Boots Riley Quotes

I sold my life to Capitol Records; it sucks.

Artists and the traditional record company model are at odds. The music business has notoriously taken from the artist. That shouldn't be the narrative.

I never, ever had it in my mind that I wanted to be in the record industry, because I still contend that the record industry is an insidious affair. It's this terrible collision between art and commerce, and it will always be that way.

I made an enormous amount of money in the record business as a result of owning so much of what I was doing... I owned all those albums and continued to own my catalog.

Recorded music is more a marketing tool than a revenue source.

I had a very unusual contract. Most artists actually pay for their record dates and it comes out of their royalties. I paid for nothing.

I don't get involved in record label politics.

I wanted out of my record deal with EMI. They wanted me to record one type of album; I wanted to record the type of music I wanted to make.

I have always abhorred the business end of music.

I think the record industry has gotten to be more about labels wondering what the new single is rather than labels nurturing artists. It's gotten away from making a full album of music that someone would want to listen to all the way through.

We are taking close to $10 a CD the way we are doing it, and I think that is a fair amount to split up between five guys. Each of us makes like two bucks a record.

Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.

I'm not a businessman, so I don't know how to solve the problems of the recording industry.

One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'

Finally, my manager negotiated a deal where I got to produce my own records.

For music, unlike a $500 software program, people are paying a buck or two a song, and it's those dollars and pennies that have to add up to pay for not just the cost of that song, but the investment in the next song.

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist.

We went into that knowing that we were never going to sell a major record 'cause we didn't sound like these bands, so I just thought this was an opportunity for us to make the kind of records that we wanted and make some money at the same time.

My first record deal was an independent record deal back in 1995 or early 1996.

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

Of course, I want to sell this record - there's no point making it otherwise.

America stopped making vinyl and phased out the single but Germany held out and refused. Warner's never phased out vinyl in Germany. Now America imports it!

I got me a hit record and I ain't never made a cent from it.

How about no one's ever going to outsell Michael Jackson at selling records because the record industry is over. Game over. There's no more record stores. With no more record stores there's no more pressing plants. With no more pressing plants, there's no more charts.

Record companies worrying more about market share than developing artists - I hear there was a time when if your first record didn't sell 8m copies, you were still given a chance to grow as a songwriter.