Rag'n'Bone Man Quotes

As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it's been a huge promotional tool for me.

My whole career began because I was always putting my music on the Internet. By the time I had my first tour, I had an audience everywhere I went, because people were listening online.

Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the Internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use e-mail.

Before the Internet became so powerful, I toured extensively. With the rise of the Internet, touring apparently has become less important.

You can put your music out on YouTube and get messages from all over the world.

That's what I love about the Internet - instead of having to wait on radio to play your song or TV to play your video, I can use the Internet as a tool to get my music out earlier.

A lot of what's happened with my career has been because of the Internet. It's a way for me to reach fans directly, especially with music.

It's so different now coming out as a new artist today than it was when I came out almost ten years ago. Now, it's all about singles, it's really quick, it's online. I came out when people sold records and they still do today but - I don't know what the key is.

The new artist is meeting the general public before they meet the record company. They're able to put the material on YouTube and have a million views before they even meet an executive at a record company, and get the deal based on that.

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that.

My whole career began because I was always putting my music on the Internet. By the time I had my first tour, I had an audience everywhere I went, because people were listening online. I started with a website, Jasonmraz.com, pre-YouTube. You could e-mail me directly, and I would send you a CD.

If you want to put out a song that you wrote yesterday, tomorrow go on Twitter, type in a new URL, and give it to the people!

I think at first the Flume project really started out as an online thing. I used Facebook and SoundCloud, and I think we got lucky because it felt like a bit of a golden age of those social media platforms. So I managed to create quite a solid fan base online.

When we first started in '04 or '05, that's when social media started to become a way to release music and connect with fans - and our fans were kind of at the forefront of that.

I do love the social-media aspect of working records nowadays. You can do a video and put it up on social media, and people check you out who would never check you out before. I think it's much cooler that you can just get the product right to the fans.

I think it's much harder now with the Internet to hone anything. It's easy to share things: you do one track, and it goes on Hype Machine; people are being exposed a lot earlier.

Yeah, I could get an internet page and maybe get a thousand downloads of new songs but it's a lot of work. I'm 57 now, I really feel like I've got the T-shirt. I just like performing. It's instant. I go off, I do the show, it's over. I like that.

It's so crazy now with the Internet and being able to play shows to people who are actually interested in you. I still feel so lucky when that happens. Things just happen so fast.

Technology has allowed me to reach my fans directly. Social media: it has been a complete revolution of how to interact, promote and share things.

I think writers have to be proactive: they've got to use new technology and social media. Yes, it's hard to get noticed by traditional publishers, but there's a great deal of opportunity out there if you've got the right story.

It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

We'd been noticing how much more important the internet had become - once information is out there in the world now, anyone can get it. Since that was beginning to happen with the record anyway, we figured, OK, let's just stream it for free ourselves.

Social media and music in general have been changing so fast. You can go on Twitter and go from one artist to another. What I really like about it is the opportunity to communicate directly with your fans.

Oh God, it's such a big world right now for artists. There are as many possibilities as you can have time for, getting your music out there with the internet, and Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and everything that you have, there is a way to spread the word. To me, the first thing you have to have is substance and content and real depth.

I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple.