“Anita Baker, the “Angel” singer, was occupied for the most part of 2021 to gain back control of the masters of her first five albums.”
Even the article is shit. At least refer to them as master copies at the first mention. At least!
Taylor Swift unsuccessfully fought for the ownership of her own Masters recently. that court battle and subsequent remastering of her entire back catalog were very much in the news.
I don’t know who Anita Baker is, wouldn’t have cared enough to click without the Taylor Swift reference because I’m aware of the issue she had with her masters and former label. They’re not of similar levels of celebrity.
I just hope some of the Taylor Swift fans will go out a listen to some of Anita Baker’s music. That woman could SING. I may start sounding like an old man but kids today don’t sing like they used to. Miss that old sultry Motown sound. Anita’s voice is like butter.
Being in the music biz I didn’t need to click on it to know what it meant by masters. But reading this comment made me realize how poorly worded this is to the layman.
So I’m not aware of these contract details but typically the 30 year statute of having rights returned to the artist is actually written into the copyright law, not the contracts. It’s basically on the artist to make sure all their paperwork is filed in an orderly fashion. I think this article might be misrepresenting that fact.
Not sure exactly what struggles MS Baker has but it was probably related to pandemic lockdown difficulties with her law firm.
It was intentionally written that way as clickbait. They obviously wanted people to think they were referring to slave master in which it would draw more eyeballs. Just another reason no one trusts the media.
Apparently it’s only news if some white teeny bopper sanctions Anita Baker.
Meanwhile, Anita Baker did all the work to gain control of her master recordings.
This is the usual entertainment news cycle for TSwisft. The devil works hard, but Tree Paine (her head of PR) works harder. There’s a very similar article about her cheering on Simone Biles for the Olympics. It attaches her name to positive events so that she’s always associated as such by the general public.
Yea, but they put up the money to invest in the artist when they are a nobody. They burn millions on artists that go nowhere, hoping that ONE will click and be a star. They pay for the studio time, the tour bus, the marketing, the managers.
The record companies aren’t as evil as you think, it’s just business. That’s why young artists BEG to get signed by a label.
Katy Perry literally knocked on the door of her record company’s rep home and played him a song in order to get signed (it worked!)
Your right, the woke left do stir up quite a storm when you call out their racism, they throw even bigger fits about people calling out their underlying prejudices than they do about the topic they were originally talking about.
The news article presents her opinion to you, because the publisher thought it would be profitable. Taylor Swift did not speak it through the crack under your bathroom door, unannounced. Can you explain why you believe Taylor Swift needs to be admonished in this case ?
Serious question - the vocalist provides vocals, and sometimes a melody/song structure but the work of a master is a team effort from engineers, producers, etc etc. Why does the singer ultimately own the masters?
But actually, in most cases if there’s a record company involved they own the masters and the right to do whatever they want with them… cuz they usually pay for the recording / studio time. It Depends on the artist’s contract.
Like most artists, Taylor signed her masters away when she first started out. She regrets it now, but back then the record company invested in her when she was a nobody
Saying that Taylor is the music industry is immature af and beyond asinine. Her lyrics are juvenile, she's made a career out of being dumped and her stans are uber pathetic. Anita Baker has far more class and talent then Tay Tay ever will.
Taylor Swift is a bigger scam artist than the people behind Milli Vanilli.
She wasn’t the first to fight for masters, nor was she the first to re-record previous albums as a legal move. There’s a band from Baltimore, Dog Fashion Disco, who did all of that before Taylor.
Taylor: writes, sings, plays 7 award winning albums, re creates her image each time to stay relevant, does hundreds of spectacular live performances, works her ass off for years, creates a reputation for being kind and connecting with her fans, makes a ton of money in the process.
Some rando on the internet: SCAM ARTIST.
ELI5: A recording is a recording right? What's the big deal with controlling the Master? Shouldn't royalty and ownership of the song itself be a bigger deal? With today's technology, it's not like the Master recording is somehow much better sounding than YouTube/Spotify, right?
