Frank Ocean’s Album Is the Straw That Broke Universal Music’s Back

once again major labels have no clue how the future works

 

Major props to Frank on this.

Bingo. I think in the end big labels are just going to screw themselves over with this. Perhaps we'll see major artists (Taylor, Adele, Gaga, Kanye etc.) just forget the label and release how they want to release.

 

So Endless was basically thrown together to get him out of a contract? Well done.

 

Everything I hear about Frank makes me like him more. If he just used Endless to fulfill a contractual obligation, that makes it even better than what it already is (a beautiful work of art).

 

Read some follow up articles that stated that Endless might not constitute as a true "album" via how its defined in the contract and if so Frank is open to legal action. Very similar to how album was so loosely defined in the ADTR contract that it couldn't be enforceable.

My biggest question out of all of this is whether or not Blonde was recorded secretly under UMG's nose or did they just assume it would be released via them? With all the buzz surrounding Alex G being on this record, most if not all indie publications would have had some kind of write up assuming this information was out to the public. Makes me think it was the former.

 

this is dope

so maybe next time we dont gotta wait mad years?

 

Glad he's getting paid for his work and all, but the way FO's camp handled this seems super shady

 

Shady how? It isn't like he didn't provide anything to them at all, and this big corporate entity will do fine without the money from this one release. Is it a big release from a high profile artist? Yeah, but they will survive. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, though.

 

Genius. Someone get A Day To Remember in touch with Frank, they clearly need some help concerning how to properly screw over your record label.

 

Shady mainly because it looks like on the surface that FO's camp made decisions to exploit the label rather than to just get out as quickly as possible. I don't think it's illegal by any means, and I don't really feel bad for UMG because, like you said, they're a huge company and they'll be fine without what's probably a drop in the bucket for them revenue-wise (and I bet they weren't easy to work with or anything). But, after reading the article, my reaction is less "oh that's awesome!" and more "wow the music industry sucks".

 

that's fair enough, on a surface level exploitation is not a commendable practice, but i also have zero problem with the exploitation of a major label / other corporation that is too big to fail. "the music industry sucks" is pretty much how i'd sum it up too