Moby Quotes

If you're on an indie label, you're not getting enough money. And if you're on a major, you're not getting enough support.

There is such a thing as good interference from your record label. I don't think I get enough interference from my record label.

There's been not a dime spent on marketing for any record I've ever put out.

You don't want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.

As an independent artist, you're always figuring out how you're going to fund your next album.

I don't have a manager who's secretly on Interscope. I'm the complete opposite of an industry plant.

Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you'd think that I'd have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I'm doing. Actually, they've just kind of let me take the wheel.

Being a producer is tough. They have to go through so much - dates, money, and release. It's quite crazy.

We'd been on Geffen for a long time, and I think we felt that we needed a change. I just don't think we felt very close to the people at the label after all this time or that they understood what we were trying to do. I don't have any regrets, because at the time we signed with Geffen, it was the right thing to do.

I've been offered things from alot of different labels and stuff like that, but it's just like, it has to be perfect. I'm not going to sign my life away.

When a record company makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When a manager makes a mistake, the artist pays for it. When the artist makes a mistake, the artist pays for it.

In the late 80s, artists could be signed to labels and be nurtured. It wasn't, "We're going to give you one shot, and if you don't measure up, you're gone".

If I do become more successful, either as a producer or a rapper, I'm going to do everything I can to help whoever I can on the label.

The hardest thing to do in this business is to still be around. When music changes, when labels' resources have dried up, it becomes harder and harder to continue to make a living at this.

I'm signed to Atlantic through 300 Entertainment [Lyor Cohen's label]. That is my only contractual relationship.

In theory, when you're working with a record label, you're just borrowing their money. And that's basically how the record industry works, right? It's like, you borrow $100,000 from a record label, so you don't make any money until you make back that money for them. In theory, they have you held hostage, so you've got to do every little stupid thing that they want you to do.

Record labels today are much less patient: Artists have a bad record, and they're gone.

There aren't many other labels who I can say are that successful, and can give me as much as 4AD gives me, and still have such a great roster.

My experience with being on a record label over the years has been when both of your agendas are in sync, and they're the same goal, it's great to have another army of people and resources and money. But most of the time, they're not the same. Their agenda is just simply to sell plastic discs at any cost, and yours is to preserve - at least in my case - your integrity, and hopefully sell some plastic discs, too.

It is cool to have a label head that is also a songwriter, in a band, and produces records.

I think Def Jam happened to be one of the labels that really didn't have a good grip on things that were going on. I'll say that - that's my political answer.

If you're an artist trying to put out your own record on your own label, it's hard to get a distribution deal because no one wants to sign a deal with one entity. They want to sign distribution deals with labels, who have lots of product, lots of artists.

At a major label you can start to feel that you're working for them, and that any work you do, you're never going to see any benefit.

I'm a free agent so I'm probably gonna be signing a major deal that I'm gonna be announcing pretty soon, and a few good singles are coming out.

There were times when I would suddenly realize making music is a crazy pipe dream. I would see bands that did super well in South Africa still struggling to survive, or even people on the international level who are doing well but financially can't really support themselves.