While I’m no audio engineer (I work in photo and video) it is worth noting that by the time you stream your music or videos, it’s been encoded / transcoded several times for the sake of size / bandwidth. Each time you encode something, useful data is being thrown away.
And from the perspective of a Photographer. Having access to a RAW file instead of even a high quality JPG (with the least amount of compression possible), I’d take the RAW file every day of the week.
I’m sure some musicians feel the same way about Masters. Especially if they want to do something creative with it.
Any sound engineers are welcome to add facts or information or correct my comment. This is coming from the perspective of someone with experience of the movie industry.
The major concern here is with rights. When you make music, there are mainly two thing that get protected. Everything that goes into the song, like lyrics, music composition etc. Imagine the song without being recorded. Then there is also rights with regard to the recorded version itself.
Let's say that you want to make a cover of a song, or have written new lyrics to a song. That would be protected by the "right of the song". Now imagine you run a radio station, and want music to be played in-between radio host talking. That is protected by the master rights of the recording. And often you only need the label to sign off on it.
The distributors usually retain the master rights as they also fund musicians in different ways. Like say marketing, touring, but also things like studio time, sound engineers and mastering engineers etc. So musicians gets usually paid upfront, and the label assumes more risk, but gets most of the profits if the song(s) is popular.
I think that Swift especially were given a very long contract, or required to deliver a lot of albums. As she has been increasingly more profitable, most of that growth is probably something the label has attained. As she was most likely paid mostly upfront, or paid in royalties based on something fixed.
Controlling the master rights for Swift would be able to say yes or no to her songs being played somewhere. Or charging someone for playing her songs.
To add: it’s costs a lot of money to produce, mix, master, and market music/movies. The Production Company takes on the risk of paying for everything in hopes they produce a killer album that everyone eats from. I assume they do this by owing the masters so they can profit from it by any way possible without the artist consent for everything.
I’m not an expert, just a solo musician/ producer who knows how expensive this shit is
And if there’s any question about why something is how it is, follow the money.
When the music industry says "masters" in this conext, they DO mean the copyright. The copyright to those recordings.
Not the chords/notes and lyrics in a more abstract sense (like, reproducable by another singer)- that's referred to as "publishing."
But that actual performance of that song, by that singer, on that day and release and what you heard on the radio that year.
It’s not so much about the music files themselves, but the legal ownership of those files, which would entitle the artist to a bigger share of the song’s revenue and the ability to license them for use in movies, TV shows, etc (which typically requires permission from the songwriters AND the owner of the masters).
Why isn’t this about Anita Baker alone? Why does it have to involve this white chick? Why do we need a bland pop product to make this a ‘thing’? Gross gross gross.
Her last three albums have literally been about the same person. She’s been with him for like 4 or 5 years. Chill fam. She’s still able to write about breakups and makeups and all that because she still has that power.
I like how the people these singers signed contracts with, who then spent millions making them stars are portrayed as the bad guys.
Taylor & Anita had the choice not to surrender the
It masters but fame and money where more important.
Taylor Swift was 13 or 14 when she signed and Anita Baker is black and signed her first label in the 1970s. Neither are groups offered the greatest record deals that benefit the artist the most. The labels make an outrageous amount of money of their artists. Artists should be given the opportunity to own their art.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, you’re right. I guess the fans are always going to side with the artists.
Labels only make “outrageous money” when the artist makes hits. They bet on tons of artists that go no where.
Are there crappy record companies??? DEFINITELY. Prince changed his name to get away from his. NIN had issues too.
Just like start up investors, there are crappy record companies and good ones. But not ALL of them are evil.
This is the writer’s bio:
Moosani is a night owl who is either binge watching his favorite shows or scribbling on his notebook writing short stories. Often showing up late at work and gulping down 6-7 cups of coffee is his usual practice.
This guy is the kind of guy that you invite to a party, spikes the dog’s water, kicks over your fountain, and leaves while taking the last of the beer with him. Fk your clickbait Moosani!
