Rapper Kitty shared a “sinister” request she received for her music recently. The 31-year-old posted a video to social media detailing the question she received, something that sadly seems to be a sign of the times.
The Florida rapper and member of the rock band Teen Suicide posted to Instagram back at the tail end of September, giving her take on the status of the music industry and her concerns about what’s going on behind the scenes.
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“I’m kinda tripping out because So far this week I’ve had four companies hit me up. And that’s on top of the past couple of years of dozens of companies hitting me up, wanting to buy my catalog,” she says in the clip. “They want me to sign over all my music, everything I’ve ever made. And be like, ‘Here you go, I’ll trade you the rights to this, you do whatever you want, put it in whatever movie you want, sample it however you want…And you hand me a big chunk of money.’”
“It started out they would offer me like $30,000 or $40,000, now it’s gone up to $100,000, that these people are offering me a hundred grand for my catalog. To own my music,” she continues. “I just want to know what is happening behind the scenes. The music industry is cooked, done. Cooked. Evil. Flopped. Burned Down. Literally zombies reaching hands…That’s even more reason why I’m not selling my s—t. Do you think that we need ‘Agora Hills’ again?“
There isn’t any clear answer for what is happening outside of the rise of owning these music catalogs for famous artists and growth in the A.I. realm, no matter how fragile the bubble seems. KISS, Genesis, ABBA, and, most recently, Pink Floyd, have all signed deals to sell their music catalog to private equity firms or companies for millions.
It’s troublesome, and Kitty’s post, even with its Agora Hills shade, shows that even independent artists are being courted in some fashion. While the $100K is far from the $300 million for someone like Sting.
