Label Quotes by Douglas Hofstadter, Ramez Naam, Srikumar Rao, Evan Rachel Wood, Mat Kearney, Mathew Knowles and many others.
We all have heard it claimed that 13 is an ‘unlucky number.’ Indeed, there are many hotels in America that for this very reason claim not to have a 13th floor, in the sense that there is no button bearing the label ’13’ in their elevators (I recently stayed in one in New York, in fact).
I support GMOs. And we should label them. We should label them because that is the very best thing we can do for public acceptance of agricultural biotech. And we should label them because there’s absolutely nothing to hide.
When you label so much of what happens to you as ‘bad,’ it reinforces the feeling that you are a powerless pawn at the mercy of outside forces over which you have no control. And – this is key – labeling something a bad thing almost guarantees that you’ll experience it as such.
I’ve honestly fallen in love with a man and I’ve honestly fallen in love with a woman. I don’t know how you label that, it’s just how it is.
I never wanted to be on an exclusively Christian label.
We as label executives, we have to know the limitations of the artists.
I’d only do a deal with a label if it allowed me to still be indie and have that indie mentality. I have to have creative control.
Being on a major label is like living at your friend’s parent’s mansion: It’s a lot nicer than any apartment we could afford, and the fridge is always full of food.
Some of the most green people in our lives are our parents and grandparents, who always bought locally and carefully. I remember my grandmother would buy a jar of cream and make it last for a long time. To me, that is just as green as something with an expensive, eco-savvy label on it.
I wanted it to be like Amy Grant, but it didn’t pan out that way. My label actually went bankrupt, and I was left without a home.
I’ve run into people who say, ‘I know what you’re like: You’re a Boston guy.’ That’s so weird. This person who doesn’t know anything about me thinks they know a lot because of the city I grew up in, which, to me, is a meaningless label. There are all kinds of people from Boston.
To see the Republican Party break up the way it has to lose its moral compass it is tragic, it’s tragic for me personally, but I won’t be part of it. I won’t share a party label with people who think it’s all right to put babies in internment camps.
People always want to put a label on you; they always want to compare you to something.
I don’t know what my label is. I just think of myself as a plain forward. I like to think I have some finesse to my game, but inside the paint is where men are made. If you can’t play there, you should be home with your mama.
If I was rich enough, I would love to launch my own record label. I would love to try and give all my musically talented friends a start in the industry.
I don’t think any of us think of ourselves as artists or actors – clowns, we’ll accept that label.
‘The Voice’ gave me the exposure that YouTube was never able to provide for me, just because I didn’t have a label or that kind of opportunity before. It also kind of trained me as person and performer with an audience.
All of my policy is not based on a label. It’s based on what I lived and what I know.
You shouldn’t feel you have to label yourself for someone else to understand you. You should be able to feel what you want to feel and that’s okay.
Those people who shun us just because of the label we’re on, or the fact that we’ve got a video out there that’s getting us somewhere, are only limiting themselves, because they aren’t keeping an open mind.
Don’t label me before we get a chance to talk about it. Talk to me first and see what kind of person I am. That’s what I like to tell the media: Come talk to me, let’s sit down and talk about what’s really going on.
I did my first album with my own record label.
People like to pigeonhole. People like to label – not just books and movies, but everything in their life. If people want to call me ‘literary horror,’ I guess that’s fine. What I’m trying to do is be both thrilling and thought-provoking.
It’s a wonderful thing to make work that is unadorned either by context, framing or label, that can exist in the changing conditions of light, weather, wind.
People look at me, and they have a certain perception, and they slap a label on me. The guy you saw in a wrestling ring is not who I am.
Looking at 2014, I look back: we made more money off ‘Mailbox Money’ than we would have made off taking an advance from anybody. We made more money letting our fans buy the stuff directly from us than what any label could have offered us.
You don’t want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.
I grew up thinking I was going to change the world, but not because I was treated like a special snowflake. It’s a silly label. People are starving. We need to feed them. That’s the end of the conversation.
I loved Justice and Uffie and everyone signed to the label Ed Banger. They were really influential to me when first started making music.
Even an independent label is looking for a hit, they’re not looking for a record that’s not gonna do well.
When you label something a singer-songwriter record, you cover many genres.
In general, we are lazy as consumers and just want to label people as good guy, bad guy.
When you take your music around to your people in the city or your label, and don’t nobody like it, but you really like it, and you like, ‘Dang, these folks don’t hear what I hear.’
Once you’re signed to a label you compromise.
The potential success that could come with signing with a major label didn’t quite outweigh how important it was for me to make my music the way I knew it needed to be made.
Manny Smith & Interscope CEO John Janick understand me and my vision for myself and also my label. Interscope gave me the opportunity to take over the game completely, and that’s what I’m going to do.
You know, I didn’t have enough money to quit my day job… the myth of the major label deal. Nowadays, you have a tour bus and a stylist and all this stuff. But back then, no way.
I am by no means suggesting that everyone who uses the neocon label is doing so as an anti-Semitic smear, but the word has been used often enough in that ugly context that it should make any person of goodwill think twice before employing it.
I just try to make the best music that I can. People are going to label it whatever they’re going to label it.
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity.
I was an average student. I wasn’t any standout. I remember when people started to know who I was and the label offers, people started to get a little weird and be weird around me.
Jimmy Iovine has been telling me since 2012 that I needed to start my own label with my own artists. This was when he first met me and ‘Bandz a Make Her Dance’ was first taking off.
Drax isn’t your average stereotypical soldier/warrior/musclehead. He actually has some depth. It was a character that I wanted to play, not only because I love acting so much, but also, I needed to play to get people to actually take me seriously as an actor and get away from the pro wrestling label.
I never became a cowboy or baseball player, and now I’m beginning to wonder if I ever really became a writer. I find that I hesitate to put that label on myself, to define myself by what I do for a living.
To be stuck with that Kardashian label, that was so hurtful to me and to my career. I probably realized that too late – not that it would’ve affected my decisions in terms of who I dated, but it would’ve affected my decision to appear on the show.
I said a racist word and I can fully understand why people would label me a racist.
I think the people at my record label know I’m a Christian and again, I’ve been really blessed that I’ve never had to get into a head-butt war over moral standards or anything like that.
Money affects everything, from who I’m with to what label I’m on, so everything I do now is about protecting it. But I didn’t understand how powerfully that would affect my home life.
What does New York sound like? For me, the Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost recordings on the Savoy label are the total embodiment of the New York music experience.
I’ve had an experience that… I don’t know the right label to put to it, if it was an angel or Jesus or what. Nobody knows anything for sure about that, but I know that I had an encounter, and I know that things exist beyond this realm, most definitely. I’m grounded in that.
My dad had two, sometimes three jobs. Besides running the Commodore Music Shop in Manhattan, he did jazz concerts, and he ran this great jazz label, Commodore.
I resent the label on cigarettes. If they’re going to warn you, why don’t they put the same sign at the entrance to every freeway or on every banana that’s sold? You can slip on the peel, you know.
I didn’t suddenly become conservative. It was only the label that changed.
I built a label at the same time I built a career.
I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They’ve sat in the studio with so many artists – like Ray Charles, for example – and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.
I was born Chinese, and I write in Chinese. I don’t think there’s any need to evade this… to a writer, as to a person, what matters is not his political label or his nationality, but whether he is a person and whether his work is worth looking at.
It was a really fun idea to have a fashion label with my sister but I don’t have an awful lot of time for it because my first love and job is to be an actress.
Let’s be honest: the label of model-daughter-of-celebrity mother is… you know, I don’t want to have that label. It’s not who I am. It’s not my values to go off someone else’s name and to be pigeonholed as that. So in a way, that has really pushed me to be more independent.
By the end, everybody had a label – pig, liberal, radical, revolutionary… If you had everything but a gun, you were a radical but not a revolutionary.
Jesse James’s next tattoo should be a warning label: Danger. Loving this man could break you.
Before I was ‘the captain’ with the label – because essentially, that’s all it is – I was a player, and before that, I was a fan of the game, fan of the team.
I certainly don’t want to be a record label guy.
I wanted a label that reflects the times… a center for artists who want to express themselves. That’s what makes Interscope unique. It’s about freedom.
