It's not about what hits Billboard or how many views you got on a video. It's about copies sold. It's about streams, you know?
The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.
I can still make a living with touring. And maybe you buy a t-shirt. And I would rather 10 million people get my record and listen to it for free than 500,000 that I coerced to pay $15 for it, you know?
There's no problem with fans and bands. There's a problem with the economics of the outside disruption of the industry.
A lot of people are coming down on people taking old rock 'n' roll songs and making commercials out of them, but from a songwriter's standpoint, I don't mind because it helps pay my rent.
MTV made a huge impact. Heavy rotation took you from selling 1m albums to 20m albums, and that meant a lot of dough.
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.
With music, you've got to find ways to get paid again, 'cause all the cool kids in junior high school and high school, they think you're wack if you pay for music.
I drop free music because I want people to know I'm still working. I want people to know I'm working and making my money independently. I don't want to charge for a mixtape; I'd rather charge for an album and really give something to my fans.
Now, we are selling over 5 million songs a day now. Isn't that unbelievable? That's 58 songs every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
Ultimately, people do want to buy merch and tickets to support their favorite bands, but they don't want to feel like it's the only thing going on.
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.
Originally my entire goal with music was for it to be my job. When I sit down to make a beat, I wanna know that I'm gonna get paid from it, and that I can pay my bills and still have money left over to be a person.
Everyone has learned how to monetize music except the music industry.
Major labels didn't start showing up really until they smelled money, and that's all they're ever going to be attracted to is money-that's the business they're in- making money.
No one really gets rich doing this. A couple people do, Black Sabbath does. We don't sell any records anymore.
It used to be that you made an album and then you went on the road to promote that album, hoping for good record sales. Well, good record sales basically don't exist any more, and the emphasis has been more on the live show.
The music industry is in such poor shape; it's in a really bad way, and a lot of people in the industry are very depressed.
The film business, for me, has been great, but the music business, we've always been on the outside looking in.
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.
Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit.
I know what labels and artists need, along with the consumer.
I know it seems like LCD Soundsystem sold millions and millions of records, but we didn't. I'm not a wealthy person.
While I used to make my living principally as a record producer, as time went on, I had to depend more and more on my live performances because of the evolution of the record industry, which has de-emphasized what made it possible to make a living.
I'm in a very good place to make records. Needing to make money off music is very dangerous.
