Kanye West Proposes New Music Industry Guidelines.
Music by: Rujay – Toxic.
It’s Oscar with CULTED.
Yesterday, Kanye West took to Twitter to propose a new series of “recording and publishing deal guidelines” aimed at helping artists in future negotiations. So what does Kanye want? And are his points realistic?
Well, first up he proposes that “the artist owns the copyright in the recordings and songs and leases them to the record label for a limited term”. We’ve seen a lot of issues with artists, like Taylor Swift, seemingly having their work taken from them because the label owns the master recording, so this would eliminate the problem under Kanye’s new guidelines.
Kanye’s second term is that record labels should accept an 80/20 split in the artists’ favour on all revenue.While both of these points seem great, it’s unlikely that we’ll see these changes take place without a huge industry reform.
He also went on to say that he wants artists to be “dependent on no one but themselves” and also critiqued the current role that lawyers are playing in the industry tweeting “a Lawyers role is to IMPROVE deals…. not charge for contracts we cannot understand or track”
Kanye then went on to state: “NO MORE blanket licenses. It should be clear from day one… what shares you get NOW and when you leave.”
Blanket licenses are basically used by bars, restaurants, and apps like TikTok so that they can legally play tracks without having to get individual licenses for each song. He also went on to critique how royalties are tracked, and royal portals themselves.
So to sum all this up, Kanye has made great points and he does seem determined to make change in the industry to help improve artists’ lives. However it is unlikely that Kanye could enforce these changes on his own.
But even if he doesn’t manage to make these changes, he is educating people on the struggles artists face in their day to day lives.
What do you think of Kanye’s guidelines? Let us know below.
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