Andy Taylor Quotes

With the new ways of getting music out, you don't need a label if you're a legacy artist.

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 once worked at a record label called London Records. The company was owned by Roger Ames, one of the most successful figures in the British music industry. Roger always placed a value on loafing, on holidays, on not being in the office all the time.

Artists have so much more control of their futures - they don't need to rely so much on major labels or big companies to help them. You have artists like Skrillex that can dominate so much that he gets 5 Grammy nominees, and he's clearly an underground artist.

I made this record without a record label.

I always wanted the world to hear my music, but I didn't know how I was gonna go about it.

Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you're making your own records and selling them online.

I'm an indie artist with major distribution, so one foot in the extreme major music business and one foot in the abyss of indie artists.

Every single thing that I was told that I couldn't do without a label - get in the charts, get on to the Radio 1 playlist - I've done.

I just wanted to have my own dynasty. I wanted my own Cash Money or Roc-A-Fella. Outside of that, I also wanted my own media company.

The internet seems to be what a lot of independent bands are doing these days. They're bypassing the studio - the big studios, EMI and all the record companies - and just doing it themselves, online, selling their stuff, getting known through that medium.

People are like, 'Wow you started your own record label,' and treat me like I'm some sort of innovative genius, when I'm not at all. You've got the Internet and music - you put them together, and people hear your music.

I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.

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.

Back in the day people made music to go on tour. They didn't make music to make a video.

After you make good, quality music, then it's your job to go out there and promote it and to market it and to get it out there to the people.

I'm very new to the industry. I'm not on the Billboard 200 and that is alarming to me. But when I sat down with my management they said it's not a big deal and that it happens all the time.

Music companies and buyers are not too encouraging towards independent musicians. Everyone wants to play safe and go with established names, but unless one breaks this routine, no new talent will come and survive.

It seems that for all of the artists signed to a major, there exists the same amount of artists that are struggling to break through to the surface within the label. I think, ideally, we'd end up with a very well connected competent indie team that will be along with us for the ride, however long that ride may be.

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).

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.

People are doing what they can these days and looking for creative ways to sell music.

The ideal situation would be to bypass all of the drama and mayhem and just get the music right to the people. I'm confident that we'll eventually figure it out.

At Spotify, we really want you to democratically win as a musician. We want you to win because your music is the best music.

If you're not on a major label today, you're not gonna get played. They've got the market sewed up.