Yo-Yo Ma Quotes

You have an entire generation of kids who grew up with the idea that music is something that you can download for free.

Records aren't selling anymore; people are burning music.

It's made music more accessible with YouTube and the ability to trade audio files. But it hasn't made it more popular.

The culture of buying an album on CD or vinyl has gone out of the window. A lot of kids don't really understand that, they just hop onto Limewire, or find a BitTorrent, or even just go onto iTunes if they're going to pay for something. It's just right there, there's no searching about.

People just want to have access to all of the world's music.

Napster is great so long as they put out tracks on there that have been officially released. I don't really mind people downloading my music; I also see it as a compliment. And if you are a real music lover, you want to have the original CD anyway 'cause then you feel more connected to the artist.

Rock and roll music - people want records. For me, it's the whole thing - the package. I don't get satisfaction from buying an MP3.

You start to accumulate your library of music. You want that music everywhere - that's the point where we monetize. If you want portability, mobility, and access, then you buy it.

I think that people will always want music; I think that the form that they will get it in, or distributed to them from, and the price they pay for it is what's up in question.

Any time you can give consumers more of what they want, it's a good thing. Unbundling the album is a good thing. In the case of music - because it is content that you can slice into songs - doing that is of huge benefit to consumers.

Typing in the name of a song and downloading the song you really have no connection with the artist at that point. So I think it is still important to have physical CDs and stuff like that.

The fact of the matter is that 40 years ago, unless you bought the record, you couldn't hear the music. It was such a narrow track in comparison to today.

As a musician, you want the music in as many hands as you can get it into. More importantly, I want people to get the music for the fairest price, and in the most convenient way. And that's really turned into iTunes when you're talking about selling albums.

I think as far as the music industry is concerned, it's kind of been the wild, wild West in a way with the Internet, which is not necessarily a bad thing to me.

With iTunes and Spotify and Pandora and this and that, you don't need to buy CDs any more.

If I'm on a train, with headphones, MP3s are great. At home, I prefer CD or vinyl, partly because they sound a little better in a quiet room and partly because they're finite in length and separate things, unlike the endless days and days of music stored on my laptop.

We want our music to reach everybody, so we're using the Internet. Every kid today is online, and we want to make sure our songs reach every one of them.

I like everything in this iPhone, iPod world where you can do everything all the time. Back in my time, you bought a vinyl record when you were a kid and took it home, and it took a bit of effort to actually get it out of the thing and not scratch it.

It's glorious to be able to go onto the Internet and hear any kind of music anywhere, from anywhere, and get it instantly. But there's also something glorious about having a record with a sleeve and looking at the artwork, putting it on the turntable and playing it, there's still something romantic to me about that.

The bricks and mortar of the music business, they don't exist any longer.

Music is changing so quickly, and the landscape of the music industry itself is changing so quickly, that everything new, like Spotify, all feels to me a bit like a grand experiment.

The music industry doesn't exist the way it used to. You'll never have another star like the stars of the '90s.

I went through my adolescence having this revelatory experience - I can have any music I want, and I can get it immediately. For me and for a lot of people I know, there's this musical eclecticism that happened.

I don't have and have never had an email address. I'm old school. But as far as downloads go, my only objection is I like the sound of CDs better, so I buy those. I think the sound quality is better.

Kids are taking music for free all the time. They have Spotify, Pandora... The record companies aren't making the kind of music that they used to make. Artists make their money on tours, not from album sales.