John Perry Barlow Quotes

If you can play live and support yourself, it's one of the few ways you're going to actually get paid in this business these days.

Back in the day people made music to go on tour. They didn't make music to make a video.

There's a tendency to make more money at concerts. That's from a financial standpoint. Night clubs have a better feel, better contact between the artist and the audience.

You know, the record business is much different than being artist on stage.

Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.

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

We want people to see us live before we continue on and call ourselves recording artists.

If you get half a million, at a certain stage you probably will get 4 million people, if they are able to hear it. The touring thing is unbelievable. It really is amazing from what we did the last tour even to what we are doing now.

There's no way to be able to tell what it's like to be a country singer until you're walking in the shoes.

I want to sell out arenas and make an album and work with some of the best artists in the world.

If I were to do this over I'd play a lot more shows before I made a record.

If you had a successful TV show, people wanted to see you live. Promoters had had practice with pop groups, and 'Python' achieved a similar status. We also had lots of rock star fans - George Harrison, Pink Floyd, Robert Plant. Promoters saw that and liked it.

Nowadays, with the state of the music business, for any artist, whether you're up-and-coming or you've been in it for awhile, you have to explore different revenues and different ways of expressing yourself.

As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album.

Being my own boss and working inside an industry that's not really an industry, I need to keep busy and keep working. The only way to make money in music - unless you're managing someone - is to tour, and even that depends on where you are at.

Technology has given us convenience, but at the same time it's making musicians work harder in that if you really want to make money making music and selling albums, you have to go out there and perform. And hope you sell stuff like merch, and get on YouTube, and all the other ancillary sort of things that go along with that.

Any artist manages his own business along with his manager. Every band should.

I do work a lot. I mean, most of my income, I would say, comes from live performances. And then you've got publishing, you've got record royalties.

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist.

While the House of Blues slogan has been 'In blues we trust,' its stages are usually filled with more reliable moneymakers - Neil Diamond and A Tribe Called Quest among them.

I've never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I've been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows.

Since the traditional recorded-music business models have drastically changed, there is truly diminished income derived from recorded music by artists - both current and catalog. The touring industry has become much more important as a majority revenue stream and the ancillary fan experiences and promotions that may be derived from it.

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

Oh yeah - for sure - hardly a week doesn't go by when I don't hear something wonderful that someone has made in some low-budget situation, primarily with a view to selling a few hundred copies at their concerts.

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.