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There's this thing called compulsory licensing law that allows artists through the record companies to take your music at will without your permission.
Now record companies are run by lawyers and accountants. The shift from the one to the other was definitely related to when the takes started to get big.
We've managed to have a long career that is still quite vibrant, yet we've never had to kow-tow to record companies who said we weren't commercial enough.
I mean, all the record companies said no, you know, say 10 record companies, whatever. But one said yes, and it took only one to make The Go-Go's happened.
'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.
It's always very special for me to work Chicago. Both of the record companies I was with, early on, were based in Chicago. The music was always huge there.
From the age of 14 to about 20, I bombarded record companies and DJs with my demos. I was desperate to get it out there. Most of the time, I got nothing back.
The paradox is that Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and all the tech giants are bigger fans of music than some of the executives working at major record companies.
People weren't buying as many records. My record company did not want me. I went through three record companies, went on tour at the wrong time. It destroyed me.
We were a very popular live band in London, packing in 6,000 people a night, and the record companies that came after us wanted us to be the flavor of the month.
Mostly I've never let record companies become involved with my music, which was a very smart thing that my first manager Dave Robinson did, to keep them out of it.
I don't hear record companies coming up with any good ideas or suggestions. Historically, if it ain't their idea, it ain't no good, so you got that to contend with.
And looking at today's music scene, I think it's cool that there are a lot of consumers and fans not limited by what radio and the record companies tell them to buy.
A lot of very popular mainstream artists are products of record companies and marketing companies, and any time anyone can stand outside of that, that's interesting.
We had an EP out and all of a sudden we find record companies are interested in us, and we're thinking, 'Oh, that's really nice, but we don't think we're ready for it.'
At the beginning, at my shows, there were a lot of press and people from record companies. Now there are people who are there to just listen to the music and are genuine fans.
There's no more record companies, so I have to get on the Internet and let people know the album is out there. I don't know if we're working for it, or if it's working for us.
Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.
Between the record companies being the way they are and the fact that people can just download one song instead of buying a whole album, it's hard to make a good living nowadays.
Record companies would rather you stay dumb, not even think of it as a business, so they can either rip you off or get you out of the way in five years to make way for the new groups.
I was studying to be a doctor like every good Indian boy, and doing music on the side as a hobby. Then I started to get a little serious and record companies started giving me offers!
I thought I'd be wasting my time to go to commercial record companies and make demos for them, because don't forget, I was doing what I was doing and nobody understood what I was doing.
It's all false pressure; you put the heat on yourself, you get it from the networks and record companies and movie studios. You put more pressure on yourself to make everything that much harder.
The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?
You go through periods of times where bands are calling the shots, and then sometimes, you've got the record companies calling the shots. I think it has to be a bit of both to make the thing work.
Today's consumer is less interested in possessing things and more in experiencing them. That's something the music industry needs to get its head around. Do we even need record companies any more?
When I was starting out with record companies, there was a tendency to simplify the image as a prodigy. I have more than one adjective, and I've always tried to be myself and listen to my instincts.
Because record companies do not routinely release sales figures the way film studios do, the weekly charts in trade publications like 'Billboard' provide the best independent measure of record appeal.
Western record companies haven't always dealt with African musicians in the best way. Giving them a lot of money and telling them they're going to be bigger than Phil Collins is the wrong way to do it!
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.
I was always told that I was too strange or that I was too cheesy by different groups of people, like the record companies said I was way too weird and the indie people wouldn't even let me in their band.
Most of my relationships have been like that - with record companies. I've never had a legitimate business relationship with a company. I've always had a personal relationship with someone in the company.
I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.
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.
Back when Napster first came along, I started telling everybody Napster was like shooting yourself in the foot because you're stealing music. The record companies don't pay for us to make records - the bands do.
Everything about my life was culturally rich, and all the people I met sort of reinforced the wackiness that was normally inside of me. No one said, 'You can't do that,' until I got to real record companies, that is.
Several record companies had rejected my song 'Owner of A Lonely Heart' on the grounds it was 'too left field.' I never create to make a hit just to satisfy some record company executive's quarterly profit statement.
Finally, I would like to remind record companies that they have a cultural responsibility to give the buying public great music. Milking a trend to death is not contributing to culture and is ultimately not profitable.
When certain bootleg companies started off and they would take maybe ten per cent of whatever they got and help fuel new bands, which I'm cool with, I think that's a good idea. Most of the record companies are not doing that.
I'm a fan of music documentaries and I always love seeing what goes on behind the scenes. In kind of the new era of record companies and record releases and that sort of thing, there has to be way more content for the audience.
My audience is the baby-boomers, the bulk of the population. This is also a group that is being ignored by most record companies because they're not the Top 40 hit singles market. They forget these people still listen to music.
The music business has changed incredibly. There used to be 50 record companies. Now there's only three, and it's just getting smaller and smaller. But then again, you have the Internet, so anybody who has music can get it out there.
I'd go to meetings with record companies - CBS, Decca, EMI. They'd tell me to wear a pair of jeans and grow my hair and look normal. And I'd say, 'Sod that,' and storm out. And I do think that belligerence is important when you're young.
I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs. Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that's rather silly.
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.
If you are a superstar, or whatever you want to call yourself, a person who's had outrageous success, and you decide to go indie and tell the record companies to screw themselves? That takes a certain amount of courage. And bullheadedness, really.
I don't relate to what's left of the music business. There doesn't seem to be any point to it anymore. The business that I grew up in and loved, we made records a different way - there were record companies, there were stores where you could buy albums.
When it all started, record companies - and there were many of them, and this was a good thing - were run by people who loved records, people like Ahmet Ertegun, who ran Atlantic Records, who were record collectors. They got in it because they loved music.
It seemed record companies wanted bands to be creative because they didn't know how to manufacture underground music. We could do our own thing and go at our own pace. But that changed when major labels started wanting bands that would sell 7 million records.
I think the good thing about the Internet is to give something away and to sell something else. Get a business model like that because the old brick and mortar record stores are falling apart, and the big record companies are collapsing under their own weight.