That one is that the reason labels own masters is because the labels pay for everything that goes into creating the master (which is literally the tape/file of the song that’s used commercially). Wanna keep that? Cool. But you’ll need to pay for recording, producers, radio...

... styling, marketing, travel, band and or folks on the road with you.

For some artists, that doesn’t matter. For others, that’s a huge difference

It’s kinda like how the bank actaully owns your house until you pay your mortgage. And the interest is the recoupable spending (videos, styling, travel, etc) that accrues over life of album cycle.

Ye tweeting hard and fast but with the amount of samples he uses, the frequency of delays, the spends, period - He’s definitely unrecouped on multiple albums.

And I said this to someone else but believe it or not, not ALL artists want their masters - at least not while they’re still with the label. If you don’t know how to leverage master licenses outside of streaming, you’re just sitting on potential.

I’m all about retaining your IP, keeping as much of your creative control as possible, but the “we don’t need major labels” narrative only works for SOME artists, and I can’t remember who said this a few months ago, but ownership ain’t the answer to everything.

Here’s the secret - Labels don’t expect you to recoup, and if, in 2020, a recording artist - not producer, artist -expects to recoup quickly and make money on the back end, they should fire their lawyer.
https://twitter.com/jacquesislike/status/1306412926111158272?s=21 https://twitter.com/jacquesislike/status/1306412926111158272

Labels loose money or break even on more acts than they make money on. The lights are kept on by those one or two SUPERSTAR acts at every label. They plan entire financial years around them. At Columbia it’s Adele and Bey. New acts are more about mitigating loss.

It’s all their financial risk. If your album doesn’t do well, you walk away with whatever advance you got.

So that’s the TWO sides to it. It’s easy to hear successful acts talk about ownership, but successes are rare. The number of folks who get signed to the number that actually release an album to the number that actually hit to the number that end up with a CAREER? Risk game.

Rule #4080 is still the realest shit ever, and there’s a lot of things that can be annoying about “a building.” Most of that, though, is centered in a lack of appreication and understanding from exec to artist - the money’s part of that

The really really really trash deals you hear about tend to be production deals, smaller labels, management deals. Mad Unsungs is like artist was signed to somebody else who struck the deal with the label. And the artist was roped in while green and hungry - maybe literally

And that whole process of the label is paying a production company and then the production company does whatever... shade ensues.

I meant to give this a closing tweet:
Today, the actual recorded masters generate the least revenue in an artist ecosystem. Touring, synch and licensing (which is master put also PUBLISHING), merch, branding... those are (or were in old outside) the money makers now...

It’s why merch bungles and artist D2C stores became more popular around the early 10s (Tyler once told me his fans can’t download a bootleg pair of socks), why the live music market kept growing year after year, and why labels pushed for 360s.

Labels JUST started making money again like 16 minutes ago. And it’s still not back to the pre-napster disruption, nor is the revenue as fast as it was with physical sales.

Bundles*
https://twitter.com/naima/status/1306450424040390661?s=21 https://twitter.com/naima/status/1306450424040390661

But like someone said earlier, ownership means just that. You take on EVERYTHING. The risks and the losses. And the work. And the responsibility to understand it all. That all sounds sexy until that first hard L.

So while label contracts absolutely need to continue to improve; and a lot of it is an outdated model, the music business is still a business, not a family. When I tell you execs get calls from finance about the budget http://every.fcking.day  bc they’re not trying to bleed out...

I personally don’t think there’ll be a time in the near future the major label model goes away. Not as long as there’s terrestrial radio, at least. Radio promo is probably the biggest thing that can’t be duplicated the same way under a smaller/more independent structure.

That and coordinated efforts between international and domestic teams.

Yup. And Meg’s deal that she filed suit to get out of.

https://twitter.com/therhancock19/status/1306452736221892610?s=21 https://twitter.com/therhancock19/status/1306452736221892610

And a production company deal VS being signed to the JV or vanity label is different. You sign to a JV, you just signed to a label. Sign to a production deal you just promised someone 30-50% of your future earnings in exchange for them financing your artist development.

So the label pays them, they take their cut, then they pay the artist.
Basically, label, production deal, whomever, NOBODY is putting significant money into speculation without a guarantee on their return if it pays off

Also, if I didn’t clarify before, the master and the song itself aren’t the same thing. You can own 100% of the song (you wrote music and lyrics) but not the master. The master is the specific recording of the song the label released.

For example: Barry Hankerson & Blackground owns the masters for Jojo’s first album, and he’s sitting on ALL Blackground masters, so she re-recorded it so it could be on streaming.

On the flip side, when Taylor Swift talked about not being able to get her masters back after her label was sold, a crucial element of the sale was the revenue potential in her masters for licensing and synch opportunities

Or with something much simpler like copyright takedowns; live performances that aren’t from a televised event like. VMAs or the Grammy’s often fly under whatever algorithm the DMCA ppl employ, bc they’re mostly looking for master use. Ie, album version.