I think our everyday coded language around ‘good neighborhoods’ and ‘bad neighborhoods’ is what allows for tremendous violence to happen… When you label a neighborhood ‘bad’ and avoid it, then you don’t know and don’t see what goes on there. And there’s no human face to interrupt that narrative.
I don’t want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I’m an actor – I guess. A journeyman actor. I think ‘star’ is what you call actors who can’t act.
I was finding it very difficult to find a label that understood what I wanted to do and really believed that people wanted to hear something honest and a little bit different. So, I did feel a bit like a clown. You’re knocking on everyone’s door trying to get them to believe what you’re doing.
If people have to put labels on me, I’d prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.
Method acting is a label I don’t really understand, because there’s a method to everybody’s acting.
I don’t get involved in record label politics.
Promoting a record on a major label is like running a minor military campaign.
I think that there will always be artists out there who think they need to sign a major label deal in order to be successful. And that machine is what is going to work for them – there’s tons of examples of pop stars who need that machine.
I want to be role model for people to be like, ‘I don’t need a major label to be a successful artist and to have a successful song.’
I realize now that I was a feminist and the minute I heard the word I certainly knew it meant me, but at that time I don’t think we had the label yet. But there’s no doubt about it that I was born a feminist.
I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you’re allowed to censor it.
Money is the most important thing because there might be a time when you have no label behind you and you have to carry yourself. Money is the only thing that can shield you.
Death Row had a lot of artists. They had Snoop, the Dogg Pound, the Lady of Rage, and there was other artists that was also on the label, so it was a big list and a long wait. I didn’t want to wait that long, so I started branching off and doing my own thing.
The hardest thing is that the people who don’t know anything about fighting, they label you. Once they get to know me, they’re like, ‘Ah, you’re not anything like I thought.’ That’s probably the hardest thing about being a fighter – everything else is easy.
Because with Black Label and all the fans it’s just one big family.
I love to watch people not care too much about the choreography, or if they sing perfectly, or if the right label people are there to watch them. It’s just about letting go and being crazy and engaging people in dance and madness – being a human instead of a doll.
I’ve started a little independent record label called ‘Six String Productions’ and recorded a couple of tunes, and I hope to do some more with some future artists next year. It’s a real passion project of mine.
I’m not in the slightest wanting to attack the women’s movement here. But I think that in popular, broadly left-wing, broadly feminist discourse, there is a tendency to just label discrimination against women – and embedded assumptions about them – as misogyny and think ‘job done.’
I’ve been misconstrued because I speak in a certain way. I find it obnoxious how it defines you, somehow limits your ability to understand the human condition. You can’t be allowed near emotions; you play these curling-lipped, haughty characters. This awful label – ‘the posh Toby Stephens’ – I’m not posh!
Actually, we got signed in November of 2000 with Dreamworks which is the most amazing label. We have friends on other labels and though we are not selling millions of records, yet, they treat us with tons of respect and give us some very good guidance.
I’ve been an educator all my life pretty much. It’s important as a manager and also as a record label, to educate your artists on public speaking, how to build that connection, how to communicate effectively, to have a general working knowledge of the music industry.
Putting out the things that I like best hasn’t been the easiest way to run a label, and it still isn’t because it requires finding an audience for each record.
In picking Gen. Jim Mattis for Defense secretary, President-elect Donald Trump has said that he found his ‘Gen. George Patton.’ Yet that label may not really capture what makes Mattis a distinctive choice.
I try to avoid a specific image. I seek to play as many different women as I can to avoid having a label put on me.
Unfortunately it’s easy to just label us as part of a Laurel Canyon sound. What we try to do is to be unique.
The label ‘wife of the prime minister’ is like a giant signboard pointing at my head from a Monty Python sketch. But I am not Mrs. Prime Minister. I’m a human being.
I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it’s to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It’s there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter.
Insult is in the ear of the listener. Statements of fact cannot be insulting unless you feel that the label applied indicates some failing, moral or otherwise, in yourself.
With my previous record deal, it’d be like, ‘OK, so I have this track then, EMI – do you know any singers, maybe? Do you have any singers on your little label there?’ And funnily enough, they didn’t. But I prefer finding unknown singers myself anyway.
For years, I wrote songs to try to get cuts or try to have hits or try to appease a label or to be famous. I was learning a lot of valuable tools about structure and how to articulate. I was getting really good at that.
Virtually every society that survived did so by socializing its sons to be disposable. Disposable in war; disposable in work. We need warriors and volunteer firefighters, so we label these men heroes.
The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax us citizens for our carbon footprints.
It’s not like I’m taking 20 grand from the shows. I mean there’s no record label, so this is a genuine thing. And I think most people can see that. I think that anyone who knows me, knows I do things with integrity.
How come liberals never admit that they’re liberal? They’ve now come up with a new word called ‘progressive,’ which I thought was an insurance company but apparently it’s a label.
We didn’t have that big-label push. We weren’t the kind of band that our label Warner Bros. Records was going to throw all this money at. Their idea was to support us on the road and see what happens. It was a very slow building process.
I had every major label in the world – I mean, any label that dealt with rap music wanted to sign me. I ended up going with Jive Records because I liked everything about ’em.
I will never sign to a major record label again. If, by some mega fluke, a record of mine looked like it might break big, I’d try and do it via an indie or somehow license it. I’m not having my music owned by those corporate bastards again.
As far as being on a major label, some labels get it and get what they have to do, and some labels don’t. I don’t think the label I’m on necessarily gets it, but I think over time they’re gonna have to.
I can’t go back and label myself as an outcast because I was a pretty well-adjusted kid, but I can certainly relate to the feeling of being an outsider.
There is a tremendous range of children with a PDD label.
I feel like it’s important for me to expand, to create my own label. With a label, I can just give someone the opportunity that I was given, you know? That’s what it’s all about, just helping.
Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to start a record label.
How do I feel about being called a national treasure? I think it’s marvellous if that’s people’s opinion. But I’d rather have the money than the label.
For the label to grow, it has to have great executives who understand the culture, understand the mission, and can lead. I don’t want to be part of every decision.
I didn’t want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.
There will be a moment in life, whether you’re forceful or not, where someone will label you something that is negative.
Major labels act as banks in terms of how they produce and release your album. No major label is really good or bad; they just 100 per cent operate as a business, which makes sense… no hard feelings.
I think that it’s human nature to categorize and label things. That’s generally the way that the medical and psychological professions work. You look at elements of what you have, and you are able to categorize it, and then you can cure it. That’s generally what works.
Steve Jobs was rare: a C.E.O. who actually had a huge impact on his company’s fortunes. Contrary to corporate mythology, most C.E.O.s could be easily replaced, if not by your average Joe, then by your average executive vice-president. But Jobs genuinely earned the label of superstar.
I don’t put a very clear label on my work. If anything, I write science fiction – looking at a moment now, in the present, and then extrapolating outward to think about what the future might look like if this particular trend goes on, or if this particular trend is the most dominant. That’s a science fictional tool.
As the label has developed over the years, more and more structure and tailored pieces have been added, and so, whilst the core values of the brand have remained, I feel it’s important to try new things and add more layers and dimensions to a collection every season.
It’s become a cliche to say that a piece of drama is about ‘the nature of truth.’ But ‘Rectify’ so openly plays with the slippery nature of memory that the label directly applies.
You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can’t let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.
I am an American. Black. Conservative. I don’t use African-American, because I’m American, I’m black and I’m conservative. I don’t like people trying to label me. African- American is socially acceptable for some people, but I am not some people.
I think, forever, I was trying to figure out maybe… what I am. But I don’t think anyone should feel pressured to have any kind of label or tag on them. We should treat everybody the same… Me, I don’t like to be put down to a specific thing. We’re all human beings.
If you have good songs and a real desire to make music, the next thing to do, instead of approach record companies, is to get yourself a really good manager because then it allows you to focus on your profession of being a musician. Then they can focus on the darker art of the record label and the music industry.
You can have the best product, but if you don’t have a plan – a label pushing it, the support of a network – you can’t make it big with a product. It’s all about distribution.
I was initially signed to a German label a few years ago.
The fashion industry might persist to label me as plus-sized, but I like to think of it as my-sized.
I couldn’t put any kind of label on my production aesthetic.
I was having a lot of mixed feelings about the independent world as well as the label world. I feel like I’ve been in the game a long time, and you know, when it come to labels not seeing a fella being around the last five years, it’s like, it’s hard to convince them what I can do.
If you want to call me an activist attorney general, I will proudly accept that label.
I’ll always work with Stones Throw, but I’m trying to start my own label to release my old material and sign new artists. I want to do everything from rock, to jazz, to electronic, to noise records and movie sound tracks. Both sampled and original music.
I am more than just a label. Why are people so driven to labeling where we fall on the sexual spectrum?
If anything, I’m the most hesitant to bring on a label. That terrifies me. I think people believe major labels are linked to success. They’re absolutely not that.
I would love for people to know that the label ‘feminist’ is something that everyone should wear proudly, because it just means that you support women.
All of us, although we may have a label attached to us, that’s not who we are.
I used to love eating canned fruit. Once I learned how to read a food label, I learned that canned fruit is arguably the least healthy form of fruit consumption.
ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam. It’s not Islam; it’s a perversion of Islam, and to label these militant externalities as Islam is to legitimize their actions.
I did not label myself ‘plus size.’ The fashion industry did.
For 10 years, I was my own label, my own promoter, my own PR. We borrowed money to print our CDs.
So, as I step out and take these first steps on this journey to do my own thing, I didn’t want to have to get anybody’s approval on anything. I didn’t want to have to ask a record label ‘Is this okay for the album cover? What time do you think I should go on tour this year?’
I used to be brave. In the past, I’ve opened a restaurant, had a record label, had my daughter and it was go, go, go with all of these.
My label understands that I am really attached to Malaysia, that I come home a lot.
You can be more creative when you’re not feeling like a slave. When you’re on a record label, they have you like that.
These are clothes my friends and I could wear. This ain’t Prada. I don’t want to be one of those celebrities that slaps their name on a label and collects royalty checks. Everything on that runway reflects me.
While working for Diplomat Records, I helped several artists with their online branding and social media. Once I left the label, I worked directly with artists and noticed many artists were overlooked and underrated if they weren’t in ‘XXL’ or ‘The Source.’
Being on United Artists was almost as bad as not being on any label at all. They were the crappiest in the business. All they did was movie soundtracks. Now, they were making an effort to become much hipper – signing people like Bobby Womack and what have you.
In the beginning, if you look at those early label albums of the Chicks, we didn’t write all that much. We had an A&R person and they were getting songs from publishers, listening to hours and hours of cassette tapes.
Warner Bros. was a great label to be affiliated with. It’s the best label out there, and the fact that I was with them for 20 years was just an honor.
We recorded that trio and it’s out on the Knitting Factory label. I’ve got another record in the can with that group and Marc, which I’ll hopefully finish some time before next summer.
The will to label will always prevail over what’s being labeled, usually at the expense of either truth or understanding.
I don’t care what you label me or how many times you come for me. I am fearless, and I’m just getting started.
Maybe I’ll work for a label someday, write some fiction, nonfiction. Someday I’d like to go back to school and get my teaching degree. I want to be a grandpa. I want to have more kids.
The only place where any artist feels liberated is doing independent music. I have had great experience making music for The Dewarists and Coke Studio. No actor, producer or label is telling me what to do with my music. I’m the boss. It is my life, my expression.
I don’t care who’s on the label, because I have a job to do.
In Washington, there’s always an effort to label people.
I love producing. I have been producing some acts and starting a label.
I never thought I would get signed to a label.
I just don’t want to give anybody a reason to label me as something I’m not.
I think growing up, people want to put you in a box and label you quite often, just because it’s kind of easier, I guess.
My wish is for gay to become less of a label, and more of just one of many great colors in the collective box of humanity.
The record label used to try and make us do stuff, like dance, and we’d say, nah, not doing that.
When I first got into the major label system, they were like, ‘Hey, you’re great – now write with a million people so we can get songs.’ That was something I hadn’t done before, and the songwriters I was working with had worked on some massive numbers – like ‘True Colours.’ One of the guys wrote ‘Livin On A Prayer.’
We are too quick to put labels on things. It is my profession. I get up and paint. Everyone wants to put a label on it, but I am a free spirit, so I fight against that.
I don’t think that one thing defines me, but I know that by coming out the way that I did, sort of almost pioneering it in action sports – to take that stand – that it’s always going to be a label that is stuck with me, and I know that I’ll always be the ‘gay skier,’ and it actually doesn’t bother me.
As in all matters involving love, which has so many different meanings, you find that the feeling that we label ‘love’ is not a simple feeling, it’s a very complex one. Under the heading ‘love’ can come all sorts of rage and desperation.
The title ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ is meant to be a deconstruction of a stereotype, and the whole show is about deconstructing the boxes that we’re supposed to be put into. We like taking apart the tropes and the stereotypes and explore the nuances, so ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ is a label that we go deep underneath to explore.
We make a lot of movies that I don’t think merit a wide release. We have this label called Tilt, and we have the movies come out on that, and that’s fine. But it shocks me when, having done this a few times, when I really believe a movie should get a wide release, and I struggle to get it released. That does surprise me.
‘Nice’ is not a common label for comedians, but it is for Canadians. I like it.
I wanted control over the merchandising, the actual packaging of the product. That was a big factor. The only way for me to exercise control on all those levels was to start my own label.
Boys do not evaluate a book. They divide books into categories. There are sexy books, war books, westerns, travel books, science fiction. A boy will accept anything from a section he knows rather than risk another sort. He has to have the label on the bottle to know it is the mixture as before.
I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago.
When I worked with Jermaine Dupri for his label, he would have So So Def parties and he’d tell me, ‘Yo, go on get this thing started.’ I had to go get on the mic and get people turnt up. I mean, I don’t want to be that turnt up guy all the time. It’s part of my job so I do what I gotta do.
One of the main reasons why it didn’t work out for me and Aftermath is because I felt my music should sound one way, and they felt it should sound another. But, I learned a lot from watching Dre, and when I left California, I knew it was time for me to get my own label.
Even with whatever people want to label me with, there are so many other sides to me.
Our society is used to judging content by its package and label.
Releasing an album on a major label is like sending a package through Fed Ex. You know that it’ll get there, and you know that it’ll get there on time.
I think social networking is absolutely here to stay. Now, whether or not the label will Facebook forever, depends in part, I think, on whether Facebook wants to try to be less proprietary, be more central to the operation of defining and stewarding identity online.
It’s pure Black Label. It’s about violence and booze. That’s all it is. There is no plan.
I think the labels ‘Plus Size’ and ‘Curvy’ should be banned. You don’t say ‘White model’ or Skinny model.’ Why should ‘Plus Size’ models have a label.
The president says, ‘What difference does it make what you call the enemy?’ Are you kidding me? As an intelligence officer, I would never get away with that. I could never say, ‘Well, you know, boss, I don’t label this enemy that we’re facing.’
Is the ‘black designer’ label there to warn everyone not to have the same level of expectations for me, or is it some type of prize? I just want to work in an even playing field where I can get press for my work and not just my race and my personal views on it.
People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.
There is a diversity of thought and philosophy, diversity of languages and dialects, diversity of political spectrum, and there’s a diversity of taste for food. I don’t label or characterize Jews in any way.
My father was the first entrepreneur in the family. He started his own record label, his own restaurant. He knew that, in order to give something back to the people, he had to create.
I have hundreds and hundreds of songs waiting to get on albums, but I don’t know about the three-month radio tours and if I’ll be interested in that. I haven’t figured it out, but I will definitely be doing music, whether it is independent or with a major record label.
Some people want to define themselves, and they should, as it’s part of their identity. For me personally, I’ve never really had a label for myself.
I wanted to first build a platform and then use it to shine a light on music/people that I believe in. This record label is for people across all corners of the world, to showcase all genres of music.
I’d probably do something that involved music, a booking agent or working at a label, if not being an actual musician.
You can’t come out on a record dissing the system and be on a label that’s connected to the system.
I’ve been kind of toying around with the bi thing in my head. I wouldn’t ever give myself the label ‘bisexual’, but bi-curious? Yea.
Every mind which has given itself to self-expression in art is aware of a directing agency outside its conscious control which it has agreed to label ‘inspiration’.
To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.
I just think that any person who wants music to be their career shouldn’t focus on a record label. I have seen friends who sign to a label too early in their career, and they lost control over their music, and their releases were delayed or never put out.
