Quotes & Sayings About Commercial Music

I think some people record songs and make records a certain way to cater to radio. If you're born to make commercial music that's cool. But if you're born to not make commercial records, maybe you're meant to cater to another market. — Bryan White

Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music and you always have to keep that in mind. — Kenneth Edmonds

We're not uncomfortable with it, and we've already been through enough of the music business where I'm not really worried that commercial success is going to in some way - we're already past saving, you know what I mean? It's too late for us. — Jerry Garcia

I think 'pop' can be a bit of a dirty word. People are very cool in Australia. They don't like to admit that they like pop. There are people who listen to Triple J and cool stuff like that, but commercial radio is massive, and if you look at the sales of the pop songs every week, people love pop music. — Ricki-Lee Coulter

I wasn't really writing with anything commercial in mind I just wanted to create some new music. — Billy Sherwood

We both [with Jo Andres] think that it is really important to our culture that we support all kinds of music, all kinds of theatre and all kinds of art because you never know what moves people. We've always believed that there should be a strong voice outside the commercial world. Certainly, the commercial world has a huge place in our culture and we also support that - but, we also want to support the stuff that lives outside of that. — Steve Buscemi

Commercial music is music that a lot of people connect to at the same time, but that doesn't mean it has to be something shallow or without personality. — Robyn

You can't steal an artist's songs and also tell him he can't license that music to a commercial. — Jack White

It seems to me in retrospect that the department stores and the dime stores did an excellent job of extending the 'sacred space' of Christmas in those days. And I sometimes wonder whether for people of no religion, this might have been the only sacred space they knew. When people rail now against the 'commercial nature of Christmas,' I'm always conflicted an unable to respond. Because I think those who would banish commercialism from the holiday fail to understand how precious and comforting the shop displays and music can be. — Anne Rice

Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less previous in the bargain. I don't want to confuse artistic and commercial value, but it's just a fact that some kid who rips an album for free isn't going to give it the same attention he would if it cost him ten bucks. At what point does convenience become spiritual indolence? I realize this makes me sound like an old fart, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the days when the universe of recorded sound wasn't at our fingertips, when we had to hunt and wait and - horror of horrors - do without, when our longing for a particular record or song made it feel sacred. — Steve Almond

When hip-hop was born she had no commercial home, and was an invention of beautiful creativity. Born from a beautiful struggle, today she is mostly a 'ratchet' bitch spitting nonsense from her pimp's mansion. — T.F. Hodge

During the so-called Jazz Age, most of the music's key exponents focused their creative energy on soloing not bandleading, on improvisation not orchestration, on an interplay between individual instruments not between sections.
[...] Commercial pressures, rather than artistic prerogatives, stand out as the spur that forced many early jazz players (including Armstrong, Beiderbecke, and Hines) to embrace the big band idiom. But even in the new setting, they remained improvisers, first and foremost, not orchestrators or composers. — Ted Gioia

I was asked to do a test commercial shoot for an Apple product which didn't mean much to me at the time. Some music player that holds all your songs. Sounded cool to me and I never gave up an opportunity to work, especially with the possibility of it turning into a national commercial. Coolest job I did in that time. — Harry Shum Jr.

[Commercial] radio is absolutely the enemy of music. They are my sworn and mortal enemy, and I will have nothing to do with them. — Elvis Costello

Mainstream media would convince you that there's commercial culture and that's all - but this other music is still here. — Michelle Shocked

I've heard some tunes in recent years that were pretty close to that same idea. The idea was you turn on the radio and you want to hear some music and up comes a commercial. — Mose Allison

I'm trying to fuse popular and commercial music and just make very creative music. It's popular music: it's everything for everybody. — Theophilus London

To me, country music is like the blues, but it's something very hip and - I don't want to say commercial - but it's very worldly and good listening. — Etta James

Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically. — Beck

I've never been in love, but I've always imagined it
weirdly
like some sort of OxiClean commercial. The TV host shows a scene from an ordinary day, and then takes a big old sponge soaked in love and swipes away the stains. Suddenly that same scene is missing all the mistakes, all the loneliness. The colors are like jewels, ten times richer than they were before. The music is louder and clearer. "Love," the host will say, "makes life a little brighter. — Jodi Picoult

The commercial music world which I had been a part of for so many years lost its sparkle. My focus became the creation of music which would slow down the brainwaves, so inducing a state similar to when we mediate. — John R. Levine

As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends. — Lawrence Lessig

Work in nightclubs was interesting. There were interesting people and places, but by and large, the commercial music experience. — Pete Seeger

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous. — Archie Shepp

The world thinks that music is a commercial commodity. I'm glad that is not my code. — Sun Ra

