A Quote by Lenny Kravitz
I think it'd be a real nightmare to put a record out and sell 20 million copies and then that's it.
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You know, if a band on a label sold a few hundred thousand copies of their record these days, they wouldn't make any money. But if a band can pump out 10 million copies of a record for free, and 50,000 of those fans come to the band's website to watch pay-per-view videos or buy a t-shirt, that's roughly $10 million in revenue per year.
I heard a quote once in a documentary about a band that said you're better off owning everything 100 percent and selling 20,000 copies of an album than signing with a record company and selling a million copies. There has never been a truer statement about show business than that.
Poison is one of the first, if not the first, truly independent bands to sell 3 million copies of our first record. It was before we were with a big company.
The biggest difference between me and other artists out there is that they'll put anything out to sell a record or sell a ticket.
Raoul' sold a respectable 700,000 copies without a hit single. It didn't take off. If you don't sell 8 million albums or 4 million albums again, everybody deems it a big failure.
Record companies worrying more about market share than developing artists - I hear there was a time when if your first record didn't sell 8m copies, you were still given a chance to grow as a songwriter.
Obviously, there are those in the industry who don't give romance novels the level of respect the sales would warrant. They'll talk about a book that sells maybe 100,000 copies, that happens to be very literary, whereas something like 'Crossfire' will sell 13 million copies in a single language and hardly get any mentions at all.
I think the power of the platforms is outstripping the size of the audience. We can't charge $150 for a game. And when the best-selling game of all time has sold only 20 million copies at $60, do the math!
When I put out the records, when I make a distribution deal, those distributors tell me who they sell it to and how many copies. So I want nothing less.
I don't want to write things that people don't want to read. I would have no pleasure in producing something that sold 600 copies but that was considered very wonderful. I would prefer to sell 20,000 copies because the readers loved it. When I write books I don't actually think about the market in that way. I just tell myself the story. I don't think I'm talking to a 10-year-old boy or a six-year-old girl. I just write on the level the story seems to call for.
Today they forget you in five years. They give an artist nowadays four or five years and that's it. Some of them don't have that. They get a couple of releases. If you don't sell two million copies, you're gone, you're out of here.
It's a blessing and a curse when your first big public album does so well. 'Twentysomething' sold four million copies - I think we were hoping to sell 80,000. And it's still selling. In some ways, you'll always be defined by that.
Imagine if you have a million views on a show and they say it's a hit on some cable networks. I could put out a piece of content that has 20 million views.
I'm really glad we came up when we did. When we got started, the record companies were concerned with building careers. They made sure you could put on a live show before you put a record out. And if your first album sold 100,000 to 200,000 copies, they were happy, because they figured you had your foot in the door on a way to a long career.
Every year, we couldn't believe it, and even when I look back on it now, to sell 14 million singles, 50 million albums and sell out arenas and stadiums, what Westlife achieved was crazy. It's like One Direction probably don't realise how big they are. They'll look back one day and think, 'Holy God, that was pretty amazing.'
You know, punk bands now sell with one record - their first or second record - sell 10 times the amount of records than the Ramones did throughout their career with 20-something records. That's why I go over to Johnny Ramone's house and do yard work three times a week, just to absolve some of the guilt.
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