Christopher Cross Quotes

Chart numbers can be deceiving. An album doesn't have to sell that much these days to show up really high on the charts.

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.

It was so simple in the old days. You put out an album, people promoted it, it got in the charts, and you had a hit.

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

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

I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly.

You used to make records, record companies sold them, and people went to record stores and bought them. That's all gone now.

Selling a million records used to be a big deal. I guess it's not anymore.

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

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.

No. 1 records are fine, but in 2016, they just don't mean as much any more - the currency has changed.

I don't really sell many records.

The record business has always mystified me. Sometimes there are reasons why things sell or don't sell that can't be understood by mere mortals.

The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don't exist any longer.

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.

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?

The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.

Formats are constantly changing, and there are really no rules for the way you put your records out anymore.

The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.

Back in the day, the album was king in many ways. And, of course, we were very tied in with the birth of FM/college radio in the States, and what we were doing suited the format of those young radio stations.

I mean in recent years, I think you've only got to sell thirty or forty thousand to get a #1.

The 'rock world' is a lot smaller than it used to be. It's doing a lot less things than it used to be. From Woodstock back in the day and Rage Against the Machine, no one sells millions of records anymore.

I'm wide open and will entertain anything anybody has to say, but if it's MTV and radio, well, they're great things, but can't be the only thing. I don't know that it would work even for the Beatles.

No one really buys records anymore. You can look at sales and do that math real quick. Unfortunately, it's fast food in the music industry. People don't ingest full records anymore.

The world has accelerated to the point that, as far as the album as a form, I don't know if it's going to last that much longer.