This effort by Sharpton and Cochran to point out that black artists get the short end of the stick from record companies at a much higher rate than white artists does have merit.

Look at the artists who own their masters. According to what I found on a Google search, the following artists own their masters:

David Bowie
The Rolling Stones
Ray Charles
Paul McCartney (solo)
Queen
Curtis Mayfield
Metallica
REM
Motley Crue

Of course that's not a complete list, but it's a good representative list. It shows that the percentage of white artists who own their masters is higher than black artists who own theirs.

Furthermore, why is it that Warner Bros. was willing to give Motley Crue and REM their masters, but they refused to do that with Prince?

I think with Prince it boiled down to a pissing match. WB didn't want to be upstaged by Prince. I wish there were some way he could get the masters back...

Why does anyone on the org care if Prince owns his masters?

He chose to take the money upfront ($100 million dollar deal anyone) and he has to honor his contract. He can't have it both ways. Prince wanted the money and headlines and then changed his mind when his music stopped selling.

If anyone on the org here signed a contract we would have to live with the terms would we not? You don't go into the car dealership at the end of lease and say I know that I leased this car, but I don't want to give it back because I am the one who spent all the time and effort upkeeping the car. If you want to keep the car you have to purchase the car from the dealer just the same as Prince will have to purchase his masters from Warners.

I know people are going to laugh at that analogy but here is another one. Take my dad for example he is an engineer for a large company in the area. He has designed several things that have been awarded patents, but he doesn't receive any extra money for this because he signed a contract that says that the company owns all rights to his inventions. You don't see him crying that they are stealing his creations.

Prince is dead wrong in the instance and he has brainwashed all of you into believing that he was wronged.

Prince could have very easily asked for his masters when he signed his last contract, but he chose not to because he wanted the money and the headlines PRINCE INKS 100 MILLION DOLLAR DEAL!

Batdance said:

The difference is they asked to own their masters BEFORE they signed the contract as to where Prince asked AFTER he had inked the deal and collected the money.

Prince can't have it both ways.

In 1992 Prince had great leverage and probably could have regained his masters if he would have only asked.

Prince can't have it both ways.
[This message was edited Wed Jul 10 18:44:10 PDT 2002 by lovemachine]

Curtis Mayfield doesn't own anything any longer, he's beyond that nonsense and gettin' ever so funky on a cloud where all music is free.

lovemachine said:

I find it amazing that Prince signed a shonk of a deal after being in the industry so long, but hey - he's spoken up about the importance of owning your masters and corrupt industry practices, artist rights & integrity. Would he have done that if he didn't sign the dodgy contract?

lovemachine said:

Yes...I concur with this. I've said this many many times before. He signed on the dotted line...No one to blame but himself. As MJ said, he has to look at the "MAN IN THE MIRROR"concerning this particular trial and tribulation...LOL

It's an ongoing saga with recording artists in America.
Some are just not aware enough until they are dumped by
the majors, so they take to public name calling and
grandstanding tactics like MJ and Prince have done.

Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Charles Mingus and George Clinton are all
black artists who have set up thier own labels to address the ownership issue.
Some met with widely varying degrees of success. It's not an easy thing to do.

Even Frank Sinatra realized this and set up Reprise Records. That's why the
joke about calling him "The Chairman". BTW this subsidiary of WARNERS was
home to Jimi Hendrix'' domestic studio recordings.




EDIT SHEESH I forgot Brother Ray!!
[This message was edited Thu Jul 11 11:25:34 PDT 2002 by PFunkjazz]

I tend to think Prince screwed himself too, considering he had the clout and seasoned veteran status to acquire his own tapes at the time of his last contract with WB. But at the same time, I know what the content is sometimes like on a recording contract, and I've never seen a recording contract that was completely fair to the artist (the degree of fairness is generally a bit better on subsequent contracts after the recording artist has some success and has been in the business for a while).

Sometimes parts of a recording contract are rhetorically vague, and not especially self explanatory. That's where a music business lawyer comes in; if Prince didn't have at least one lawyer look over the contract before he signed it and explained anything he wasn't clear about (even if lawyers don't know they're supposed to specifically find out for their client - it's part of their job), he should have.

But since I don't know what the signee was led to believe (how it's worded), and since I know that in general recording contracts are unfair to begin with (even those that are clearly on the up and up), it's hard for me to really come to a complete opinion about it. I doubt anyone here truly knows either unless you're privy to the content of the contract. And I don't mean by just reading it.

It seems to me that since Prince wasn't a rookie, and had already been in the game for over a decade at that time that he would have had a more successful outcome.

This is analagous to the big brouhaha thread about what the NPGMC contract stated - or didn't state according to some. Fans can judge that because they are a part of it; but for those who have never been privy to the contract that Prince signed, they seem to want to judge it up and down, left and right, forwards and backwards, all the while having no knowledge of the contents aside from the publicized money he was supposed to receive.

If Prince wants to have it both ways, so do many of his fans.
[This message was edited Thu Jul 11 13:08:13 PDT 2002 by Supernova]

PFunkjazz said:

makes no difference if the artist is black or white. has everything to do with who has the better and more persistent lawyers or bargaining teams.