![]() ![]() Artists have to balance out factors such as smaller advances, lower royalty income, higher risk and bearing costs. A record label is going to get less, so in return it is going to give less back. ![]() A label services deal normally means trade-offs. This does not however mean that all artists will be turning down traditional masters deals in favour of label services deal. The more that the media is awash with stories like this, the more that artists will be considering their options. Nor have they ever had so many commercial options, from doing direct distribution with a CDbaby or Amuse, a label services deal with an AWAL or BMG or simply going direct to fans with platforms like Bandcamp.īig Machine just highlighted the downside of traditional label dealsīy allowing the dispute with Swift to become so public, Big Machine has just inadvertently done a promo campaign for label services deals. Artists have never been so empowered and so educated. The fact that Swift signed a label services type deal with UMG shows just how much more choice artists have with the type of deals they sign, whether that be label services, joint ventures, distribution deals or combinations of all three. At one level the world has not changed much, but on another it has done so, and dramatically so. Fast forward to now and we have another massive pop act angered at not having control of their own creation. Swift may not like the feeling of being someone else’s asset but that is the very nature of what happens when an artist signs a traditional label deal.Īrtists now have unprecedented commercial choiceīack in the early 2000s the Beatles wentto court to try to regain ownership of their master recordings because of a dispute with their label. Without one of those, the company’s value would have been much lower. From Big Machine’s perspective, it simply couldn’t sell the company without having either Taylor Swift or her recordings on its balance sheet. In her post she calls this a ‘worst case scenario’. ![]() But, however good her UMG deal might be, she is now in a position whereby her recordings are being sold to someone she’d much rather not have ownership of them. At the time she said it was ‘incredibly exciting’ to own her masters. Late last year Swift left Big Machine to sign a long-term deal with Universal Music that was most likely a label services deal. Whether she likes it or loathes it, Taylor Swift’s catalogue is Big Machine’s asset The feud clearly has some distance to run but the issues of ‘who got what text message when’ are not the big deal here, the real deal is the big deal. First Braun enthused about acquiring a ‘brilliant’ company and the global ‘opportunities’.Then Swift responded with an open letter saying that Braun had ‘ stripped her of her life’s work,before Big Machine’s Scott Borchetta responded saying he had given her the ‘opportunity to own her masters’. The sales of Taylor Swift’s former label Big Machine Records to Scooter Braun has resulted in an ugly spat that has been played out very publicly. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |