When I was 20, I thought anyone in the music business over 25 is past it. Then at 30, you think anyone still doing it at 35 is ridiculous. Suddenly, you find yourself at 48 and still doing it, so I don't know what to say, really.
In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It's not so competitive.
I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on.
For starters, I wanted to do an acting role in a movie that had nothing to do with the music business or in which I would play a singer or a songwriter. When I act, I don't even want to be thought of as Ne-Yo.
In business, you can have one massive success that earns $50 million overnight, and that's it. You're successful. End of story. But in the music business, you have to keep on doing it.
The music business is rougher than the movie business. In film you get noticed in a small role, even in a movie that bombs. But in records you better have that hit or else it's 'See you later.'
I think Sean Parker damaged the music business with Napster.
I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician.
There's a lot to live up to when three of your parents are successful in the music business.
If everyone in the music business were brutally honest about what their intentions were then you could sort things out, but it's all smoke and mirrors.
I'm in the music business for one purpose - to make money.
I love the music business very much.
Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say 'This is a good song' as somebody who is in the music business.
I was tossed all over the place growing up, which I guess prepared me for the music business, but the one thing that has always been there, that has never ever left me, has been country music.
We do things on an exchange basis in the music business - it keeps the wheels turning. That's how I can get people like Slash, Flea and Kris Kristofferson on my album. Collaboration should be done through trades rather than charging each other a fortune.
Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman.
The music business is not a good place for people who don't know things.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
With my quick success, I didn't have time to learn the ropes of the music business. Because my first record was such a hit, I was terribly spoiled and I thought I couldn't do anything wrong. I was also desperate to make tons of money because of my responsibility to my daughter. And there was no longer any joy in making music.
The whole point of 'Acid Rap' was just to ask people a question: does the music business side of this dictate what type of project this is? If it's all original music and it's got this much emotion around it and it connects this way with this many people, is it a mixtape? What's an 'album' these days, anyways?