What seems to most balance out the major music labels resistance to the MP3 explosion is the fact that their own artists are ahead of the curve.
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Source They Might Be Giants release First MP3 Only Album - 1999Richard Menta
» Richard Menta - all quotes »
I think that labels are foolish in not using the Internet, instead of being afraid of it. I think that if AOL Time Warner were smart enough, they'd enter into a contract agreement with their own company — AOL — and agree on one thing: They have the ability to track anywhere that a message comes from, no matter what service you're signed up with, via an IP address. You just make sure that whenever a song is downloaded by somebody utilizing your server, whether it's AOL, or Mindspring, or anybody else, you access a minimal charge for these downloads. It could be 75 cents or a dollar, a dollar-fifty… This way, at least you're making money off it. At least this way the people who are supposed to be making money off the product still can, as well. It still gives people the opportunity to go ahead and download as much as they want. It's a standard fee for doing a service, or for having a service available to them. They'll do it, and at the end of the month, they'll have their AOL statement, or their Mindspring statement, and it will have their download tax added onto the bill. And it will keep on going. The labels don't think of this. It seems like I've been talking about this to deaf ears on this topic for the last five years. Before we even got signed, I was talking about this. It's just preposterous to me that labels, for the most part, are the reasons for their own demise. They're just so stuck in this old way of thinking, and unfortunately, the good elements of their old way of thinking have all gone away. They don't spend enough time developing artists, they throw a whole bunch of shit against the wall and wait for something to stick, and when it doesn't, they let it fall off. (cited in Disturbed's David Draiman Offers 'Solution' To Illegal Music Downloading, Blabbermouth.net, 11 July 2003)
David Draiman
Major labels really have no interest in us. That's fine, I don't care, you know. A lot of them want us to do demos, but I refuse to do demos for a bunch of 24-year-old-little-morons who tell me what's wrong with my music.
Osborne,Buzz
"There will always be people who are ahead of the curve," he [James] says, "and people who are behind the curve. But knowledge moves the curve."
Bill James
(When asked about pop music) Pop music has become the largest farce in music history. It is soul-less, mechanical, and only made for the sole purpose of making the fastest dollar possible, with more emphasis on imagery than the music. I would much rather remain an independent recording artist who can dictate his own creativity and make it available to a smaller community of fans then sign with a major label under conditions of compromising my work just to sell lunch boxes and sound like every other thing out there. The only artists that have any longevity are the ones that pioneer a movement not follow a movement. The hundreds of following wannabes always get left in the dust or remain one-hit-wonders.
Frank Klepacki
A thrown-stone trajectory is a good metaphor for so many phenomena: the curve of an event, any event; the curve of a life, any life; the curve of a hypothesis; the curve experienced in the manufacture of a work of art; the curve of interest experienced in the manufacture of a catalogue.
Peter Greenaway
Menta, Richard
Menuez, Doug
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