Music Ownership Quotes

The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might not be successful.

Once a song comes out, these songs aren't mine. They're everybody's. So there you go.

Music was the one thing that was just mine, and no one could take it from me. I created it, dictated it, and it made me not able to let go of it.

In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.

Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn't their parents'. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.

So in my mind I own a lot of house records still.

Good Charlotte became more than a band and more than the songs: it became something that the fans owned.

I've never sold my publishing. I have 100% control of all of my publishing and that includes everything, every use of my songs.

The New Kids took some hits for, you know, not writing their own music. But on a songwriting standpoint, I mean, I'd never written music before when I was in the group, ... Now the music is my music, so it's kind of like my baby, and that was a whole different experience.

You put a piece of music out, and it's not in your hands anymore, and that's cool with me.

There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.

Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.

The fans own the records and listen to them and love them. It becomes the soundtrack to some part of their lives, and we don't control that. To me, that's what's exciting about what we do.

Music is everybody's possession.

Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential.

When I was younger, I'd buy a vinyl album, take it home and live with it, and I think that attachment's largely gone for the file-sharing generation.

Because I don't believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

I get sick when I think about someone going to iTunes and downloading two songs off our album. It's not meant to be listened to that way.

It's nice if people ask to use your song. You have to make a decision as an artist how you feel about that.

A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand, it's all 1's and 0's, this digital cloud floating in the ether. but with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand.

I try and take it for what it is, and I'm very at peace with the fact that when I'm done with the songs, they don't belong to me anymore. They belong to the listeners.

Anyone who knows anything should know you cannot take a master track of a recording and write another song over the top of it. You just can't do that. You can call it a tribute or whatever you want to call it, but it's against the law. That's a problem with some of the younger generation, they don't understand the concept of intellectual property and copyright.

I don't do sessions for myself ever. I'm always working, writing for pop sessions. And what happens is that sometimes I like a song so much, I keep it for myself.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

I'm a hip-hop guy, and the first time I heard Eminem was in '96. He was on a record with Shabban Siddiq. I was like, 'Who is this guy? He's dope!' First album came out: awesome. Second album came out: awesome. Third album, I was like, 'Eh.' He started to get really successful. He wasn't 'mine' anymore.