John Waters Quotes

I'm singing the music publisher's theme song - it ain't a commercial.

Part of doing mash-ups is getting the legal rights to use the songs. If you're going to do a mash-up with five songs, you should probably find 10 songs, because you're only going to get half of them cleared. It's a real collaborative effort.

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.

I'll go to the movies and hear 'Angel From Montgomery' in some film, and nobody ever even told me about it. They don't tell you your stuff is going to be in a movie. They don't have to, so they don't tell you. You get paid eventually.

Sure, the labels and publishers get the rights for songs to be remade into a ringtone. So part of what we do is to work with those content owners to make sure that there are rights in place for every piece of content to be made into a ringtone.

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.

When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.

There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.

There's definitely some sort of dissent brewing between labels, publishing companies and artists. A lot of it has to do with older licensing schemes.

Every time I release an album my old record company releases another one.

So you have to just be really careful and make sure that when a deal comes along, that it's like the right deal for you... not necessarily the most money, because you have to pay the record label that back in like record sales and stuff.

It's typical for video customers to often use licensed music - whether a soundtrack, background music, or sound effects - to complement their video projects.

The songs certainly have not made my fortune, but I am still grateful for the royalties when they come in.

I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, these are just some of the people who threatened to sue if we used their songs.

I'm delighted about the track's success in the sports world, but the frustrating thing is, I don't think I got rich on it. The labels and publishers did very cheap deals on our songs.

I've copyrighted 3,000 songs.

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.

As long as you have a percentage of a song, that lasts forever. You have to study the business. Don't just be in it for money. You have to understand what you're in it for, then get your money.

I don't want to have to talk to a lawyer if I want to jam with someone or if I want to sing on someone's album.

Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple in copyright law, and when it comes to music copyright, it's especially convoluted.

The purpose of VEVO is to continue the tradition of corporations preventing artists from making money on their art.

I rarely have any contact with the artists who cover my songs.

I can do anything onstage. Here's the misconception: You could record an album called 'The Best of Styx.' And all you would have to do is pay the individual songwriters a mechanical royalty.

And once the music is out there, when you're selling a record and selling music and people are going to do whatever they want with it, it's kind of hard to resist certain opportunities, especially in the record market now.