Mustard Quotes

I wrote and produced millions and millions of selling records, so my publishing company alone was worth millions of dollars. I didn't have to work anymore in life because when the rappers started sampling... I'm the most sampled artist in history.

The whole industry evolves around a great song.

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

I have always abhorred the business end of music.

My first record deal was an independent record deal back in 1995 or early 1996.

I'm delighted about the track's success in the sports world, but the frustrating thing is, I don't think I got rich on it. The labels and publishers did very cheap deals on our songs.

Everyone has learned how to monetize music except the music industry.

Selling music doesn't make that much money.

Tell me a musician who's got rich off digital sales. Apple's doing pretty good though, right?

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.

So, my records really didn't sell, but musicians started picking up on my sound and my songs and cutting my songs and that turned into a gold mine.

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.

If you earned money listening to music, I'd be a millionaire.

We turned what is virtually a glorified independent label into one of the powerhouse labels in the town.

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

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

We are taking close to $10 a CD the way we are doing it, and I think that is a fair amount to split up between five guys. Each of us makes like two bucks a record.

Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.

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 know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway, and we did a record and it got put out.

I'm developing a record company. I'm learning how to supervise music on a film.

I have an independent record label called Favored Nations on which I released an album by an artist called Johnny A, who plays an arch top Gibson through a Marshall, but the tone is all in his fingers.

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

In those days I don't' think they were even demos.