My plan was always to leave school and live in a flat with some friends, have a 9 to 5 job, and try to get as many gigs as I could. I wanted to keep writing and then eventually, in my twenties, head to a record label and hope they'd sit down and listen to my book of songs, sign me as a songwriter and maybe an artist in development.

Ella Henderson

A lot of people are trying to get me to go solo. It's just a thing I have to deal with a lot. Record labels are always trying to get me to go solo.

Ad-Rock

Yin Wit Ways

We have meetings with our record label to tell them how to market us.

Adam Jones

Wit Us Tin

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.

Adam Rich

Money Car You

I'm recording another demo for another batch of record labels that we'll shop it around to.

Ahmed Best

UN T Shop

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.

Alesha Dixon

Music Way Us

Heath Ledger was supposed to put our album on what would have been a new record label. I still feel a little dead after losing him.

Alex Ebert

Would Up Till

I've never been told to do anything. I've never been hurried along by anybody - the kind of so-called 'pressure' of record labels doesn't really exist in my case.

Amy Macdonald

Thing Thin T

When you don't have a record label and you have been on your own as we have, you can look at all these other ways you can get in touch with other people and get music out there again.

Andy Taylor

Music Your You

This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.

Andy Taylor

Home Business Wed

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.

Anita Elberse

Art You Wing

In a sense, the music business and I haven't always been the best of bedfellows. Artists often have to fight their corner. Your music goes through these filters of record labels and media, and you're hoping you'll find someone who'll help you get your work into the world.

Annie Lennox

Work Music Business

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.

apl.de.ap

Music Art Want

I remember at a very early age ringing up record labels I found in the Yellow Pages, and asking them for a record deal.

Ashley Walters

Age Yellow Yell

It was a lot easier to write songs before I had a record deal, because the record labels and the industry doesn't mean to put pressure on you, but they do. They don't realize that they are, but you end up having a pressure there that you feel. At times I feel myself wanting to say, 'Just let me do what I do.'

Ashton Shepherd

Time You Write

I got really noticed by record labels and that's how I got signed.

Ava Max

T Signed Sign

When I first was a part of 'The Monster,' I really wanted to put it out under my name, but no record label thought it was good enough - until Eminem liked it.

Bebe Rexha

Good Art Wanted

All of my songwriting success happened within a four month time span, and my record label deal happened within the next three months.

Bibi Bourelly

Time Success Writing

I got out of the business because I went from being the biggest artist on my record label to someone they didn't even want to have around.

Billy Squier

Business Art Want

I think I'm a living embodiment of, 'Don't try to push me around or squash me,' whether its how I talk to a record label or in my relationships.

Bonnie Raitt

Relationship Men Whether

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.

Boots Riley

Work Art Age

Even though we're not the most punk rock band, the way we've done things is pretty punk rock. Just kinda say it with a big middle finger to the record labels and do it ourselves.

Brandon Thomas

When you're 17 and a record label says, 'Hey, do pop,' you listen.

Brooke Hogan

I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.

Bruce Springsteen

I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'

Bruno Mars

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.

Calum Scott

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.

Cara Delevingne

I've never conformed to what my record label has said and, yes, that has meant that it's been a long journey for me.

Charli XCX

I want to have a publishing company and a record label, and I want to manage five artists... eventually.

Charli XCX

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.

Charlie Daniels

People at the record labels were like, 'We don't want to sign you, you're girls' - sexist, ridiculous nonsense.

Charlotte Caffey

I want to invest and have my own record label and artists. I want to have a business where my kids, kids, kids will still have something going on long after I'm gone.

Chingy

At 18, I finally came into a relationship with a record label. My family got back on its feet. I was happy.

Christina Milian

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.

Courtney Barnett

There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.

Damien Rice

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.

Darius Rucker

In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that.

Dave Van Ronk

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.

Deborah Cox

The Moody Blues were a blues band, so when we got discovered, we were taken to London. That's where we started to make it. That's where the record labels were. That's where the action was.

Denny Laine

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.

DJ Snake

Mark Ronson was a dear friend through family and through growing up in New York, being in that scene, and Mark came to a show and really liked it and asked us to join his record label Allido records, or 'all I do' records, and that was sort of a development deal.

Domino Kirke

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.

Edgar Bronfman, Jr.

My plan was always to leave school and live in a flat with some friends, have a 9 to 5 job, and try to get as many gigs as I could. I wanted to keep writing and then eventually, in my twenties, head to a record label and hope they'd sit down and listen to my book of songs, sign me as a songwriter and maybe an artist in development.

Ella Henderson

I get bored easily, so I need to do a lot. I've started a record label, so I get to nurture new talent and talk about music, which is a passion of mine. I've written another book. And I get to come to work and do the TV show, which is always really fun.

Ellen DeGeneres

I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like 'Clown' and 'Mountains' that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

Emeli Sande

You no longer have to have a big record label behind you and have to kowtow to the politics that enabled you to get there. You can be a phenomenal artist and put your stuff out there on YouTube and find yourself becoming a star.

Eric Bischoff

I'm the only girl songwriter that fights for a lot of things. I fight for songwriting fees, which record labels want you to shut up about.

Ester Dean

It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

Evan Dando

Originally, after 'Tambourine' came out, another record was supposed to come out, but I had issues with my record label at the time, which was Interscope. We couldn't agree on a record, so that took some time. I had to leave them and find a new label.

Eve

There are people who are genetically made to start record labels, and I'm not one of those people. People just have it in their blood and are good at it. Corey Rusk from Touch and Go and Ian MacKaye. These are people who have made their own labels.

Fred Armisen

I feel like some artists need a record label, and some don't.

Freddie Gibbs