Ann Powers Quotes

If you are a musician and you don't show any interest on the business level then you are actually vulnerable and people will rip you off. They will sweet talk you into anything.

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 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.

Things can turn ugly so quickly in the music business, especially if you have an unexpected success.

I started my music career at 18 and for a long while I let other people handle my affairs.

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.

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.

Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

When I finished Westlife, we had - Louie Walsh is still managing me - I was lucky to have options from different labels such as Sony and Universal. When we met Capitol and Nick Raphael, I just believed in them the most, and it looked like they believed in me the most.

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

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.

If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry.

I've always treated the music business as a business.

Today the kids that are out now they make a hit record and they put them right out on the stage with 10,000 people out there and they don't know anything about the business yet.

Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist.

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

You rarely get money out of labels, except for when they open up a budget for a project. Other than that, it's a do-or-die type thing.

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.

It's always boiled down to the quality of your music and the quality of your deal with whoever's distributing your music: There are artists who sold a lot of records and didn't make money because of their deal, and artists who didn't sell nearly as much who made a great living because they own their masters.

The music business, a lot of times, has a big finesse mentality to it.

You come up, you love music, and then business interferes.

It's called the music business. We've all gone into it 'cause we love the music, and a lot of people end up with nothing at the end of the day, after they've done all of this great music, 'cause they never learned any of the business side.

I want to invest and have my own record label and artists. I want to have a business where my kids, kids, kids will still have something going on long after I'm gone.

When I was 17-years-old, I was in the music business.