Kanye West calls music industry ‘modern-day slavery’, tweets pages of his recording contracts – Entertainment News , Firstpost

Popular rapper and independent presidential candidate Kanye West has gone on the offensive against music labels for making artists sign away rights to their master recordings.

West had been posting a series of more than two dozen tweets, some featuring favourite Bible verses, others pointed missives at the music industry demanding that what he claimed were overly complicated contracts be “simplified now.”

Kanye has been tweeting constantly for the past couple of days to call out the malpractice that leaves music artists with no rights.

He wrote, “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. Artists have nothing [except] the fame, touring and merch.”

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. Artists have nothing accept the fame, touring and merch

— ye (@kanyewest) September 16, 2020

He pointed out that due to the lack of tours in the pandemic situation, artists were “starving”.

The artist deserve to own our masters … artist are starving without tours … Ima go get our masters … for all artist … pray for me — ye (@kanyewest) September 16, 2020

We’ve gotten comfortable with not having what we deserve … they allow us to have a little money from touring get some gold chains some alcohol some girls and fake numbers that feed our egos … but we don’t own our masters

— ye (@kanyewest) September 16, 2020

The musician later posted several pictures of his contracts with Universal Music and called for lawyers of the world to look into them.

Kanye wrote that he was the only one who could speak on behalf of all the artists as he has “made multi-billions outside of music.”
“I know a lot of musicians are not allowed to say anything but I can’t be muted or cancelled so I’m going to say everything as always,” he tweeted.

Later, he alleged that Universal was not telling him the cost of his master recordings as they know he is capable of buying them.

The fashion mogul tweeted that he was going to take the legal route against every music company so that the norms could change. Asking fellow artists like Drake and Kendrick Lamar to support him, Kanye also posted a video of his Grammy award in a toilet.