Jill Sobule Quotes

When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well - but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.

I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough.

Now we know that, the way contracts are set up, it's not really made for artists to get rich from selling records - that's the company's one shot to make money.

Even though the popularity and the fanbase is much much greater, and more people have heard about me through things like the Grammys and the Ivors and touring and word of mouth, it doesn't reflect in the sales of the record and doesn't go into my pocket.

If I had to live on record sales, I'd be pushing up the daisies.

As for the music business itself, the key things have not changed that much. It operates like any business and money still keeps things moving.

I don't know how many records I'm selling.

Nowadays, with the state of the music business, for any artist, whether you're up-and-coming or you've been in it for awhile, you have to explore different revenues and different ways of expressing yourself.

The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.

The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.

When we were on the road, I found out that my greatest hits album went Gold. They freaked out. Things really came to a head when we started arguing about a Van Halen greatest hits package.

In whichever way my music can get out there, I'm just like, 'Sure.' It's also through the TV synch licenses that I've been surviving. I don't really make money through record sales. I used to be really picky: 'No, I don't want it to be the song of a commercial,' but nowadays it's what you need to do to get the song out as much as you can.

I just want to keep saturating the market and radio with as many hit records as I can.

Nowadays, you have to sell, like, half a million or a million records just to break even.

MTV made a huge impact. Heavy rotation took you from selling 1m albums to 20m albums, and that meant a lot of dough.

I'm delighted about the track's success in the sports world, but the frustrating thing is, I don't think I got rich on it. The labels and publishers did very cheap deals on our songs.

There's no problem with fans and bands. There's a problem with the economics of the outside disruption of the industry.

I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.

It's always boiled down to the quality of your music and the quality of your deal with whoever's distributing your music: There are artists who sold a lot of records and didn't make money because of their deal, and artists who didn't sell nearly as much who made a great living because they own their masters.

I've never sold a lot of records.

I think the music business is as crass and as unrewarding as it has ever been.

The library companies have made it so that music is so cheap to license. They do sound-alikes of every band, and it makes it harder for the actual bands to get any decent paychecks for licensing.

We could be as rich as the Rolling Stones if we sold as many records.

The more people are listening to music and experiencing it, the more value for both the music companies and the artist, especially when their financial model is built around that. With the music industry, everybody is starting to understand that doesn't begin with a piece of music.

Nobody sells records any more, and the only way you can actually do anything is to go out and play live.