Tom Waits Quotes

Even for the people in the business who are real music lovers it's really about putting things in the right boxes, and my style doesn't fit into a box.

As a producer putting up music, I wasn't dropping a project to do this much numbers or make this amount of money, I really just dropped a project for the streets and the culture of music.

I hate genres. I think they're just marketing labels.

I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.

I hate how things must be classified. How this is applied to musicians implies that they somehow contrive their products and have studied the demographics of the audience.

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

Am I R&B because I'm black? Am I pop because I have a song called 'Milkshake'? Or can I just be who the hell I am? Good Lord, people make it seem like we're doing heart transplants here, but we're just making music!

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

The work I've done through my Common Culture Music series has enabled me not only to share my joy of music at scale but also promote the artists I love.

Pop is the most competitive form of music there is. You are always fighting to be adopted and accepted by the masses, and it's always shifting.

I just look at capitalizing on everything that I feel like G.O.O.D. Music brings to the music industry, our following, and the culture. First of all, we have incredible artists. It's definitely about getting those albums out in a very manicured fashion.

All these ways we classify things as R&B and hip-hop and rock... It's bullshit. It's all music. If you put yourself in that box, then you won't be able to hear that it's all music at its soul.

You know how it is with drawers and labels in the music business. They don't want anything to be complicated. They just want it simple, as simple as possible.

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

Well, I am very happy that I was able to play a part in bringing music from the streets onto the radio and into modern culture, I worked very hard and always believed in the sounds I was creating.

In a sense, the music business and I haven't always been the best of bedfellows. Artists often have to fight their corner. Your music goes through these filters of record labels and media, and you're hoping you'll find someone who'll help you get your work into the world.

Music changes every three months. There's always new artists coming out. There's always new sounds. There is always a new hit coming out. You gotta stay relevant as much as you can and feed your fans as much as you can.

I know that starting out as a young band, it's really easy to get lost with bands that sound the same or with the plethora of music that's out there.

I just want to get my music out and make sure that it's heard in the right way.

Genre boundaries are good for marketing but they all but disappear when you're a player.

There is a lot of music in the world that I love that does not always get the appropriate exposure.

My songs don't play on pop radio; they play on black radio.

I think music will thrive where it wants to.

When I first released music, and no one knew what I looked like, I would read comments like: 'I've never heard anything like this before; it's not in a genre.' And then my picture came out six months later: now she's an R&B singer.

I enjoy touring. I enjoy recording the music, I enjoy dreaming it and I enjoy performing it. I also definitely enjoy selling it, because I like to eat.