Music Biz Nerds might want to check out Kanye West twitter feed today

He tweeted out page by page his contracts with Island Def Jam as part of his public war to earn back his masters. Kind of the new Prince in many ways I guess. He's very mercurial to say the least so who knows how long they will stay up....

 

My optimism that we can have any kind of constructive discussion of this topic here is less than zero, apart from the fact that it will inevitably stray into politics and issues of mental illness.

There are plenty of great reasons to talk about Kanye West’s music in a music forum. This, not so much.

 

The moderators will rule of course. I just thought it was something a lot of people here might care about and might not know about. Just the actual contract language.

 

The lawyers I follow on Twitter are collectively curled on the floor in a fetal position.

 

He’s a busy guy

 

Ironic that Kanye took time out of Taylor Swift's day to very visibly dunk on her in public and yet they both have struggled with control over their own master recordings.

 

There is never a good reason to check out what Kanye West has to say.

 

If you can’t say something nice about someone...

 

He also tweeted a video of (presumably) him pissing on a grammy award.

 

The urination aside, I would think at least some of his musings would resonate here? Maybe he's just the wrong genre to garner more attention on the forum.

“When you sign a music deal you sign away your rights. Without the masters you can’t do anything with your own music. Someone else controls where it’s played and when it’s played. ”

 

I’m sure that’s just part of the holy water blessing ritual for his church. The Grammy confers cleansing power on HRH Kanye’s bio emissions.

 

As usual with Kanye, there’s a very good point and a valid idea buried under a lot of... nonsense (to put it lightly). He absolutely should be able to buy his masters if he wants to and can afford it. I was talking with some friends about Prince and his label struggles tonight and this came up in that conversation as well.

 

He's in a tough spot, the boilerplate deal he signed was probably a bad deal. i don't know if he tried or did renegotiate or if this is that moment? Yet, on many levels he still generates sales and interest, this may or may not play into that. If he were a nobody he could get his masters back easily, but... he isn't. catch 22. I still think it has great value letting the contracts see the light of day. There are only three majors left and they are not playing the game well longterm, drunk on streaming money, thus not keeping their eye on cultivating and protecting the existing and new creatives. More power, to you Kanye, others need to join you, like Jericho.

 

that should attract the Kardashians....

 

Even nobody's can't get their masters back unless they have the money to pay off all their un-recouped advances, no matter how corrupt and padded that might be, and a lot of leverage.

 

For those not wanting to wade thru dozens of tweets, someone else compiled the actual contract docs here for the curious: kanye contracts.pdf

 

Apparently, he has ten contracts with Universal, not sure if they are concurrent or consecutive. I would think the problem was also his legal representation did not advocate/bargain strong enough, as I would think at some point in the last 10-15 years he should have been in a very strong place to get his masters. apparently, Universal will not name a price, because he fears they are afraid he can pay it. He may want to own and then lease back any new masters from this point on.

 

Acting like a egotistical buffoon.

Remember kids, when you sign a recording contract always put in a reversion clause. It will save you lots of headaches later on.

 

He is unwell and I genuinely dislike him as a person from what I've seen. Whatever injustice he intends to fight presently and in the future will be overshadowed by:
1. The fact that he is unwell
2. The fact that I'm not alone in disliking him as a person