Natalie Merchant Quotes

Only I hold the right to all my songs.

If you want to play somebody's music, you'd better go into his house.

I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.

When I do a film score, I am basically nothing more than a fancy pencil for hire. I don't own any of the music when I am - it belongs to the film company - and likewise, when I am done, even if I come up with something astounding that I may want to revisit... in the world of film composition, you can't do that.

Before our albums are released I feel like we still own it, that we have control over our music. But once it's out there in the world it's no longer ours.

If music is to continue to support the livelihoods of artists, it cannot be taken without the permission of artists.

You're kinda striding the line of what's yours and theirs. What's yours, what's mine, what's ours as creators of it and what's yours as owners.

An author who gives a manager or publisher any rights in his work except those immediately and specifically required for its publication or performance is for business purposes an imbecile.

There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy.

Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.

If we're talking about someone creating something new, those rights are fairly well defined (in the United States, at least) under existing copyright law. But then there's often discussion about the rights of people who produce works under work-for-hire arrangements, which can be far more subtle and nuanced.

I own all the characters I created, thanks to the Writers Guild, so nobody can do anything without me. The way it works is: If the copyright owners instigate a project, like the movie, then I get a fee as creator. If I instigate a project, like the musical, I pay a percentage to the copyright owners.

As you know, in America there's no rights for the artist, so whatever films I've made kind of belong to the studio, so if they want to remake it they can.

The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.

But here's the thing: what you do as a screenwriter is you sell your copyright. As a novelist, as a poet, as a playwright, you maintain your copyright.

Big Tech's nonchalance about copyright violation tramples over people like my wife and me, who strive to make a living in the great tradition of the creative realm.

It's nice if people ask to use your song. You have to make a decision as an artist how you feel about that.

I certainly wouldn't want a song that I'd already written to be used on a commercial. That seems strange.

Copyright is too valuable to be wholly renounced.

What we are fighting for is the intent of copyright as it is described in the US constitution: the promotion of culture.

… the pursuit of civil rights by copyright.

I like the old days when, if I wrote a song and I recorded it, it didn't mean somebody else couldn't record it.

With Ghost Tunes, you just try to do what's right. And what's right is whatever the copyright owner wants to do with their music, they do it.

Our first manager really pushed that we not sell our publishing rights, which is one of the earliest things an artist will do: They'll sell in order to get a cash advance.