Music Autonomy Quotes

The music industry the last 120 years has been insane. It's just continual chaos. So it's not unusual that something like the Internet comes around, but as one door closes another one opens, and that certainly is the case where now, artists can have a lot of control over how they display to the world, all at once, their new record.

When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free.

And looking at today's music scene, I think it's cool that there are a lot of consumers and fans not limited by what radio and the record companies tell them to buy.

The music should speak for itself, and hopefully it will.

I always remain optimistic. There are three levels of music production: the majors, indies, and what I call "inties," music distributed via the Internet. The Internet is one area that I have used pretty effectively to break free of corporate control.

Some movies work really well with music from Bach or Mahler that existed long before the film, so music has its own autonomy.

I was actually signed at a very young age - I was 12 - and one thing led to another, and I ended up in a mutual split from the label. But it was probably the best thing that could have ever happened, because I was able to kind of leave the industry side of it for a minute and focus on the independent side.

Music is worth doing just because. It doesn’t have to be justified by some political point of view, and it’s kind of insulting to the music to make it a tool for something else.

The prospect of music being detachable from time and place meant that one could start to think of music as a part of one's furniture.

God, just shoot me the day I start making music you can just put on in the car and have a conversation over it.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn't tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

My greatest accomplishment is the freedom for doing what I want to do with my music...I love my freedom so I'm happy I am a free artist.

I would love to learn to play something so I don't have to rely on someone to collaborate with.

I want to make hand-held music, undiminished by the need to make everybody in the world listen at once. The goal is to ride into the sunset, stereo blasting, and all of what's got you worried will disappear in the rear view mirror!

I'm gonna make my records, whether I release them as Bleachers or something else.

Producing all my own songs and refusing to go to the hot producer. That's the biggest risk I've taken so far.

The only place where any artist feels liberated is doing independent music. I have had great experience making music for The Dewarists and Coke Studio. No actor, producer or label is telling me what to do with my music. I'm the boss. It is my life, my expression.

The only thing they really get to pick is the single. But I get to pick the producer, the songs on the record, the final masters, the artwork. Basically, I hand them a record.

It's a joy to actually be able to control your own music.

The back story of a songwriter isn't important to me - I don't listen to music needing to know who the guy is.

From the beginning, I knew intuitively that if nothing else, music was safe, and that nobody could tell me anything about it. Music didn't need a middleman, whereas all the other things in school needed some kind of explanation.

Rock music had its own constituency, its own steering wheel. It was beyond the control of the establishment, and we saw TV as the enemy.

I'm not a slave to the recording industry. I have the freedom to make an album that I want to make and do it the way I want.

I really like conducting my music in concerts because I'm convinced it's not just for films; it has its own life. It can live far away from the images of the movie.

It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!