve to be treated.

The facts show that the music industry was much better off before Spotify hit these shores.

The value of streaming platforms is estimated at a few billion dollars, and creators can only afford a pizza without pepperoni at the end of the year with the revenues. Without musicians, all those platforms wouldn't exist, so we urgently need an appropriate and sustainable business model for musicians for the 21st century.

If you look at something like Spotify, many record labels are investors in the company. So from that standpoint, the money is all going back into the labels.

Now we know that, the way contracts are set up, it's not really made for artists to get rich from selling records - that's the company's one shot to make money.

There's definitely some sort of dissent brewing between record labels, publishing companies and artists [about the compensation they get from streaming services] Spotify is returning a HUGE amount of money [to the record labels]. If we continue growing at our current rate in terms of subscriptions and downloads, we'll overtake iTunes in terms of contributions to the recorded music business in under two years.

Generally speaking, the business of music streaming is treacherous at best: Consumers don't seem to want to pay big money for access to digital music services, so companies must keep the fees low.

The larger streaming grows, the less money there will be to get the music out there, which, to me, is the sad part.

I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.

I'm really interested in the record industry and the artists and the problems they're having.

We had an era where we wasn't getting paid, before the 'Versace' and all that.

I think the music business is as crass and as unrewarding as it has ever been.

The library companies have made it so that music is so cheap to license. They do sound-alikes of every band, and it makes it harder for the actual bands to get any decent paychecks for licensing.