Music Profits Quotes

One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'

A lot of people are coming down on people taking old rock 'n' roll songs and making commercials out of them, but from a songwriter's standpoint, I don't mind because it helps pay my rent.

I really hate it when I see other bands selling their music to commercials.

Everyone has learned how to monetize music except the music industry.

Major labels didn't start showing up really until they smelled money, and that's all they're ever going to be attracted to is money-that's the business they're in- making money.

No one really gets rich doing this. A couple people do, Black Sabbath does. We don't sell any records anymore.

I remember being told 'Someone's gonna make a fortune out of this rap thing' and thinking 'no way'.

My dad would always ask, 'How's the money?' but I was never interested. Millions came and went, stolen by the robbers in the music industry. But as someone said, 'You'll never be poor as long as you can pick up a guitar.'

Music as a business is a dirty thing.

I know it seems like LCD Soundsystem sold millions and millions of records, but we didn't. I'm not a wealthy person.

When I got my first check from 'Rack City,' I was like, 'Damn, I can make this much money making beats?'

Even though the popularity and the fanbase is much much greater, and more people have heard about me through things like the Grammys and the Ivors and touring and word of mouth, it doesn't reflect in the sales of the record and doesn't go into my pocket.

My biggest frustration is the lack of scale in the music industry. The fact that no one has sold 100 million copies of an album is frustrating.

I've never commercialized my music. I've seen that ruin too many people who think two-minute ditties are the answer.

There's something extraordinary about selling millions and millions of albums.

You see the music videos and the bling and the cars, but all of that goes home at the end of the shoot. They make nothing because there's less and less money in the music industry.

By the time 1997 had rolled around, I had been in the music business for all my life, from the age of 15. I started recording professionally when I was 18. I had seen how record companies work, how the business works, and truth be told, I was pretty disgusted by everything by that time.

I have always abhorred the business end of music.

The fact that people still know us is, in my opinion, a result of our music and of the big money that runs the music industry today. The people who control the industry are accountants who recycle everything in new, nostalgic packages, and everything else, to make more money.

I made an enormous amount of money in the record business as a result of owning so much of what I was doing... I owned all those albums and continued to own my catalog.

I had seventeen No. 1 songs and I didn't see anything like that kind of money.

I got me a hit record and I ain't never made a cent from it.

When no one's buying your records, it's easy to justify selling a song. But once you start selling records, you can't really justify having two songs in Cadillac commercials. It looks greedy. And it is greedy. This whole music thing should be about music.

There's no money in music. I know that. I think the whole world should know that.

I don't know how much money I've made, don't know how many albums I've sold.