People seem to want to give ‘Flowers’ a comedy or a comedy-drama label. I suppose it’s closer to comedy-drama, but it feels like it requires a whole new definition all of its own.
The rap against Tesla has always been of the ‘yes, but’ variety. Yes, it’s a fine artisanal designer and manufacturer of electric cars, and its CEO is one of the few business leaders alive for whom the label ‘visionary’ isn’t hyperbolic.
I think we have to be careful about what we label as a prerequisite for spirituality. I don’t think you have to know a lot to have a spiritual life, but knowing gives life richness.
I signal with an independent label, Continuum. After that I put out a totally independent record, sold fourteen thousand of them from my basement, bought a house, started raising my kid, made a decent living.
They told me that they are starting a classic label, and wanted me to be the first artist. So I signed, and am producing myself, and writing my own music, but I’m their first artist on their classic label. And I have creative control.
I know being on a major label is meant to be antiquated, but we’re fine with it.
When you’re from the East Coast or you’re from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don’t sound that way, people won’t label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.
There’s this label called Neurotica by these sweet girls that have given me some lovely things to wear, and we might collaborate on making a little piece. They’re really lovely, and I think they’ve been quite inspired by me in turn.
You don’t have to wear a label to be important.
Remember the Stax label and how if you liked one record, you liked all the others as well? You don’t talk to a lot of people who tell you how much they love their record label. I don’t care how many records they sell.
I know I can’t rap forever, but I know as long as I got a label or something I can get money forever.
Libertarians are essentially what the Republicans were 30 years ago. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. They’d all fit more under the Libertarian label than the modern day Republican label.
I have trouble applying the ‘whistle-blower’ label to someone who just disagrees with the way our country is structured and operates.
Paddington Bear was a refugee with a label – ‘Please look after this bear. Thank you’, and he had a little suitcase.
I know a lot of people who jumped into a record label right away, dropped an album, and then nothing happened for them. Build your fan base first, and follow your gut.
If I had a label, everything would have been easier. But it wouldn’t have been the same album, from the cover art to the songs on it.
We got a thumbs-down from every label. But you gotta keep the faith, man. You gotta hang in there and be tenacious.
Keep your eyes peeled: Honor’s the label to watch. It’s quickly becoming a serious celebrity favorite – just ask fans Kirsten Dunst and Kelly Osbourne.
I’m developing artists for my new record label, my son’s band, Intangible, being one of them.
I wear this label of a Christian filmmaker proudly.
Musically, I wear many hats. I’m the social media director. I conceptualise the videos, write the songs, do the press. I’m not a major label act.
So long as TARP money is wrapped up in GM, the company will never shake its ‘Government Motors’ image. That label, as competitors and GM employees are keenly aware, is code for one thing: ‘GM is a failure.’
We got on his label, and the Bizarre organization is just going up and up. So we have faith.
When I got signed to the ‘Fader’ Label, they got really excited about having me as their new artist. They were promoting my music everywhere. Pharrell was one of the producers who wanted to work with me, so I was really lucky to be one of those people who got to work with him.
The Broken Bow group is such a great family and seem like a group of tight-knit people. When I looked for a new label, I wanted to feel I could trust everybody. I wanted motivation to be at an all-time high.
The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.
The label ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative,’ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‘Iolanthe.’ It goes, ‘Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.’ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.
I wanted to go back to writing for myself and my fans. I built my own recording studio, started my own label, and decided to use the Internet to sell my records.
Just look at the name of Kanye’s label: G.O.O.D. Music. That’s what it’s all about, creating good music.
There are a lot of similarities, even though we’re in two different businesses: There’s the Taylor Swift business and the Big Machine Label Group business, but there’s a huge intersection there. When we’re together, it’s limitless.
It’s great to be able to find a way to release your music and do what you want to do artistically and not have to just worry about being accepted by the major label industry.
Whether it’s singing, modeling, acting, you name it, they always label you as the YouTuber, the social media kid, the social media star. It’s something that I’ve heard – a lot – but I kind of just put it to the side.
In 1985, I went to work for MTM Records, Mary Tyler Moore’s Nashville record label, and stayed three years. After that, I spent two years as an independent promoter, then worked for MCA Nashville Records, DreamWorks Nashville, and Universal Music Nashville.
I’ve always tried to stay clear of being labeled, putting a label on what type of music that I make.
I just want it to be normal for every fashion label to have all sizes. Completely inclusive – that’s how it should be.
I started the label Tzadik to support an entire community of musicians, not just Jewish musicians. But the radical Jewish culture movement was begun in a lot of ways because I wanted to take the idea that Jewish music equals ‘klezmer’ and expand it to, ‘Well, Jewish music could be a lot more than that.’
I think that on paper we did make so many of the classic mistakes that a punk band makes, signing to a major label, getting in business with the wrong people, stuff like that.
That’s one of those things that will really hurt me personally, if I label a character or think about what it might do if it were to do well. I just try to do a good job with it.
Free speech is carelessly tossed to one side in order to silence views and people that liberals label as intolerant.
Just like food, you could think peanut butter is your favorite food for 5,000 years and then be like, ‘I actually like burgers better’, you know? I was just trying to say that kids and people in general don’t have to label themselves and say, ‘I’m straight’ or ‘I’m gay’ or ‘I’m whatever.’
People are like, ‘Wow you started your own record label,’ and treat me like I’m some sort of innovative genius, when I’m not at all. You’ve got the Internet and music – you put them together, and people hear your music.
Not to get too deep, but I was brought up by these women who if you wanted to label them, maybe they were feminists, but you know what? They never asked for that or wanted it and they never got up on a soapbox and spoke about it, they just did it. They did their work, they did their jobs, they were who they were.
Hollywood likes to label everyone so you’re easier to identify.
When I was younger, coming up in this industry, I was 17, 18 years old. You couldn’t tell me Beyonce wasn’t my friend. You couldn’t tell me that Janet Jackson wasn’t my girl. You couldn’t tell me that once I signed to my label that me and J.Lo weren’t going to have tea in L.A.
Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.
I didn’t start my label out of a business perspective. I did it because I wanted to create a platform where new musicians can have the chance to get into a studio, work with each other, and get their music noticed by a large audience.
You label somebody ‘New Age,’ and that’s automatic mockery: ‘She cannot possibly be a serious thinker.’
I was done with my second major label deal, and I was doing a lot of urban sessions, and I had an acoustic itch. And you know, I picked up a ukulele. I always wanted one. And it just resonated with me. I would wake up with this uke in my hand. For me the ukulele just opened this door in my heart.
I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one.
I’ve heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt ‘foreign.’ Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: ‘I’m a Protestant.’ It wasn’t until I left, I thought: ‘Oh, those weren’t Protestant feelings.’
Jimmy Iovine, he pretty much started off as an engineer and a producer, and then he started up a label. Then he built his label to have big artists like Dr. Dre and 50 Cent. Then he started up a headphone company and made it a billion dollar business. He’s a genius to me.
At my second record label, they told me and other female artists that some of us were going on the chopping block. I was 19… and it was devastating.
Sometimes, you just get a label and it sticks.
I have no friends here apart from the dudes at my record label, and I didn’t go to school with no one. Nobody knows me – I’m incognito. It’s all new, all fun.
I got introduced to Maps by my label, and I liked his sound. I had been living with the original version of ‘Younger’ for quite a long time when I heard the result of his remix, and I loved it. It actually made me find a new love for the track.
At first, I wanted to start my own label, but it was such a full-time job that it became too much.
You can have a favorite band, but when they sign with a major label… maybe a new producer says, ‘You can’t do that, take this down a notch.’ And you’ll keep listening, but you’ll always think their first album was their best album.
Def Jam is an iconic label.
There couldn’t possibly be a more label-driven industry than acting, seeing as every audition comes with a character breakdown: ‘Beautiful, sassy, Latina, 20s’; ‘African American, urban, pretty, early 30s’; ‘Caucasian, blonde, modern girl next door’. Every role has a label; every casting is for something specific.
I’ve experienced a lot of creative freedom because I’m on a family label. It was nice to put out what I wanted to say and do what I wanted to do.
I remember when I first came out as an artist, back in 2004 or 2005, the record label used to take me to all the radio stations and just have me sit in, like, their lunchroom or their conference room, and play for the whole staff. Just to introduce them to me so they would play my records.