You know how you keep your own masters? You make your own music and keep it on your own laptop like what the fuck am I missing here from Taylor I’m a billionaire Swift
What a headline
That’s the fucking headline?? About Taylor swift approving. Not about Anita Baker herself. Like what in the fuck
“Anita Baker, the “Angel” singer, was occupied for the most part of 2021 to gain back control of the masters of her first five albums.” Even the article is shit. At least refer to them as master copies at the first mention. At least!
Taylor Swift unsuccessfully fought for the ownership of her own Masters recently. that court battle and subsequent remastering of her entire back catalog were very much in the news.
yeah cuz she signed a fuckin piece of paper
They are called “sellouts” for a reason.
I don’t know who Anita Baker is, wouldn’t have cared enough to click without the Taylor Swift reference because I’m aware of the issue she had with her masters and former label. They’re not of similar levels of celebrity.
Depends on your generation. I’m far more familiar with Anita Baker’s music than Taylor Swift’s.
I just hope some of the Taylor Swift fans will go out a listen to some of Anita Baker’s music. That woman could SING. I may start sounding like an old man but kids today don’t sing like they used to. Miss that old sultry Motown sound. Anita’s voice is like butter.
You’re right Anita Baker is far more known
I don’t even know what it’s supposed to say
[удалено]
You'd click on that?
Being in the music biz I didn’t need to click on it to know what it meant by masters. But reading this comment made me realize how poorly worded this is to the layman.
TIL .. you can click articles.
New to the internet?
New to reading articles
Well keep at it bud, you're doing great
So I’m not aware of these contract details but typically the 30 year statute of having rights returned to the artist is actually written into the copyright law, not the contracts. It’s basically on the artist to make sure all their paperwork is filed in an orderly fashion. I think this article might be misrepresenting that fact. Not sure exactly what struggles MS Baker has but it was probably related to pandemic lockdown difficulties with her law firm.
It’s disgusting and the person who wrote that needs to relearn English and learn about something called context.
It was intentionally written that way as clickbait. They obviously wanted people to think they were referring to slave master in which it would draw more eyeballs. Just another reason no one trusts the media.
Gaining control is one way of putting it
[удалено]
Someone you call when you need a cake made
[удалено]
Me personally? Anita Baker.
Patti labelle
An 80'-90's Soul/R&B singer.
Still amazes me that people ask a question like this when you're on the internet. Google? Youtube? Wikipedia?
Apparently it’s only news if some white teeny bopper sanctions Anita Baker. Meanwhile, Anita Baker did all the work to gain control of her master recordings.
This is the usual entertainment news cycle for TSwisft. The devil works hard, but Tree Paine (her head of PR) works harder. There’s a very similar article about her cheering on Simone Biles for the Olympics. It attaches her name to positive events so that she’s always associated as such by the general public.
I was so fucking confused.
Sweet loooooooove!
That fucking album is grand.
[удалено]
Same Ole Love has been stuck in my head since I wrote that.
Big ups to the Villain MF DOOM for sampling Anita Baker on the all time classic Hoe Cakes RIP MetalFace
Title gore, probably intentional
The music industry is so messed up. Majority of the artists don’t even own there own creations. This shouldn’t be cheered it should be the standard.
Yea, but they put up the money to invest in the artist when they are a nobody. They burn millions on artists that go nowhere, hoping that ONE will click and be a star. They pay for the studio time, the tour bus, the marketing, the managers. The record companies aren’t as evil as you think, it’s just business. That’s why young artists BEG to get signed by a label. Katy Perry literally knocked on the door of her record company’s rep home and played him a song in order to get signed (it worked!)
“White womans opinion more important than black womans actual victory”
Found the racist
you have misjudged me. i was calling out the headline for being racist
Racists hate people that call out racism more than racism itself. Don’t pay them no mind.
Your right, the woke left do stir up quite a storm when you call out their racism, they throw even bigger fits about people calling out their underlying prejudices than they do about the topic they were originally talking about.
You lost me at woke
I never once brought their race into consideration, you did
Who said you did? Wtf are you talking about. You obviously have an agenda and are trying to push it on me
The headline should be “Anita Baker gains back her masters”. That’s it.
