#master recording

Simply put, the master of a recording is that recording; it is the thing itself. The master contains the record’s details in their purest form: the grain of a singer’s voice, the timbres of instruments, the ambience of the studio. It holds the ineffable essence that can only truly be apprehended when you encounter a work of art up-close and unmediated, or as up-close and unmediated as the peculiar medium of recorded sound permits. “You don’t have to be Walter Benjamin to understand that there’s a big difference between a painting and a photograph of that painting,” Zax said in his conference speech. “It’s exactly the same with sound recordings.”

The comparison to paintings is instructive. With a painting, our task as cultural stewards is to hang the thing properly, to keep it away from direct sunlight, to guard it from thieves. A painting must be maintained and preserved, but only in rare cases will a technological intervention improve our ability to see the artwork. If you were to stand before the Mona Lisa in an uncrowded gallery, you would be taking in the painting under more or less ideal circumstances. You will not get a better view.

cos I have concern…

During the spring and summer of 2020, as protests across the country illuminated the systematic injustices Black Americans have faced and continue to face, the music industry was one of many that was called out to take accountability and action for its treatment of a group of people that is largely responsible for its many decades of profitability. While the industry’s unfair treatment of Black Americans is longstanding and deep-seated, one seemingly simple course of action is to cease all usage of the term “master recording,” which may sound innocuous but, as detailed in Variety’s expansive August 2020 interview with Pharrell Williams, derives from the words “master and slave.”

For those not aware, the terms have long been used to distinguish between a source recording (the “master”) and the subsequent copies made (the “slaves”), which has led to a pervasive use of both terms in many industry contracts. Although these charged words have been normalized to indicate a dominant/ subservient relationship, it does not negate the weight that they carry, especially in context of the music industry.

For as long as the music business has existed, Black performers often have been in a subordinate position to label executives, the majority of whom are white, even though their music is the vital resource upon which this industry is founded. Digging deeper, when you consider that most of these performers do not have control or ownership of the underlying copyrights to their music, parallels can easily be drawn to how slaves did not have autonomy over their lives since they themselves were the property. Many of these performers, most famously Prince and Kanye West, have outright said that their experiences in the music industry have felt like modern-day slavery.

This business has been dominated by white men since its inception, so when coupled with the well-known exploitation of Black artists, the already insensitive use of the phrase “master recording” carries an even more sinister sting. Artists such as Williams, have voiced their discomfort with reading these words in their contracts and have called for changes to be made.

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Some attorneys feel that removing the phrase “master recording” is unnecessary because it is only interpreted negatively by a few people, so they personally do not feel the need to stop using it. This blatant and short-sighted disregard for the psychological and emotional impact that this phrase can have on others speaks exactly to what many people marched for in 2020: You cannot detach the word “master” from its roots in American Chattel Slavery, regardless of the other word with which it is combined. Thus, using the term “master recording” while being aware of its racist inception is a microaggression, whether it is being used maliciously or not.  Words have an undeniable impact, and the continued use of this racist language reinforces the negative connotation of the term’s origin. There are plenty of words that can be used in place of “master” and still convey the same unambiguous meaning, such as “sound” recording, which is the official terminology used by the U.S. Copyright Office for registration of these works.

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Whether the phrase offends a handful of people or thousands is irrelevant: It is a point-blank racist term that must be removed from our industry’s vocabulary if we want to continue to work to rectify our past injustices. Sylvia Rhone, the first African-American woman CEO of a major record label, put it best when she stated, “If it bothers even one person, we’re taking it out.”

Brains & Beauty: Rihanna Has Acquired The Rights To The Master Recordings Of All Her Albums

Per The Culture, In a cover story for the April issue of Vogue, Abby Aguirre reports that after she released her last album in 2012, Rihanna left her old label and acquired the masters to all of her previous recordings. This is an incredible business move for star who also founded her own label imprint under her new home RocNation.

Artists hand over the rights to the master recordings as a part…

Yes, that’s exactly what it means!! ^^ I consider countries between: Portugal in the West, Turkey in the East, Norway in the North and Crete in the South within ‘Europe’, as in, the shipping fee from Denmark to You will still be reasonable!And London/UK is basically right next to Denmark so you can definitely join! ^^

Since I’m not sure which order you’re interested in, I’ll just go over them both~:this is according to my banks current conversion rate, it might be a bit different compared to yours! ><Kindly: USD22 (1kg) is ~£14.19, USD30 (1.4~1.5kg) is ~£19.35 & shipping is USD28.5 ~£18.39 right nowMPST: USD53 (2kg) is ~£34.19, shipping is USD33.5 ~£21.61 right now