‘I had no confidence, no money’: the pop stars kept in limbo by major labels

At the end of June, Raye smashed through the shiny and carefully controlled veneer that usually surrounds music stars. The British pop singer’s numerous hit singles had made her one of the world’s 200 most popular artists on Spotify, but her label Polydor hadn’t allowed her to make even one album from a four-album record deal she signed back in 2014.

“I’ve done everything they asked me, I switched genres, I worked seven days a week, ask anyone in the music game, they know,” she vented on Twitter. “I’m done being a polite pop star.” Polydor responded saying they were “saddened” to read Raye’s tweets and the two have since parted ways.

She had released one mini-album, five EPs and over 20 singles both as a lead and featured artist (and had written songs for other artists such as Beyoncé, Little Mix and Anne-Marie). One of her newest singles, Bed, with Joel Corry and David Guetta, is the biggest song so far in 2021 to be released by a British female artist. So why had her label left her in limbo?

She is far from alone, and the reasons for artists being stifled by the music business are numerous. Perhaps the artist’s creative vision is at odds with the label’s, or they’re sidelined after the person who signed them leaves the company. A lack of commercial success might make a label reluctant to spend more money on an artist’s career, or if the album they made isn’t deemed to be good enough. These pitfalls mean that the majority of artists never make it – stats from UK music trade body BPI say that only one in 10 signed artists are expected to succeed commercially, although industry insiders suggest this is a generous estimate – and if the relationship does fall apart, any music an artist has made typically remains owned by the label.

Kimberly Anne, who goes by the artist name of Lanta, signed to Polydor in 2013 and found herself in a similar situation to Raye. She spent three years with the label, “being a good artist, doing everything they said,” and changing genres so many times that she felt she lost her “creative compass”.

She lived off the £25,000 advance she’d been given and then spent a year negotiating her way out of the contract. After leaving, she says her self-confidence and mental health were shattered. “I think I have underlying anxiety issues but the whole experience definitely exacerbated it. I became depressed. I didn’t see how I could make music and represent myself any more, my confidence was at zero.” (In response, Polydor said it was the first they had heard of Lanta’s feelings, “which we were very sorry to read – given the substantial changes in the label’s management and staffing since 2013, we can’t comment on them. We take artists’ mental health very seriously and over recent years we have developed a number of resources to support the wellbeing of both our existing artists and those moving on.”)

Pop singer and songwriter Marney, who spent five years stuck in a deal with Sony without releasing any music after the A&R who signed her left the company, says she feels she lost her 20s. “You come out the other end and your friends have mortgages, they’re senior members of staff or just qualified as lawyers or doctors. Whereas you feel like you’ve got nothing to show.”

Singer and songwriter Bruno Major was given the A-list treatment when he signed to the since-dissolved Virgin in the US, which included a first-class flight, a stay in a beautiful hotel in Los Angeles and the pick of musicians he wanted to record with. He even had, he says, a private chef who baked him pies with his name on them. The high life ended abruptly when the label head who signed him was dismissed and the higher-ups decided his album was, Major says, “rubbish” and they wouldn’t release it.

Major says he was devastated and describes the experience as “the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I had no confidence, no money. And it’s a long way down – when you become the guy that signs a record deal and goes to LA and then you get dropped, it’s humbling.” He has a pragmatic view on the situation now, saying it gave him the impetus to record new music and release it independently, but it taught him a harsh lesson about the reality of major record labels.

“It’s a giant illusion,” he says, comparing it to a TV talent show search. “People think in order to be famous or successful, you go on and the powers-that-be bestow upon you the magic wand of success. But the vast majority of people on the show actually get sunk and legally bound in deals that mean they are never able to release music and they are fucked, basically. The major label system is really not that different, just a little bit more finessed.”

Music industry adviser Mike Burgess explains the labels’ thinking: “There are a huge amount of acts that are signed because they might have the thing the label is looking for, or they might not. But it’s safer to hoover them up anyway, sign them and retain them.”

The problem, though, is that labels often seem to forget that they’re signing a human being rather than a prospect. Ted Cockle, who spent 15 years as head of record label Virgin EMI, where he worked with Lewis Capaldi, Amy Winehouse and Bastille before joining Hipgnosis Songs, says that the decision to delay a Raye album could make sense from a purely commercial perspective: her mini album Euphoric Sad Songs didn’t chart when it arrived last year. But does it make sense from a human one? “At some point, if the artist is seeing themselves as a recording artist and they’ve signed an album deal, in order to keep them energised, satiated and focused, you have to let them make an album,” he says. “It’s a rite of passage.” The artist-development process usually takes around two to three years before acts are deemed ready to release an album – less than half of the time Raye (who would not comment for this article) was kept waiting.

