Kanye On Rogan: Kanye West intends to upend the traditional Artist-Label power structure.
This week Kanye West, who happens to be running for Vice President, shocked everyone with his remarks during a recent Joe Rogan podcast. You may have been recently taken aback by West’s recent posts of his contracts as he rallies against the biggest players of the music industry.
Although, not the only one parroting these type of complaints, and love him or hate him, he makes decent points about how the biggest players in the music industry have continued to keep their stranglehold on the music industry and the artists in particular. Often seen as a throwback to the music industries gatekeeper origins where powerful businessmen control access to the music industry market and hold the power to make or break upcoming artists.
West, who shocked many recently tweeting out photos of his record contracts, bolstered his demands to be able to purchase back his masters by shining an unflattering light on the global music industry and the unfair balance of power between the labels and the artists.
These questions were a main point of conversation during the Joe Rogan podcast on October 24th as he went in on the big three power structure which begs the question, what if artists maintained ownership of their masters.
This led to West’s admission that he is thinking bigger, beyond acquiring his masters, to point of saying he would buy Universal. West said to Rogan, “I was thinking about buying my masters (but) I realized that was too small of a thought”. West continued talking about how universal is “only a $33 billion organization. I’m one of the greatest product producers that ever existed. And I’m a child; I’m 43 years old. I was $53 million in debt four years ago. Now it’s proven that I’m the new Michael Jordan of products”.
Although his claims of being the “new Michael Jordan of products” is debatable, industry experts have verified that by and large his valuation of UMG of being approximately $33 billion is fairly accurate. Could we live in a world where Kanye West owns Universal Music Group? Being the year it is, 2020 could still hold many more surprised up its sleeve.
Although, known for his grand claims or greatness, West continued onto other topics that warrant introspection by everyone in the industry. The arrangement of how contracts, artists and labels are intertwined and how at the given moment he finds himself in 10 contracts that tie his hands and reduce his music to being more costly to him than profitable.
Many artists may look at West and bemoan the fact that his success makes him an unlikely champion of artists rights. From this conversation this appears to be not far from the truth though as West envisions an industry where agreements and organization between artists and labels are mutually beneficial. West continued by saying “I’m not trying to go and eliminate anyone’s job. “There’s a way where both parties can be happy and these infrastructural partners can be of service to the influencer, to the artist. These deals can be flipped in a way that they are just more fair.”
Watch more here on the Joe Rogan Podcast: