Published November 10th 2015
Martin Garrix
The story of Martin Garrix may look like a dream to anyone on the outside. At age 16 his weekend job was being a world famous DJ, earning just a little bit more than his fellow class mates at his high school, with their jobs selling clothes at stores.
But, Garrix is now three years the wiser, and is claiming that his contract with record company Spinnin’ Records took advantage of his inexperience and forced him to sign off the rights to his songs to the label owner, who also forced him to sign with him for management.
Last week, many of Martin Garrix fans already noticed that some of his music has disappeared from YouTube, which forced him to respond. In a tweet he said that they’d been forcefully taken down due to copyright issues with his label.
The young DJ, now 19, has left his management after a huge blow out in the summer and the conflict is turning into a court case in an attempt to free him from the contract.
Despite of the fact that much information is made available to aspiring artists about how the music industry makes their money, and despite the fact that it´s now widely publicized that publishing rights are where the money is at, Martin Garrix is far from the first nor will he be the last to have gotten himself into a bad deal.
In the past, Toni Braxton only received a royalty’s check of less than $2,000 after selling 20 million records for LaFace Records, causing her first bankruptcy at the height of her career! 80s Groups, Wham and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, signed contracts leaving them to earn just a couple hundred dollars, despite selling millions of records. All of them have explained over the years how this happened. George Michael couldn’t get out his deal with Sony, so chances are slim that Martin Garrix will be freed from his contract.
Toni Braxton about her contract:
Details about Wham’s contract: