Sam Tsui Quotes

I remember when I first came out as an artist, back in 2004 or 2005, the record label used to take me to all the radio stations and just have me sit in, like, their lunchroom or their conference room, and play for the whole staff. Just to introduce them to me so they would play my records.

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.

I miss how a record label can help spread the word that you have something out.

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.

There has never been any proper commitment to marketing these artists and their music. We are not Sony.

I remember talking with Arcade Fire after their first record, when they were getting all kinds of offers from major labels, and I don't think I gave them any advice. They survived that whole onslaught pretty well anyway without me.

It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now.

Equal Vision seems to be doing really well. A lot of these major labels are just imploding and becoming indie labels, anyway.

I'm recording another demo for another batch of record labels that we'll shop it around to.

We are meeting with Sony, and we have a couple of other labels that suddenly have interest and that's really great because none of them have actually heard our stuff.

If anything, I'm the most hesitant to bring on a label. That terrifies me. I think people believe major labels are linked to success. They're absolutely not that.

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.

I want to be in control of how my music is released and how I create it. What people don't talk about when they talk about major labels is how many artists get dropped or funding gets dropped when they don't recoup quick enough.

To be honest, the search for a label was really weird, because some of the labels that you wouldn't expect to care about stuff like radio formats were the ones that did care. They were like, 'Yeah, we love this record, but what are we going to play on the radio?' And I was like, 'You don't have bands on the radio.'

You can tell if something feels special. But there are so many moving parts involved in making the song a hit. The radio has to deliver, the management has to deliver in terms of booking the right promotions... just being a good song isn't enough.

If you're a priority artist, then you get an amazing amount of exposure and money thrown. If you are more niche, then it's not necessarily the way forward. If you want Instagram followers and fame, then the major labels are still really great for that.

Major labels have always been around our band since the beginning, and we just waited. We knew we had to do some things, and we needed to grow as a band before we made that step. We needed to do it our way and not do it how it works for other people.

I've always invested in myself, whether it was marketing or putting an album together and paying for radio. Spending eight months to a year working on one single to try to get it where you know it's a hit and you can take it into the top 20.

Part of the mission of Nash Icon is taking away some of the day-to-day, hand-to-hand combat that you have to do to continue the mainstream country-radio relationship.

A lot of big labels will just sign bands like a write off.

If you are the record label who owns Lady Gaga, and you have a new artist coming up, you can say, 'Let's have the artist play just before Gaga.' Now you've exposed the huge Gaga audience to the new artist. It's similar to showing a trailer before a movie. The hit creates a hit.

A lot of artists feel it's not worth it to sign with a major label, because if you don't have a giganto hit, then you're not going to get a video made. You're not going to probably get much tour support. You're not going to get promotion. You're certainly not going to get a publicist who's going to pay much attention to you.

You know, I didn't have enough money to quit my day job... the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.

I hate the industry even more now, no bands get nurtured anymore. Labels only spend money promoting acts they know will be Top Ten. I find it offensive spending $2 million on a video.

I'm really happy with Elektra, I don't have anything bad to say about them at all. I always knew a major label was the right place for me to be. I never really had an opportunity to go to an independent label anyway.