Well, Kanye is insane. Whatcha gonna do?
Has he conceded yet?
Yes. He’s not that crazy.
Crazy, but not Trump crazy.
Kanye got around 21k votes from 11 states.
Swift was represented by her parents, both of whom were very successful stockbrokers. She wasn’t taken advantage of, she got a very generous deal for a 16 year old girl with no track record of success at the time. “Record companies shouldn’t own and be able to sell my music, they should give it back to me because I say so” has no precedent in the music industry and is just a big star who has a track record of abusing faux-political causes to get attention trying to abuse her power to get something without paying for it.
When I said legal representation, I meant lawyers familiar with the industry, not stock brokers. I also wasn’t specifically talking about Taylor, but new musicians in general. The stories about new musicians being taken advantage of are hardly rare. Many of them stemming from these artists simply not understanding how things work in that industry. The wording may all be laid out in the contract, but if you don’t understand it (and moreso, if the record company deceives you about it’s meaning), it’s easy to get sucked in to a shitty deal where you can release a few enormous hits that make them millions of dollars while you end up with a check for a few hundred dollars.
My point being that if there was someone present, familiar with the industry and understood record contracts, they can discuss the contract with the artist and explain to them all the mechanics of it and point out parts of it that are going to haunt them in the near and far future that should be addressed.
I’m not sure what form of solution you’re actually seeing here. The fundamental issue is not lack of representation. It’s lack of negotiating strength. Mandating representation doesn’t do anything to fix that. And where is this mandatory representation supposed to come from?
What would be helpful is not mandating representation but actual minimum standards for initial contracts. The music industry has a long history of collective bargained contracts, such as the Ascap and BMI contracts.
Re-recording music is not saying, “Record companies shouldn’t own and be able to sell my music…” It’s simply a business move that seems to be legal, direct, and above board. It seems to bother you an inordinate amount, but possibly I’m misunderstanding your position.
McCartney also said “No” when Al wanted to cover Live and Let Die as Chicken Pot Pie." He didn’t want his music being associated with the concept of animal flesh as food. And Michael Jackson didn’t care for the idea of “Black or White” being used as a parody, because he thought of it as being an important piece of social commentary which would be cheapened by the irreverence of a Weird Al parody.
I have no idea who Scooter is, and only the faintest glimmering of who Taylor Swift is, but I feel compelled to ask if she used to date Scooter.
the Muppet?
Taylor Swift has every legal right to complain about her situation and re-record her music. I’m objecting to the moral content of her stance that a record company negotiating a contract for her original masters and then selling those masters without consulting her is somehow exploitative or unusual. It’s not just how the music business works, it’s how all business works; I won’t be consulted if I work on the Ford assembly line and someone re-sells a Taurus that I helped make 10 years ago. And it’s not like she’s making some Marxist argument about labor relations in general - she seems to think that she and she alone should magically get back everything the record producers invested in her, despite the fact that her very educated financial industry parents negotiated a perfectly decent contract on her behalf, because she’s Taylor Swift specifically.
At the emotional level, there is a fundamental difference between an assembly-line car and a personally-written song.
And at the “how they have always been handled when the people involved in making them are not named Taylor Swift” level, there is no difference whatsoever - and Ms. Swift seems to have no problem with that part of reality.
This isn’t about the rights to the written song, but to the recorded performance. It’s still a lot more personal than an assembly-line car, but a recording is usually the product of many people working together.
Taylor’s hardly the first artist to have beef with her label and the ownership of her music, and she’s hardly going to be the last, so the ridiculous personal attack parts of your post are just looking silly.
Same-same, since Taylor is involved in the production too.
Well, golly. Why didn’t she just make and distribute her first records on her own?
That would very likely accomplish the same thing I was thinking of. My point about have a representation wasn’t about just having someone to explain all the big words, but basically to have someone on your side to make sure you don’t get screwed. A guaranteed “If you sell X records, you’ll earn [at least] Y dollars and Z benefits” would work as well.
That alone would give up and comers at least a few bucks to put them in a better bargaining position for whatever they go on to do next.