Tyler, the Creator is among those who have co-signed a warning from English singer James Blake about the state of the modern music industry.
On Sunday, Blake, a two-time Grammy Award winner, took to X, the platform previously known as Twitter, to share some thoughts on the struggles faced by artists in today's musical landscape.
The 35-year-old initially responded to a quote attributed to him in which he claimed he and Frank Ocean never made "a cent" from his cover of Ocean’s "Godspeed," despite it going viral on TikTok.
"It’s worth noting this is just an example I used in a post talking about the wider effect of TikTok on music," Blake remarked.
In a follow-up post, Blake then wrote: "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 added.
In a series of further posts, Blake elaborated on how difficult it can be for musicians to make money in today's industry and how moving forward, the use of artificial intelligence could further damage artists.
"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 wrote in one post.
In another, he wrote: "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 received plenty of support for his comments, including from Tyler, the Creator, who shared a post of Blake's tweets to his Instagram stories and wrote: "Talk ya shit."
When Blake later shared screenshots his tweets to his own Instagram account, Tyler again passed comment.
"yeah," the Odd Future rapper commented on Blake's post.
Kanye West, Vic Mensa, The Alchemist, Metro Boomin, and English rapper JME were among the others to co-sign Blake's comments.
"FACTS," wrote JME on X.
Comments