Real Stories

What It's Like When A Label Won't Release Your Album

BuzzFeed - 5/12/2013

• “Ferreira, who signed with EMI in 2008 when she was just 15, has spoken of her difficult early relationship with the label. She struggled for years to put out an album that EMI would approve of. “I turned in five different albums and none of them made sense. It was just one thing after the other and getting shelved,” she told the Phoenix. Ferriera stuck it out, however, with a new team, and more artistic control, to finally produce a successful EP last year.”

• “[A]rtists will resort to public calls for help, like Bow Wow did in 2009, when he pleaded on Twitter to be released from his label contract:

  ‘Yep! It’s true! I want off Columbia. I’m asking to be released. NO they not dropping me I’m askn. Not happy there. Been like dis 4 5 years.’”

• “Lupe Fiasco went public with his frustrations against his label, Atlantic Records, in 2010. He delivered speeches and interviews discussing the three-year process to release his third album, Lasers, which he claims was artistically controlled by Atlantic. His fans even organized a protest outside the label’s offices in late 2010. ‘I am a hostage,’ Fiasco told the Chicago Sun-Times the following year. ‘I gave them what they wanted. If I didn’t, at the end of the day the album wasn’t coming out.’”

JoJo Is Officially Free From Her Former Label After A 7-Year Battle

BuzzFeed - 1/15/2014

Behind the music: When artists are held hostage by labels

The Guardian - 4/15/2010

• “Last week, Amanda Palmer declared on her blog: ‘I am very happy to announce that I have finally been released from my contract with Roadrunner Records.’”

“I lost my identity”: The artists who left major record deals to form their own indie labels

NewStatesman - 7/8/2020

• “But major label glory wasn’t all it was made out to be. ‘Once I signed to a major label, everything slowed down… Kiesza soon realize that with each new song, her label only expected copies of her first hit. ‘We had a big argument and I realized, maybe I’m just not a major label artist. I want to evolve quickly, I like to have one foot in and one foot outside the box at the same time. But that one foot outside the box is very scary to a major label.’”

• “Even Taylor Swift, arguably the most successful solo pop artist of the past decade, is not immune. … ‘Thankfully, I am now signed to a label that believes I should own anything I create,’ she wrote in a damning Tumblr post, after giving a warning to young female musicians: ‘This is what happens when you sign a deal at 15 to someone for whom the term ‘loyalty’ is clearly just a contractual concept. And when that man says ‘Music has value,’ he means its value is beholden to men who had no part in creating it.’”

• "‘I had to constantly annoy the label to let me go. I had my lawyer send them a message every day.’ [Kiesza] says the label would not release her because it was still profiting from ‘Hideaway,’ while she earned just 15 per cent of the profits from her masters, out of which had to pay her producers. ‘Everybody says that’s the standard deal. In my view, it’s criminal.’”

From Prince to Megan Thee Stallion: When record contracts go wrong

BBC Music Reporter - 3/3/2020

• “Rapper Megan Thee Stallion claims that her record label is preventing her from releasing new music. The star, who released the platinum-selling single ‘Hot Girl Summer’ last year, says she’s been frozen out since asking to renegotiate her contract.

  ‘I didn’t really know what was in my contract,’ she explained on Instagram Live. ‘I was young. I was, like, 20. So now they telling [me] that [I] can’t drop no music. It’s really just a greedy game,’ she added. The musician, whose real name is Megan Pete, signed her deal with 1501 Entertainment in 2018. She only became aware of problems with the contract last year when she hired a new management team.

  ‘It’s not that I literally didn’t read [the contract,’ she said, ‘it’s that I didn’t understand some of the verbiage at the time. Now that I do, I just wanted it corrected.’”

  Note: Megan Thee Stallion has since moved on to the label 300 Entertainment.

• “‘I’m not gonna put it solely down to my label situation ‘cause I had other things going on, “ wrote British rapper Nadia Rose. ‘But not being able to release my music was one of the most heart wrenching feelings I’ve ever experienced. I had severe depression, suicidal thoughts … God, family [and] therapy saved me.’”

• “US star Juicy J spent the weekend arguing with his record label, fuming in one tweet: ‘I gave Columbia Records 20+ years of my life & they treat me like back wash. I’m gonna leak my whole album, stay tuned.’ Minutes later, the star released a short, venomous track (the title of which is unprintable here) saying he was being treated like a ‘slave.’ ‘If I waited on Columbia, then I’d be out here broke,” he rapped. “I sold albums, sold out tours but I never sold my soul.’”

• “On his 35th birthday, the star announced he would no longer go by the name Prince, but rather by a ‘Love Symbol’ which was a mash-up of the gender symbols for man and woman.

  ‘Warner Bros took [my] name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music I wrote,’ he said in a press release. ‘The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.’”

25 Rappers Who Had Beef With Their Labels

XXL - 11/21/2014

• In January of 2014, Azealia Banks took to Twitter begging to be dropped from Universal. She wrote, “I REALLY should have signed with Sony,” followed by, “Can someone at Sony buy me off of Universal please?? I’m really in hell here.” She continued letting it all hang loose, continuing, “I’m tired of having to consult a group of old white guys about my black girl craft. They don’t even know what they’re listening for or to.” Later adding, “I’m literally begging to be dropped from Universal.”

August Alsina Calls Def Jam "Trash," Explains Why He Wants Off the Label

DJBooth- 2/12/2018

• “… In response to a fan on Twitter who asked him for a new album, [August] Alsina threw Def Jam under the bus, claiming they are holding him and his music hostage. ‘I would love to put my album out but Def Jam is holding it/me hostage because the system is not up & running until next year so they basically don’t exist,’ Alsina replied. ‘The label is just TRASH. I will release free music soon but that has been the hold up. Tell Them to FREE ME & the Album.’”

Our Record Industry Nightmare: Unlocking the Truth’s Journey From Viral Craze to Label Hostages

Daily Beast - 7/12/2017

• “‘It’s been very difficult. We’re speaking to our attorneys about leaving Sony, and it’s very complicated,’ says Alec [of Unlocking the Truth]. ‘The album is ready, but because our attorneys are talking about us leaving the record label, it’s going to be a whole process of getting our music back.’

  Jarad shakes his head in despair. ‘I believe that the movie [documentary Breaking a Monster] gave an accurate visual of what happened behind the scenes. It shows that when we were trying to put the album out and people were asking for it, that we couldn’t put it out for no good reason.’

  That $1.8 million contract, like most music contracts, sounds a lot more lucrative than it is.

  ‘The $1.8 million is what happens if you add up all their advances for five records, and it increases in amount with each successive album,’ says Meyer, who explains that in order to go beyond their advance, they need to sell over 250,000 copies of a single album, which these days is a bit of a pipe dream. ‘That’s what everyone says about the music industry,’ adds Meyer, ‘it’s got all this glitter on it, but it’s always less flashy than it looks.’”

It's Not Me It's You: Why So Many Artists Want to Break-Up with Major Labels

VICE - 6/04/2014

• “Sky Ferreira recently revealed that her time at EMI—where she recorded three albums, none of which were released — was characterized by “55-year-old guys telling me what people my age wanted to hear.”

Are the Major Record Companies Signing Too Many Artists?

Rolling Stone - 6/14/2019