Randy Jackson Quotes

If you are the record label who owns Lady Gaga, and you have a new artist coming up, you can say, 'Let's have the artist play just before Gaga.' Now you've exposed the huge Gaga audience to the new artist. It's similar to showing a trailer before a movie. The hit creates a hit.

You have record companies that sign acts that they think are great, and then they never do anything. Acts that they don't think are really going to do much end up having a career. I don't think anyone really knows what it is that drives somebody to get on their computer and want to download a song.

I'd like to think that people see there's two ways to do things. You can put a lot of money into a band and force people to like them or you can just find good bands and people will like them anyway.

There are people that bring artists to me to look at it and it's a question of whether I like their music and their look and if I think there's something they have that makes them different and commercial.

Starbucks has changed the rules of engagement for the music industry.

The public doesn't want new music.

Doing things in my day was simple: you either signed to a big label or you signed to a very small label, and you worked with that one, and then they eventually signed you on to a big one.

A real foolproof way to do it is play your stuff by hook or by crook and build up a grass roots following.

There was a bidding war between Epic Records and Jive - now RCA - which was bittersweet. Just having labels bid over me was really cool, but I ended up going with Jive because it felt better over there, and they have my favorite artists like Usher, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake.

The marketing is just as important as the music, almost.

There has never been any proper commitment to marketing these artists and their music. We are not Sony.

With *NSYNC, we shopped our deal for a year in America, sang a capella in everybody's office, then moved to Germany for almost two years and became popular there. A guy representing a rock band came to our show in Budapest, saw 60,000 people get excited for a band from America that nobody in America knew, and told someone at RCA.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

I'm always going to talent scout and try to find new artists to work with.

My A&R at Epic got fired the first week I got signed.

It's really tough - if you're on a major label and they want you to have a number one song, you need to do what they say.

I just think that any person who wants music to be their career shouldn't focus on a record label. I have seen friends who sign to a label too early in their career, and they lost control over their music, and their releases were delayed or never put out.

Most companies that are successful listen to people and see what they want and they make that. So when I used to make songs, I'd make mixtapes. The public would tell me what they like and then I would make songs based on what they like. That's how I knew 'Ridin' Dirty' was going to be big - they told me they liked this kind of music.

My first record wasn't even with the Fugees. I was signed to Big Beat Records, so I was signed back in 1989 to the label that the Knocks are on now. You can always tell which generation had the pulse based on how they see things.

The way I do that is to keep coming up with good songs and when I do a concert, I make sure I give a good performance. It's not rocket science.

The business has changed dramatically from what it was even just a few years ago. Music isn't even distributed the same way anymore. Even CDs are becoming a thing of the past. The Internet has made it easier to get my music out to anyone who wants it, but at the same time, I feel like we're losing the mystique.

Being on a major label is like living at your friend's parent's mansion: It's a lot nicer than any apartment we could afford, and the fridge is always full of food.

If a new artist comes, and he doesn't have a good record label to invest in him, then there is no point.

People who aren't as interested in recorded music as they used to be will say, 'Oh, 'Buena Vista?' Loved it.' And I'll say, 'Well, how about any of my other recent records. I've been doing some pretty good ones. You like those?' And they go, 'Huh?'

Like everything at Big Machine Label Group, the music comes out when it's ready.