Artist Sustainability Quotes

You can't sustain a fan base on a great catalog alone. You must take your music directly to the people.

I think if you're constantly reinvesting into your content and giving the fans stuff, then you can continue to tour. You can continue to sell the merch and monetize the popularity of the brand.

I think that the current climate enables a lot of musicians to do relatively well. Twenty-five years ago, you could be a bass player in a folk-rock band and do pretty well - that sort of means that you're going to have to go get a day job. But a lot of my friends have learned how to write classical music for movies and produce other people and do remixes, and DJ and go on tour, and do all these different things. The more diverse their approach, the better their chances of actually having a career.

There are people who are like monkeys in a cage just hitting the coke button. They don't really get that for [musicians and artists] to do these things, they have to fund them. They have to have something to pay the rent.

Without a good cultural policy, without adequate help, we will always have individualists, shooting stars who are rapidly forgotten or who stop painting for a more profitable occupation.

I want a long-lasting career. I want to build up a fan base that will come to my shows and love me no matter if I have a song on the radio or not.

Before MTV, if you put out an album that sold 50,000 copies, your band could afford not to have day jobs for a while. That meant you could stick around, put out another album or two. Maybe it would be the second or third album where you'd make the statement you'd been trying to make all along.

A rock musician's career is short-lived. To extend it, you need to do other things to keep yourself fresh.

Writers and musicians are very similar in that the chances of making a life in either field are so infinitesimal. And once you're in, the chances of staying viable are difficult. But there is something incredibly different about performing in front of a live audience, as opposed to sitting at your desk typing.