
Taylor Swift: Don’t know what else to do - garyng
https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-swift/dont-know-what-else-to-do/10156631338812023/
======
ggm
_(not a tay tay fan. not actually listening to much music these days, I can 't
quite get Bach and Beefheart out of my head)_

Normally I'm a "the contract sets the limits" person but in artist's rights,
an given the extent to which artists are both young, and exploited, and wind
up in legally dubious relationships which then magify out and up, I think the
intent should be "what's the right thing here, no matter what the contract
says"

And I think unless she received heinous amounts of fuck you money, and sold
her rights for their current worth, unless she did that, if this is just
normal A&R nickel-and-diming, then they should be told to go away, and she
should get to perform her songs.

 _" you can't perform your songs"_ is a very sad place to wind up. it does
nobody any good.

She very possibly did receive heinous amounts of A&R support but I would also
believe a lot of leeching has been going on. The industry is a giant machine
to suck revenue out of art and put it into tax efficient structures for other
people.

They learned from masters: the movie industry. Who did those masters learn
from? The Sheet music industry.

Pop will eat itself.

~~~
nordsieck
> Normally I'm a "the contract sets the limits" person but in artist's rights,
> an given the extent to which artists are both young, and exploited, and wind
> up in legally dubious relationships which then magify out and up, I think
> the intent should be "what's the right thing here, no matter what the
> contract says"

If young artists cannot sign away their rights to the songs they create they
won't get funded in the first place.

> And I think unless she received heinous amounts of fuck you money, and sold
> her rights for their current worth, unless she did that, if this is just
> normal A&R nickel-and-diming, then they should be told to go away, and she
> should get to perform her songs.

This is absurd reasoning. "You have to pay for IP rights. Also, if the artist
is successful, you have to pay them again in 10 years depending on how
successful that become." If they want that kind of a deal, it's usually
possible to negotiate points for money, especially with unknown talent.

There is this idea that artists have some sort of moral right to control the
destiny of their creation. This is garbage thinking.

Quite frankly, becoming a pop star is a huge gamble. Most people who get
fronted money by labels don't make it. Those that do pay for all the failures.
If you want to call that "exploitation", so be it. But I don't have much
sympathy for her predicament.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> If young artists cannot sign away their rights to the songs they create they
> won't get funded in the first place.

Bullshit. We are perfectly fine accepting all sorts of contact limitations in
other areas. How many times have I heard on this site that people wish all
states were like California in making non-competes unenforceable. And yet
engineers still manage to get hired there.

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to amend performance contract law to
state that artists who actually wrote songs should always be allowed to
perform them, even if someone else owns the "rights". Heck, even put in some
reasonable royalty payment that the "rights owner" must be paid if the
original performer performs her songs, but don't allow an outright ban on
performing them.

The "rights owners" would still have full control over ability to use that
music in other areas, and by other artists, commercials, political rallies,
etc.

~~~
orev
Supply and demand.

There are a limited number of engineers and the companies who need them
actually have to fill those roles in a reasonable amount of time to be able to
get things done and stay competitive. This puts pressure on the companies to
make the contracts more equal.

There are an (effectively) infinite number of young musicians dying for the
chance to “make it big”, and the music companies don’t have the same kind of
pressure to constantly have to keep filling seats to get work done. They can
take their time and pick and choose however they want. This allows them to
write the contracts more in their favor.

------
stupendousyappi
Evidently, starting next year, Swift will have the legal right to do something
harmful to the owners of Big Machine Records- rerecord her old songs. The
owners of that company currently have the legal right to prevent her from
playing her old songs. There are many artists who I think have been exploited
by the executives of their industry, but Taylor Swift isn't one of them. I
expect that she was generously compensated for giving up ownership of those
songs. If she wants to change the terms of that deal, the other parties have
offered to negotiate.

~~~
steve19
Presumably she had a lot less power early in her career when she originally
recorded those albums.

------
bhauer
For those who, like me, don't visit the domain called facebook dot com:
[https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867...](https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1195123215657508867?s=20)

~~~
wallace_f
To be fair Twitter isn't overwhelmingly better.

~~~
stallmanite
I never am asked to sign in to Twitter just to view content. Facebook does
last time I checked.

~~~
whamlastxmas
I am asked with a pop-up but not required every single time on Twitter

------
yellow_lead
>The message being sent to me is very clear. Basically, be a good little girl
and shut up. Or you’ll be punished.

>This is WRONG.

Is that the message? Is it not the case that this is the result of a legally
binding contract?

~~~
xwowsersx
Right. Is this just celebrity with a huge audience privilege whereby they get
to skirt contracts they signed by leveraging their fan base to exert pressure
on the other party?

~~~
deogeo
Contracts she only signed because the music industry had all the leverage. A
music industry that is filthy rich, and notorious for their exploitative
contracts, so I wouldn't rush to their defense.

------
xwowsersx
Can someone explain the background here? I only have a vague idea of how the
music industry works. I don't understand what's going on here.

~~~
0xfffafaCrash
Taylor Swift signed a deal with a record label instead of being an independent
artist because it seemed (and possibly was) advantageous at the time and now
that she is rich and famous and doesn't need the label, she no longer wants to
hold up her side of the deal (giving the label certain rights to her earlier
music for a certain period of time) and so now she is playing victim to get
her fans to pressure the label into giving her more generous rights to the
music she signed to them.

Basically when you sign with a record label you give them certain rights with
respect to creative control, music ownership and licensing in exchange for
them investing in helping you produce and market your music to a wide
audience, network in the industry, tour, etc. In short, they help you make it
big and take on early costs and risks and in exchange you make them rich if
you do become extremely successful.

