Kanye West Shares A Strong Message About Musicians Not Owning Their Master Recordings

Kanye West and his Twitter account have generated a number of headlines over the past couple days, whether he’s hinting at upcoming legal action or trying to organize a meet-up with Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole. Last night and this morning, he continued on the legal thread, speaking further about the importance of artists owning the masters of their own music.

Last night, he declared, “In the streaming world master ownership is everything… that is the bulk of the income … in COVID artist need our masters … it’s more important than ever before. […] The artist deserve to own our masters … artist are starving without tours … Ima go get our masters … for all artist … pray for me.”

A few hours later, he continued, “When you sign a music deal you sign away your rights. Without the masters you can’t do anything with your own music. Someone else controls where it’s played and when it’s played. Artists have nothing accept the fame, touring and merch.” He then shared a video of game show contestants trying to climb up slippery stairs, comparing the situation to artists trying to own their masters.

Kanye continued the conversation this morning, writing, “We’ve gotten comfortable with not having what we deserve … they allow us to have a little money from touring get some gold chains some alcohol some girls and fake numbers that feed our egos … but we don’t own our masters. We our supporting other people’s kids … we could spend our whole life in the music industry but our kids gotta go work for another company when they grow up.”

He went on to say that it’s up to him to spread this message: “I am the only person who can speak on this because I made multi billions outside of music no musicians make billions inside of music. I’m going to change this. I know a lot of musicians are not allowed to say anything but I can’t be muted or cancelled so I’m going to say everything as always.”