When I was shopping around trying to get signed, I made it a point to say, ‘This is who I am.’ I dress the way I normally dress, and I just wanted to find a label that would accept me for that.
Some people choose to go on ‘American Idol’ or another singing contest, and some people choose to beat down barrooms before anyone even knows who they are, in order to get a fan base, so when they do get a record deal, they have that to put in front of a label.
Plain white T-shirts do it for me every time. You can spend anything from ВЈ3 to ВЈ50 on a T-shirt, but I’ve bought some great ones from H&M, as well as shelling out on Duffer Of St George and a Polish label I discovered while filming ‘Robin Hood’ in Hungary called Scotch And Soda.
I don’t like being labelled so I decided to label myself.
I used to buy vinyl. Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks – if not two months – before it comes out. There’s no real way around that.
I would like to say when I turn the project over to the label that I have been successful. And that’s truly the way I feel. But, in addition to the self-pride in ‘making’ a good album, to be honest, I’d love to have a hit record.
It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist.
I was always a little insecure. I had brothers that played football, so I was just a straight-up tomboy for a minute. I didn’t know makeup and hair stuff. My friends had to tell me what a straightener was. I didn’t know fashion or any of that until the label gave me a stylist.
When we label human beings and flatten them to just a splashy headline, we lose decency and the truth.
The career high would be putting out a Kids of Widney High CD on my label, Ipecac Recordings.
Everyone in the world, regardless if they’re Muslim or not, does not have to adhere to the label society slaps on you.
I have never made a cent off a record in my life. I have never recouped enough, and I never sold enough. When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well – but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.
I could more label myself as even a spokeswoman for happiness!
I don’t label films or actors, and labelling means setting boundaries. Why do you want to do that to art?
I realized how important it was to have a good team – manager, attorney and label. It’s not just about putting out a record and somebody signing you.
I’m the type of person that doesn’t like to wait for people to do things for me, and I never want to feel stuck. Why sit around and be like, ‘I wish my label would book me some studio time,’ if I can just buy my own studio equipment and figure out how to run Pro Tools and record it myself?
Shoot, there’s a committee to tell you everything at a record label. You definitely have to know who you are if you want to look like you at the end of the process. We’ve all seen people get record contracts, and by the time they’re spit out by the machine, we don’t even recognize them.
A record is a commodity, but so is a hamburger. Just because I work at McDonald’s doesn’t mean I reap the benefits of that commodity. That’s the reality with most artists in the record industry: They’re getting paid a subsistence wage so they can keep producing a commodity for the record label.
Can a label group by itself scale to make a sensible business? I don’t think so.
You could be an 18-year-old girl in Tokyo wondering how you could ever break into fashion or beauty, so you follow your favourite designer or editor, see what their day comprises, where they go, who they meet, how they do it… If I were setting up my own label today, I would definitely do it through Instagram.
‘Classic rock’ is never a label that we’ve given ourselves – it’s one of the many labels that’s been imposed on us.
Commercial success still hasn’t come to an artist that isn’t signed to a record label. There are very few artists that can succeed without the help of a record label. The role of the record label is still required, it’s still necessary.
In the early 1990s, I was signed as a singer to the same label as Robyn. She was in her early teens, and I was in my twenties, so we didn’t hang out, but our paths crossed so many times that we slowly got to know each other and became friends.
I support anything that broadens the message of gender equality and tempers the stigma of the feminist label. We run into trouble, though, when we celebrate celebrity feminism while avoiding the actual work of feminism.
It is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind.
Through a voluntary national certification program, SAFLA will create uniform rules and definitions for foods carrying a GMO-free label, allowing consumers to understand and identify those products that fit their food preferences.
The best advice is to avoid foods with health claims on the label, or better yet avoid foods with labels in the first place.
Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.
Finally I’d found this way where I didn’t need a record label; I didn’t need to wait for some phone call to tell me, ‘Go and do it’. It’s like, I’m going to get up with a bag of CDs and an amp and my guitar and make it happen for myself. That was such a liberating feeling, and I think it was the start of everything.
You don’t even know are we going to have a career? Are we going to be able to sell records? Are we going to have a label?
There’s artists that I’m working with on a new label of mine. Foxy Nova and Supa Nova.
Obviously, for Geffen, if it wasn’t for us, it’s quite possible that bands like Nirvana or Beck would not be on the label.
I’m involved in a lot of different things, like producing, starting a label and writing songs. But still my biggest release, and the easiest and most fun thing for me to do in my life, is to be in New Found Glory, go on stage and play these songs.
You can’t really label me as a musician, a comedian, or a rapper – you know, it’s different.
I think the line is where you’re in the studio, you’re creating. That belongs to you as an artist. Nothing should taint that. I shouldn’t be thinking about what the fans want, I shouldn’t be thinking about what the radio wants, what the label wants, what your manager wants, a song for the chicks, a song for the street.
A few years ago, one of our singles got beaten out by Better Than Ezra. The label could only have one band at a time being taken to the right people at radio, and they opted for Better Than Ezra instead of us. Who knows.
I’ve toured the U.S. every single year and I’ve put a record out every single year whether it was on a major label or not; that doesn’t make any difference to me.
Individuals have little opportunity to get elected to Parliament under the label of the government party… unless they are in good standing with the Prime Minister and pledged to be cooperative.
I am not a label snob and have learned that the thrill of shopping can be just as great, if not more so, when you find a bargain.
The opportunity to record the song came when Phil Collins’ record label, Atlantic, was doing a tribute album to him and they asked all these different artists to do renditions of his songs.
If you’re on an indie label, you’re not getting enough money. And if you’re on a major, you’re not getting enough support.
I will be developing artists for my new label. The rest is in God’s Hands.
The hard left labels anyone who challenges it ‘divisive.’ The leftists live in a world where everyone is free to look different but must think the same. I don’t play their game. I threaten them and their narrative. That’s why they slap the ‘divisive’ label and attempt to dismiss me. It’s not going to work – not on me.
I have a day job Monday to Friday. I work at a record label in Brooklyn called Ba Da Bing. It’s a great indie label and I listen to music all day. I meet people online and find out about the cool new music blogs.
There is no such condition as ‘schizophrenia’, but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event.
I wanted to put out a solo record because I was stuck on a major label and sick of it.
It’s really tough – if you’re on a major label and they want you to have a number one song, you need to do what they say.
If had to label myself, I guess classical liberal would be best.
Even though I am signed to an American label, I want Australia to fall in love with my music because if it doesn’t work here, it won’t work anywhere.
I’ve been working in music since I was a little kid. I would do background singing in my dad’s studio all the time when I was a kid. I went to label meetings when I was pretty young, and obviously my goal was, like, ‘No, we’re gonna hold off.’
It’s more about the music and doing good shows than it is about our ethnicities. We’re not trying to label ourselves as the all-around universal ethnic group. It’s not a gimmick.
As a label, you have to treat every group and every record as a unique entity. I think that that has been our success, rather than relying upon a fan base.
If you’re making a film about a band or a songwriter or whomever, there’s a publisher, there’s a record label, and there are people who are vested interests in that film. But with back-up singers, because they did stuff for everybody, there’s no one party that has any vested interest in seeing the story told.
Roc was only supposed to be our distributor, but then they ended up recruiting me as the label’s artist. They said they really liked my album ‘Everything You Wanted.’
I’ll tell you where I stand on the issues, and then I’ll let the pundits decide how to label me.
When I was nominated for a Grammy, my label dropped me – I have a wariness about trying for a hit.
What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children’s or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.
My world is much bigger than music, and that’s why I always fight the ‘rock’ label.
We laid the foundation before we went to a major label.
I don’t like any of the Geto Boys albums at all. Not one. There isn’t a Geto Boys album that I like. I didn’t learn anything from it, and it was a bad time in life for me too. With the label, with life, whatever… it’s a point in my life where I was the most miserable.
Mom+Pop aren’t just a label, but they were the group of people that seemed to really care about a long-term relationship. I can be honest with them, like I would with my family, but at the same time, I can expect for them always to be upfront and honest with me.
The way Aventura became successful was so weird. We didn’t have a major label. They say everything has a reason, but it’s not easy to find. The only thing that was right was the music.
If you label someone lazy or a liar, he’ll feel like that for life. Worse, guys lose motivation to change when we feel like your perception of us is set in stone.