~~~
deogeo
It should be noted that music label contracts are notoriously one-sided, and
artists often make their labels millions without seeing a dime themselves.

~~~
divbzero
We should thank those who have helped nudge the startup world in a different
direction.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Hallelujah. I'm honestly kind of dismayed at how many people are saying "tough
shit Taylor Swift", when I hear people bitch on this site _all the time_ about
the unfairness of things like non-competes, lopsided preference rights, etc.
that end up in the contracts of engineers and the startup founders.

While I don't know if it's the same people bitching about these contract
provision who are also saying Taylor Swift should cry me a river, the overall
tone strikes me as completely hypocritical. Just search for any post on this
site about non-competes and tell me how many upvoted comments you see saying
"Tough shit, why did you sign the contract then?"

------
gorgoiler
I think there are two things that weaken Swift’s message here:

1/ There’s no need to call out gender — “be a good little girl and shut up”,
referring to “these men”, etc. Not during 2019’s entertainment industry
harassment crisis. This is an intellectual property rights issue but it feels
like Swift is trying to nudge it in another direction, unfairly.

2/ When your net worth is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars it
seems calculating and disingenuous to try to have your way in the court of
public opinion. Asking your fans to directly contact the other party in the
legal dispute feels like straight up bullying.

~~~
unreal37
I'm sure Scooter Braun, who's likely got a net worth more than Taylor Swift,
is going to be OK. He can take care of himself and doesn't need you to defend
him.

Nobody is bullying anybody here.

~~~
daenz
Your argument is essentially "It's ok to use dirty and deceptive tactics
against people with more net worth than you." Why is that acceptable to you?

~~~
unreal37
The words "dirty and deceptive tactics" are yours.

I just don't worry about people with 9 figure net worths arguing over
inconsequential things.

------
czottmann
Full text, readable away from FB:
[https://outline.com/https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-
sw...](https://outline.com/https://www.facebook.com/notes/taylor-swift/dont-
know-what-else-to-do/10156631338812023/)

PSA: I just prepend [https://outline.com/](https://outline.com/) to the URL of
a FB post to get the actual text (as FB domains are resolved to 0.0.0.0 in my
house).

------
cheez
Wait, so she sold "her" music and it's no longer hers....

What am I missing here?

~~~
ToFab123
> On Sunday, June 30 [2019], it was announced that Scooter Braun and his
> company, Ithaca Holdings LLC, acquired Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label
> Group in a deal that’s reportedly worth over $300 million. Through buying
> Borchetta’s company, Braun now also has ownership of Taylor Swift’s master
> recordings made when she was with the label, including her first six albums.

[https://www.bustle.com/p/why-doesnt-taylor-swift-own-the-
rig...](https://www.bustle.com/p/why-doesnt-taylor-swift-own-the-rights-to-
her-music-its-actually-more-common-than-you-think-18159717)

~~~
hobofan
> in a deal that’s reportedly worth over $300 million

So if she were to really put the money where her mouth is, she could probably
buy the rights to her old records with her reported $360 million of net worth,
or find a more friendly recording label willing to do so.

~~~
smnrchrds
She actually tried that, but was unsuccessful.

------
yevster
So she’s crying a river over being forced to live up to the obligations of
contracts she willingly signed. Most of her fans reading this can only dream
of having a fraction of the breaks she’s had or the money she’s made. So she
won’t have a documentary about her on Netflix. Neither will anyone reading
this, but somehow we’re all supposed to feel sorry or outraged for her?

------
iamleppert
Apparently she doesn’t understand the concept of ownership. Yes, she created
the songs.

However, once you sell something to someone else it no longer belongs to you.
This includes works of art.

------
amluto
She’s too young and her music is too recent to invoke her right to terminate
her copyright transfer, which would otherwise be a nice solution.

~~~
tzs
Another possibility that comes to mind is a compulsory license.

For those not familiar with compulsory licenses, US copyright law provides
that for certain kinds of works and uses of those works, instead of obtaining
a license from the copyright owner you can pay a fee to the Copyright Office
and they can give you the license. The Copyright Office sets the amount of the
fee. The money still goes to the copyright owner.

It doesn't matter if the copyright owner doesn't want you to have a license
[1]. If you pay the fee, you get the license.

Unfortunately for Swift, I don't think that taking a compulsory license would
help her here. I don't think that there is a compulsory license available for
broadcast rights or for performance rights, one or both of which would be
necessary for performing the songs on a TV broadcast. I think that the only
compulsory license available for songs is the right to make and distribute
audio recordings.

[1] One big exception. In the case of recordings of songs, compulsory licenses
are not available until after there has been a release authorized by the
copyright holder. Once the first authorized release is out, others can take
compulsory licenses and make and release their own recordings.

------
cameldrv
Cf
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352108)

[http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17](http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17)

------
brazzledazzle
Was this flagged by moderators? @dang

~~~
minimaxir
Given the other comments, it was likely user-flagged.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Weird. Copyright is one of HN’s favorite topics in my experience.

------
dylan604
Maybe she can turn herself into a symbol, and fix it that way?

------
fredsanford
Maybe she should talk to John Fogerty...

------
thewinnie
isn't she been trying to trademark 22 number?

and once we swap sides, will she act differently?

------
rambojazz
She should try CC-BY-SA.

------
wruza
Pretty sure that with such a huge fan base, these guys could appear to
sexually harass a couple of acquaintances or more. This is a very unstable
situation happening right now, depending on their positions in the business.
Maybe it’s better to let the girl sing her songs? Everyone would win.

