The record companies are interested in the kind of sales they can get from the rock groups.
I've been wanting to sing for a long time. I've been singing all my life, and I've tried different record companies, but it seemed like - it was such a struggle and so hard to get out there. So, I said, 'I'm gonna go on American Idol and see how far it takes me.'
I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.
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.
Leaving Interscope was not a personal thing. These record companies are a certain kind of machine, and we weren't able to function in it.
Stop doing what the record companies are doing and do what's in your heart.
As long as those things are on vinyl or tape or what have you, the record companies are going to release them someday.
I think everyone should sell whatever product they want to sell for whatever price they want to sell it for, but ultimately the market will dictate what it is and people will have to charge less money for everything. Record companies have been overcharging people for way too long and now this is the trouble that they're in.
The only thing I have no control over is the politics that goes on within the record company. It's always been the same, but it's far tougher now, because record companies are run by financial people; before, they were run by creative people.
Back in the early days like for the Temptations, Supremes and Four Tops, artist development was alive in record companies. Every artist had a moment to develop the record visually. When the web took over and camera phones, it stripped the artists of the power to figure it out. So there's a need to bridge that gap and that's my job.
I used to run record companies, and I went to the advertising business at 29 years old.
When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.
I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.
'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.
I got out of the music industry many years ago. I had a charlatan for a producer who I wanted nothing to do with. He's dead now, so I guess I can't beat that horse any more. It left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I just went on about my business doing what I do and not involving myself with record companies, except for distribution.
We had an EP out and all of a sudden we find record companies are interested in us, and we're thinking, 'Oh, that's really nice, but we don't think we're ready for it.'
There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
If you are a superstar, or whatever you want to call yourself, a person who's had outrageous success, and you decide to go indie and tell the record companies to screw themselves? That takes a certain amount of courage. And bullheadedness, really.