When we read, we decide when, where, how long, and about what. One of the few places on earth that it is still possible to experience an instant sense of freedom and privacy is anywhere you open up a good book and begin to read. When we read silently, we are alone with our own thoughts and one other voice. We can take our time, consider, evaluate, and digest what we read - with no commercial interruptions, no emotional music or special effects manipulation. And in spite of the advances in electronic information exchange, the book is still the most important medium for presenting ideas of substance and value, still the only real home of literature. — Andrew Clements

I've been involved in a lot of different kinds of projects. I've been on straight hip hop tours. I've been on underground rock tours. I've been on multimillion selling rock shows. I've been in the jam band thing, and both commercial and underground hip hop. Very few people listen to one kind of music. — Boots Riley

[Commercial radio] is owned by one or two corporations now, and they're not in the music business. They're in the advertising business ... So let's not kid ourselves. If you want to hear music, go buy a guitar. — Elvis Costello

If love is under siege, it is because it threatens the very essence of commercial civilization. Everything is designed to make us forget that love is our most vivid manifestation and the most common power of life that is in us. Shouldn't we wonder how the lights that glimmer in the eye can blow a fuse for a time, even as barriers of oppression break and jam our passions? Yet despite a life stunted and distorted by mediated Spectacle, nothing has ever managed to strip love of its primal force. Although the heart's music fails to overwhelm the cacophony of profit efficiency, bit by bit it composes our destinies, according to tones, chords, and dissonances which render us happy if only we learn to harmonize the scattered notes that string emotions together. — Raoul Vaneigem

When was the last time we took a verse like, "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving" (Eph. 5:4) and even began to try to apply this to our conversation, our movies, our YouTube clips, our television and commercial intake? What does it mean that there must not be even a hint of immorality among the saints (v. 3)? It must mean something. In our sex-saturated culture, I would be surprised if there were not at least a few hints of immorality in our texts and tweets and inside jokes. And what about our clothes, our music, our flirting, and the way we talk about people who aren't in the room? — Kevin DeYoung

I think I gave indications early on that mine wasn't just going to be a commercial, er, career. If that were the case, then the first record would have been 10 versions of 'Loser.' I always thought it would be interesting if there was no such thing as gold and platinum records, or record deals, and people were just making music. What would the music sound like? — Beck

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so. — Jamie Cullum

Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much. — Jimmy Carl Black

When I look at commercial studios, I think, "Oh, they're all so nice and tidy," but it's because they don't actually write music in them. — Aphex Twin

I'm very hands on with my music - I do all the artwork and everything myself - and the songs I write aren't necessarily the most commercial. — Courtney Barnett

In whichever way my music can get out there, I'm just like, 'Sure.' It's also through the TV synch licenses that I've been surviving. I don't really make money through record sales. I used to be really picky: 'No, I don't want it to be the song of a commercial,' but nowadays it's what you need to do to get the song out as much as you can. — Priscilla Ahn

The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters - there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void ... That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window. — Jean Baudrillard

That was a time when I did love music, I couldn't get enough of what was going on. Maybe it was Nirvana that brought me back. I guess it was a comfort because something that sounded so right - and non-commercial - had become so influential, so immediately. — Marc Jacobs

Music is the worst of them - roiling and boiling - overly emotionalized on the one hand, overly intellectuallized on the other. Bach and Mozart indeed! Bach inevitably makes me think of fish in a barrel! round and round and round they go and nothing ever happens. Nothing ! Tum -de-dum-dum. Tum -de-dum-dum and that's all! Tum -de-dum-de-bloody-dum-dum! As for Mozart, his emotions did not mature beyond the age of twelve. never achieved adolescence, let alone puberty. his music merely combines a popular talent for slapstick and a commercial talent for tears. No - not tears. For sobs. Beethoven, pompous. Chopin - sickly sweet and given to tantrums - Tum -de-dum-dum- Bang! and Wagner - a self -centred bore. and Stravinsky - discordant, rude and blows his music through his nose — Timothy Findley

I love commercial music! I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business. But without any thought, I just enjoy it. It's folk music. That's what I'm doing, folk music. I'm not intellectualizing it ... and making it into a phoney art form. I'm just doing the music I enjoy. — John Lennon

Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddenly retro. — Chuck Palahniuk

When 'Nevermind' came out, my roommate had the CD. At first, I actually thought, 'This is too polished and commercial.' It was a little off-putting. But then I was like, 'This is the best music ever.' It felt so close to what I wanted to do. — Rivers Cuomo

When I started making music, I made music in a very commercial space and I didn't have room to really explore things on my own terms. It took me awhile to create a little bubble where I could explore other things, and new things. When I did that, my tools were songwriting and arranging. — Robyn

