I get sick when I think about someone going to iTunes and downloading two songs off our album. It's not meant to be listened to that way.
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.
It's a scary question for a musician or songwriter today - what does the future hold? It is a strange time in the music business too; it feels like we are all in some kind of transitional period, stuck between old technology and new.
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.
During college, I collaborated with another YouTuber and musician, Shankar Tucker. He told me, 'You can do music on YouTube and it's a viable way to put out your songs' and it worked out.
There are millions of people who consume music illegally every month. Just getting them into a legal service will make the music industry way bigger than it's ever been before.
Napster is great so long as they put out tracks on there that have been officially released. I don't really mind people downloading my music; I also see it as a compliment. And if you are a real music lover, you want to have the original CD anyway 'cause then you feel more connected to the artist.
It's pre-roll or post-roll on Vevo. The record company makes money off of that, and then it trickles down.
Because of piracy there has been a massive downturn in people buying music, which makes it more difficult for artists to make money from the sale of records.
GaGa is a digital baby - that's how they communicate. There cant be any layers between the artists and their fans.
Everyone seems so excited by the fact that music is more accessible, people can find new artists more easily and it's cheaper, without focusing on the potential negatives, not least of which is that idiots can more easily listen to your favourite music.
It doesn't matter if people take the music for free, because you can't illegally download a ticket to a concert.
My company created a platform called Modlife, this prepackaged website that runs an artist's website.
The nature of the music industry is changing. People are getting famous on Youtube. I felt I had the advantage of having a following. My fans know what I do and who I am. The independent world gives me more hands on with day to day handling of what needs to be done.
There's a lot of artists whose contracts are written in such a way that they do not get paid for what's happening on streaming services.
People are buying music from 12-year-olds. No one realizes they didn't create this. They didn't write this. They didn't make this. All they have to do is press play, and you have a band.
From the artist's standpoint, are you getting more from streaming than you used to, prior to the days of the Internet? No - and I don't know if those days are ever going to come back - but at least, technically speaking, it's the legal way to do it.
Concerning iTunes, the deals have mainly been done with the record companies. But the artists, with some exceptions, haven't been very well-represented. This is partly because the record companies have largely been copyright owners.
If you look at something like Spotify, many record labels are investors in the company. So from that standpoint, the money is all going back into the labels.
I don't think holograms are the future in the music industry.
Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.
Generally speaking, the business of music streaming is treacherous at best: Consumers don't seem to want to pay big money for access to digital music services, so companies must keep the fees low.
The big, big record labels have so much control. I think too much control that it actually made their artists scared to not do what they were told and then the music suffers because of that dynamic and now there's the power of the download.
Digital downloading of music has affected us all in adverse ways.
I get letters from young people telling me that they're broke and download my albums for free. They ask me what I think about that. I now have a standard line. I tell them, 'I would rather be heard than paid.'
