[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.

[mcphage]

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

Of course they will, because there will still be plenty of money in it. They've made quite a bit of money off of Swift already.