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You don't want the biggest record deal as far as money goes, you just want to make sure that the people at the label really support your band and the music and stuff.

If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.

It's like, on my solo stuff, every single person who buys the record, gets it. On the other stuff, the masses... when you have a hit on the radio, not everyone's going to get it. They are going to buy it for the hit.

Some people buy records just to dance to 'em. Some people buy records to listen to the radio. And there's people that buy records 'cause they listen to every song.

I hate record labels. They think they know everything. I want to hear them try to sing it.

I've always known, before I had a record deal, that the thing is to go out and put on the show. I've been doing that from day one.

At the end of the day, you sign a record deal and you understand where it could go if you had the right song.

A record deal doesn't make you an artist; you make yourself an artist.

When people see you have a song on MTV, they think you are doing well - but you know, the way the traditional label deal was set up, it is really hard for an artist, unless they sold a lot, to see anything.

We went into that knowing that we were never going to sell a major record 'cause we didn't sound like these bands, so I just thought this was an opportunity for us to make the kind of records that we wanted and make some money at the same time.