Gabby Barrett Quotes

Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.

A lot of big labels will just sign bands like a write off.

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

We've managed to have a long career that is still quite vibrant, yet we've never had to kow-tow to record companies who said we weren't commercial enough.

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

I would love to continue working behind the scenes in music - to produce and manage up-and-coming musical talent would be a dream!

If it wasn't for the TLC story, many artists would not have smartened up, and you wouldn't have the Lil Waynes and people with their own labels.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

Since I was 17, I had been just making records and promoting them.

I was with PolyGram; that was the big label that I was with for the longest, like 12 years.

Actually, we got signed in November of 2000 with Dreamworks which is the most amazing label. We have friends on other labels and though we are not selling millions of records, yet, they treat us with tons of respect and give us some very good guidance.

My record label is treating me like I'm a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.

I was having a lot of mixed feelings about the independent world as well as the label world. I feel like I've been in the game a long time, and you know, when it come to labels not seeing a fella being around the last five years, it's like, it's hard to convince them what I can do.

The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.

A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.

I'm developing artists for my new record label, my son's band, Intangible, being one of them.

I will be developing artists for my new label. The rest is in God's Hands.

I got all these books about, like, what you need to know to enter the entertainment industry. And I remember I sent my music to record labels, and I took these little DVDs and sent them all over the place. And either no one got back to me or they just kept saying, 'You're too different.'

At the end of the day, when people say, 'Oh, she's an industry plant,' I'm like, 'No, I just have representation, like every single other artist you listen to.' I'm not the first person to get a manager.

When you break an artist, you learn a lot.

Jimmy Iovine signed me personally to a million-dollar contract, and I lost my identity for a long time. That system is so predicated on making a hit, or you're out of here.

A lot of people are trying to get me to go solo. It's just a thing I have to deal with a lot. Record labels are always trying to get me to go solo.

I know a lot of people who jumped into a record label right away, dropped an album, and then nothing happened for them. Build your fan base first, and follow your gut.

I'm not interested in anything besides making some good music, helping some artists, being an executive. I'm pretty happy with that.

Major labels have always been around our band since the beginning, and we just waited. We knew we had to do some things, and we needed to grow as a band before we made that step. We needed to do it our way and not do it how it works for other people.