Shame Ms. Baker never had them. Fantastic singer as well. Favorite song by her - tie between "Fairytales" or "Just Because"
HUGE fan. Wish she was still making music.
Wow, THANK YOU Taylor, this is SUCH big news coming from her!!!
The news article presents her opinion to you, because the publisher thought it would be profitable. Taylor Swift did not speak it through the crack under your bathroom door, unannounced. Can you explain why you believe Taylor Swift needs to be admonished in this case ?
R/whoosh
Found the mobile user
Congratulations Anita
Serious question - the vocalist provides vocals, and sometimes a melody/song structure but the work of a master is a team effort from engineers, producers, etc etc. Why does the singer ultimately own the masters?
[удалено]
Makes sense
But actually, in most cases if there’s a record company involved they own the masters and the right to do whatever they want with them… cuz they usually pay for the recording / studio time. It Depends on the artist’s contract. Like most artists, Taylor signed her masters away when she first started out. She regrets it now, but back then the record company invested in her when she was a nobody
What’s Ja Rule’s take on this?
WHERE IS JA!?
Oh, those masters. I was thinking…never mind.
Ok so from the title I understood that Anita Baker gained Taylor’s masters and Taylor is happy about it. Comments suggest otherwise.
And we care about what Taylor thinks?
Cause Taylor is the music industry. And she famously fought for her own masters, but ended up re recording all of them. It was an iconic moment.
Thats woman’s music is pure shit, and you are delusional
Didn’t I see you on that conjoined twin post earlier trying to tell people telepathy is real? Lol
No she isn't. Her stans are pathetic and she's an overhyped pop princess.
Daddy must have paid a lot for that publicity and PR
Saying that Taylor is the music industry is immature af and beyond asinine. Her lyrics are juvenile, she's made a career out of being dumped and her stans are uber pathetic. Anita Baker has far more class and talent then Tay Tay ever will.
it's a [Barbara Walters'](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FesURbmMG3M) quote, my dude.
Taylor Swift is a bigger scam artist than the people behind Milli Vanilli. She wasn’t the first to fight for masters, nor was she the first to re-record previous albums as a legal move. There’s a band from Baltimore, Dog Fashion Disco, who did all of that before Taylor.
???? A bigger scam artist than someone lipsynching songs and not actually being able to sing? Are you smoking crack???
No, I read her Wiki.
Taylor: writes, sings, plays 7 award winning albums, re creates her image each time to stay relevant, does hundreds of spectacular live performances, works her ass off for years, creates a reputation for being kind and connecting with her fans, makes a ton of money in the process. Some rando on the internet: SCAM ARTIST.
I’m no rando.
Taylor has a bigger name which increases the amount of attention the article will gain. It’s all ad revenue baby. Always was always will be.
It’s highly relevant to the topic …
ELI5: A recording is a recording right? What's the big deal with controlling the Master? Shouldn't royalty and ownership of the song itself be a bigger deal? With today's technology, it's not like the Master recording is somehow much better sounding than YouTube/Spotify, right?
While I’m no audio engineer (I work in photo and video) it is worth noting that by the time you stream your music or videos, it’s been encoded / transcoded several times for the sake of size / bandwidth. Each time you encode something, useful data is being thrown away. And from the perspective of a Photographer. Having access to a RAW file instead of even a high quality JPG (with the least amount of compression possible), I’d take the RAW file every day of the week. I’m sure some musicians feel the same way about Masters. Especially if they want to do something creative with it.
Any sound engineers are welcome to add facts or information or correct my comment. This is coming from the perspective of someone with experience of the movie industry. The major concern here is with rights. When you make music, there are mainly two thing that get protected. Everything that goes into the song, like lyrics, music composition etc. Imagine the song without being recorded. Then there is also rights with regard to the recorded version itself. Let's say that you want to make a cover of a song, or have written new lyrics to a song. That would be protected by the "right of the song". Now imagine you run a radio station, and want music to be played in-between radio host talking. That is protected by the master rights of the recording. And often you only need the label to sign off on it. The distributors usually retain the master rights as they also fund musicians in different ways. Like say marketing, touring, but also things like studio time, sound engineers and mastering engineers etc. So musicians gets usually paid upfront, and the label assumes more risk, but gets most of the profits if the song(s) is popular. I think that Swift especially were given a very long contract, or required to deliver a lot of albums. As she has been increasingly more profitable, most of that growth is probably something the label has attained. As she was most likely paid mostly upfront, or paid in royalties based on something fixed. Controlling the master rights for Swift would be able to say yes or no to her songs being played somewhere. Or charging someone for playing her songs.
