Caroline Polachek Quotes

I truly believe, as an institution, most major labels should just die.

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

A lot of labels are hiring a lot more accountants than people that know music.

Most bands are commercial enterprises. But I'm not in one of those bands.

The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?

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

We've managed to have a long career that is still quite vibrant, yet we've never had to kow-tow to record companies who said we weren't commercial enough.

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

I know there are some labels that put out music for art's sake, but I don't know which ones.

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.

I love music and musicians. And seeing great artists dropped from labels was really frustrating and sad to me.

It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who despise music end up being in charge.

I don't think that old-fashioned idea of record companies exists any more.

If it wasn't for the TLC story, many artists would not have smartened up, and you wouldn't have the Lil Waynes and people with their own labels.

I am a singer first and foremost. I was lucky enough to have a manager, when I was 15, who knew the heads of a lot of record labels at the time.

I like Rick Ross as a person. I like Jay-Z and Kanye West as people. But I hate the companies that they record for.

I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will.

Artists were nurtured back in the '70s. Their music was developed by the record companies.

I would largely attribute my identity - as it relates to music labels and corporate music giants - to Dave Chappelle and his relationship to and firm standing in Hollywood.

I wanted to stay independent because I figured there was no way I was going to be able to have control to create the type of music I want. I was basically ignoring a lot of labels.

It used to be that labels would spend two or three or four albums developing a new artist before they threw in the towel and moved on, which kind of gave the artist an opportunity to grow.

Corporate America couldn't be more excited about the demise of the record companies.

The record companies don't give you a chance, like in the old days when they went, 'Here's a pile of money. Go make a good record!'

The music industry the last 120 years has been insane. It's just continual chaos. So it's not unusual that something like the Internet comes around, but as one door closes another one opens, and that certainly is the case where now, artists can have a lot of control over how they display to the world, all at once, their new record.