Kanye West and James Blake against the music industry

Blake fired off a series of tweets at X about the devaluation of music and emphasised the challenges artists face in monetising their work in the age of streaming services. “One thing I keep seeing is that if you’re lucky enough to go viral use your exposure to generate income in other ways. Musicians should be able to generate income from their music – do you want good music or do you want what you paid for?”

“If we want quality music, someone is going to have to pay for it. Streaming services don’t pay properly, labels want a bigger cut than ever and just sit back and wait for you to go viral, TikTok doesn’t pay properly, and touring is getting expensive for most artists,” Blake added, inviting Ye to share the message on his own Instagram story.

The British singer says the public is “brainwashed” into thinking that music is free. He also opined on AI-generated music: “And, by the way, given that it’s cheaper to produce fast, synthetic music to stream every week to capitalise on the strengths of the model. Look at how the model prepares you for AI-generated music that doesn’t pay musicians anything”.

Kanye West sets the networks on fire with these images of Bianca Censori.