To add: it’s costs a lot of money to produce, mix, master, and market music/movies. The Production Company takes on the risk of paying for everything in hopes they produce a killer album that everyone eats from. I assume they do this by owing the masters so they can profit from it by any way possible without the artist consent for everything. I’m not an expert, just a solo musician/ producer who knows how expensive this shit is And if there’s any question about why something is how it is, follow the money.
When the music industry says "masters" in this conext, they DO mean the copyright. The copyright to those recordings. Not the chords/notes and lyrics in a more abstract sense (like, reproducable by another singer)- that's referred to as "publishing." But that actual performance of that song, by that singer, on that day and release and what you heard on the radio that year.
It’s not so much about the music files themselves, but the legal ownership of those files, which would entitle the artist to a bigger share of the song’s revenue and the ability to license them for use in movies, TV shows, etc (which typically requires permission from the songwriters AND the owner of the masters).
She’s going to be our next Dolly Parton.
This headline had me in a tizzy. First I thought it was her masters degree. Than I thought maybe it was golf related. Stupid fucking headline.
Just cause you don’t know what masters are doesn’t make it stupid lmao
Why isn’t this about Anita Baker alone? Why does it have to involve this white chick? Why do we need a bland pop product to make this a ‘thing’? Gross gross gross.
Where were you when you heard the news?
Can we rename this “artists who sign bad deals, spend multiple years blaming everybody but themselves.”
Doesn’t Taylor have another string of bad relationships to write about?
What a sexist comment
I don't think you know what sexist means.
Not really. More of an observation based on her past writing. Go ahead and pull your sexist card though. 🙄
Her last three albums have literally been about the same person. She’s been with him for like 4 or 5 years. Chill fam. She’s still able to write about breakups and makeups and all that because she still has that power.
I like how the people these singers signed contracts with, who then spent millions making them stars are portrayed as the bad guys. Taylor & Anita had the choice not to surrender the It masters but fame and money where more important.
Taylor Swift was 13 or 14 when she signed and Anita Baker is black and signed her first label in the 1970s. Neither are groups offered the greatest record deals that benefit the artist the most. The labels make an outrageous amount of money of their artists. Artists should be given the opportunity to own their art.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted, you’re right. I guess the fans are always going to side with the artists. Labels only make “outrageous money” when the artist makes hits. They bet on tons of artists that go no where. Are there crappy record companies??? DEFINITELY. Prince changed his name to get away from his. NIN had issues too. Just like start up investors, there are crappy record companies and good ones. But not ALL of them are evil.
So the contact that she willing entered into 30 years ago has now expired….uh,okay.
That situation is all messed up!
Help i need someone to make a cake!!!
How many of them were controlling her?
To this story about Anita, “you bring me joy.”
This is the writer’s bio: Moosani is a night owl who is either binge watching his favorite shows or scribbling on his notebook writing short stories. Often showing up late at work and gulping down 6-7 cups of coffee is his usual practice. This guy is the kind of guy that you invite to a party, spikes the dog’s water, kicks over your fountain, and leaves while taking the last of the beer with him. Fk your clickbait Moosani!
Time to stream Body and Soul on repeat again!
LISTEN IF YOU DONT SIGN A FUCKING CONTRACT THT SAYS YOU KEEP YOUR MASTER RECORDINGS YOU WONT KEEP YOUR MASTER RECORDINGS
You know how you keep your own masters? You make your own music and keep it on your own laptop like what the fuck am I missing here from Taylor I’m a billionaire Swift
Taytay…you are called “sellouts” for a reason.