David Berman Quotes

I can still make a living with touring. And maybe you buy a t-shirt. And I would rather 10 million people get my record and listen to it for free than 500,000 that I coerced to pay $15 for it, you know?

Since the traditional recorded-music business models have drastically changed, there is truly diminished income derived from recorded music by artists - both current and catalog. The touring industry has become much more important as a majority revenue stream and the ancillary fan experiences and promotions that may be derived from it.

I'm a real guy. I'm not money-laundering. I make money off music, and music is my source of income. It feels good. I'm not selling T-shirts, I'm not doing none of that other crap. Straight music.

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

I enjoy selling my music. I don't enjoy selling myself.

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that.

I want to make more fans, sell records.

I am in a business that's built on record sales and reputation and how your single is doing and where your song is on iTunes. But the kind of music that I do comes from my beliefs.

I don't want to get too involved in marketing budgets, online promotions and download set-ups because it would be a bit like Gertrude Stein mapping out a TV campaign. I want to sing. I want visibility. I am essentially Al Martino, not Seymour Stein.

The majors, they have to control the distribution, the record outlets, the radio and, in some cases, even the venues. And downloading and pirating have also put pressure on the majors.

I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.

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.

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.

Back in the day people made music to go on tour. They didn't make music to make a video.

I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.

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

The alternate media are becoming important and viable alternatives to playing live. Records, videos, that kind of thing. They're going to start to count for something. Because there's only a limited amount of us-time available to us.

You know, if a band on a label sold a few hundred thousand copies of their record these days, they wouldn't make any money. But if a band can pump out 10 million copies of a record for free, and 50,000 of those fans come to the band's website to watch pay-per-view videos or buy a t-shirt, that's roughly $10 million in revenue per year.

It breaks my heart to see these young, really talented bands getting chewed up into the system. I remember a time if you'd signed to a major label it was such a sell out! But now... unless you've signed to a big label, you're a failure now.

If your album sells, that's cool, more people find out about you, more people get turned on to what we're really about-which is a live rock and roll band.

Music and the music business are two different things.

How does a band like System of a Down get big?

Don't believe bands who say it's all about the fans and they want to give their music away for free. The result is they will continue to live in their mother's basement.

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

Chart numbers can be deceiving. An album doesn't have to sell that much these days to show up really high on the charts.