Jeff Ament Quotes

Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.

I will never sign to a major record label again. If, by some mega fluke, a record of mine looked like it might break big, I'd try and do it via an indie or somehow license it. I'm not having my music owned by those corporate bastards again.

The purpose of VEVO is to continue the tradition of corporations preventing artists from making money on their art.

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.

It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

Actually, I don't think there's anyone that represents the artists, except the artists themselves.

The intentions of record companies are not good, from the musician's perspective.

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.

What's scummy about the music industry is that everybody loves you when you're dead.

I feel Motown really exploited me.

Imagine if someone like John Lennon or Bob Marley, Sid Vicious, Picasso, whomever, were doing their work, and some corporation, some CEO, some branding entity was saying to you, 'Well, you can do that, but you've got to remove this aspect of your work.' There would no longer be that purity anymore.

Everything about the music industry takes away from you as an artist. They're always wondering what the next thing is: 'What do you have?' It's a very introverted process.

We, the artists, make the stuff they sell and they're like ticks on our backs, sucking the life out of us.

Record contracts are just like - I'm gonna say the word - slavery. I would tell any young artist... don't sign.

A record is a commodity, but so is a hamburger. Just because I work at McDonald's doesn't mean I reap the benefits of that commodity. That's the reality with most artists in the record industry: They're getting paid a subsistence wage so they can keep producing a commodity for the record label.

You see artists hailed as a new generation of independents, only to be enlisted to leverage product.

Whoever is in charge of the artist will always have the upper hand. They act like it's the artists' world, but it's the other way around, so they're going to do whatever they want to do.

You have laws to protect oil men, so why not artists?

The less subsidy we have, the more the 'producers' take over, and the 'bottom line' becomes the raison d'etre. That's quite an unappealing landscape for artists.

I understand that music is a business, but for people who have control of their stuff, like little Taylor and other artists, I think you'll find them standing up for their music every chance they get.

The record companies really do conspire against the artists. Especially the black artists

I did a lot of songs that I sold, but then they never came out and I never got paid for it. You learn real fast that the music industry, in the beginning, you're not going to get paid for a while, and then you start getting the accolades.

The music business is a place where the artists are all treated like we're working for the people who are working for us. That can obviously be exaggerated when you're a female.

I think to find an escape route out of a music industry that is becoming more and more focused on making money.

The irony is that musical artists have enormous public voices, but behind the scenes we're voiceless, actually.