“The ‘music trade’ isn’t a time period I take advantage of,” Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits mentioned to Rolling Stone in 2015. “I have a tendency to focus on music, and the music enterprise is one thing totally different.”
In different phrases: there may be a line between the artists who make music and the individuals who distribute, market and promote it. The previous get together is often involved with the authenticity of their work and the inventive management they’ve over it, whereas the latter is, sadly, typically profit-driven. In the perfect of eventualities, these two sides come collectively to craft a shared imaginative and prescient for the artwork, one wherein everyone seems to be justly compensated for the work they do, inventive or in any other case.
It ought to come as a shock to nobody that as a result of the music enterprise entails loads of cash, ego and fame, it is the prime setting for issues like lawsuits and different such discrepancies. This normally has little or no to do with any precise inventive benefit, and will be made much more ugly when components of racism and/or misogyny are current.
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“I heard somebody from the music enterprise saying they’re now not on the lookout for expertise,” Joni Mitchell mentioned to the Los Angeles Occasions in 2004, “they need individuals with a sure look and a willingness to cooperate.”
Within the chronological gallery beneath, we’re analyzing over a dozen instances artists put their foot down and stood as much as the powers that be within the music trade — legal professionals, label heads, and so forth. — within the title of their very own artwork.
This isn’t a enterprise for the faint of coronary heart.
Gallery Credit score: Allison Rapp
