Artist Livelihood Quotes

I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale.

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?

I just have to sell enough records to continue financing making more records.

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist.

Video artists being at the low end of the totem pole economically, one of the ways we survive is to go around showing work and giving these talks.

I've never made a dime from a record sale in the history of my record deal. I've been very happy with my sales, and certainly my audience has been very supportive. I make a living going out and playing shows.

If I had to live on record sales, I'd be pushing up the daisies.

I was on the dole once. I loved it. It was only for a couple of years, when I was 20 or 21 and playing in a band. Back then, this was something young folk did - you got your rent paid, a little bit of money to live on, and you loafed around, wrote songs, rehearsed and dreamed of playing Wembley Stadium.

Over the years, I have worked professionally as a musician, photographer, and writer. I've been able to earn my living in other ways, but I always knew I'd come back to acting.

People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love.

Artists deserve to make a living

I don't make my living making records. Maybe someday I will.

Serious music usually doesn't pay.

Ultimately, our goal is to provide all artists with the opportunity to make a living on MySpace.

But it's hard to support yourself from music when nobody knows you.

As soon as I got into music, I tried to be a working, real artist who gets paid for what he does, who doesn't have a day job.

It doesn't matter how good you are as a band or how good your music may be; if the fans aren't supporting it and buying your music, it's hard to make it.

People like to say their songs are like children, but you gotta get those kids out there so they can make some money and pay the rent.

You don't make any money being an artist. Writing and producing? You get your money from that. You live comfortable.

I've been asked often what is the difference between an amateur and a professional artist, and I will tell you. An amateur artist is one who works all week at something else so he can paint on Saturday and Sunday. A professional artist is one whose wife works so he can paint all the time.

It's hard for a country performer to make a living in a Beatles society.

When I first broke into the acting industry, I taught spinning classes to support myself.

From the beginning of my rap career, since I was seen and heard, I always had a store.

As musicians, we are quite literally singing for our supper. Don't get me wrong, I love touring, but the reality is that our idols from the '70s and '80s never toured this hard. They'd do a record, have one big world tour, maybe two, then break to do another record.

Since the decline of record companies and music sales, I've always played live.