Chris Carmack Quotes

I'm really excited because Interscope is really focused on artists. They've been working side by side with me creatively and allowing me to make a lot of the creative decisions, which you don't always hear about. That's why I didn't want to sign originally with a major label.

I wanted to put out a solo record because I was stuck on a major label and sick of it.

I never had many problems to do my music and to give it to a record company. Rarely do they try to argue with me about my music, probably because it's still too far-out.

Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.

With my previous record deal, it'd be like, 'OK, so I have this track then, EMI - do you know any singers, maybe? Do you have any singers on your little label there?' And funnily enough, they didn't. But I prefer finding unknown singers myself anyway.

I always said, if I got a record deal, I'd want to record the best songs I could, whether I wrote them or not.

The BBC were not playing the music that was happening on the street so we did an independent production because we knew we had an audience. Then we licensed the album to EMI.

I have had the good fortune to experience both the limelight and the traffic light as a musician. I did my first recording on my own and it was available at concerts. The second to seventh were released on small and then large labels. My eighth to 14th were done under my own steam once again, but with the benefit of the Internet.

I saw an Elvis Presley movie Jailhouse Rock, where he gets out of jail and makes his own records and takes them to the radio stations himself. And then, he puts records in the store. After seeing that, I made records an put them in stores.

The record company stay out of my way. Whenever the record is finished, they take it.

I certainly don't want to be a record label guy.

The reason I never wanted to sign with a big label was because I didn't want no one telling me how to make my music.

That's my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don't have to sell out to the record company. You don't have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record.

I have just enough people paying attention that I have the freedom to be in charge. And I have a great record company - Nonesuch understands what I'm about.

You make music to change the radio, not make music for the radio.

I made this record without a record label.

I did not start IC and Inteam to have control over my music. I had control before and after.

There's never been a song that I just wrote and tried to send to an artist.

As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album.

To go indie is a thing. But to put an album in the stores, you need a distribution label.

I didn't need to borrow money from the record company, because if I had my own publishing company, and I had my own writers, I'd have enough to get and do whatever I wanted to do.

I started my own record label.

I should be the one to say what I do. It's just not done that way anymore in Nashville, and I can't do it the other way. That's how our record label came about.

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