Eddie Vedder Quotes

In rock n' roll, we don't sell records at all like we used to. Yet the artist still has to pay to make records. So you've just got to get out on tour and be smarter about your merchandising.

My biggest frustration is the lack of scale in the music industry. The fact that no one has sold 100 million copies of an album is frustrating.

What my whole object was is not to really sell records. I was trying to sell songs.

We're not trying to be a mega-pop-band, but we also wouldn't be opposed to selling millions of records, either.

Obviously there was the idea that we could sell more records if we played live, but I guess I didn't care enough to sell more records to do that.

I guess if I'd have more of a producer attitude, maybe I'd sell more records. But I'm basically a songwriter.

When you think about it, we sold about 120 million records, which relates to about £1.2 billion in the U.K. economy. We've seen very little of that.

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

In the commercial music world, the folk world, we sell records and concert tickets - this is the way I make a living. You go out, you make your art and hopefully people will put their money down for it. But it's getting hard. I have to be on the road so much to keep the lights on.

From all the years that I've been in the business, you know that ballads are what impact. Mid-tempos are great, you can sell some records on 'em, but when it comes down to it, ballads are the meat-and-potatoes on the album.

If we waited for a hit record to tour, we would never have toured.

I don't think most rock stars are particularly calculating. I don't think they sit there and think, 'I will do this; therefore, on Monday, I will sell another 200,000 records'.

There is no everlasting power in the music of today. Everyone is running after record sales.

I think my first client other than my brother was this kid named Tallent. I was charging him eight dollars an hour to record in my room. He kept coming back, then I went up to ten dollars an hour.

You don't even know are we going to have a career? Are we going to be able to sell records? Are we going to have a label?

The record companies didn't want 'Stony Road,' and it ended up being a gold album. They didn't want 'Blue Guitars,' and we did 165,000 books.

Anything can wait for a hit record. That, after all, is what everyone wants at the end of the day.

I don't think people should be priced out of going to the theatre... But we have to recognise that it is a show business.

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.

Exclusives are bad for artists, bad for consumers, and bad for the whole industry.

When I started in the music business, travel became a huge part of my world, where it hadn't been at all. I visited parts of the world that I'd never been to and found that I was spending maybe 30 days at home a year.

In a time like this, when records are not selling, he's the only one that is selling. You know, Drake and all the other ones [did well], but Em did [close to] 800,000 his first week, and he's #1 for the fifth week. It's incredible. I think he has a faithful fan base of people who have been following him for years. They're not going to stop following him and not stop listening to his music. Em said he didn't like his last album as much as this one. You can hear the difference. I like both of the albums. '3 a.m.' is one of my joints. But Eminem has followers that's gonna mess with him until the day he dies.

People will download the music for free and they'll pay for it if they want to give you a compliment. They don't have to pay for it. And the only way the artist can make money was by touring 'cause the record label didn't take that money. Unfortunately now, cause the record company's not making money from the downloads, now they want to take money away from everything.

[Making music] only turned into this weird job in the last year or so. Once I figured that out, I was having a blast.

I'm down to sell records but not my soul.