Mike Rutherford Quotes

I've seen 13, 14-year-olds opening CDs as though they're records from the 1920s, going 'Look at this - there's a little book!'... That makes me think the format has probably had its day.

The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.

I think that people will always want music; I think that the form that they will get it in, or distributed to them from, and the price they pay for it is what's up in question.

I never paid attention when the LP became the cassette and the cassette became the CD and now we're dealing, you know, with MP3s. It's okay.

No one listens to CDs anymore. Who even owns a CD? I used to bring my CDs to shows, and it was, like, a guarantee that everyone would buy one. Nope! Not anymore.

I'm not going to be the guy who sold the last CD.

With iTunes and Spotify and Pandora and this and that, you don't need to buy CDs any more.

I've got nothing against records - I've spent my life making them - but they are a kind of historical blip.

Rock and roll music - people want records. For me, it's the whole thing - the package. I don't get satisfaction from buying an MP3.

Records used to be documents, but now record companies want product.

With pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.

As long as someone wants to hear my music, I don't care if it's a ringtone or the album or whatever.

With the advent of radio and recording, music became an industry rather than just a tradition.

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.

For the most part, rock fans don't go and buy CDs any more, very rarely. It's pretty much about downloads and streaming.

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 files and downloading have indeed changed the currency of music to a great degree.

The rise of the iPod meant that digital music became the norm, It's sad, but you can still find the real stuff out there if you look for it!

In order to continue the growth, we have to go back to embracing technology and the way that people choose to consume music.

If a kid goes and buys a CD at Best Buy, we have no idea who the person is, how many times they listen to it, or anything like that.

People who buy my records don't go into music stores - music stores which are fading before our very eyes.

The culture of buying an album on CD or vinyl has gone out of the window. A lot of kids don't really understand that, they just hop onto Limewire, or find a BitTorrent, or even just go onto iTunes if they're going to pay for something. It's just right there, there's no searching about.

I was in the generation of CDs, so when I moved to L.A., I think I probably brought my Shania Twain Come on Over CD. But if I lived in the '80s, I would definitely be the one going to the record stores.

Everything from now on will be done online - physical music media like the CD are dead in the water.

The streets buy records, but they don't really buy records in incredible numbers.