A few days ago, Taylor Swift went to Instagram to vent about losing her entire back catalog to a douchebag with money who had previously bullied her. Because this was Taylor Swift, the news swept like a lip gloss tidal wave across social media before penetrating mainstream media.
This is our response:
Dearest Taylor,
I'm very sorry for your loss.
I'm also sorry to hear that you crossed paths with anyone named Scooter.
Those kind douchebags are the reason why a lot of great music people are no longer in the music industry.
This "douche-bro" contingent arrived on the scene about the same time the Japanese started gobbling up American entertainment companies and staffing the A&R departments with the children of the American lawyers who'd helped make such deals possible.
Next thing you know, the corporate bean counters are flying in from Tokyo and meddling in artistic decisions.
The irony was not lost on me that the very country upon which we had dropped THE BOMB in WWII was now buying American entertainment companies and, in doing so, becoming owners of the masters to just about every premiere American rock band of the modern era: Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, Springsteen, hell, even Loverboy.
 |
| "Lovin' every minute of having our crap owned by a publicly-traded multi-national conglomerate!"
Thing is, I'll bet none of those rock & roll dreamers saw that coming when they signed the record deal they'd dreamed about their whole lives.
You can picture the scene: The band, members of their management, the label's A&R staff, radio people, and marketing folks gather in some Manhattan conference room high above the clouds to sign At some point in the proceedings, the head of the label pops in with vodka already on his breath at 10AM to say a few words: "Welcome aboard! While we've been blowing some serious Grade A smoke up your ass to get you to sign with us, now that you have, allow me to state for the record that we care about your masters only as much as they help us leverage a better deal when we eventually sell out to some foreign entity that cares even less about your art than we do. Hell, you're shit could one day be owned by the same publicly-traded Japanese conglomerate that will force the CD format upon us, forcing everyone to re-buy their vinyl collections and setting in motion a wave of consumer resentment that, when combined with the global power of the internet digital typhoon known as Napster, creating the perfect storm that leads to the destruction of the entire music industry. Isn't that exciting?" While I know it can be painful to come face-to-face with the icky underbelly of the music business, your post on Instagram left me with one huge question: WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST OUTBID SCOOTER AND BUY BACK YOUR MASTERS? I'm not privy to your financials, but I'm guessing you've got easy access to the money that would have been needed to buy back your catalog, even if it meant buying Big Machine Records outright. I mean, even if you're cash strapped, the value of your catalog would make borrowing the money a breeze. Hell, you could have gone to the public with your desire to own your masters and started a GoFundMe page. You'd have had the necessary cash in half a day. Heck, even I would have chucked in a tenner. |
Instead, you went public after you lost your masters. You, more than anyone, must recognize the power you wield.
There's another powerful artist who also lost the rights to his art. His name is Paul McCartney and he DEFINITELY had the cash, or access to it, yet took his eye off the ball and lost out on buying the rights to his very, very, very, very lucrative publishing catalog.
In fact, it was Paul's close friend Michael Jackson who bought Paul's publishing after McCartney had told Michael about it in the first place.
Then, of course, Jackson proceeded to go broke, thereby losing the catalog to, you guessed it, Sony Music.
That's right, the very same publicly-traded conglomerate mentioned above that owns the masters to some of the most important albums of the last 50 years without having ever been involved in their creation.
Sure, it'd be nice if those we entrusted with our life's work weren't complete whores to the almighty dollar, but when that entity goes by the name Big Machine Records, you sure as heck-fire can't say they didn't try to warn ya.
Tags:
taylor swift