Boots Riley Quotes

It used to be that you made an album and then you went on the road to promote that album, hoping for good record sales. Well, good record sales basically don't exist any more, and the emphasis has been more on the live show.

I don't do CDs. I only do radio. That's the truth.

We sold 1.5 million copies of the 'Abracadabra' album and 26,000 copies of 'Italian X-Rays.'

It's easier for fans to consume one or two songs at a time. Not everybody buys records, so some songs can get overlooked.

It's harder and harder to sell records now. You've got to give extra value. You've got to give people a reason to go out and buy it rather than burn a friend's copy.

No one sells records anymore. It's all about touring. It's all greatest hits records and box sets. And even those don't sell. People just go online.

We are a business, and you do a little of what you think's right, pay your bills, and attract... a single record attracts attention to your concerts and your albums.

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.

It's so different now coming out as a new artist today than it was when I came out almost ten years ago. Now, it's all about singles, it's really quick, it's online. I came out when people sold records and they still do today but - I don't know what the key is.

Nobody's going to sell 10 million records by not working hard.

I actually don't think that I'm gonna sell a lot of records.

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

The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.

I don't think they like the idea that the people who are buying the record get to choose what goes out, because it's their job. The fans even pre-ordered stock to make sure that I had some sort of presence.

Only a certain number of people go to a store over the period of a year. When a person sees my record on the shelf, it eliminates someone else's record from being sold. It's about continuing to try to find new ways to sell records.

Look at music for what it's worth around the world and not just America. In other countries, people are still buying CDs and going to record stores. But in America, it's all about digital. The game is breaking down. But, look at me, you need to know how to play the game the right way.

I genuinely don't know how many albums I'm going to sell when the new album comes out, because I honestly don't know how many fans I've actually got at the moment.

Traditionally the show must go on which is a stupid thing to say, but that in a nutshell is what's going on. We have a new record out; if we won't tour, the new record dies. It's reality - it's what business is nowadays. You just need to tour to sell your albums.

No one really buys records anymore. You can look at sales and do that math real quick. Unfortunately, it's fast food in the music industry. People don't ingest full records anymore.

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

My best country record only sold 200,000 copies.

It's a sad state when more people retweet than buy records.

But when our first album came out, I didn't think it was going to sell a lot of records.

If you want to put out a million CDs and sell them and get them played on the radio, and even videos, or whatever, if that still exists, that kind of muscle can only come from a label like Columbia.

I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly.