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Artists Should Stop Selling Their Masters And Here’s Why

The pros of keeping their masters far outweigh the cons

Stanley C.
9 min readDec 5, 2024

What Is Happening?

As you are probably aware, artists are selling the rights to their music by the dozen. This trend started a couple of years ago thanks to market projections regarding music catalogs and musician’s insecurity surrounding cash flow due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it made logical sense for artists to cash out sooner while the future was unpredictable.

We’ve seen legendary artists in their final chapters, as well as musicians in their 30s and 40s, sell their masters during this trend. Some artists have given away total control, while others are only giving away pieces of their catalog or specific rights. Either way, artists have significantly demonstrated their preference for cash sums over artistic integrity and long-lasting musical control of their work.

This article will argue that the “sell your masters now” trend must end.

I’ve divided my argument into the following sections

  • Recognizing The Power And Overreach Of Record Labels: In this section, I establish definitions, dive into the music label’s perspective, and outline their unforgiving control of an artist’s work.

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Stanley C.
Stanley C.

Written by Stanley C.

Hi there 👋🏾 I'm a music writer that posts weekly essays about albums, genres, songs, and other novel topics in the music world that span across time.

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