I have given it a couple days, and ready to summarize what is happening. I am devastated, depressed, and enraged over what has been going on with the Materia Collective label. Many still not receiving their funds properly, reports of mistreatment of the business and internal staff, and their solution is deleting our music.
I performed and/or composed for 26 of Materia’s albums, on multiple tracks each. Yes, that is TWENTY-SIX albums in the last 6 years. Of those twenty six, 20 have been deemed “official Materia Collective Community Albums” So, those 20 albums, TWENTY ALBUMS… All that work. All those hours, days, weeks, months, years, GONE!
Here are my twenty “Community” albums that are on the chopping block:
This breaks my heart on so many levels, it is impossible to describe in a sensible manner, but I will try. I grew so many friendships on these albums, and so many collaborations that grew into future work opportunities… and so many wonderful singers and musicians and mixers all working and supporting each other… And then to find out people were being screwed over and that the response they have is to remove all our work, wipe the slates clean… I can’t describe how much this burns.
As an example of how many individuals are affected here, other than to say hundreds. On one of my choir arrangements, we had 30 singers. On another 24, and so on. Revenue splits for all were always promised, even if it was a huge group I always gave people 1% (thank heavens i never had a 101 singers)…. Then, to find out that many of my singers and musicians had been waiting years without seeing a single penny come through, and more and more cases became public.
And now, to top it off, the tracks that we created will be ripped from the internet as if it never existed. All that work, erased. As if we never created it. I guess you don’t have to pay anyone all they are due if nothing exists to make money. Just remove the evidence. Like murder.
And many of you know I run The Bwak Choir. I don’t know what is going to happen to them yet. That fictional flock of singers was created for the Materia Collective community albums. All of their tracks existed on those albums. So when the albums die, poof. I hope I can save them. I am planning to redistribute/release the tracks on my own if possible. See our official post about the situation on the Bwak Choir website here
Here are the Bwak Choir tracks that will be deleted as a result of the decision to erase the community albums from online:
There is also debate going on within the group of whether or not original lyrics can still be republished without issue… but it does sound like thankfully the language of the Bwak Choir ie chicken sounds does not count, so we can probably not worry about that there. Sadly I was involved with many tracks where choral or musical numbers had original lyrics created for human singers. We are currently being told those will most likely be lost forever.
If you are online and sharing a hatred or rage against Materia and it’s current postings, please remember that under all the chaos are the creators of the music and that they are going through turmoil right now as well, and we do not deserve this. I do not hold any anger against those who vocalized they were being mistreated to the public, this had to be known. It is just so sad that this is the result we get. No apologies, no ownership of the problems caused, just removal of the music from existence.
If you want to purchase these albums before they are removed in their current state forever, they are on bandcamp, itunes, amazon, spotify, etc, till the end of the month. If you want to wait to see if we can re-release our tracks on another platform (which may pay us all more fairly in shares etc), then stay tuned and I’ll share what I know when I know.
NOTE: THIS ALSO MEANS if you have already purchased any of these albums in the past (or have worked on a track and were given a download code) you have UNTIL November 30th to download your music, because after that it will be wiped from the system with no refund. Because of dumb reasons.