In June, nine months after its decision on the Taylor account, Sony Music shocked the industry when it declared that it “will no longer apply existing unrecouped balances to artists.” The financial structure of the record industry has long been centered around the idea of an “advance”: An artist receives a substantial payment upfront, and then is essentially in debt to their record label until their recordings earn enough money to pay back the advance.įor the untold number of recording artists who, for decades, hadn’t seen a penny in recording royalties because their advance had never been recouped, Sony’s new program (dubbed Artist Forward) meant that artists on at least one major label could actually start receiving the money their recordings had been earning all along. “If it had been 10 years ago, or even seven years ago, may not have done the same thing.” (Sony declined to comment for this story.) “I started wondering, ‘What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting the money?” – Fonda BryantĪccording to a source familiar with the matter, Bryant’s questioning also came at a time when Sony was already in the process of evaluating how “to do right by its legacy artists.” “When Fonda Bryant came to concerned that was still unrecouped, her timing was right,” says the source, who asked not to be identified. “ did good she got them to pay attention.” “It worked,” says Tim Langridge, a longtime royalty manager who has previously answered inquiries from Bryant while managing Taylor’s royalties under a different label. “I’m glad turned on the faucet that’s what’s really important.” “I’m not surprised it took a long time, and I’m glad she hung in there,” says Cedar Boschan, the head of a firm that regularly audits labels over royalty payments. While it’s not uncommon for labels to forgive unrecouped balances of legacy artists on a subjective, case-by-case basis, attorneys and royalty experts tell Rolling Stone that such occurrences tend to be hard-won over a period of years, and often take place as part of a larger settlement between a label or an artist. Last September, an executive at Sony explained to Bryant that the label would be wiping out the $72,000 balance on her father’s account and “voluntarily make a collective, one-time payment” of $97,000 to be divided among Taylor’s nine heirs.īryant’s persistence resulted in what some might call a success story in the world of royalties. “I started wondering, ‘What’s going on?” says Bryant.
The account had been steadily earning income since Taylor’s death in 2000, but, like many artists who take out large advances with labels, the debt to Sony still needed to be paid off before his heirs could begin earning money in royalties. By September 2020, nearly a year before the label would announce a sweeping new companywide initiative aimed at correcting past royalty grievances, Sony reversed course, making the surprising decision to forgive the unrecouped balance on Johnnie Taylor’s account.
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Over the next few weeks, Bryant had a series of conversations with Sony, expressing frustration at what she viewed as a lack of transparency.
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