Lyle Lovett Quotes

Music isn't selling like it used to, but the one thing you can't steal or download is a live show experience or a T-shirt.

The Band never really played big concert tours. We never sold millions and millions of albums.

When Pandora doesn't pay, and bars don't pay, and weddings don't pay, and nobody buys CDs or shirts or concert tickets or lessons, then the musician can't make a living making music.

When I made my first album, there was no indication that anybody other than my parents were going to buy it.

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

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?

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.

My best country record only sold 200,000 copies.

Eventually, when I sell enough units, as they say in the record business, I will stop touring. I'll concentrate on what I like to do... stay in the studio.

Since the decline of record companies and music sales, I've always played live.

That would be awesome, to be totally making records whenever I want and to play a show and have a few hundred thousand people there at any city you go to because people know you and your music.

I have sold 120 million records. Half of those could be in Europe.

If I had to live on record sales, I'd be pushing up the daisies.

I want to make more fans, sell records.

I think we'd sold a couple hundred records with our first album, maybe 1,000 at the most.

If we waited for a hit record to tour, we would never have toured.

Raoul' sold a respectable 700,000 copies without a hit single. It didn't take off. If you don't sell 8 million albums or 4 million albums again, everybody deems it a big failure.

I don't really sell many records.

If I cut an album now and sell it for ten bucks, I can put seven dollars and fifty cents in my pocket.

In those days it was pretty cut and dry. If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.

Well, a lot of our concerts do okay, and I know we still get royalty checks which still isn't that important, but again, I have to just say that we're making our records.

I feel like I'd like to continue putting out records and start putting them out more rapidly than I have until now and for me if I can keep selling the records to the fans that already like me that's fine.

I know acts and I'm not going to name names but these people sold ten million copies the first time and the second album sells three million and it's considered a failure and they're dropped and that's really a shame.