Wendy Day has negotiated hip hop deals for over twenty years.  She’s been a champion and advocate for the fair treatment of hip hop artists during her career and has been responsible for some of the biggest deals in hip hop history. Before she stepped on the landscape, no artist in the genre had ever walked away from closing a label deal with the amount of payment, rights, and ownership that she was able to secure for her artists. One of the most monumental deals was the 30 million dollar label agreement she got for Cash Money Records. A deal that also awarded them ownership of their master recordings, which was close to unheard of in hip hop at the time.
Here are just a few of Wendy’s former clients: Cash Money Records (Juvenile, BG, Lil Wayne, Hot Boyz, Big Tymers, Baby aka Birdman), Read the rest of this entry »

In this video clip, Michele Singer, Director of Legal and Business Affairs for jazz and classical, breaks down some of the finer points of the recoupment process between artists and their labels.

Lance Grode teaches Legal Issues in the Music Business at USC Law. In this video he expresses the need for labels to adapt to remain sustainable. Good info if you’re running an indie label as well.

In this video sited at Hypebot, Lupe Fiasco reveals some of the absurdities he’s had to endure while trying to get his music released under his label, Atlantic.

Meanwhile, in this post sited at Fakeshore Drive, the Cool Kids are just recovering from a nasty court battle with their label, Chocolate Industries.

Peep the tweets from Chuck Inglish and Sir Michael Rocks

Last but certainly not least, Nas wrote a searing letter to his label Def Jam, telling them in essence, to stop fucking with his creativity and “Put [his] Shit Out!”

In a recent article on Tunecore’s blog, founder Jeff Price made the point that you could not trust Neilsen Soundscan reports on the number of independent releases and how successful they were. The major and most obvious reason for this is because a huge percentage of independent releases are not registered with Soundscan, making them impossible to track. The article was a direct response to Tommy Boy Records CEO, Tommy Silverman’s, recent statement that breaking music from do-it-yourself artists required luck and/or the kind of money a label could provide to be successful. I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Read the rest of this entry »

Today we lay, Unsigned to rest. For so long he fueled our hopes and dreams to make it in this thing we call the Music Industry. We tried and worked so hard to free ourselves from being associated with you, Unsigned. Because of you, some of us signed some real fucked up contracts and damn near lost our souls and minds to remove your name from our artist’s bios. Read the rest of this entry »

Kill The Record Labels is a film released earlier this month about the alleged assault on hip hop by the record labels. The buzz about this movie has been around for a while, but I didn’t want to do a post about it without seeing it first.

What do I think about it? I think it’s worth the money I spent on it. With this film, you get straight-forward information about what’s happening today with the mixtape game, record labels, and independent artists. Read the rest of this entry »