A Quote by Russell Simmons

Most artists are making as much money now as they could have made... in the heyday of Def Jam [when the] Beastie Boys would sell 10 million records or DMX would sell 6 or 7 million records. Those records are one thing, but then all the other ways to exploit the emotional relationship between artist and community is so much greater that I would guess that they're making as much or more money than they could have ever made.
I don't sell millions of records. As a matter of fact, I'm not even interested in selling millions of records. I enjoy MCing. I make a decent amount of money. I can feed my kids. I keep a roof over my head. I don't have to sell a million records to maintain my lifestyle.
There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done.
God works funny so it might have just been meant for me to be an artist that doesn't sell two million records. Maybe my records might change somebody's life rather than sell thru the roof.
Obviously there was the idea that we could sell more records if we played live, but I guess I didn't care enough to sell more records to do that.
Have I learned something from making records? Yeah, I've learned a lot, because I've not only made eleven of my own records, I've also probably produced that many records for other artists, and then I've probably played on, or been a large part of another eleven records with other people.
Of course, you're not making records in a vacuum. I'm not making them for myself. It would be nice if I could get more people to hear them. But if I have to sell my soul to the devil to do it, I won't.
People will always have the desire to make rock and roll records, and they'll always have the desire to sell rock and roll records. Most of the people making these records do it because it is a business, and if someone says, "You can't do this", they won't complain. They'll just keep making records, but they'll get blander and blander. There'll still be rock and roll, but compared to what it really could be or ought to be, I don't think it'll be all that terrific.
I would sell 2 million records, a million went to teenagers and a million went to the adults. So, when The Beatles became so popular, I lost a million to the teenagers, but I was still selling a million to the adults.
We moved into the back, made it into a little 50s sitting room and started to sell the records. We had an immediate success. For one thing, these Teddy Boys were thrilled to buy the records.
There's really no money per se to be made on records. We used to make a lot of money on records. Now, all of our money is made on touring.
If I could sell 500 million records every time, it would be great. But I've also had the luxury experience of having it when I was a teenager, in a very kind of model version of it.
I wish records got made faster and looser with less thought in them, but since touring is so much more profitable than records, you spend so much time on the road that it's hard to work on them. And the records get further and further apart.
European exporters will be paying twice as much duty on stuff they sell to the U.K. because they sell twice as much stuff as we sell to them. We would then have quite a lot of money to support our industries in ways that we choose when we leave the E.U.
I just have to sell enough records to continue financing making more records.
If I was going to sell out, I would do it for more than 10,000 records.
I wanted to sell a million records, and I sold a million records. I wanted to go platinum; I went platinum. I've been working nonstop since I was 15. I don't even know how to chill out.
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