Of Masters and Mortgages

I was speaking with an artist manager colleague of mine the other day. This esteemed colleague has represented the likes of Alanis Morissette, LeAnn Rimes, and Collective Soul among many others. He's a sharp guy. We were discussing how historically, recording artists frequently lost the rights to their master sound recordings (known as "masters") when they signed recording contracts with record labels. And how difficult it is to get the rights to those masters back.

My colleague shared an analogy that I thought was really profound. He said the story he shares with artists is that the 'masters situation' is kind of like taking out a mortgage with a bank, paying it off, and then at the end - the bank keeps the house title. Absurd right? Yet that's how it has been (simplistically) for artists who have 'signed away' their master recordings to labels. Some artists who have been unfortunate enough to be in this position have been bold enough to take the reins and either they have purchased their masters back from their record labels OR they've re-recorded and re-issued their original albums (if they didn't have a clause in their original contract prohibiting them from doing so). But artists who have taken either of those measures are in the minority.

Now that the balance of power is shifting to artists and they have more choices available to them, they (and their handlers) have become more astute about not giving away more rights than they need to. My crystal ball predicts that fewer artists will repeat the mistakes of the past in this context moving forward.