There are no record companies in Waikiki.

When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music.

Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.

The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?

When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music... Now, record companies are run by lawyers and accountants.

We had an EP out and all of a sudden we find record companies are interested in us, and we're thinking, 'Oh, that's really nice, but we don't think we're ready for it.'

Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.

When Phil and I started out, everyone hated rock n' roll. The record companies didn't like it at all - felt it was an unnecessary evil. And the press: interviewers were always older than us, and they let you know they didn't like your music, they were just doing the interview because it was their job.

I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.

Publishers and record companies love a broken heart.

The only thing I have no control over is the politics that goes on within the record company. It's always been the same, but it's far tougher now, because record companies are run by financial people; before, they were run by creative people.

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

I always thought that if record companies didn't understand me, fine - I'd go and do it by myself.

I've been wanting to sing for a long time. I've been singing all my life, and I've tried different record companies, but it seemed like - it was such a struggle and so hard to get out there. So, I said, 'I'm gonna go on American Idol and see how far it takes me.'

American record companies seem to feel I am antiwestern, anticapitalism, anti the kind of society they like. They think I'm a troublemaker.

I think everyone should sell whatever product they want to sell for whatever price they want to sell it for, but ultimately the market will dictate what it is and people will have to charge less money for everything. Record companies have been overcharging people for way too long and now this is the trouble that they're in.

It's always very special for me to work Chicago. Both of the record companies I was with, early on, were based in Chicago. The music was always huge there.

Artists were nurtured back in the '70s. Their music was developed by the record companies.

Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.

I'd go to meetings with record companies - CBS, Decca, EMI. They'd tell me to wear a pair of jeans and grow my hair and look normal. And I'd say, 'Sod that,' and storm out. And I do think that belligerence is important when you're young.

I mean, all the record companies said no, you know, say 10 record companies, whatever. But one said yes, and it took only one to make The Go-Go's happened.

We showed record companies that they shouldn't be scared just because it's an all-girl band. We could play just as well as the boys.

Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.

There aren't enough people who are scaring the kind of people who work at these record companies.

The record company started as an adjunct to that, to give young composers their first recorded performances; to give young musicians their first debut on a recording. These are all things that big record companies would never touch because there is no money in it!

I put 'Ghost' online hoping to make a couple hundred bucks, but then the next day, I took meetings with five different record companies.

A respectable-sized audience hasn't really been able to follow developments in jazz since the free jazz movement in the '60s. Some of them can't even get with John Coltrane. Audiences are diminishing more and more rapidly. Some of the top young musicians with something new to say can't get record companies to put out their stuff.

My audience is the baby-boomers, the bulk of the population. This is also a group that is being ignored by most record companies because they're not the Top 40 hit singles market. They forget these people still listen to music.

When I was starting out with record companies, there was a tendency to simplify the image as a prodigy. I have more than one adjective, and I've always tried to be myself and listen to my instincts.

It seemed record companies wanted bands to be creative because they didn't know how to manufacture underground music. We could do our own thing and go at our own pace. But that changed when major labels started wanting bands that would sell 7 million records.

'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.