Nearly everyone who chooses to work for Donald Trump is disreputable in one way or another; Ali Baba didn’t find 40 wise men in the cave. But to label everyone in Trumpworld a grifter misses important subtleties. It conflates grifters and grafters, and it ignores the crucial distinction between the two.
Where writers are from is one of the world’ s most boring topics. Where we’re born, gender or race, wealth or poverty – those are the things we spend time talking about. Stop trying to label me. I’m a writer. Worry about whether I’m any good!
When it comes to fighting for progress in Boston, there’s a long history of people in power trying to label advocacy and hard work as being political in order to avoid accountability and distract from community demands for better leadership.
I wanted to have a label to not only release my own stuff but to also give young talent a chance to release their music without signing away their life. I had a great time with Spinnin’, and the people I worked with were amazing, but the contract wasn’t really for me. It wasn’t what I wanted.
I hate how I’ve had the mantle set on my shoulders as being against the record label. We’ve had some issues, but that is the nature of business.
It’s been awesome going indie. I don’t need to be on a major label. I love not having to walk into a specific radio person’s office to try to convince someone to play my songs. At the end of the day, it’s more work, but I’ve discovered that I like to get my hands dirty.
My manager was Buddy Glee, who put me together with Mike Curb, and was basically the idea to bring some soul to the label and bring something different to the label besides the Hank Williams situation.
When I was writing the Destiny’s Child songs, it was a big thing to be that young and taking control. And the label at the time didn’t know that we were going to be that successful, so they gave us all control. And I got used to it.
I don’t like to label films with a genre.
I don’t think we should label budgets even before the budget is presented.
I’ve always been independent with my music. I’ve always run my own music label.
I tried to work with a record label; I tried to work with a booking agency, variety shows. I went to Vegas. I just tried everything I could think of, and nothing took. No one thought there was a place for my style and my music; it was just too different.
It’s always easy to describe something complex by applying to it an already known label.
People like to think of you as a certain person, or a certain type of person, and they do love to give you a label. We like luggage labels, and we like people labels.
Obviously there is no such thing as race, and in many ways, sex is a continuum, not a binary. So it doesn’t make sense to label people in that way.
I am not really brand-conscious; I pick out clothes that appeal to me regardless of the label, but I consider my style very American.
Island Records was the first record label to… acknowledge me. After that, quickly, Republic Records, and then Atlantic Records, Sony Records and Warner Bros. It was all the labels at once. It was absolutely insane, like, knowing that this many record labels were interested in me.
‘Educate, don’t hate.’ That’s my motto. The reason why there’s so much pushback against diversity and against minority communities is because people are afraid to make mistakes and ask questions. They feel that they’ll be chastised if they use the wrong label. It’s too scary for them.
There will be a Jussie Smollett album. I signed to Columbia. So, darling, I’m label mates with Beyonce and Adele and Barbra Streisand.
I don’t care what you label me as long as you call me president.
It’s so politically incorrect to make a character gay and then make them ‘un-gay’ again. Like, once you become gay, you’ve crossed over, or you’re not allowed to be a person who doesn’t want to be defined by a label like that.
For a label for me, ‘conservative’ is more appropriate than ‘Republican.’
While households that make anywhere from $48,000 to $250,000 can call themselves middle class, to group such a wide range of incomes under one label, as politicians love to do, is to confuse the term entirely.
If you get into Scientology, you will go to auditing. It’s like therapy except that there is an E-meter between you and your auditor. That’s a device that actually measures your galvanic skin responses. It’s two metal cans that you hold. They used to be Campbell’s Soup cans with the label scraped off.
I like for jewelry to tell a story and to be able to talk about what I’m wearing. That’s more important to me than a name, brand, or label.
Leaving the record companies tweaked something inside me and I realised I don’t have to deal with labels to make something happen. If I want to meet someone, I don’t have to go through the label – I’ll just go to them. I took my life in my hands and social media has just helped me do that more.
With any body shape it’s important to buy the right size and not be dictated to by size you think you are. Try on a bigger and a smaller size in the shop and see what fits visually. If you do have to go up a size, cut the label out, it’s just a number!
Not everything I do is gossip or bedroom. To the contrary, I think that’s just an easy label to dismiss me and to dismiss the new medium.
We grew up listening to alternative music from the ’90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.
Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.
When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, ‘indie’ wasn’t a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as ‘indie bands,’ and then it became a genre.
If you are the record label who owns Lady Gaga, and you have a new artist coming up, you can say, ‘Let’s have the artist play just before Gaga.’ Now you’ve exposed the huge Gaga audience to the new artist. It’s similar to showing a trailer before a movie. The hit creates a hit.
I think what people get confused about is that they want to label me as this EDM girl, but a lot of this stuff is genre-less.
I think it’s common to want to label things as all good or all bad and what I’m finding is that every situation, person, event, has good and bad in it.
With the Beatles, we’d been very spoiled because we had George Martin who worked for the record label we were going to be signed to. That was very fortunate, because we grew together.
One overlooked great 1980s rock n’ roll band, maybe punk rock – they were on SST Records, same label as Black Flag – is this band called the Leaving Trains.
I had the most frustrating thing happen when I was trying to find a label. I sent my album to this indie label, and they were like, ‘We already have two girls on the label. I’m so sorry, we just can’t take your project.’
I’d love to do a fashion label in the future. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about maybe making a line of little dresses, so maybe one day.
My record label is treating me like I’m a new artist, which is exciting after all this time.
I have an independent record label called Favored Nations on which I released an album by an artist called Johnny A, who plays an arch top Gibson through a Marshall, but the tone is all in his fingers.
I just initiated the project where I write music for somebody else to write the lyrics and also for the orchestra to perform. I’ve just initiated the project. That leads the project into creating an independent label outside of game music.
At 18, I finally came into a relationship with a record label. My family got back on its feet. I was happy.
Well, we were originally called Huey Lewis and the American Express. But on the eve of the release of our first record, our record label, Chrysalis Records was afraid that we’d be sued by American Express.
It’s not a giant thrill to hear someone give you the label ‘manic-depressive,’ but to me I was so relieved. What I was suffering from had a name and could be treated.
I love having a major label behind me. Independent was really great to start off, as and I made some really big moves and gained a lot of fans.
Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.
I do not come bearing a party label on my sleeve – or a quick fix in my back pocket. I do not come with a rigid ideology in my heart – or a soul that tells me to go it alone. I do not come to uproot tradition – or to be imprisoned by it.
The new independent spirit at Warner Music is a perfect fit for a stand-alone label like Maverick.
I met a lot of label people at the start of doing this music thing, and I just realised soon that it wasn’t much about music but more so about their paycheck at the end of the day.
Christianity is a lifestyle. And being a Christian is more than a label.
By embracing a label such as ‘non-fiction,’ the creative writing community has signaled to the world that what goes on in this genre is at best utilitarian and at worst an utter mystery. We have segregated the genre from art.
It was important to me to find a label that wouldn’t back out after a first single. Everyone’s so used to hearing me with Hootie, they’re going to be skeptical.
A lot of things encouraged me to start my label. I think it’s very important for an artist to know how many records they’ve sold and where they’ve sold. I know that I have never been treated the way I’m supposed to be treated – like an artist. That’s why I do things for myself. I feel like I’m a free man.
I want people to see how universal experiences of intimacy are, regardless of demographic or label or whatever.
We have meetings with our record label to tell them how to market us.
When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn’t understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.
People in this country don’t realize how tyrannical the Left is. It is phenomenally intolerant of any views other than its own, and it must label them as bad, evil, malodorous in some way.
I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.
Denise Mina is probably one of the most gifted writers out there, whether it’s mystery or literary or whatever label you want to give it.
People might say I’m difficult, but did you ever hear anyone describe a label as ‘difficult’? By nature, artists should challenge. When they call you difficult, it is a reflection of the imbalance of power.
I should be the one to say what I do. It’s just not done that way anymore in Nashville, and I can’t do it the other way. That’s how our record label came about.
People are going to label you anyway, but the one that bugs me the most is when they say, ‘One of the funniest female comedians.’ There’s s no ‘funniest male comedians.’ You’re either a funny comedian, or you’re not!
Well, Eminem, you know, I know him longer. Ive been signed to his label since 2001 and he’s a good friend.
I’ve got a great team around me with my family, manager and label, and we’ve all worked hard together to make things happen.
