Nigerian Artistes may Benefit from Kanye West’s Deal Guidelines

As Nigerian artistes continue to fight their record labels over unfavourable deals, American rapper Kanye West has presented new guidelines for them to follow.

In a series of tweets titled New Recording and Publishing Deal Guidelines, West exposed the artistes to what ‘a proper recording deal between a record label and an artiste’ should look like.

Breaking his guidelines into sections pertaining to royalties, advances and more, the Wash Us In The Blood singer advocated for fairer treatment for all artistes.

Below are his suggestions for the artistes:

• The artiste owns the copyright in the recordings and songs and leases them to the record label/publisher for a limited-term, 1-year deals.
• The record label/publisher is a service provider that receives a share of the income for a limited term. The split can be 80/20 in the artistes favour.
• Artistes must be dependent on no one but themselves to manage their catalog. You should need NO ONE else to understand the business you’re in.
• The first thing that changes about Record Deals is actually lawyers. We need Plain English contracts. A lawyer’s role is to improve deals…. not charge for contracts we cannot understand or track. Re-write deals to be understandable.
• If you’re with a major you have invested your ‘songs’ as shares in their power to get equity and deals. Almost all new deals now are based on all songs going to a store or app. The equity is the Artistes. No more blanket licenses. It should be clear from day one… what shares you get now and when you leave. If your song helps a deal over the line you invested in that store/app the same as they did. Universal Music Group (UMG) now has a 2.2 billion shareholding stake in Spotify. This is the artistes. The system as to how we get share balances on our royalty statement needs to be created and a system on when Artists can cash in.
• On artistes re-signing these stops. Advances are loans with 75% interest rates (or worse). No other business in the world takes a look at the business, buys shares, starts to profit when it profits. Record companies have to buy into you, not loan you.
• Again back to dependents, you need a business manager to read how you did? So you pay to see your money!!! NO MORE. Royalty portals need to show (and do not now) Every song you delivered Every store you are in How many streams per song Income per song. It sounds basic and logical but t does not exist. They focus on top earners and zero look at the 440 stores…. Only the top few. Artistes are global. That’s why their contract territory says global royalty department in every label. No more separating finance teams from the music.
• Portals are not just for royalties. They are for your entire business.  Every audio file, every asset, every deal stored with the money. So money and music must stay together. When your term ends, download it all. Leave.

Meanwhile, due to increasing dispute between record labels and artistes in Nigeria, eelive.ng had published that the artiste/record label feud, has always been messy and irreconcilable.

This publication’s report exposed its audience to the fact that Nigerian musicians have always had problems with record labels that discovered and brought them to the spotlight, such that record labels’ disputes with artistes have become all too common in the Nigerian music scene.

Will West’s suggestions do some good to address the historical issue between Nigerian artistes and their record labels?