How Mega-corporations Bought the Music Industry

Stevie Nicks. One hundred million dollars.
Imagine Dragons. One hundred million dollars.
Lil Wayne. One hundred million dollars.
Neil Young. One hundred FIFTY million dollars.
Bob Dylan. FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.
No, I’m not talking about their monthly OnlyFans income. I’m talking about what they got paid to sell their music catalogs to corporate interests.
And those numbers may be an all time high, but the list doesn’t end there. RZA, Bruno Mars, Nelly, Taylor Swift, Scooter Braun, 50 Cent, Drake, Nicki Minaj, Calvin Harris and Shakira, all of these artists have either sold their entire music catalogs or seen some of their music get sold to corporate firms for often eye watering amounts of money up front.
The concept is simple. A corporation approaches a successful musician in the latter years of their career and offers 10 to 20 years worth of their music royalties up front in exchange for ownership of their recordings. But who’s buying, why are musicians selling, and what does this mean for the music industry? Let's get into it.

#volksgeist #spotify #music #hiphop #alternative #bobdylan #lilwayne #pushat #taylorswift

[saintblades]

Mariah did say, the one thing she held onto was her master's. All her written and produced works. She said she'd never sell. She also predicted all this back in the early 2000's. No one listened. They destroyed Michael for his.

[tallskeleton]

Disney will likely buy Spotify to box out Apple and offer a Disney +, Hulu, Spotify ultimate bundle with a student discount

[FashionForwardAlways]

This is actually truly worrying for the future at hand. We have already seen a plethora of albums that were released after the artist has passed that felt incomplete and not in-line with the artists vision.
I also do agree that I would have a hard time saying “No” if the check was just that substantial. Regardless, great video about a pretty saddening trend!

[RD-jrnv]

The most damning thing is this video is the fact imagine dragons music is actually worth £100, 000, 000. We’re all doomed.

[k-baye]

If corporations can pay you $ 100, 000, 000, 000 for your catalogue then just imagine what they'll make off you.

[sampson]

Disney’s gonna own everything in the future

[sakshamtyagi]

Kanye was also having a feud with his label regarding the ownership of his masters.

The Weeknd is one of the artists who owns rights to his masters and has talked openly about ever not selling them.

[MoeDavinci]

Once I found that Jay-Z catalog only amasses less than 10% of his wealth, I realized how much money music is actually worth. Once you've reached peak notoriety you can use that leverage the rest of your life fr. I am interested to see how this Taylor Swift thing plays out though.

[aidanmcpavian]

"Could I run away from 50 Mill like Dave Chappelle?"
That lyric is about to become a whole lot more relevant.

[thevinyltruffle]

Being a musician doesn’t always pay well. Some artists are never able to stop touring. Many of them, I imagine, are happy to finally get a real payday and are able to stop focusing on the record/tour/repeat cycle. Good for them.

[lpace]

0:02 imagine dragon these nuts across your forehead

[elisianez]

Little known fact: In the early 90's Steve Jobs company Pixar was broke but he didn't want to let his employees go so he kept borrowing money to keep it afloat, Disney offered to pay for Jobs' idea of a full length computer generated feature film, after much push and shove they agreed on the production of the mega blockbuster Toy Story, Steve later sold Pixar to Disney for a pretty penny

[adrisosa]

Thankfully, Taylor has the contractual rights to control her publishing, so she can veto any use in TV, films, commercials, video games, etc. Also, her first rerecorded album did really well on sales and consumption, at least for now her fans and listeners are streaming the re-recordings more than the original release, so the company that owns her masters might loose money instead of making profit as she continues to re-release her catalogue.

[orlock]

Another point is the lack of new music with staying power. There might be one or two memorable modern pop songs per year at most. TV and movies are using older songs and sometimes even the same song in multiple projects. I'm guessing the cream catalogs number less than two dozen as I don't hear that much variety in TV and movies.

[austins.]

I've had to retrain my brain to recognize the beauty and value of every Fleetwood Mac song that has been featured on car commercials over the years.

[JayySonataWTF]

all i got from this is that major artists need to downgrade their lifestyles. like how do they burn through millions and millions so easily?

[Dimee]

Very important video. People who want to learn about the problems of ownership in the music industry should learn about the role that the capitalist ownership structure plays

[impossiblesoul]

do/can independent artists sell their catalogues too? i mean if they’re independent they own their music and if they’re really successful i doubt they’ll sell their albums right?

[DumbIdeaPresentedStupidly]

Interesting, but record companies were always finding ways to screw over artists. This just seems to be the new way

[marcel]

I think warner bros killed prince to finally win the war over his music that have fought for many years. Soon as he died all his "vault" got released