Music Entrepreneurship Quotes

I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.

When I graduated, I was going to go to school for law, but had such an affinity for hip-hop. It was like walking into a casino and I decided to bet everything on hip-hop, and I hit! My hit wasn't just a hit for me, it was a hit for everyone in this culture.

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

We came up with all these crazy ideas that Taylor Swift could be the biggest artist in the world - and it came true - and that we could have five labels and become the biggest independent record company in the world - and it came true.

Obviously spending my teenage years in music, and in popular music, I wanted to continue this career, but in a way that allows me to dictate it and create it myself as opposed to relying on third party or more corporate decision making.

You can always pound out demos and send them to record companies, but most of the successful bands I've seen are the ones that can sustain themselves.

I remember being told 'Someone's gonna make a fortune out of this rap thing' and thinking 'no way'.

There's no real outlet for making Hip-Hop in Alabama. You need to travel to get heard. You really need to be working though. You need to be going at it every day and getting yourself seen, getting yourself out there on the road, doing shows, making music. It's all about being on your grind.

Music business is hard. It's very difficult. And it's not for everyone. Even if you can sing or even if you can write a song, it takes a lot of determination, it takes some kind of thick skin.

If it hadn't been for record people like Ralph Peer, the Chess brothers, and Alan Lomax, then life would've been unbelievably dull, and I would've been sacking groceries somewhere and probably, at this point, running a little 7-Eleven down by the airport.

I have been doing merch' since I was 15 and in bands when I was a teenager - silk-screening shirts, making the emulsion in my mom's closet I converted into a dark room, through college. That's essentially how us bands survived was selling homemade t-shirts.

I used to go and cop stacks of blanks CDs and sit there and burn copies of my mixtapes and print up my own mixtape covers and post up in downtown Oakland and Telegraph in Berkeley and literally was selling my mixtapes for five bucks, hand-to-hand.

Well, since I produce and pay for my own albums, it is the ultimate freedom.

SST was formed to put out the first Black Flag record. Basically, there wasn't anyone else to do it. I felt that what I was doing with Black Flag was very worthwhile, and I wanted to get it out there.

Music is a big machine that would go on with or without me.

Hip-hop is a beautiful thing. I think that the music genre itself has created more millionaires than any other music genre before it, especially in our community.

I like the music. I love it & live it in fact. But for me the business part of music just plain stinks.

I realize that I really have to make music work for me as a career because I can't do anything else.

The music business is strictly business.

I felt like for what I needed, Bad Boy got me... they got me covered. Especially Puff, man. He's going to be the first billionaire rap entertainer. At the end of the day, they need me. Other artists-labels don't need me, but Bad Boy and Puff needs me. And I need them. It goes both ways.

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'd like to make music for a long time, and all different types of music. Maybe I'll start my own label to get other artists off the ground.

Independent artists and labels have always been the trend setters in music and the music business.

I founded my label last November called Icy, and once my foundation is laid, I'd love to go back and help other artists and give them the opportunity that I wasn't given at a younger age.

The rise of the Internet has caused the demise of the record labels, and has destroyed the music business of old, but it's also created new opportunities for young artists.