Ry Cooder Quotes

Here's the tragedy of the modern record business: It's radio. If you're not on radio, nobody really is going to hear you or see you or care about you.

In those days it was pretty cut and dry. If you had a record company believing in you enough to cut an album then you had better have the ability to work the album on the road.

If the record was picked up by Dot Records, I would imagine that they would have wanted both sides of the record to be something by Lou alone which would account for the dropping of 'So Blue'.

In the history of pop music, a lot of great records cost an enormous amount of money. There used to be a time where people that had means to experiment would do it, you know?

I just want to keep saturating the market and radio with as many hit records as I can.

I can't wait to start something up myself that is actually about giving unsigned bands the exposure they deserve, especially when they travel so far to play the smallest gig they've ever played in their lives.

Traditionally the show must go on which is a stupid thing to say, but that in a nutshell is what's going on. We have a new record out; if we won't tour, the new record dies. It's reality - it's what business is nowadays. You just need to tour to sell your albums.

Hopefully it will be possible to get all our other albums in American shops one day so if people are interested they can hear it but I'm hoping that people are going to be interested in what we are going to do, not just what we've done.

Music is always occurring. It is just a matter of marketing, attention, and many other factors, that determines whether people will hear these songs or not.

People in the music business say don't make too many records because they'll compete against one another.

The problem with working under an outside label is that your music never seems to reach the right people.

It's really hard in this day and age, with radio and MTV being so consolidated, to get new music out there. I think we've become a really legitimate, viable avenue for getting new music out there.

America stopped making vinyl and phased out the single but Germany held out and refused. Warner's never phased out vinyl in Germany. Now America imports it!

People are scrambling to figure out how they can prolong the life of an album. But as long as the shelf space continues to shrink at retail, there's just no room for them anymore... which is fine with me! I would love to be the next person in country to just release digital singles, but I think we're probably a little ways from that.

It's hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don't seem to want to talk about music, it's all marketing, and that's part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that's not repulsive.

You make some good music, people are gonna find you.

You're not really taken seriously when you're on SoundCloud because anybody can upload. It's the same as standing on a street corner and trying to push your mixtape.

I want my music to be heard.

I used to make albums because I wasn't touring, and so I thought, "This is the best way for people to find out about me.

Today on social media, you can release anything and everybody will hear it. Back in the day, that was your only outlet, getting a deal with a record company and them distributing it around the world.

The Internet has killed the traditional record business, but it's given back in the way of instant access.

I have never had a problem letting a record go.Honestly when I'm making them, mixing them Honestly when I'm making them, mixing them.

Record labels have enjoyed a 100-year monopoly of selling plastic and now they're up against a different format.

When I started out, it was this sense of, "Let's put out a record and see what happens and see where you go and see how you feel and where we can take it." That was a very different world back then.

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.