Music Industry Ethics Quotes

You will have to look a long way before you find a bunch of scum-suckers more greedy, humourless and deserving of death than the suits in the music business.

I often call Daptone the Motown and Stax of today. But in some ways it's different. At Motown, a lot of the musicians didn't get recognized, music got stolen, and people didn't get paid. Or the label would just throw them a pinch of money for their songs. That is one thing we're not doing. Anything anyone writes here, we get a percentage.

I'm down to sell records but not my soul.

I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It's the band's fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it's a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band. I would like to be paid like a plumber. I do the job and you pay me what it's worth.

I hate the business part of music. Music is just like the streets. There's loyal and disloyal people, people saying one thing and then don't do it.

This isn't about fans, greed or money. It's about being morally right or wrong. Nobody is governing the way music gets from artists to fans. It's all running amok.

It's really not hard to keep your dignity and sign to a major label... Most people don't have any dignity in the first place.

In the music business I am surrounded by people who don't view music as a sacred voice. They view music as something that they can use and exploit, often times lazily. They have no sense of the tradition, they have no sense of honor about those who came before and charted the path.

In the end, I think musicians know that getting up in the morning and making music you love doesn't necessarily mean that you deserve billions of dollars or worship from anybody.

I had walked away from the music industry because I had a certain integrity and all that.