Dean Wareham Quotes

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.

Music can be so disturbing and frustrating. I mean the business side of it. The actual making music part is fun, but the business side of it is just so out of control, has nothing to do with anything.

I don't get involved in record label politics.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.

The Philadelphia/New York world of the music business is a tough place to be.

I have always abhorred the business end of music.

You learn at a certain point that you have to focus on the business side of music. After getting ripped off a couple of times, you figure out that you need to get a grip on it.

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

I have known from the beginning one thing you need to know. That is, the music business is a business.

The music industry is very small.

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.

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.

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

As a person, I've been in the business since 1969, and I never remember getting an honest count based upon how many records been sold for Burning Spear.

I had business experience. I had made my living designing and building electronic equipment. Basic business was not new to me, but the music business was completely new to me. I knew nothing about distribution, or any of those things.

By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum.

Doing things in my day was simple: you either signed to a big label or you signed to a very small label, and you worked with that one, and then they eventually signed you on to a big one.

It's a small percentile of people who see one dime out of the music business.

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.

Music and the music business are two different things.

To some extent, the idea that rock 'n roll used to have this sort of free antediluvian identity, frolicking in the 1950s with Elvis or something, is totally wrong. It's insane. Elvis' relationship with Colonel Parker, his manager, was one of the most possibly corrupt, certainly lucrative, and intense business partnerships ever in rock n' roll.

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.

The movie industry can be tricky and occasionally creepy, and I have this sense that the music industry is just shady as hell. I don't want to be a part of it.

Los Angeles and New York are the big centers of the music industry worldwide so of course it can be hard for newcomers who don't know what to expect from the music business.

The music business is one of a few places where everything you've heard about it seems entirely cliche, but it's true.