The artist formerly known as Kanye West seems to share concerns with James Blake about the state of the music industry.
Blake, 34, fired off a series of tweets on X (formerly known as Twitter) early Sunday morning to share his thoughts on the devaluation of music and emphasized the challenges that artists face in monetizing their work in the era of streaming services.
“Something I keep seeing is ‘if you’re lucky enough to go viral, just use the exposure to generate income some other way’. Musicians should be able to generate income via their music. Do you want good music or do you want what you paid for?,” he tweeted.
“If we want quality music somebody is gonna have to pay for it. Streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever and just sit and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting prohibitively expensive for most artists,” Blake added, promtping Ye to share the message on his own Instagram Story.
The UK singer, who says audiences are “brainwashed” into thinking music is free, also discussed the potential threat of AI-generated music, writing, “And by the way, since it’s cheaper to produce fast, synthetic music to drop on streaming every week to capitalize on the strengths of the model, watch how the model is preparing you for AI generated music that pays musicians nothing at all.”
Blake’s concerns appear to echo a recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok, who were unable to reach an agreement in January to keep music from artists such as Drake, Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, SZA, Ariana Grande, and Billie Eilish on the platform.
