Phil Harris Quotes

Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.

Coming into the business, you'd pass through these little agencies until you got to understand what was happening in the business, unless you were really able to have a style strong enough to go directly to the publishers.

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.

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.

So why sign your name in blood for more? It seemed like a sensible arrangement for me. I didn't sell large numbers of records and the record company paid advances they rarely recouped.

More labels should be like that. Instead of putting these records out myself, I should have just signed with them, but they probably don't like my music (laughs).

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

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.

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.

Now we know that, the way contracts are set up, it's not really made for artists to get rich from selling records - that's the company's one shot to make money.

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.

I had to get out of my record deal that I signed with my previous band and get a full solo record deal going so, with all of the paperwork that, that entails it did take a while.

One of the reasons I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to keep things in print. I got tired of labels dropping things out of print when they don't sell.

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 made an enormous amount of money in the record business as a result of owning so much of what I was doing... I owned all those albums and continued to own my catalog.

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 had a very unusual contract. Most artists actually pay for their record dates and it comes out of their royalties. I paid for nothing.

I don't get involved in record label politics.

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 know, the record business is much different than being artist on stage.

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.

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

Napster has pointed the way for a new direction for music distribution, and we believe it will form the basis of important and exciting new business models for the future of the music industry.

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

So you have to just be really careful and make sure that when a deal comes along, that it's like the right deal for you... not necessarily the most money, because you have to pay the record label that back in like record sales and stuff.