I've had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, 'Your music sucks, you don't know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don't know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When you don't have a record label and you have been on your own as we have, you can look at all these other ways you can get in touch with other people and get music out there again.
I will never sign to a major record label again. If, by some mega fluke, a record of mine looked like it might break big, I'd try and do it via an indie or somehow license it. I'm not having my music owned by those corporate bastards again.
I think the music business is probably not happy with what we've done, because the people buying the record have actually got to pick what they want to buy, rather than being told what they should buy.
The people who are competing business-wise out there want what other successful labels and artists have. I don't want what they have; I want my own path, my own sound, my own identity. Record labels care nothing about identity or artistic freedom, they want good business.
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 don't get involved in record label politics.
We have meetings with our record label to tell them how to market us.
I should be the one to say what I do. It's just not done that way anymore in Nashville, and I can't do it the other way. That's how our record label came about.
I just have so much love for my record label.
People are like, 'Wow you started your own record label,' and treat me like I'm some sort of innovative genius, when I'm not at all. You've got the Internet and music - you put them together, and people hear your music.