A lack of substantial record sales might also be the fault of a label’s development approach, rather than an artist whose destiny lies elsewhere. Grammy award-winning producer Jim Abbiss, who has worked with Adele and Arctic Monkeys, says that labels sometimes “try every combination of every genre and style” with a pop star – just as Polydor did with Raye and Lanta – who then “loses sight of what they are. Then, it’s very easy for the label or the management to never commit to things.” Raye’s songs have had productions ranging from deep house to Afrobeats, R&B and dance-pop, and she has arguably lost a strong sense of identity because of it.

There is anecdotal evidence to suggest this process may disproportionately affect women and people of colour. Songwriter Coco Morier, who has written for Britney Spears and Demi Lovato, says she’s seen plenty of young female artists “lectured and berated” by the male studio teams they are collaborating with, and who are “deemed a creation of the label and the producers behind them, instead of them being signed on their talent and allowed to have their creative vision.”

A Black female artist, who wished to remain anonymous, wanted to get out of her deal with Island Records for the vast majority of the time she was signed, and says she was pushed to be “super R&B” and told by her A&R that the chords on her songs “don’t sound Black enough”. She says: “With Black women, sometimes they’ll push you into the more commercially white realm or, in my personal experience, they refuse to see you outside of a stereotype of Blackness and make you feel like if you don’t conform to that, no one will believe you as an artist.” (Island said they would not comment on the allegations of an anonymous artist.)

Singer VV Brown has recently written about this, saying she “hated being immediately categorised as R&B” even though she’d written a pop-punk song. Throughout her career, she said she’s seen “countless” Black artists ending up in the same position as Raye. “I experienced it myself. For two years I was unable to release music and was completely neglected.”

These issues aren’t unique to major labels. Another artist I speak to was blocked from releasing her self-financed and self-produced album for two years by the independent label she was signed to, after they said it dealt with “women’s issues” that people didn’t want to hear about. It nearly devastated her financially. “In no other industry would this happen where someone says to you, ‘Oh, here’s a job contract but actually, we don’t want you to come into work, we’re not going to pay you and you can’t go and find another job.’”

For their part, record labels spend a lot of money on developing and promoting new music talent. In the UK, the BPI says that labels pump £250m a year into artist development (A&R) and another £150m on global marketing, which is over 35% of the total £1.118bn labels made from recorded music in 2020. The costs for one artist project alone can reach millions and when artists leave labels, they don’t have to pay back their advances. And thanks to the growing number of companies such as AWAL and BMG, which offer a more flexible alternative to traditional labels, artists now don’t have to enter into restrictive deals in order to get their music released.

Cockle refers to albums as an “artist appeasement tool”, because promoting albums in today’s track-led streaming age can be expensive and thankless. In 2010, Take That’s Progress was the best-selling album of the year with 1.84m sales, but in 2020, Lewis Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent topped the list with 456,000, so there is an argument to be had over whether artists are too focused on albums when success and revenue span a multitude of areas (including playing live, merchandise sales, writing songs for others, branding deals and licensing music to film and TV).

Are album deals outdated, then? Yes, says music lawyer Robert Horsfall, who still sees “many contracts from the pre-streaming era that call for the old-fashioned ‘album’ format to be delivered and released”. This seems to be an issue Raye faced: although she’d released enough tracks to fill multiple albums, contractually, she hadn’t yet delivered one.

To their credit, Polydor allowed Raye to leave her deal swiftly and she’s now free to pursue a career as an independent artist. But what about those who end up trapped, unable to release the music they have poured their hearts and souls into? Many of those I spoke to called for better education about the reality of deals in music, as well as some sort of HR department that exists specifically for artists, where they feel supported to air grievances.

When putting this idea to the three major labels, one pointed to its artist relations department, who “support artists in a wide range of ways”. The second said that the company works in partnership with artists and managers “to ensure that creative choices are discussed and decisions are made collaboratively”. The third label said it has an informal reporting process but no formal mechanisms in place. The Musicians’ Union also offers support and advice to members for their contracts and relationships with music companies.

This sort of system isn’t a perfect solution – as Raye tweeted, artists often don’t speak “out of fear” of repercussions on their career. But if more can find their voices, the more likely it is that they will, finally, be heard.