Chuck D Quotes

Making music has gotten easier; selling it has gotten harder. Making music has been democratized, but the market is in the hands of fascists.

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

The Flaming Lips have been on Warner Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way, from the Cure to Radiohead to Bjork.

Creativity is much better when it's free. Someone can take it and sell it if that's what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living - that would be the best scenario.

The history of the music industry is inevitably also the story of the development of technology. From the player piano to the vinyl disc, from reel-to-reel tape to the cassette, from the CD to the digital download, these formats and devices changed not only the way music was consumed, but the very way artists created it.

I think mp3s are great if you are unknown and trying to get started. It's a good way to get your music out and about. But for those who are established, it's not good at all.

Unfortunately, music devolved instead of evolved. The music business got into the hands of lawyers and accountants rather than the entrepreneurial creative people, and that's when the beginning of the end started. It's all based on money instead of art and creativity.

The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs.

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.

Our business has changed so much. Do people even want albums, or do they just buy singles now? You sort of feel like you're the last guy manufacturing VCRs... but I really like albums, and so I like doing them. I'll be the last one making them, even when no one's buying them.

Music is not free to make. Studios are going under because people now work at laptops. Quantity over quality is what begins to happen; the idea of what quality is has changed.

When I was working on 'Coloring Book,' I knew that I wanted it to be a beacon for independent artists and music makers with their own agenda.

Castle Face Records, run by The Oh Sees main man, Johnny Dwyer is always worth checking in with.

I am here talking to 'Rolling Stone' because of an iPhone. Music has transformed because of Apple.

When it comes to independent music albums, you cannot put in 50 lakhs or a crore in each and every song to first make a video and then even promote it. It's not possible for a musician or a singer to promote each song. It's not possible for musicians to do that independently.

Every record store and record chain has folded; they don't exist. They do not exist. And the only two outlets that would still sell CDs were Best Buy and Wal-Mart. They now have stopped selling it. There's nowhere you can go into a store and buy a CD in America. That's how it is.

I think the cool thing about being alive in 2017 is that you can literally put out music as soon and as frequently as you want to because of streaming services.

Since Bollywood is getting more corporate, it is getting difficult for the composer alone to take a decision unless you are a big name like Pritam or Vishal-Shekhar who can speak his heart out and say that 'This is the singer I want for this song.'

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

Apple is a company that understands music.

Technology has opened up the music business 100-fold and provided space for all kinds of new faces.

It's tough, with the iTunes and all the downloads... You've really got to make an impact to be heard and be unique and different.

I posted some songs on MySpace, and right away people started asking, 'Where can I get a CD?'

I don't do CDs. I only do radio. That's the truth.

Technology has changed the way we think about music.