Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/the-dont-sign-there-list-6-record-deals-artists-say-became-financial-nightmares/
There’s a version of the music industry story that everyone knows: a young artist gets discovered, signs a record deal, and watches their life transform overnight. The advance lands, the album drops, the tours sell out. What that story tends to leave out is what happens to the money – and more often than not, the answer is complicated, painful, and instructive for anyone who’s ever held a pen near a dotted line.
The record business has allegedly scammed countless musicians out of their masters, publishing rights, royalties, and just about everything else under the sun. The cases below aren’t abstract. They’re documented, fought in court, and in several instances changed the way artists think about what they’re actually agreeing to when a label comes calling.
Taylor Swift and Big Machine Records: Losing Six Albums Overnight
Though the dispute officially began in 2019, the story actually starts over a decade prior, when Swift was simply a 15-year-old aspiring singer-songwriter. In 2005, she inked her first record deal with then-new Nashville company Big Machine Records, signing over the ownership of her first six studio albums’ masters. It was a standard industry arrangement at the time, but for Swift it would later prove enormously costly.
In June 2019, a dispute emerged between Swift and her former record label, Big Machine Records, its founder Scott Borchetta,…
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Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-05-30 02:40:00
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