A Quote by Jenna Wortham

SoundCloud took a community-first approach to building its business, prioritizing finding artists to post on its service over making deals with music labels to license their music, the approach taken by Spotify.

Jenna Wortham

Quote Topics

Approach Artists Building Business Community Deals Finding First Labels License Making Music Over Post Service Soundcloud Spotify Taken Took

Quote Author

Jenna Wortham
American - Journalist
Born: 1981

The music business is suffering because fewer artists are being invested in. Labels are putting in less money, taking fewer risks and signing half as many artists as they did 10 years ago. Everything is risk averse right now and there are two ways to deal with a business situation like this: either reduce your risk or increase your return. They're reducing their risk to the bone and looking for ways with their 360 deals to increase their return. They're still not making money. Artists are suffering. Labels, or music investors, are suffering.

Tom Silverman

I sense people respond more to the honest approach to making music instead of the manufactured approach.

John Oates

There's definitely some sort of dissent brewing between record labels, publishing companies and artists [about the compensation they get from streaming services] Spotify is returning a HUGE amount of money [to the record labels]. If we continue growing at our current rate in terms of subscriptions and downloads, we'll overtake iTunes in terms of contributions to the recorded music business in under two years.

Sean Parker

Independent artists and labels have always been the trendsetters in music and the music business.

Shawn Fanning

Independent artists and labels have always been the trend setters in music and the music business.

Shawn Fanning

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

Nadia Boulanger

I will say that maybe me being young, it enabled me to have a more youthful approach to making music, and a fresher approach.

Ravyn Lenae

Kids are taking music for free all the time. They have Spotify, Pandora... The record companies aren't making the kind of music that they used to make. Artists make their money on tours, not from album sales.

Malcolm D. Lee

I hate that people have made the term SoundCloud rapper into a bad thing, because a lot of artists are underground and they don't have a way to put their music on. But to get that clout, to get that popularity, you might want to upload your music to SoundCloud - because how else is everybody going to hear it?

Megan Thee Stallion

There are half a billion people that listen to music online and the vast majority are doing so illegally. But if we bring those people over to the legal side and Spotify, what is going to happen is we are going to double the music industry and that will lead to more artists creating great new music.

Daniel Ek

I'm really proud to be a woman making music. Nothing makes me happier than when other women approach me at shows and say, "You've inspired me to start writing music," or, "I feel like we could be best friends." Music is a male-dominated business, so it's nice to see bands with girls in them, and not just a bunch of dudes with beards in flannel shirts.

Bethany Cosentino

We're expressing ourselves through references to anime and things like that, but SoundCloud music is just music that happens to be on SoundCloud.

Denzel Curry

Those albums are so important to me because, for the first time, I was making my own music, paying for it, finding strengths in it, and going through the process of finding the right music for the record.

Randy Bachman

Music is what is going to save me," "On the bad days, when I have to look at the cold, hard facts of life, I see that this is not the music business I came up in and I have to be very, very objective and detached and say, 'what's good about it and what's bad about it?' Mostly, I'm finding it good that it's not the same old music business, because the music business I came up in really didn't advance anything I was doing, and I don't think it was particularly kind to a lot of artists.