Daniel Ek Quotes

I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists.

I don't get involved in record label politics.

I think we have to bottom out. When the studios jump out of the ring, perhaps the artist can get back in.

I'm the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.

For the first case I did with Octone, 360 deals were not at all being talked about. And then for the follow-up case, it was the focus. I wanted to see how things were changing and what the new challenges were.

I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough. When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well - but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.

But anyone who knows anything about the music industry knows it's not only about the music.

The music industry is very small.

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.

With Spotify and all those streaming services, you don't get paid anything. You have to be, like, Madonna or something to actually make a real royalty from that.

Spotify wants to make consuming music simpler and at the same time pay the rights owners.

Companies like Spotify, the new Apple service, and all the others are really going to have to pay artists more. And I think it's a matter of time; I think a lot of these companies and the individuals that are involved in them realize that as well. They know that artists are not getting what they should be getting.

If you are a musician who has released albums, it would perhaps be morbidly interesting to know how much you would be owed if everyone who now has your music had actually bought your record.

Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.

I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.

The music industry is really difficult.

The library companies have made it so that music is so cheap to license. They do sound-alikes of every band, and it makes it harder for the actual bands to get any decent paychecks for licensing.

Now we know that, the way contracts are set up, it's not really made for artists to get rich from selling records - that's the company's one shot to make money.

I suppose we don't know that much about how the music business operates in the U.K., but from what I've heard, it's a pretty big deal.

There's definitely some sort of dissent brewing between record labels, publishing companies and artists [about the compensation they get from streaming services] Spotify is returning a HUGE amount of money [to the record labels]. If we continue growing at our current rate in terms of subscriptions and downloads, we'll overtake iTunes in terms of contributions to the recorded music business in under two years.

You gotta' sell a million records before you talk about getting paid at a major [label].

When Pandora doesn't pay, and bars don't pay, and weddings don't pay, and nobody buys CDs or shirts or concert tickets or lessons, then the musician can't make a living making music.

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.

As for the music business itself, the key things have not changed that much. It operates like any business and money still keeps things moving.

To the extent that '60s guys own things, yes... but I don't have the publishing, just like most '60s guys, and that was an error, you know... part ownership in publishing was the kind of era that started a little bit later, when real businessmen started to manage artists.