Prince Explains Why He Partnered With Tidal And Why Record Contracts Are Slavery

Photoshot/Getty

Prince Explains Why He Partnered With Tidal And Why Record Contracts Are Slavery

Photoshot/Getty

Prince has been riding the Tidal train in a big way, pulling his music from all other streaming services and releasing his upcoming The Hit And Run Album as a Tidal exclusive. At a meet and greet with the media at his Paisley Park Studio’s last night, as NPR reports, Prince continued to stump for Tidal and criticize record labels. He famously chafed under his Warner Bros. contract for years, walking around in public with “SLAVE” written on his face in 1995, and now the Purple One is back to comparing labels to slavery: “Record contracts are just like — I’m gonna say the word — slavery. I would tell any young artist … don’t sign.” Beyond the usual argument about creative control, one of his main complaints was that labels don’t give artists enough of the revenue from streaming, which is something that David Byrne also recently talked about. He advocated for artists getting paid directly by streaming services, without middlemen like record companies taking a cut, saying that Tidal lets artists control as much of the revenue as possible (and gives him much more freedom). “Once we have our own resources, we can provide what we need for ourselves,” he said. “Jay Z spent $100 million of his own money to build his own service. We have to show support for artists who are trying to own things for themselves.”

more from News