Robert Hilburn Quotes

Chart numbers can be deceiving. An album doesn't have to sell that much these days to show up really high on the charts.

Selling a million records used to be a big deal. I guess it's not anymore.

My biggest frustration is the lack of scale in the music industry. The fact that no one has sold 100 million copies of an album is frustrating.

No. 1 records are fine, but in 2016, they just don't mean as much any more - the currency has changed.

The streets buy records, but they don't really buy records in incredible numbers.

I don't really sell many records.

The record business has always mystified me. Sometimes there are reasons why things sell or don't sell that can't be understood by mere mortals.

I don't know how many records I'm selling.

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.

When radio stations started playing music the record companies started suing radio stations. They thought now that people could listen to music for free, who would want to buy a record in a record shop? But I think we all agree that radio stations are good stuff.

The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.

Well, you know, back then there wasn't many albums, it was the singles. You sold singles.

My best country record only sold 200,000 copies.

I grew up in the day when the Beatles sold 1 million singles in a week. And all you've got to do now is sell about 10,000 singles and you're in the charts.

Singles, whatever. But selling a million albums feels like an impossible thing to do.

When I started playing music, people weren't selling 5 million records. That was not the standard; that was not the focus.

A record for us that sells 50,000 is a good record, and 100,000 is a serious hit.

It's harder and harder to sell records now. You've got to give extra value. You've got to give people a reason to go out and buy it rather than burn a friend's copy.

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?

It was so simple in the old days. You put out an album, people promoted it, it got in the charts, and you had a hit.

Those record companies don't know what's happening at all.

There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done.

Recorded music is more a marketing tool than a revenue source.

People say, 'How's the record doing?' In the old days you'd say, 'We're at 600,000, it's doing great.' You don't say those things anymore. Those numbers are gone.

D.C. is one my largest audiences. They buy tons of records of mine in Washington, D.C.