Pat Mastelotto Quotes

I think that's the problem in a lot of music. We've got these record labels.

We have incredible record labels in Australia, but sometimes they have a preconceived idea of how to do things.

It seemed record companies wanted bands to be creative because they didn't know how to manufacture underground music. We could do our own thing and go at our own pace. But that changed when major labels started wanting bands that would sell 7 million records.

I'm a fan of music documentaries and I always love seeing what goes on behind the scenes. In kind of the new era of record companies and record releases and that sort of thing, there has to be way more content for the audience.

Jive is a good label, but they're R&B'ed out.

'Magic' is a word that's too often misused in the record industry.

They understand what their market is and who they should be selling records to, and most importantly, they know the kind of artist that they want to be, but they have to do it themselves. You don't want a 13-year-old singing some awful song from a musical.

Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music and you always have to keep that in mind.

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.

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

I don't spend much time listening to the records when they're done. Usually I let go of it. Especially in the Eighties and Nineties - they were like product, almost.

I don't believe in the philosophy of stumbling across hit records.

Artist development is something that I've been passionate about from my days at Uptown and Motown Records.

In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that.

I've never worried about how a new release will be received. I simply try to do the best I can and leave the rest to the gods. The music industry in those terms is something I loathe and detest. It conjures up images of a gigantic factory spewing out parts of the machine.

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.

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

'Vinyl' is a good look at the music industry. The script was honest.

When I was a kid and putting out my first records, there was a lot made out of the fact that the '50s/'60s generation was so dominant.

It's frustrating to do albums that you think are worth listening to, but it's just so difficult to cut through.

You make your music, then you try to find whatever audience is out there for it.

Island Records was the first record label to... acknowledge me. After that, quickly, Republic Records, and then Atlantic Records, Sony Records and Warner Bros. It was all the labels at once. It was absolutely insane, like, knowing that this many record labels were interested in me.

It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.

I think the record industry has gotten to be more about labels wondering what the new single is rather than labels nurturing artists. It's gotten away from making a full album of music that someone would want to listen to all the way through.

If it wasn't for the TLC story, many artists would not have smartened up, and you wouldn't have the Lil Waynes and people with their own labels.