Getting ripped off in the music business is as old as the business itself.
It’s a reality that can even affect those at the very top of the game. Last year Taylor Swift took to twitter to expose the shady dealings that prevented her from playing her old material at the AMA Awards.
Swift’s label, Big Machine, who she’d signed to aged 15, had been bought by Ithaca Holdings in a $300 million deal which included the lucrative masters of Swift’s early albums. Swift suggested that she would soon start re-recording those albums so that fans could buy them on her terms, a move that would have a serious impact on Braun’s investment.
Swift took it public. “Scott Borchetta told my team that they’ll allow me to use my music only if I do these things,” she posted. “If I agree not to re-record copycat versions of my songs next year…and also told me that I need to stop talking about him and Scooter Braun…The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl and shut up. Or you’ll be punished.” As of last week, her masters had been sold on by Braun to a private equity firm called Shamrock Holdings.
Taylor isn’t the only one fighting for her musical rights. Swift’s nemesis Kanye West, recently declared the music industry one of the “Modern Day Slave Ships”. West said he wouldn’t release any more music until released from publishing contracts with Universal and Sony. “I am the new Moses,” he tweeted.
The Cribs, fresh from a two-year legal fight against ownership of their albums being sold to “some fucking big-shot in Beverly Hills” without their knowledge, stalled their output and almost split the band. “Our first album cost us £900 to record and we funded it by working in a factory for weeks, I’ll be damned if some huge mega-rich corporation is going to take that away from me or claim ownership of it… Our catalogue and all our songs, that’s everything I’ve got to show for my life. That’s my entire legacy.”
This just scratches the surface. Many acts suffer from such backroom dealing all the time. We often hear about managers or accountants syphoning off cash all the while artists’ incomes are squeezed by streaming. More acts are frustrated at their music slipping out of their control.
It’s going to take a massive effort on the part of all musicians to shift the scales back in their favor. Be it acts like Swift and West risking legal issues to ensure they’re seen to get what they deserve, or the new breed putting their futures on the line by insisting on fairer deals.
Like Taylor wrote: “Hopefully, young artists for kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation – you deserve to own the art you make.” The future of music depends on acts educating and standing up for themselves.
