Why master recordings

As a musical artist, you likely know that your tracks must go through two stages of production—mixing and mastering before.

Remastering music is essentially improving on the quality of the original copy of a song or album. Removing flaws from. Browse around our website for more detailed information on our online mixing and mastering service. We offer a variety of different mix options as well as customized selections so you can specify exactly what you need for your tracks.

Our mix engineers will give life to your music. Search for: Search. My account My Cart. Master recording uses. Record label power.

Our online mixing and mastering service can help you reach that crisp professional standard of audio you want. Artist's agreements. How long does it take to master a song? Read more. Hold tight to those masters and keep scrolling. In many traditional record deals, an artist signs away their master rights — that is, the rights to their recordings — to a record label either for a set period of time or the length of the copyright.

That may sound standard, even great to some, but in most of these traditional deals, the artist is prohibited from releasing any records elsewhere with another partner, label, or even artist in some cases. And any recordings made by the artist under the contract are owned by the label — possibly forever. You're becoming a product, and you should understand that. Everyone should understand that, at the end of the day, as much as they'll tell you that they love you, and they'll tell you that you're the next greatest thing, ultimately, there's an Excel spreadsheet somewhere with an incoming and an outgoing column, and if that is not balanced and in the green, ultimately, they're not your friends.

And, he points out, if an artist does ever choose to sign to a label, owning your master recordings is like having an upper hand. Swift left Big Machine Records without having the master rights to her work — those rights would allow her to continue to make money from the catalog of her first six albums, but Swift will continue to only earn a percentage of the money they make. Labels are historically known to not have transparent accounting practices, and part of Swift's problem with Braun may be a lack of trust.

If any "creative accounting" should happen, she may never see another dime from her master recordings or simply a drastically reduced payout from Big Machine. Ariana Grande doesn't own her masters either, Republic Records does.

For nearly a century, this is just how it has been done in the music industry. But, some savvy artists are building clauses into their contracts to have master recordings revert to their control after a two to five year period, declining to take advances for recording their albums in exchange for either a better master royalty split or return of their masters, and finding alternative distribution models that sidestep label deals entirely.

If Borchetta and Braun are unwilling to sell them to her now, Swift may be able to regain control of her masters after 35 years are up and she requests under section of the Copyright Act to have them returned to her. On the plus side for Swift, who writes or co-writes all of her songs, she makes a good chunk of change on publishing rights from her music from her longterm deal with Sony ATV. For her seventh album, Lover , Swift will control her masters — instead of signing them over to her new label, Republic Records , she struck an agreement for the label to produce copies of the album while she retains the master rights on this and all future projects.

The problem Swift might have with Braun, who she appears to consider an enem y, controlling the masters to her early work. It means he can say yes or no to usages on the master rights side, potentially approving them to be used by things Swift doesn't like, be it a new streaming service whose deal terms she disapproves of or a movie she feels isn't on-brand on the latter, at least, she can decline to grant a publishing license and squash the deal. It also means he'll be profiting from her catalog of music without having to lift a finger — something no one with bad blood would want their nemesis to be able to do.

This story has been updated throughout with new information.