I'm not quite sure. Probably because "Hanky Panky" and "I Think We're Alone Now" had more to do with it than anything else. For some reason, staccato eighth notes on a bass sounded like bubblegum. Basically, groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Co. took my early format and kind of perverted it, and made these mindless pre-fab hits over and over. In the 60s, anybody who was making commercial music, that is music that didn't have a political slant to it, or wasn't taking drugs, was bubblegum. And that term kind of hung on a lot of people back then, and it's unfortunate. — Tommy James

There are people that bring artists to me to look at it and it's a question of whether I like their music and their look and if I think there's something they have that makes them different and commercial. — Kenneth Edmonds

I don't think too much about how it might exist in the world in a commercial sense - I more just try and focus on making music that I love and trying to put it out into the world. — Moby

Commercial rock 'n' roll music is a brutalization of the stream of contemporary Negro church music an obscene looting of a cultural expression. — Ralph Ellison

I enjoy music that is commercial. — Kenneth Edmonds

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music. — Iggy Pop

I think the Cosmic Psychos were a band that was highly influential on the Seattle so called grunge scene. I know that Kurt and Nirvana were fans, they played shows with Pearl Jam. Even thou the Cosmic Psychos never had the commercial impact or success that those bands had, they were still a major influence on them, and I think a lot of it had to do with the spirit and the sound of their music. — Butch Vig

I'm a commercial artist, both in music and art. — Grace Slick

The sort of commercial parameters of classical music changed after the [World War II] , and the whole industry became more backward-looking. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

The style of music that we're playing, this progressive metal style, has always been an upstream battle for us. We don't usually get a lot of commercial exposure. — John Petrucci

I don't think that three minutes of music on a commercial record is going to bring paradise, but I feel like there is power in music and power in our words and power in what we put out into the world. — Kyp Malone

Actually, Wilson's art can't fit into these neat categories. My own take is that the best way to think of Wilson is as an outsider musician, but one who actually happens to have a huge amount of talent. Much like, say, Wesley Willis, Wilson is focussed on having huge commercial success, but has little to no idea what actually counts as commercial. He's very easily swayed by people around him, so if he's told he should be doing three-minute pop songs, he does three-minute pop songs, and if he's told he should do epic suites about the American Dream, he does those. But at all times there are two things that remain true about him: he has an unerring ability as an arranger, and a directness that makes his music more communicative than any other music I've ever heard. — Andrew Hickey

The joy of music should never be interrupted by a commercial. — Leonard Bernstein

In a way, all recorded music is reduced to the same level, no matter what it is. You find it in the store, you put it on and, "Oh, that's not cool. That's gangsta rap. That's white supremacist punk." But in a way, the content is removed from the intention of the people that made it. That's the commercial level of music. — Eyvind Kang

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement. — Bernice Johnson Reagon

Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record. — Neil Young

The success of Watermark surprised me. I never thought of music as something commercial; it was something very personal to me. — Enya

Music is a spiritual expression of what's in your heart. Music as a way of getting rich is a pretty new thing, and I often wonder if the mega-bucks glitzy atmosphere is making the quality of music suffer. You have to work really hard to get around that and remember why you're in it in the first place: because you have to be. It's like an addiction. You can't go a day without picking up your guitar. To me, the only commercial goals that are really valid are, 'Boy, I wish I didn't have to go to work. I wish I could do this all the time.' — Trey Anastasio

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain. — Ken Burns

I really do listen to all types of music, not only rock, but everything from good pop music - which is usually older pop music - to R&B and indie rock. I love indie rock more than a lot of the commercial stuff that you'd expect. — Amy Lee

My policy is not how fast you play, it's not how much you play but it's what you play and where you play it ... play for the commercial side of the music ... the word I still use today is called "simplicity" .. it is so important that you use simplicity in your playing and in your music ... — James Burton

The only thing that exists to me is commercial pop music. — Barry Gibb

I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial. — Chris Robinson

An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music. — Moby

I have always made commercial music. The people who vote for the Grammy nominees are mostly in their 40s and have other jobs or are musicians themselves. They like music that they can relate to - they like commercial music. — Al Walser

I had always loved cartoons, especially 'Bugs Bunny,' and I found I enjoyed making animated films. Even a 30-second commercial involved drawing and painting, storytelling, not to mention actors, music, and sound effects. — Mordicai Gerstein

Rock became an incredible commercial success, people just became bored with serious music, and it was forgotten. — Henry Flynt

The commercial music video industry is very hard to break into, and until you break in, that first job is the hardest thing in the world to get. — Joseph Kosinski

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great. — Ikue Mori

Pressure is high and jobs are at stake. There is nothing wrong with having commercial music to pitch for those situations, as well as for ad campaigns. — Wendy Starland

It's not my concern to make a commercial pop record. I want to make a record of music that I would listen to, that is lyrically rich and has songs that people can relate to - more along the Jakob Dylan route: people who create for the art of it and not necessarily the monetary rewards of it. — Crystal Bowersox

Commercial to the core, Elvis was the kind of singer dear to the heart of the music business. For him to sing a song was to sell asong. His G clef was a dollar sign. — Albert Goldman

If you're making music, you must want to turn other people on to it, whether you're number one in the charts or number 60. I don't know, that's a commercial thing, but just the fact that other people like you ... there's no point in making music, otherwise. Otherwise, you might as well make it in your bedroom and leave it there. — Paul Weller

My music doesn't really sound like punk music, it's acoustic. And it doesn't really sound like folk music 'cause I'm thrashing too hard and emoting a little too much for the sort of introspective, respectful, sort-of folk genre thing. I'm really into punk and folk as music that comes out of communities and is very genuine and very immediate and not commercial. — Ani DiFranco

I want to burn as a beacon of possibility. I don't want nobody to misconstrue the commercial success I've had as anything other than an example of what black music is capable of. And what it's capable of is being more than just black. I'm not black or white anymore. I'm Cee Lo Green. — CeeLo Green

the old anti-'commercial' tendencies mocked throughout this book have been bulked up into a worldview by the runaway growth of what I call semipopular music." (Oh yeah, "semipopular music." Er, "music more popular in form than in market share." At least when it starts out. Under the rubric "alternative," now also an established image-making strategy that informs many of the "brands" ambitious young musicians concoct for themselves. — Robert Christgau

Public radio is the last oasis of free and independent music. For satellite radio channels, you have to subscribe; commercial stations are as corporate as basic cable. — Nellie McKay

And for the past 10 years I've been in a real commercial setting where people are all about numbers, they're all about that bottom line. So it's nice to step out of that and hang out with a bunch of people who play music just because they love it, as you can imagine. — Lee Ann Womack

When reggae was introduced to the world, it was a voice of the oppressed, a music with integrity that you can enjoy holistically. Throughout the years, what has become commercial kind of strayed from the integrity. — Stephen Marley

It's fair to say that white America wouldn't have elected an African-American president without the integrating effect of black music - from Louis Armstrong to hip-hop - and black drama and fiction, commercial as much as 'serious.' — Joe Haldeman

It's great to have other people's help. Then the music gets heard. There's a lot more commercial support for that now. — Madeleine Peyroux

Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you
do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale? — Chuck Palahniuk

Making music, dancing, the theater, conversation, proper and urbane deportment, these were cultivated here as particular arts. It was not the military, nor the political, nor the commercial, that was predominant in the life of the individual and of the masses. — Stefan Zweig

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time. — Orson Welles

The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular? — David Sarnoff

I'm singing the music publisher's theme song - it ain't a commercial. — Hoagy Carmichael

Large-scale enthusiasm for folk music began in 1958 when the Kingston Trio recorded a song, "Tom Dooley," that sold two million records. This opened the way for less slickly commercial performers. Some, like Pete Seeger, who had been singing since the depression, were veteran performers. Others, like Joan Baez, were newcomers. It was conventional for folk songs to tell a story. Hence the idiom had always lent itself to propaganda. Seeger possessed an enormous repertoire of message songs that had gotten him blacklisted by the mass media years before. Joan Baez cared more for the message than the music, and after a few years devoted herself mainly to peace work. — William L. O'Neill

I was addicted to 'The Monkees' TV programme - not so much because of the music but because of the commercials in between. The programme was sponsored by Yardley, and in the commercial breaks, there would be these English girls on roller skates, wearing hot pants, and I just thought, 'God! How neat!' — Marie Helvin

I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial. — Ani DiFranco

Music can save people, but it can't in the commercial way it's being used. It's just too much. It's pollution. — Bob Dylan

Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it.
It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive more than likely would be a resounding, "No - what's a Moby?"
But if you say, "Remember that American Express commercial where Tiger Woods is putting around New York City? Remember the song playing? That was Moby."
"Oh, then, OK. I guess I have heard Moby," our theoretical retired banker in New Canaan might say.
"So ... what exactly is a Moby?"
That's like grace. Not that grace is a pretentious vegan techno-rocker, but you get the idea.
Grace is everywhere, all around us, all of the time. We only need the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it. — Cathleen Falsani

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. — Mark Twain

Black music has become a commercial commodity. Live performances are not so accessible as they were previously. It use to be possible to go to the bar on the corner and hear music. It was available for a fifteen cent beer. — Archie Shepp

The truth is an artist like me who doesn't get the type of promotion that we see more commercial artists receive, and especially in this climate of the music business, you have to be creative about how you promote yourself. — Chrisette Michele

It bothers me when I hear it in a car commercial or some such. But for the most part, it's better than seeing sacred music relegated to the scrap heap. — Richard Morris

I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry. — Charlie Hunter

Anytime you look at anything that's considered artistic, there's a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can't exist without it. — Steve Martin