Artist Compensation Quotes

I firmly believe artists should be paid for what they create.

One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'

When you think about it, we sold about 120 million records, which relates to about £1.2 billion in the U.K. economy. We've seen very little of that.

People think top singers are overpaid, but opera houses have a top fee, which is a good thing. Of course concerts are different- everyone wants to make as much money as possible.

When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.

I'd never been paid for the first Roses LP - it was 2002 before we received any royalties.

A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid.

I'm very supportive of creative people being paid for the work that they do.

The same applies to the music and film industries. Until the heads of the labels start wanting to make money rather than creating controversy, tension, and excuses about why piracy is making the job so hard that no one could do it but them - and oh by the way, they need a raise to really focus in on the fight - the music industry is going to have a very tough time of it.

I think overall, and this isn't specific to Spotify or any streaming service or any label... when you consider the overall value chain of the music industry and how important the songwriter is to the business - I think there needs to be another look at the value chain.

I think it would be bad for culture and the art if artists and people who develop the apparatus to support those artists don't get paid.

I have a real kind of fundamental philosophical belief that movies are better if everyone gets paid when they work, and if they don't work, the people who worked on them make a little bit of money, and the people who finance them, they lose, but they don't lose too much. I believe that that creates better work.

I imagine if Spotify becomes something that people are willing to pay for, then I'm sure iTunes will just create their own service, and they're actually fair to artists.

You have laws to protect oil men, so why not artists?

Composers and lyricists are not responsible for storyline and casting. One can imagine actors shouldering this responsibility, since they charge for half the film. But producers never ask actors to share the losses. Instead, they train their guns on composers and lyricists.

Artists need to be valued. Many of our shows are re-run in other countries. In Hollywood, if a show is being re-run, artists are paid royalty.

I'm the only artist who got paid by Puff, like really, really, paid.

The Internet is the wrong direction for music.

Nobody is interested in how many claps and whistles he received for his performance. All they are bothered about is how much money they are getting.

Art is only worth what people will pay for it. Artists do not get paid by the hour.

A group or an artist shouldn't get his money until his boss gets his.

I don't think that the real enemy of the music industry is illegal downloading; I think the real enemy of the music industry is radio.

Companies like Spotify, the new Apple service, and all the others are really going to have to pay artists more. And I think it's a matter of time; I think a lot of these companies and the individuals that are involved in them realize that as well. They know that artists are not getting what they should be getting.

I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!

Singer/songwriters spend two or three years making an album, and then it goes up for sale and everybody pirates it and you don't make any money. Whereas, writing a film score you still get presented with a paycheck.