Blake Shelton Quotes

I remember auditioning for record labels and having them tell me, 'Well, the country-radio demographic is the thirty-five-year-old female housewife. Give us a song that relates to the thirty-five-year-old female, and we'll talk.'

I was really amazed when I started hearing 'Songbird' on the radio. I couldn't believe that the record company promotion department had actually convinced radio music directors to play it -because there wasn't anything like it on the radio at the time.

The music business is the most childish business in the world. Nobody knows what they're selling or why, but they sell it if it works.

'Course, 'Santini' bombed in England, y'know. It came out at the height of the New Wave, which couldn't have been a worse time for a solo singer trying to sell rock melodies.

What Nirvana's success means is that certain radio stations now have their ear more cocked to bands like us; they're more open to playing more stuff.

Most companies that are successful listen to people and see what they want and they make that. So when I used to make songs, I'd make mixtapes. The public would tell me what they like and then I would make songs based on what they like. That's how I knew 'Ridin' Dirty' was going to be big - they told me they liked this kind of music.

I know what labels and artists need, along with the consumer.

When a record company looks at me I'm very hard to market, I don't really fit anywhere, It's hard to get me on the air, and I'm hard to demography, but! because of that I'm not subject to trends like you pointed out.

Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music and you always have to keep that in mind.

The music industry is saying, This is the format, and if you'll fit into this format, you can be on radio, and if radio will play you, MTV will expose you, and MTV will expose you, we'll sell records.

We can get airplay all across the board, from CHR to Active rock.

My songs don't play on pop radio; they play on black radio.

I think it's ridiculous to try to sell records to teenagers, because teenagers don't buy my records. And there ain't that many teenagers out there in the marketplace.

It is difficult to get played at my age on the radio.

D.C. is one my largest audiences. They buy tons of records of mine in Washington, D.C.

When radio stations started playing music the record companies started suing radio stations. They thought now that people could listen to music for free, who would want to buy a record in a record shop? But I think we all agree that radio stations are good stuff.

There's one place that I've always known I wanted to be, and that is on country radio.

Any album that I ever put out I'm going to send it to country radio first.

Back in the day, the album was king in many ways. And, of course, we were very tied in with the birth of FM/college radio in the States, and what we were doing suited the format of those young radio stations.

I think it's a reflection of the music business in general, which to me seems very fragmented.

Look at music for what it's worth around the world and not just America. In other countries, people are still buying CDs and going to record stores. But in America, it's all about digital. The game is breaking down. But, look at me, you need to know how to play the game the right way.

The market didn't define the music; the music defined the market.

I would sell 2 million records, a million went to teenagers and a million went to the adults. So, when The Beatles became so popular, I lost a million to the teenagers, but I was still selling a million to the adults.

Jay-Z, he knows precisely who he's going for - 14-year-old white suburban girls.

When the first record came out, I'd go down to radio stations pretty much every day to get the record played, and I would walk in and they'd tell us how much they loved the record, but they weren't sure how much they could play it because they were already playing a girl.