A Quote by Linda Perry

My number one goal is to take over the music business and run a really great record company. — © Linda Perry
My number one goal is to take over the music business and run a really great record company.
Most artists have contracts directly with the record company, and when they do music, all of their music is owned by the record company. But I did mine through a production company.
About 1990 there was a huge shakeup in the music industry and the 6 major record companies fired all the music people and hired business graduates to take over the spots. So the music became not as important. What really became important was the bottom line, how much money you could make.
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.
I run a business and go all over the world doing things for that business, things that are fairly orthogonal. But my job is to run my company, not to be the best Instagrammer. I'll let other people be awesome at it.
I have a pretty random life. I run a business and go all over the world doing things for that business, things that are fairly orthogonal. But my job is to run my company, not to be the best Instagrammer. I'll let other people be awesome at it.
When you are doing music videos through the '90s, which I did, and the 2000s, you were put in the position, really, as an independent filmmaker. You were being financed by a major record company or a minor record company or whatever.
In business terms, if you take over a company and oust its CEO or fire a divisional chief, you run the place. But in institutional terms, as it happens, it doesn't at all work that way.
I think for us, we don't feel like the future of music is in the act of being a record company. We feel like the future of the music business is in empowering artists to have better and better tools to communicate with their fans. We want to be people who are saying to artists, "Look, you don't need that company over there to release your album. You can do it this way." Almost more of a band partnership than a label-artist relationship. Not about ownership of content, but about empowerment.
If you have been brought up with attacking and trying to get to number two, number three, number four goal, not getting one goal and defend, if that's sort of the mentality that's engraved in you, it's really difficult to do the other thing.
I had success. I had a number one record. I had a number one album. I have to make this kind of record again or else I'm going to lose it all. That's how you end up making the same song over and over.
The music business has made a 360. It's a whole 'nother game. It's not nearly what it was. And I fear for it, because, you know, with the advent of the computer and online and downloading and all these things, they have destroyed - that stuff has destroyed the record business, not the music business, but the record business. The music business is well, and it's alive and thriving. Now, I hope something happens to turn it back around to the point whereas it's - you're earning a living from writing your songs, from your work, you know, because it's not like that anymore.
But I did mine through a production company. All the music I did, I gave to the production company. Then the production company would give the record company the album. I used to do all my albums like that. It was fantastic. But now, understand, I have never planned to do anything with these other tapes. The one that are released, like the Virgin Ubiquity you have there, I wasn't going to do anything with that music. One day, I was talking to this guy that owns BBE over in England, and I said I've got some tapes and stuff that you might be interested in, and he went berserk.
At the time, there was a great disagreement over 'The Wild and the Innocent,' and I was asked to record the entire album over again with studio musicians. And I said I wouldn't do it, and they basically said, 'Well hey, look, it's going to go in the trash can.' That's the record business, you know.
I don't wait on the music industry to qualify me or give me my paycheck. I go about my business as an artist and I believe that my value is in my product and in my art form, and that's why I can't be stopped, because I began producing my record by myself, without a record company.
Artists and the traditional record company model are at odds. The music business has notoriously taken from the artist. That shouldn't be the narrative.
You go ask any founder of any company why he or she did it, you will never hear, "I wanted to create jobs for the community" as the number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number 10 reason for doing so. That is a result of the success the business enjoys. Creating jobs is not why people start businesses. Creating jobs is not how people innovate in business. It's not how they compete.
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