Our sport has always had somewhat of a racist label to it.
When you label them, when one of the most powerful social media companies in the world labels people as Nazis, you could make the argument that’s inciting violence.
Proponents of same-sex marriage regularly label opponents ‘radical’ and ‘extremist.’ However, given that no society in thousands of years has allowed same-sex marriage, it is, by definition, the proponents of same-sex marriage whose position is radical and extreme.
We live in a society that wants to label you with a color, sexuality, religion, or ethnicity. It divides us, but it also allows us to find pride in our identity.
I remember when we were going to release ‘Dancing On My Own,’ and I went into the record label crying to them that I was terrified people wouldn’t support me anymore if they knew I was gay.
I wouldn’t ever give myself the label bisexual, but bi-curious, yeah.
I bring in the record label who distributes the music.
When I got my first email from a record label, I decided I didn’t want to go in with just one song, so I sat down and kept on writing.
You can’t control it once you turn it into the label, so there’s the expectation that it’ll leak a week before the album comes out. That’s the world we live in.
I wanted to play in bands and get signed by a record label and tour the world and stuff, but that never really worked out.
I was in a situation where I was a West Coast artist signed to an East Coast label.
Technically, at this point we’re no longer with the label; we’ve fulfilled our contract.
It’s just someone has labelled us as having a different label to do what you do. I find that labels are the worst thing in the world for artistic expression.
Never label anything ‘Miscellaneous.’
I think if you look back at some of the stuff that we broadly label as the crime ‘ouvre,’ there are certainly elements of the supernatural at work.
Leonard Chess passed, and that was the end of the Chess label for that time.
If we meet some people that are in love with NFG that are a major label, then we’ll sign with them. If we meet people that are in love with NFG that are an independent label – and they have a plan – well, then we’ll sign to them. It’s completely up to us.
Although I had the label of being the ‘pretty girl rapper with a lot of followers,’ I just broke the rules.
I come from a Muslim family. The label ‘Muslim’ is one aspect of me, but it’s not the only part of me.
If something comes that it is so extreme that you have difficulty thinking of it as a good thing, don’t think of it as a good thing and kid yourself. To the extent that you can, don’t label it a bad thing. Refusing to label something a bad thing opens you up to possibilities you would not have even considered otherwise.
I do not like to label the characters I am doing or even myself as a particular type of actor. I try to do different kind of roles which are not the same ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ kind.
There is no one label that could be attached to me that would be thought adequate.
I don’t like the intellectual label.
I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I’m just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.
With me, I’m going to have a label where no one is ever cheated, ever.
‘Gangsta rap’ is a derogatory label.
I remember in 2016 when I got signed to my record label Good Soldier, which is a very small indie label. They took a big risk on me because ballads were the furthest thing from cool at the time.
So you have to just be really careful and make sure that when a deal comes along, that it’s like the right deal for you… not necessarily the most money, because you have to pay the record label that back in like record sales and stuff.
To be honest, the search for a label was really weird, because some of the labels that you wouldn’t expect to care about stuff like radio formats were the ones that did care. They were like, ‘Yeah, we love this record, but what are we going to play on the radio?’ And I was like, ‘You don’t have bands on the radio.’
Magic Realism is not new. The label’s new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it’s been around as long as literature has been around.
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well – but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.
I always wanted to be a part of a New York-based label, so I’ve worked really hard to try and network with people that I felt would put me in the right place.
Yeah, I think Michael has had to deal with that label of being Michael Caine for a long time.
Back in the day, if someone at the record label didn’t care or like your music, it never got to the public. It just got shelved.
To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.
I produced the Buckcherry album and I just finished a band called American Pearl on Wind-Up Records. That’s Creed’s label. They’re pretty rocking. Now I’m looking for another band to produce.
Another Black Label motto. That’s what I think life is. It’s just another bridge to cross. You ask no questions. Whatever work it is you gotta do, you gotta go over it, under it, through it, around it, to do it.
I hear people telling me a lot that the production of that particular record – ‘One Part Lullaby’ – really influenced them. I’m like, ‘What? We were dropped from the label after that!’
In 1970, my label decided I should do a Christmas album and I put a bunch of tunes together. We couldn’t decide what to call it and so I said ‘Why not just say Merry Christmas in Spanish? Feliz Navidad.’ They said, ‘That’s cool, Jose, but we need a title song.’ So I just sat down and started to play.
I’m from Israel, so America has no limits. I started a record label, and then I started managing other artists, like Liza Minelli.
If I really like the smell of something – a piece of tar or my goddaughter’s plastic doll – I put a tiny piece in a bottle with a label. I keep them in a fridge in my bathroom.
I want to create music that moves me, not just music that is going to get me famous or make someone at a label happy.
Geddy Lee and I went to the same grade school. He moved away when we were still young, but I remember him like I do all my friends from back then. Then in 1982, Dave Thomas and I were approached to do a record as the McKenzie Brothers on Anthem Records, the same label that Rush was on.
Being in a band is very much like a startup. You start in a garage. You hope to get interest from investors, like a major record label.
When I tried to get a record deal, only one label wanted me. The rest said ‘oh, we’ve already got a girl with a guitar.’ Can you imagine them ever saying that to a guy?
Vertigo’s always been a label that experiments with new stuff and forms of subversion.
I’m really excited because Interscope is really focused on artists. They’ve been working side by side with me creatively and allowing me to make a lot of the creative decisions, which you don’t always hear about. That’s why I didn’t want to sign originally with a major label.
I want to record many albums, have a healthy record label with talented artists, keep building my publishing catalogue, and maintain our culture with good music that will be remembered for years to come.
I didn’t think it was fair to my music to label me as the daughter of somebody – I didn’t think it described me very well and I didn’t think it had anything to do with my music.
For me, I wanted somebody that got me musically, that understood that I’m an artist and this is who I am. I’m not going to be like another artist on your label, probably – hopefully. I found all those things with the Broken Bow group.
I feel that I want what allows me to reach the largest number of people as possible, and I don’t feel ashamed of that. I think I’m the kind of artist that’s meant to be on a major label because my music is different.
I guess I’ve learned that there’s really no such thing as a bad label, there is only a bad contract.
I wear the beard as a label. I want people to know I am a Muslim and I want people to know I am representing the Muslim faith. I want to show that you can practise your faith and still play cricket to a high level.
I want people to know me for my singing. I’ve never been searching for a label of being a fashion plate or a top model. That’s a thing that’s very short-lived, and it’s dealing with a superficial level of this which doesn’t really appeal to me.
The truth is that both groups want to be noticed. Yet we view a man’s desire for attention as a natural instinct; with a woman, we label her a narcissist.
It was not easy to get rid of that ‘tv actor’ label.
If your label won’t let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!
I find anonymous music frees me best. Chinese pop can be perfect. I can’t decipher anything on the CD label; there is nothing I can hang on to.
Every single thing that I was told that I couldn’t do without a label – get in the charts, get on to the Radio 1 playlist – I’ve done.
I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn’t tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.
Nobody from my label called any of their labels to get this done. Most of it happened very naturally. Mary and I have been friends for a long time. Then Jay-Z offered.
I am going into the adult market because they don’t care what label you are signed to or who you know.
I’m a huge Cure fan. I love the Cure. The scales being tipped to when they weren’t on a major label compared to when they were seems pretty meaningless. I had the good fortune of having them go before me and seeing their careers, musically at least, lose something. Like a novel written by a dead hand.
I’ve always been very much in control of my music and my image, and I think one of the things I’ve been lucky about is I didn’t bring a label on board until I really figured out who I was.
As an Asian immigrant coming in, for the longest time I still had problems getting in the lot because they’re just not used to seeing someone like me who’s directing these films. I do think ultimately there’s a point where we can kind of just shed that label and become filmmakers.
We have stigmatised sleep with the label of laziness.
I’m a label that wants to sell. I believe in clothes.
I always wanted to run a major label, and I feel like I got the skills to do that. The one thing about me is that I won’t sit behind a desk the whole time – I’ll go to the clubs and see what’s hot.
I don’t believe any artist who says, ‘I had to do that because DJs will tell me I can’t play that music. I will lose my job.’ Well, lose the job and create a new job. If your label won’t let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!
I never thought of myself as a comedian. That is a label – make me laugh. I want to make you think.
