For those who believe the music industry’s aim should be to encourage creativity, Robert Fripp’s diary makes for depressing reading.
The veteran guitarist, founder of King Crimson, has published the diary on his website since the 1990s, during which time he’s spent more hours locked in bitter legal battles with labels and distributors than he has playing music.
Written with the driest of English wit, Fripp’s diary details the trials and tribulations of the independent artist in a music industry now dominated by an oligopoly of major companies.
Fripp’s particular bête noire is the Universal Music Group. “You cannot expect a company the size of UMG to read or apply the details of every contract of every catalogue it acquires”, Fripp cites from legal correspondence received from UMG following the company’s acquisition of yet another competitor – and wryly notes in the same breath that nearly two decades’ worth of royalties for his two albums with The Police guitarist Andy Summers have remained unpaid.
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