Last year, for the release of her Die for Your Love EP, singer-songwriter Valerie Teicher Barbosa, who releases music as Tei Shi, told us about her tumultuous relationship with her past label Downtown Records, and how signing with a label is something most people shouldn’t be doing right now. Today, that neglectful relationship continues to come to light with the reveal that she hasn’t been fully paid for her last album.
She’s shared an Instagram post that her sophomore album La Linda was removed from streaming services as a result of silence from a cease and desist order she sent Downtown Records. La Linda was released in 2019 and Barbosa states that she hasn’t been paid her full advance. “I’ve been trying to get the back-end of my advance payment (the second half, which is normally paid out upon delivery of the final masters),” she wrote.
She continues to say that she believed a cease and desist would force the label to react. Instead, they’ve kept silent, and so La Linda was removed from streaming services. It’s been a week since the album was removed and Tei Shi still hasn’t heard a word from them. “Unfortunately being exploited, undervalued, ignored, taken advantage of and overall fucked with as an artist is just the name of the game in this industry,” she wrote in the caption.
She also shared that she appreciates her fans’ support and desire for the album to be re-published, but this is the last card she could play. “I want people to understand the bleak reality that as an artist in this situation, this was literally the only leverage / option I had. To try and get paid the money I am rightfully owed for my work, the only thing in my power was to take down my own work—which is obviously something very distressing and detrimental to me and my business.”
This exposure of label abuse toward artists is another recent revelation that has been brought to social media recently. British singer Raye revealed on Twitter that her label Polydor has kept her in album release limbo for seven years.
Read Tei Shi’s full post below.
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