Offset Quotes

I feel quite sad for the young musicians coming up because they may never get to pay their rent properly. It doesn't matter what the genre; nowadays, it's so much harder than it ever was.

You see the music videos and the bling and the cars, but all of that goes home at the end of the shoot. They make nothing because there's less and less money in the music industry.

I'd hate to be a songwriter starting a career today.

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

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist.

I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough.

The music industry is very small.

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.

I don't think my story is an unusual story for a lot of music performers. But I think that since 1982, worldwide, I have probably seen less than 3,000 American dollars in royalties.

It's a tough business, yes it is. But I've been fortunate. The only real hard times I had was when I was with Montague's Kentucky Serenades. We really had it tough then.

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

That's my dream job, to be able to mail songs out to people who want to hear them. Paste my face on them and not travel all over the world trying to sell them.

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.

Getting a record deal is a meaningless thing now.

Even at my biggest, I want to be writing for other artists. Even at my peak - the highest I can be as an artist - I always want to be keeping my creative juices flowing, keeping money in the bank, putting my intellectual property out there.

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.

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.

If you can play live and support yourself, it's one of the few ways you're going to actually get paid in this business these days.

It's not like it used to be where everybody has a record company to belong to.

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

Sheet music, recording, radio, television, cassettes, CD burners, and file sharing have all invalidated, to some extent, the old model of making a living making music.

That's my favorite subject because it really levels the playing field for artists these days. You don't have to sell out to the record company. You don't have to get a five hundred thousand dollars, or whatever, and pay them back for the rest of your life to record a record.

Nowadays, with the state of the music business, for any artist, whether you're up-and-coming or you've been in it for awhile, you have to explore different revenues and different ways of expressing yourself.