Sean Booth Quotes

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.

Midwestern Jews is a different community, is a different thing than New York Jews, L.A. Jews. It's just different. It's the whole Midwestern thing.

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

You gotta remember: the record industry, in order for it to really thrive, has got to attract great people.

I think records are irrelevant, but I'm being approached about it all the time. If I could avoid it, that would be great.

For me, I've always been intimidated by the computer coming from the era of record industry and record stores and buying records and looking at album covers, waiting in line for records when they came out and then ultimately being successful in a band where we recording pre-computer era.

A lot of people are trying to get me to go solo. It's just a thing I have to deal with a lot. Record labels are always trying to get me to go solo.

To be honest, the search for a label was really weird, because some of the labels that you wouldn't expect to care about stuff like radio formats were the ones that did care. They were like, 'Yeah, we love this record, but what are we going to play on the radio?' And I was like, 'You don't have bands on the radio.'

What happened in the '70s was albums and concerts began making a hell of a lot more money, and then the suits got involved.

I have a lot of musician friends. I worked in radio as a music director, and I know everybody hears about the George Straits and the Garth Brooks and the Kenny Chesneys and all that, but for every major star, there are thousands who didn't quite make it.

I think the music business is as crass and as unrewarding as it has ever been.

The music business used to be filled with people who love music.

Charts and learning the politics behind making a record - it's pretty soulless.

Our records are commodities. We're looking to make a sale. The radio stations are looking to get the advertising dollars. The end.

But I can say that the business has changed drastically since I started at 8 years old. Everything from the way you tour to how you make a record and how you release the music.

Before I started Brainfeeder, there were rumblings in our own circle about creating a label for us all. Then I started to see all these other ones from Europe try to capitalise on the scene. It didn't make sense to me that there were all these people who were trying to build on something that was in our backyard.

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.

Nobody sells records any more, and the only way you can actually do anything is to go out and play live.

My father was in record promotion in Los Angeles. He worked for Mercury Records, Capitol Records, and RCA Records. My parents divorced when I was about 9. In 1978, my dad moved to Nashville and opened an independent record promotion company, Mike Borchetta Promotions.

You see the music videos and the bling and the cars, but all of that goes home at the end of the shoot. They make nothing because there's less and less money in the music industry.

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.

Major labels have always been around our band since the beginning, and we just waited. We knew we had to do some things, and we needed to grow as a band before we made that step. We needed to do it our way and not do it how it works for other people.

The streets buy records, but they don't really buy records in incredible numbers.

I remember when I got into movies, the only way singers could be heard was to through playback singing in movies. Then gradually came the music companies promoting independent pop singers.

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.