<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/26/a-swiftian-solution-to-some-of-copyrights-problems/>
"Copyright is generally understood to be for the benefit of two groups of
people: creators and their audience. Given that modern copyright often acts
against the interests of the general public – forbidding even the most
innocuous sharing of copyright material online – copyright intermediaries such
as publishers, recording companies and film studios typically place great
emphasis on how copyright helps artists. As
Walled Culture the book spells
out in detail (digital versions available free) the facts show otherwise. It is
extremely hard for creators in any field to make a decent living from their
profession. Mostly, artists are obliged to supplement their income in other
ways. In fact, copyright doesn’t even work well for the top artists,
particularly in the music world. That’s shown by the experience of one of the
biggest stars in the world of music, Taylor Swift, reported here by
The
Guardian:
Swift is nearing the end of her project to re-record her first six albums –
the ones originally made for Big Machine Records – as a putsch to highlight
her claim that the originals had been sold out from under her: creative and
commercial revenge served up album by album. Her public fight for ownership
carried over to her 2018 deal with Republic Records, part of Universal Music
Group (UMG), where an immovable condition was her owning her future master
recordings and licensing them to the label.
It seems incredible that an artist as successful as Swift should be forced to
re-record some of her albums in order to regain full control over them –
control she lost because of the way that copyright works, splitting copyright
between the written song and its performance (the “master recording”). A
Walled Culture post back in 2021 explained that record label contracts
typically contain a clause in which the artist grants the label an exclusive
and total license to the master.
Swift’s need to re-record her albums through a massive but ultimately rather
pointless project is unfortunate. However, some good seems to be coming of
Swift’s determination to control both aspects of her songs – the score and the
performance – as other musicians, notably female artists, follow her example:
Olivia Rodrigo made ownership of her own masters a precondition of signing
with Geffen Records (also part of UMG) in 2020, citing Swift as a direct
inspiration. In 2022, Zara Larsson bought back her recorded music catalogue
and set up her own label, Sommer House. And in November 2023, Dua Lipa
acquired her publishing from TaP Music Publishing, a division of the
management company she left in early 2022."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
