In a statement on his Instagram, Kanye West claims that his music catalog was put up for sale without his knowledge.
Less than 24 hours after news broke that Kanye West’s catalog was for sale, the rapper is claiming he never approved of the move.
In a statement posted to his Instagram, West ironically compared himself to Taylor Swift and claimed that his catalog had been put up for sale without notifying him.
“Just like Taylor Swift. My publishing is being put up for sale without my knowledge. Not for sale,” he wrote in his story.
In using Swift’s example, he was referencing the popstar’s very public feud with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta in 2019, where she accused the latter of selling her masters to Braun without giving her the chance to buy them herself.
Swift claimed that she had been ‘begging’ to own her masters from Big Machine Records, but the label would only allow her to earn them back with every release. The feud eventually led to Swift re-recording all of her catalog and releasing her previous songs as ‘Taylor’s versions’.
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In his IG stories, Ye went on to provide screenshots of his conversation with an unnamed person, where he asks them to figure out who is attempting to sell his catalog from Gee Roberson, his former manager.
“Can you ask Gee who is selling my publishing?” he says, to which the recipient replies: “From Gee. Fake news. Of course every publisher wants to pitch there (sic) hardest to buy. SMH.”
West’s statements comes less than 24 hours after Billboard reported that the rapper and his team had been evaluating the value of his catalog with potential buyers for the last 10 months.
In the report, Billboard estimated the number to be around $175 million USD, taking into account speculations that the rapper was seeking almost 35 times the net publisher’s share or gross profit.
With a speculated share of $5 million USD in a year, the catalog valuation rested at a whopping $175 million. If true – which Ye claims it is not – it would have made his catalog one of the most expensive publishing catalog deals in the industry. Even if artists aim to seek such a high share, precedence states that the amount is usually too high for buyers to go through with the sale.
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