We heard a lot about legacy artist contracts during the recent UK streaming economics inquiry. Now we may be seeing a court battle over some of the issues. Musician Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) is taking legal action against independent label Domino Recordings over royalties from recordings he released in the 2000s.
Music Week broke the news, having seen the legal filings from both sides ahead of a trial in the Business and Property Courts of the UK’s High Court of Justice. The dispute focuses on whether Hebden should have received a royalty rate of 50% for streams and downloads of the recordings rather than the applied rate of 18%.
Both sides are pointing to different clauses in the original contract (signed in 2001, before both the launch of Apple’s iTunes Store, let alone the dawn of streaming) to support their claims. If the case is not settled before it goes to trial, it will have important knock-on implications for other labels and artists with contracts signed in the early days of digital music.
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Tools :: Wyng
Through Music Ally’s internal marketing campaign tracking, we’ve recently discovered an interesting website by the…