Bette Midler Quotes

I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.

Those record companies don't know what's happening at all.

There were a lot of times where there was a great deal of fodder recorded and played, because there was a market for it - just as there is today. And there were more bad bands than there were good bands - I think that should always be remembered.

Kids are taking music for free all the time. They have Spotify, Pandora... The record companies aren't making the kind of music that they used to make. Artists make their money on tours, not from album sales.

When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.

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.

Well, you know, back then there wasn't many albums, it was the singles. You sold singles.

My audience is the baby-boomers, the bulk of the population. This is also a group that is being ignored by most record companies because they're not the Top 40 hit singles market. They forget these people still listen to music.

At the beginning, at my shows, there were a lot of press and people from record companies. Now there are people who are there to just listen to the music and are genuine fans.

I think the pop chart today is entirely market-driven. And it has nothing to do with public taste. And it has nothing to do with moving music forward. It's simply a market chart.

You have record companies that sign acts that they think are great, and then they never do anything. Acts that they don't think are really going to do much end up having a career. I don't think anyone really knows what it is that drives somebody to get on their computer and want to download a song.

I don't even know what words to use to talk about the music industry anymore. But the business has changed a lot - the methods of releasing music.

I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.

I'm trying to get hold of them... the trouble is a lot of the companies that recorded and produced the albums went bust, so I don't know where to get the masters.

I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs.

Corporate America couldn't be more excited about the demise of the record companies.

People don't really buy records anymore, so record companies won't invest in bands like us. They want cookie-cutter acts.

I think the 360 deals are what stands out to me, first and foremost. I never would have dreamed that record labels would be taking a piece of touring, merchandise, and everything else. The world has changed so dramatically from when we first started.

Because record companies do not routinely release sales figures the way film studios do, the weekly charts in trade publications like 'Billboard' provide the best independent measure of record appeal.

I've watched the dynamics of music completely change to where we've sold tapes, we've sold CDs, then everything started becoming 'music is free' now. In a perfect world, Napster wouldn't have come along. But the world isn't perfect, and when it changes, you have to adapt.

The iPod is not a new category. Music is not new. It's not a speculative market. It's a very, very large market. It's been around for thousands of years and will be around as long as humans exist.

Record labels have enjoyed a 100-year monopoly of selling plastic and now they're up against a different format.

It was 22 years of work in a row, right up until 1987. Twenty-two years in a row-either on tour, writing an album, or recording an album. It wasn't until 1987 that I was able to take a breath.

It's a different thing when you go into a studio and you record with the intent of going somewhere and you're marketing yourself for that direction.

Every time I meet the CEO of a record label I tell them how they did it in the seventies because they want to know. I tell them, "Sign a hundred people! Throw it against the wall and see which ones stick!" And they frown and say, "Oh, we can't do that!" and they start mumbling about demographics and this and that.