Text | Wu Boya
Recently, the global music circle "top stream" Kanye (Kanye) released a new album "Donda", traffic password master Kardashian posted a dynamic in IG Story that he was listening to the pictures of "Donda", but was found by netizens that the volume was zero. Such psychedelic operations were shouted "drama" by the whole network.
In addition to the "confused" behavior of his ex-wife Kardashian, looking back at the release of Kanye's new album, it can be described as a wave of uneven, a wave of rises.
Before the release of the album, there were three auditions, from the red down jacket to the soaring to the rebirth, each audition of Kanye made a breakthrough in stage styling. As a businessman, Kanye has also launched the corresponding peripheral products for each audition, such as the third audition in addition to clothes and other peripherals, Kanye also sold on the official website that users can control their own vocals, drums, bass, sampling and adding effects and other custom options, to experience the fun of secondary creation of the Donda STEM PLAYER player.
And Kardashian's appearance in the wedding dress with the wedding music finale detonated the atmosphere of the whole venue, triggering speculation among netizens about whether the two wanted to get back together, after all, Kanye emptied all his INS and only kept a photo of Kardashian wearing a wedding dress.
At the culmination of three auditions and public curiosity about their private lives, on August 29, the 27-track album, nearly two hours long, was released with JAY-Z, Pusha T, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, Kid Cudi, Lil Baby, Baby Keem, Vory, Don Toliver, Lil Durk and the late pop Smoke.
But not long after the album was released, it caused a lot of talk.
First, Ariana Grande posted that she did not contribute to "Donda", and the female voice in the song "Donda" and "Believe What I Say" was a singer named STALONE. Then Azelia Banks gave a bad review of "Donda" and directly shouted Kanye, "Music is just a circle of money investment in your hands, brother". Chris Brown and Soulja Boy also tweeted on INS because of the removal of the verses.
While fans were waiting for Kanye's response, Kanye, the main owner, posted on INS that Universal Music released his new album "Donda" without his consent and removed the song "Jail Pt 2".
As soon as the news came out, it quickly caused extensive discussion among netizens, and everyone noticed that this was not the first time that Kanye had torn it up with the record company.
Kanye's copyright dispute with the record company
As early as 2019, Kanye had launched a lawsuit against EMI Records, in addition to accusing EMI Records of being unable to retire under contract, Kanye also hoped to take back the ownership of his works from EMI Records, and finally the two sides settled by privately re-reaching an agreement.
On September 16, 2020, Kanye declared war on Universal Music, releasing more than 100 pages of scanned copies of the contract signed by Universal Music and himself through his Twitter account, including the initial version in 2005 and a series of subsequent modifications and supplementary contracts, detailing the album recording budget, advance payment amount, profit share ratio and other content.
Kanye claimed that record companies used unequal treaties to force musicians to be "slaves of the modern day", and hoped to defend their rights by disclosing industry insiders and using public opinion to pressure record companies, and even made a move to throw Grammy trophies into the toilet.
On September 20, Kanye released a self-made "Latest Recording and Distribution Transaction Guide", mentioning the record companies, royalties, lawyers, royalty portals and so on involved in the industry. And Kanye has publicly declared on social media that he will not publish any new works until he has negotiated contracts with Universal Music and Sony Music.
Fast forward to October, however, he mentioned on the podcast "Joe Rogan Experience" that he was preparing a new album "Donda", and even threatened to buy Universal Music directly.
For Kanye's series of actions and speeches, some people think he is arrogant, and others think that he hits a stone with a pebble. As far as the environment of the entire music industry is concerned, in 2020, due to the impact of the global epidemic, live performances have been impacted, and the importance of copyright to musicians has increased, but Kanye's attempt to innovate the music industry has not provoked a widespread response that has stirred up thousands of waves.
As can be seen from Kanye's public contract, Kanye's "Yeezus" released in 2013 received $12 million in revenue, of which $8 million was Kanye's advance payment, and the other 4 million was the recording budget. At the same time, after the record company recouped its costs, he was also able to receive 14% to 25% royalties.
According to professional analysis, the conditions offered by record companies to Kanye are rare in the music industry, and such a musician who is obviously favored by the industry and has already received dividends expresses dissatisfaction is not so convincing to the public.
Secondly Kanye himself is G. Although the manager of the O. O. D. music label returned all 50% of the copyright he held to his musicians after the public contract, Kanye, who took into account both the identity of the artist and the manager, still faced contradictions on the copyright issue.
After the Kanye incident, the American magazine "Variety" published an article saying that Kanye's contract with Universal Music is very common in the music industry, and such contracts usually do not allow artists to terminate their contracts with the company at will.
It is not easy to change the long-standing copyright royalty rules on its own, and the current group of musicians has not yet formed a closely connected whole to compete with record companies and win greater copyright distribution benefits, and record companies have very different contract terms for musicians with different market share and influence.
In this case, the dispute between the top artist and the record company will always become the focus of public discussion.