I had my own label, Rising Force Records, and made records, but had them distributed to the chains, to the retailers, but the retailers are gone – there’s no physical sales anymore – so I’m not gonna make the CDs and have ’em put into trucks to go nowhere.
I’m not only a DJ. I run my own record label and I work out of my own productions.
Basically, the Internet is just the way now. It’s the end-all, be-all of self-promotion. It’s not like you got to burn CDs and pass them out or sell them. The Internet is a tool that reaches billions and billions of people. It’s like a no-brainer to tie it in with self-promotion, or even label promotion.
Don’t get hung up on the size. If you feel bad about yourself because a 12 is what fits, take a Sharpie, and write ‘6’ on the label.
If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I’ve ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.
We wanted to do something different and have a surprise release. At first, naturally, the label was getting a little scared about that, because they wanna sell records, and a surprise release means it might not go as quickly.
There was a time in the ’90s where, as an African-American man, you had to be a misogynistic R&B star or a rapper, and I didn’t fit into either one of those. I was advised by my label to remain closeted at that time.
It became a question of do I want to be on a label where it could take three years to put out a record instead of putting out three records over the same period of time on my own.
A prophet is always much wider than his followers, much more liberal than those who label themselves with his name.
It is easy but inaccurate to label any legislation which makes it easier for working families to combine family and work responsibilities ‘job killers.’
I was more comfortable with guys growing up, but now I find myself more comfortable in my own skin and open to people, regardless of their gender or popularity or any other label, as a result.
I’lI say this: I recall entering Congress in 1971 and being called a ‘feminist’ by members of my own party as if it was a dirty word. They didn’t realize that I wore that label as a badge of honor.
I don’t like to use the words ‘real women,’ honestly. I like to use the word ‘woman.’ And I say that because there are so many women out there who are naturally thin or are naturally curvy, and I think when we start putting a label on the type of woman, it gets misconstrued and starts to offend people.
We had a heroic attitude to artistic freedom, and we thought normal contracts were a bit vulgar – somehow not punk. But that was the whole point – we weren’t a regular record label.
As an artist, your only way to battle your label if you have a discrepancy is to go to court. I don’t understand why you can’t both agree if you have an accounting problem to have a third party to assess the situation.
When something happens to you, suffering doesn’t begin. Suffering begins at the instant you label a bad thing – as something that is wrong.
Generally, when a record label suggests album ideas for you, you smile politely, and then proceed to shoot it down, because it’s never what you as an artist feel is right for you.
My mother taught me something at a young age – she said ‘you are the company you keep’. To define yourself by some label or some level of resources – that’s pretty shallow.
I made that first record in 2008, alongside the EP, but my label at the time waited three years to release it. They thought maybe someone bigger would buy it, but they didn’t, so in the end they just released it themselves.
We’ve been lucky. Even as a young, local-level band, we were able to rise out of the local scene without having any debt, without having signed the wrong deal with the wrong manager or the wrong booker or a small label.
For too long, the producers of non-dairy beverages, such as almond and soy products, have unfairly benefited from the ability to label their products as milk.
When you have a label stuck on you, people tend to believe it. If someone calls you suave and debonair, you only get offered parts in a suit and a collar and tie. It just so happens I wear them reasonably well.
As a black person on the outside, because there’s so much black art and so much of black people’s work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there’d be more black people on the business side. It didn’t cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.
Somehow, it seems that the sadder a song is, the happier I feel. The release of emotions that many would label as ‘negative’ is actually a liberating process for me.
My tenure in the Senate was really as an independent and whichever, regardless of party label.
I don’t like labels, but if you have to put a label on it, I’m a gay man.
Fat Joe is signed to Fat Joe. I have a distribution deal for my label. I’m independent. I’m very happy with that.
If a new artist comes, and he doesn’t have a good record label to invest in him, then there is no point.
Neoconservatism’ once had a real meaning – back in the 1970s. But the label has now become meaningless. With many of those who are described as neocons, including me, fleeing the Trumpified right, the term’s sell-by date has passed.
I was just trying to say that it’s unnecessary; you don’t need to label yourself. I guess it came off the wrong way, because then everyone labelled me as gay. That’s not what I was trying to say. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course!
Creativity is much better when it’s free. Someone can take it and sell it if that’s what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living – that would be the best scenario.
Success happened for me when I dropped my first major label album for Def Jam, ‘Live From The Underground.’
I have my own label and I’m my first artist.
However, the radio and national media depend much more on the hype from a good record label, and from a ‘ buzz ‘ about a band, then from just one or two good shows. There are a lot of artists that have a ton of good press going for them, and still do not make it big in the US.
We were all friends who formed a band. We weren’t auditioned or put together by a record label, management company or TV show.
‘Memoryhouse’ came out, and there wasn’t a single review and zero sales, and after about a year, it was deleted. So I recorded The ‘Blue Notebooks’ on a little indie label, and my attitude was, ‘Well, if nobody is listening, I might as well keep doing what I’m doing’.
An artist is usually responsible only for the creation of a particular art. It’s up to the critics to label it.
I want to keep the whole ‘Lace Up’ movement going. I want to take it national and international with a machine, a label.
I’d done recordings, little demos, since I was in college, which I used to get gigs. But I never thought I’d have a record label.
Police are reluctant to label a murder as a possible serial homicide.
I was in school with Dweezil Zappa, Frank Zappa’s son, and we had a band. Only in L.A. could stuff like that happen. We would hang out in Frank Zappa’s studio, and we released a single in 1982 on his label. I was 12, and that was the first recording experience I had. To top it off, Eddie Van Halen produced it.
We should not label people who speak up, because it should not be the exception – it should be the norm. When you see something wrong, you speak up.
I think most people would struggle to define their whole relationship with just one label – like: my girlfriend, boyfriend, brother, sister, confidantes, whatever – but in those moments, there’s true joy in each other.
I didn’t have huge expectations for ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ My previous album, ‘Frampton,’ had sold about 300,000 copies – a decent amount but not mind-blowing. There was talk at the label that maybe the live record could go gold. I was hoping we could do it, but I wasn’t sure.
I think anyone who’s willing to be brutally honest with who they are and express themselves is always going to get the oddball label, the pyscho label, the twisted label. That’s what happens.
The pop world is cool, but I never really thought of myself as part of it or wanting to be a part of it because I’m on a label that’s not really like that. They’re not trying to dress me up, they’re not trying to do things like that. I feel like I’m sort of separate from that, actually.
Even though I haven’t released a song since 2010, I have still performed, so I don’t feel I have been completely away from music. I have been away on a mainstream level, of course. But releasing a single this way – on my own independent record label – is more fun.
Even though I don’t believe in God, I feel strangely compelled to fight the atheist label.
I am a middle-class black, a college professor, far from wealthy, but also well removed from the kind of deprivation that would qualify my children for the label ‘disadvantaged.’
I actually think Justin Trudeau’s approach to label people who have legitimate concerns with his issues as being un-Canadian and intolerant – that is very dangerous.
I’ve started my own record label – Jeepney Music – and I want to put out my own stuff and also stuff by other Filipino artists.
All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.
I really don’t think we should label models as ‘plus’ or ‘runway.’
The first-time director thing is just another label somebody puts on you.
I don’t think the label cares about an album… People just want their number-one record.
I’ve been part of running a label since I was a kid, so I understand how it works. But the more and more I learn about it, the less and less interested I am in it.
The beautiful thing about being independent and having my own label is I can say whatever the hell I want.
We believe that the Internet is the live concert promoters best friend although it might have crippled the record label business.
Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. They’d all fit more under the Libertarian label than the modern day Republican label.
People think I have the benefit of a public school education. I have this suave and debonair label, but really, I’m as common as muck.
My ultimate goal was to make the music that I wanted to make, and give shows. I was never going to get a major label deal – I never wanted a major label deal – so I was really free to express myself.
I don’t like the women who stand up for the empowerment of women at the expense of men. They try to demonize men, and they try to suggest men all want to keep us down, which is one of the reasons why I don’t like that label ‘feminist.’
I made this record without a record label.
Because the pop industry is cruel, if you don’t do everything the label wants you to do, it has an army of other people waiting to do it.
John Peel made his reputation with his radio show and his record label, Dandelion, by championing the underdog.
It’s time to get the FDA to reverse its 1994 decision not to label GM foods.
