Buzz Osborne Quotes

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.

I was working with Bill Graham management at the time and it was obvious to everyone concerned that albums like Open Fire, while they were good for me creatively, were not going to be commercially successful.

Well, I tried to get a record deal in 1966 or '67, and everyone thought I was too eclectic.

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.

I have just enough people paying attention that I have the freedom to be in charge. And I have a great record company - Nonesuch understands what I'm about.

I made this record without a record label.

I was actually signed at a very young age - I was 12 - and one thing led to another, and I ended up in a mutual split from the label. But it was probably the best thing that could have ever happened, because I was able to kind of leave the industry side of it for a minute and focus on the independent side.

Shoot, there's a committee to tell you everything at a record label. You definitely have to know who you are if you want to look like you at the end of the process. We've all seen people get record contracts, and by the time they're spit out by the machine, we don't even recognize them.

To me, being in the big time is not that big of a deal. I've been there; I know what it is. It's exciting, but it's also a lot of work and pressure. I love sort of flying under the radar where we can play theaters and sell CD's on the Internet, and it's really kind of a cool time.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested.

Putting out my album on my own label has been a great experience for me. It's been very inspiring. It's like a new start for me and having all this creative freedom is so liberating and exciting.

Record companies worrying more about market share than developing artists - I hear there was a time when if your first record didn't sell 8m copies, you were still given a chance to grow as a songwriter.

You want to sell records, but if you want to call yourself an artist, your job is how you express yourself.

When I was working on 'Coloring Book,' I knew that I wanted it to be a beacon for independent artists and music makers with their own agenda.

When you get to a point where you're not beholden to a record company, then it's up to you to say, 'OK, enough knob-turning. We're done.'

Of course, I want to sell records, and of course I want to get played on radio, but it has to be about making the record that I'm proud of.

It's great to be able to find a way to release your music and do what you want to do artistically and not have to just worry about being accepted by the major label industry.

In my music career, I never was interested in working and writing and creating songs based on what kind of rewards I could receive in return - a hit song, per se, is what most contemporary artists have to deal with when they deal with a label.

Attention, it just comes and goes. Since we don't have a major label, it's like, what are we gonna do next? You have to make your own decisions.

I think what I've learned to focus on is my music, and that's why I made my record independently.

Leaving Interscope was not a personal thing. These record companies are a certain kind of machine, and we weren't able to function in it.

You might be like, 'I want really big hits.' But when you get really big hits, and your label is making $150 million, they are people who are now interested in what you do. They are going to begin to tell you what to do, and so you become important. So your creative freedom - you're not going to have that again.

We got very lucky, and we were really honored with how amazing our family is now at Hollywood Records... They believed in us, and they let us make the record we definitely wanted to make. And they let us be the Jonas Brothers.

I've never commercialized my music. I've seen that ruin too many people who think two-minute ditties are the answer.