Top musicians on record labels
The road to resistance
Top musicians who have clashed with record labels aren't just Kanye. Prince had written "slave" on his cheek, turned his name into an inauspicable symbol, and questioned Rolling Stone magazine: "If I can't do what I want to do, then what am I?" Michael Jackson also held a press conference to publicly denounce Sony Records as racist and discriminatory.
In the same year that Kanye sued EMI Records, Scotter Braun, a veteran of the music industry who brought Kanye and Justin Bieber, bought Big Machine Records for $300 million through its holding company, Ithaca Holdings, while owning recordings of six albums released by Taylor Swift from its debut in 2006 to 2017.
In response, Taylor posted a long message saying that he was betrayed because he had not been told in advance that the company was about to be acquired. At the same time, Taylor accused the former company of threatening to renew his contract by using the recording rights of 6 albums, and even offered to keep himself on the condition of trading a new album for an old album.
Despite the time, effort, and money cost of re-recording an album, and the possibility of splitting his old and new albums from each other, Taylor decided to take back control of his work through this method, and publicly stated that "refusing to sell master tapes should be a fundamental right of musicians."
According to the rule that recordings cannot be re-recorded within five years of release, except for "Reputation" released in 2017, which did not meet the deadline, taylor's other albums in 2020 can be re-recorded. This is a lost opportunity for Big Machine Records and Scotter Braun, who have just successfully traded and held the recording rights to Taylor's six albums, to make money lying down.
So soon after, Taylor posted a long article pointing out that Big Machine Records had banned him from performing songs from the first six albums, and talked to her about the conditions that if Taylor wanted to perform his previous songs in public, he could not re-record his previous albums. In response, Big Machine Records responded that there was no ban on Taylor's performance, nor the right to ban it, and questioned whether Taylor's speech was hype.
On November 16, several foreign media reported that Scooter Braun had sold the rights to Taylor's recordings to a private investment company called Shamrock Holdings. For the copyright to be resold again, Taylor sent an open letter explaining that this time it was not until the acquirer of the copyright, Shamrock Holdings, emailed her team that she did not know that her copyright had been resold.
And although Shamrock Holdings expressed its willingness to work with her, she declined to work on it when she learned that Scooter Braun would still be able to share in the copyright proceeds of her album for many years to come under the resale agreement. On April 9, 2021, a re-recorded version of Fearless (Taylor's Version) was released.
After such a copyright dispute with the previous company, Taylor made it clear that he held the rights to all the master tapes when he transferred to Universal in 2018, which was also published on her Tumblr. Perhaps it is precisely because of the knowledge that Taylor has such an experience, so in 2020, Kanye tried to abandon his previous personal feud with Taylor and pull Taylor and many other musicians to fight against the record company.
However, from the record contracts between Kanye and Universal announced, it can be seen that the mastership of Kanye's early records is undoubtedly Universal's asset. However, some professionals have analyzed that a profit sharing agreement signed by Kanye in 2012 shows that if the recording costs of "Yeezus" and "The Life of Pablo" can be earned back, they can get back the mastering rights of their sixth and seventh albums in 2033 and 2036, 20 years after the release of the work.
This year, there have also been a number of copyright disputes in China. One of the most hotly debated is the copyright dispute between Wu Qingfeng and his former agent Lin Weizhe. Although on April 1, Wu Qingfeng's Universal Music issued a statement saying that Wu Qingfeng won the second-instance trial of the copyright case, and Wu Qingfeng was the owner of the intellectual property for his songwriting. But Wu Qingfeng and his band still can't use the name "Soda Green" at present, and can only return with the identity of "Fish Ding".
On June 15, lyricist Wu Xiangfei posted a complaint that more than a dozen of his musical works had been maliciously usurped by Taiwan Universal for 13 years, and after taking measures to protect his rights, the other party was willing to pay for copyright, but the amount was pitifully small. For example, the main song "The Road Has Always Been" written for Eason Chan, the annual songwriting fee is only 271 yuan, an average of 22.58 yuan per month.
It can be seen that if artists and record companies want to balance and seek a win-win situation, it must be a long-term struggle.
As far as Kanye's incident is concerned, Universal Music has not responded at present, but Kanye's new album has reached the top of Apple Music in 152 countries and regions around the world in only 24 hours after its release, creating a record for Apple Music's all-time highest, of which the Top 20 has won 19 songs, and created the third highest number of streaming albums in Apple Music history. In addition, the album was streamed as many as 95085647 times on Spotify's first day, making it the second highest first-day streaming album in Spotify history.
Such popularity also inevitably makes netizens suspect that Kanye's series of moves may be marketing for the new album.
"Donda", which has been released for less than two days, remains hot, but the outside world's evaluation of the album is uneven. For example, Pitchfork scored 6.0 for Kanye West's new album "Donda", the British Independent newspaper gave "Donda" a score of 0, and Douban scored 7.6.
Copyright issues and marketing issues aside, the 27-song album volume is indeed rare enough in the current singles era. But I also have to say that the influence of Kanye's new album and his own proficiency in topic marketing are also rare in the music industry.