Anita Baker has won the fight to get her masters to her music. The “Sweet Love” singer tweeted that fans can now go stream her music because she now has her master recordings, the original recordings of all of her songs. She previously asked that fans stop doing so until she got what was rightfully hers.
“All My Children Are Coming Home,” she tweeted on September 3. “Catalog Impossible Things Happen… Every. Single. Day. Gratefully.”
She sent this tweet with a photo of her albums The Rapture, The Songstress, Compositions, Giving You The Best That I Got and Rhythm of Love.
Back in March, Baker brought to her fans attention that she had outlived her recording contracts and was legally supposed to have her masters given back to her. The Detroit-bred singer was referring to copyright reversion, which allows musicians to be given their copyrights after 35 years. Since it hadn’t happened, she told her fans to halt streaming her music until the issue was resolved.
“Miraculously… i have out-lived *ALL, of my Artists Contracts They no longer ‘Own’, My Name & Likeness,” she tweeted. “And, by Law…30 yr old, Mstrs are 2B Returned, 2 Me Unfortunately, They’re gonna make me Fight 4 it. I’m Prepared, 2 do that. Please Dont advertise/buy them ABXO.”
According to Amuse, it’s important to artists to own their master recordings because “owning your masters gives you the legal rights to freely appropriate and maximize your money-making opportunities. With a master recording, you can license the recording to third parties, like TV shows, films, commercials or even for sampling use by other artists. If your master belongs to someone else, like the record label, the music producer or sound engineer, then they have the right to license out the recording (and collect the royalties).”
Baker had also called out streaming services like Spotify, referring to them as “thieves in the temple” that do not pay artists the royalties they deserve. She broke it down in a tweet writing, “2020 Streaming rate $0.003 – $0.005 1/3rd – 1/2 A PENNY Per Stream, for Artist. minus… *fees *taxes *ect. ect. ect. They need to Leave me alone.”
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