Steve Stoute Quotes

YouTube provides a unique opportunity for all musicians to market and promote their music and directly engage their fans.

Labels are curators of taste, and the best ones know how to monetize what an artist is trying to do.

I can work my butt off and create an album that's wonderful, but if it's never played and never given the outlet, it won't succeed.

It's called 'I Wanna Thank You,' and I'm encouraging everybody out there to blog, Tweet, Facebook, anything about it. Let's sign a petition. The petition is called 'Busta Rhymes Make 'I Wanna Thank You' Your First Single.'

A record co. is just a vehicle for public appearances.

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.

The music industry is saying, This is the format, and if you'll fit into this format, you can be on radio, and if radio will play you, MTV will expose you, and MTV will expose you, we'll sell records.

If your music is great, you will have fans, not because you have spent time chatting on social media.

Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing.

A lot of people see a Nissan ad and they see a finished product in a record store or on iTunes and that's the face of the band.

Well, I was making a record, and I had to choose a name, because they said, you know, you can't make a record under the name of Reg Dwight, because it's never going to - you know, it's not attractive enough.

Unless I've got Katy Perry on the cover of my CD, it's going to be tough to sell a lot of records.

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

After we wrote The Wreckoning, our record label did listen.

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.

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

The music business is rougher than the movie business. In film you get noticed in a small role, even in a movie that bombs. But in records you better have that hit or else it's 'See you later.'

I'm going to continue posting on my YouTube, which is youtube.com/nolansotillo. So I mean, if I get signed and come out with an album, it would be just another... that is a goal of mine.

When you're an independent artist, you need as much play or promotion as you can get.

My passion is music, you know, and music influences culture, influences lifestyle, which leads me to 'Roc-A-Wear'. I was forced to be an entrepreneur, so that led me to be CEO of 'Roc-A-Fella' records, which lead to Def Jam.

It's not essential for me to have a big debut week; it's not essential for me to have big radio records.

Often, it's the little things, like the title of a song, that can make a huge difference in its success.

Chance The Rapper makes some of the greatest music out, and he build his brand up organically, and the fans have reacted to it.

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.

While working for Diplomat Records, I helped several artists with their online branding and social media. Once I left the label, I worked directly with artists and noticed many artists were overlooked and underrated if they weren't in 'XXL' or 'The Source.'